Over at Backbencher Lee Jenkins takes a look at some issues surrounding ‘international intervention’ from a libertarian-inclining standpoint: Yet international relations is a sphere refreshingly free of ideology. States are motivated less by values and ideals, and more by a narrow set of objectives and interests… Once you acknowledge what motivates a country’s […]
It’s always worth reading anything written by the prolific and perceptive Walter Russell Mead. Here he is on how we need to invent Liberalism 5.0: Briefly, the idea is that after World War II America was organized around a group of heavily regulated monopoly and semi-monopoly companies. AT&T was the […]
UPDATE: More fine examples added – see below Unless you have really been paying attention for a very long time, you will have missed my various attempts to share examples of diplomatic themes appearing in great rock lyrics. And the time has come for a former senior diplomatic practitioner (ie […]
The Climate Summit at Copenhagen was a supreme example of collective European negotiating incompetence: Copenhagen was a startling example of how this big tent approach to agreeing global issues is unworkable. It predictably slumped into an uncontrolled haggle which as each day passed grew more and more detached from respectable […]
Here’s one to ponder. Purely hypothetical of course. Say you are an ex-diplomat turmned consultant of no little erstwhile seniority, and you are asked to help with a significant business problem involving a foreign government and a private corporation. You are happy in principle to help the corporation move the […]
Back in 1998/99 I was one of the first people to point out that Bosnia’s new post-war Constitution as promulgated by the Dayton Accords had a unique feature. The Constitution was unconstitutional! It included obviously discriminatory clauses working against the interests of many citizens who were denied the chance to […]
Mark Steyn never seems to lack material on which to base his beyond magnificent rants. Try this new one on the impact of Hurricane sandy and what it shows about modern America: A few weeks ago, I chanced to be in St. Pierre and Miquelon, a French colony of 6,000 people […]
Over at a newer smarter Business & Politics is my take on the Denis MacShane story: … As the US election saga limps to its end, those of us who favour the victory by Mitt Romney do not find it hard to point to staggering examples of corruption and abuse […]
I was so moved by the thrilling experience of trying to cross the road in Hanoi that I sent the Commentator a piece comparing and contrasting socialism (and socialists) in Vietnam and here. If you have never been to Hanoi or indeed Asia before, nothing can prepare you and your […]
As a former diplomat turned wannabe speechwriter I have studied closely the latest Conference speech by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband. How to assess it from a technical point of view? And what does it tell us about a possible future Prime Minister’s approach to the great foreign policy issues […]
