UPDATE The key zero-zero soundbite in this speech (below) is already causing controversy for being, how best to put this, simply wrong. Ed Miliband has been quick to put out a subtly different version to try to fix the mess! But the original tendentious version is still out there proudly on […]
My latest piece for DIPLOMAT wonders what happens when international borders start to melt: … some people think that borders are less and less important. This in turn seems to signify politically (or even morally) that within the European Union so-called nation states are less and less important. As perhaps […]
At last this spectacular new museum in Warsaw is fully open and buzzing. So many sites in Poland recall how Poland’s Jewish community died. Now this one recalls how they lived. Here is a good piece from Timothy Garton Ash: “Mir zaynen do!” (“We are here!”) The defiant Yiddish refrain […]
Greetings. Long time no blog. I have been racing around the planet and just don’t feel like opining from a weary hotel bedroom. My peregrinations have included the IAEA in Vienna to deliver with other colleagues a senior leadership course; Astana in Kazakhstan, for a speechwriting course for top Kazakh officials, […]
Mulling over my latest piece for PunditWire I started to look at one of President Obama’s rhetorical tics: his use of the word ‘clear’. Take, for example, his 10 September statement on US policy towards ISIL/ISIS. Three hits! Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” Our objective is […]
A reader has sent me this fascinating email with many points of historical interest (reproduced with his permission) on the general subject of ‘diplomatic asylum’ (and the Assange case): Dear Charles I’m a retired DS officer, who follows your website with interest. I enjoy what you say and how you […]
It’s always good when a Pope picks up one’s ideas and gives them mass appeal. Here is Pope Francis warning that a ‘piecemeal World War Three‘ may have already begun: “Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, […]
My latest Telegraph piece on Ukraine is up on the DT website: Russia’s “principled demands” are unchanged: that Ukraine stay independent of all “blocs”; that eastern areas of Ukraine get radical autonomy allowing them to have special economic relations with Russia; and that Ukraine kisses goodbye to Crimea. A settlement […]
One of the sharpest knives in the British Embassy in Moscow in the early 1990s was Christopher Granville. He was the first-ever UK diplomat to resign from the FCO to set up a new financial business in Russia. After various adventures he now is a leading member of the team at Trusted […]
My new piece for Telegraph Blogs looks at NATO’s preparedness (ie lack of) for a new assertive Russia: It is hard to imagine any situation in which Moscow decided that a full-scale military attack on central Europe would be a productive and winning idea. But what about something far more […]
