Foreign policy is – at root – simple. Identify a clear and fair-minded position. Then use all available sticks and carrots to pursue it. And don’t give up quickly, lest you lose impetus and credibility. Thus one might think that Russia’s August power-play to slice off parts of a fellow […]
A neat summing up of attitudes round the region as Macedonia and Montenegro recognise Kosovo. Key argument: It also helps that Montenegro supported a Serbian initiative in the UN seeking a ruling by the International Court of Justice on Kosovo’s February independence declaration. The General Assembly adopted that resolution on […]
I have been rambling on for some time about how Government is failing in good part because it can not cope with Complexity. Thus the preoccupation with Objectives/Targets/Strategies and the rest is, I unhumbly suggest, theoretically meaningless, ergo operationally harmful. In the light of the utter mess now unfolding within […]
Michael Totten has written a good piece about the Nagorno-Karabakh problem, albeit as seen from the Azerbaijan side of things. We tend to think that the Soviet Union broke up ‘peacefully’ (just as we inaccurately think that South Africa’s transition from apartheid was ‘peaceful’). This is because the vastness of the […]
The folk at EU Referendum are churning out searching piece after piece on the deep and complicated EU rules which (they say) look to be making the financial crisis graver than it might be. This post argues that the ranks of UK journalistic experts are failing to see the issues as a […]
President Tadic has hinted that Serbia will contemplate partition of Kosovo if "every other possibility is exhausted". Oops. What he meant to say was that he was not suggesting partition, merely mentioning a purely hypothetical possibility. If all other possibilities are exhausted. Hypothetically speaking. Down the road Montenegro is being […]
The speedy manoeuvres by the Dutch/Belgian/Luxembourg authorities to rescue Fortis bank were, says Willem Buiter writing on the FT site, a "great day for Europe": The ability of the euro area fiscal authorities to co-ordinate on a bail-out for a bank with not-only strong cross-boundary operations, but indeed with a strong multi-national […]
Denis MacShane reviews Chris Patten’s book about future trends. In it he swipes at Conservative policy on Europe: In Berlin recently, David Cameron promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty were he to become prime minister and the Treaty were not to be ratified. That would mean that the first […]
Welcome Britblog Roundup 189 Visitors Here is a summary of the European Parliament’s latest pronouncement on the media (including bloggers). You’ll recall the original pernicious idea to ‘validate’ bloggers. The full text of the ghastly resolution – 4352 words long – is here. It is an exemplary Liberal Fascist document. […]
The article accompanying the Total Politics UK Political Blogs Top 50 argues that "the right-of-centre hegemony, which has dominated the UK blogosphere for several years, seems to be at an end". Why? Because, according to TP, over half the top 500 political blogs incline to the left. That’s as maybe. Pity so […]
