The Times has two noteworthy pieces on Georgia and its ramifications today. Bronwen Maddox weighs in on the EU’s defiant chihuahua-like stance: … even though the EU should rightly settle for the lowest common denominator on such important questions of its own identity, the proposals were weak beyond parody. “The Union […]
Analysis/comment on Georgia/Russia gushes out. EU leaders meet tomorrow. Hence we have the latest UK positions as described by Foreign Secretary David Miliband and (today) Prime Minister Gordon Brown. These senior British statements are both alas inelegantly drafted. Who is preparing these texts for our leaders – and are they themselves […]
This reads well: Imagine what modern Europe would look like now if Poland had the political status of Georgia, lying in some sort of political-moral twilight zone with former Soviet interests linked to the KGB having a far freer time to penetrate into that society and play games with Polish assets. As […]
The commentaries on Georgia pour out. This one by John Bolton is sharp and good. Try this: The European Union took the lead in diplomacy, with results approaching Neville Chamberlain’s moment in the spotlight at Munich: a ceasefire that failed to mention Georgia’s territorial integrity, and that all but gave […]
As if the EU’s ambiguous response to the Georgia crisis was not depressing enough, life is getting tougher on the economic side too in Europe: The eurozone as a whole shrank by 0.2pc, the first contraction since the launch of the single currency a decade ago. Germany led the slide with […]
A noteworthy sub-plot in the Kosovo situation is a plan by Serbia to ask the UN General Assembly to refer the issue to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an Advisory Opinion. Serbia looks to be getting some handy noises of support for this manoeuvre from eg Russia and India. […]
John Redwood aims to correct in brisk fashion some ‘Continental Misunderstandings’ about a future Conservative Government’s policy on further EU integration (and indeed the EU integration we already have). Eg on the Lisbon Treaty: “We assume the Conservatives will go along with the European project and with the Lisbon settlement […]
Craig Murray has commented on my earlier post about EU policy towards Uzbekistan: You make the somewhat childish debating error of asserting that because I have said that US republicans do something, I am claiming that only US republicans do that thing. I have in fact published numerous pieces, both on my […]
The FT attempts to describe how this morass of trade rules complexity has hit the rocks (Note: deliberate mixed metaphor). See also this. When one has worked in Diplomacy for as long as I have, one realises just how little one knows. So on this subject I have primitive instincts/prejudices […]
Peter Preston gives a rather overwritten analysis of Serbia and its prospects for joining the EU – see eg the obscure Paul Anka reference. Why, he asks, is the EU mumbling about bringing the former Yugoslavia space (plus Albania) into its ranks? Partly because the EU mumbles about everything. Partly […]
