Here’s my first piece for Spurs Web on what the Saido Berahino transfer (or not as it turned out) saga tells us about Negotiation Theory: In international negotiating, Time can be unlimited. Issues drag on for decades if not centuries: Cyprus, Korean peninsula, Russia/Ukraine/Poland/Germany. Brexit? For football transfers Time is […]
The UK’s Labour leadership between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith contest threw up this interesting exchange. Should involve anyone from so-called Islamic State be involved in Middle East peace negotiations? Yes? Or no? A classic ‘closed question’ that leaves almost no room for waffling. Or so you might think. But look carefully […]
Thanks to the WSJ, we can search the ever-growing database of Hillary Clinton emails. Here is the one from Feb 2011 where news of Tony Blair’s discussion with Gaddafi is described, as the doomed dictator (Gaddafi, not Blair or Hillary) wriggled to survive. If you have a safe place to […]
Russia has decided once again to line itself up with absurd and offensive positions by vetoing the Srebrenica resolution in the UN Security Council. Here is what looks to be the final text. Most of it is the usual rather convoluted language of UN-speak recalling and noting earlier positions. I […]
In case you have been missing me, I have been on the road. First at this year’s Dubrovnik Diplomatic Forum in Croatia. Then back at IAEA (in Vienna) on Leadership Skills. Dubrovnik is of course splendid, if not quite as affordable as it used to be. As for the Forum, the event […]
My piece on the withdrawing by Australia of its ambassador to Indonesia following the execution in Indonesia of two Australian citizens described this move in rather uncharitable terms: The real problem with withdrawing an ambassador ‘in protest’ is that it actually is a gesture of weakness, of faux toughness You […]
Diligent readers will remember that now and then I argue with Brian Barder, another former Ambassador turned energetic contrarian. The Assange Saga in its early days gave one such exchange, where we disagreed over how far if at all the UK government might be within its rights to enter the […]
Check out the website of the lively new mediation partnership I am developing with Lori Pinkerton-Rolet: Mediation by Design. It has a blog where now and then we offer our thoughts on mediation in action. Such as this one, on the importance of scrutinising very closely (but ideally not too obviously) […]
Yesterday on my lonely dog-walk I listened to an iTunes U podcast presentation from Oxford University on the Theory of Arguments as part of a series on Critical Reasoning. I did not find the lecturer easy to follow, but then it’s not easy to explain simply entailment, causation, necessity and […]
Remember back in December when I cantered to almost victory in a national Mediation Competition? The winner that day was Lori Pinkerton-Rolet. And since then we have been working to join forces to offer a joint mediation service aimed at the creative industries of all shapes and sizes (but of […]
