Sorry to have been a bit quiet, folks. I have been in Vienna with ADRg Ambassadors giving negotiation training to Senior Inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency. These Inspectors have a unique and important job, namely to help check what is going on out there in the world’s civilian […]
Here’s my latest article in DIPLOMAT magazine, mulling over the subject of diplomatic loyalty: … the Libya case has given rise to a spectacular number of high profile diplomatic changes of side, with one Libyan ambassador after another announcing support for the opposition forces struggling to bring down the Gaddafi […]
A snappy young Serbian woman with two degrees from universities in the USA comes back to Belgrade to live and work. She gets a good job in a major Serbian bank on the corporate communications side. She gives a presentation to the bank top brass on how the bank can […]
A few days ago there was a flurry of gruesome media coverage of the appalling death in Crimea (Ukraine) of a local Muslim girl who had been a beauty queen, and stoned to death by an enraged boyfriend for breaching Islamic Law. Only one problem. It wasn’t true. Apparently. Read […]
Exhibit A: a superb article describing research which shows convincingly how the influence of the bureaucratic-cultural disciplines of the Austro-Hungarian Empire lives on in today’s Europe. Thus: Our results show that past formal institutions can leave a long-lasting legacy through cultural norms – even after some are generations of being governed […]
My latest piece over at The Commentator looks at why it took so long to arrest Ratko Mladic, and why our leaders tend to opt for gradual escalation rather than decisive blows to the head: In late 1996 I sent a secret telegram to London arguing that the massively expensive […]
Here is the text of President Obama’s speech in Westminster Hall. Well received more for powerful delivery and ‘feel-good factor’ than substance. Before he left Washington the President gave an important speech on the upheavals across the Arab region and what it all meant for the Middle East. Text here. […]
A powerful article by Yale law professor Jeb Rubenfeld spelling out for the purely foolish the legal issues (such as they are) surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden. See especially this: The opportunity to surrender is a cherished, civilized and valuable part of warfare. But accepting an enemy’s white flag in […]
My latest piece over at DIPLOMAT magazine looks at the policy and practice of ‘international interventions’ (or not): ‘The more precisely the position [of an electron] is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely’. This, as all clever Diplomat readers will know, is the classic formulation by […]
Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski last week bcame the first Western Foreign Minister to visit Benghazi and meet the anti-Gaddafi leadership. Here at Project Syndicate are some of his conclusions: Peoples in transition from authoritarian rule – peaceful in Poland in 1989, bloody in Libya today – grapple with decisions […]
