Opinion / Middle East, Arab Spring

Poland Threatens Europe!

Here is a bizarre article by one Sławomir Sierakowski over at Project Syndicate, who ought to know better. It gets off to a flying start with the title: The Polish Threat to Europe. Not, you note, A Polish Threat to Europe or even A Polish Threat to Europe? No, it’s the definite […]

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Europe: The Myth of a Steady State

My previous post linked to the new gloomy piece by Robert Kaplan for the WSJ, in which he ponders the possibility of Europe reverting to deep historical fault-lines: The sturdy core of modern Europe approximates in large measure the Carolingian Empire founded by Charlemagne in the ninth century. The first […]

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North Korea Nuclear Test

Around the planet the world’s networked seismographs will have revealed in seconds all sorts of things about North Korea’s latest big bomb test, hydrogen or otherwise. Notably that it was indeed a bomb (and not an earthquake) and where exactly the test took place. Other instruments will be tracing the […]

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Turkey v Russia

My latest piece for the Telegraph on the shooting down by Turkey of a Russian bomber. A belligerent set of comments, mostly feuding with each other to no helpful purpose and having nothing to do with my piece if anyone actually read it. Russia ‘of course’ will respond. But it’s […]

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Jay Pollard Leaves Prison

Hurrah. Jay Pollard has been released on parole on strict conditions after a full 30 years in a US prison. In 1986 he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the USA for spying for Israel. He has served his full term, despite the generally close US/Israel relationship and numerous public and […]

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France, Terrorism (2): NATO Article 5

Separately on Twitter I have been sparring with Phillip Blond of ResPublica on an interesting issue or two: is ISIS effectively a state for international law purposes, and if so does that make it easier for France to mobilise effective military action under NATO’s famous Article Five? You’ll have to […]

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France, Terrorism (1): Surveillance Works?

My latest DIPLOMAT article on migration and refugees had this dismally prescient passage (emphasis added here): According to the Office of The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in 2014 on average some 40,000 people a day were driven from their homes by conflict or persecution and compelled to find […]

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Refugees, Migrants, Borders

My latest piece for DIPLOMAT magazine, on the EU and its refugee/migrant crisis: Who exactly is a citizen of state X? And what rights (if any) does a person who is not a citizen of state X have (a) to enter state X and (b) to stay there? The answer? […]

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Hillary Email: Blair and Gaddafi

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 […]

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Assad Stays! Realism!

My latest piece for the Telegraph this morning has another look at Syria, and notes with gloomy satisfaction that my thoughts on this subject several years ago have been proven correct: I hate to say that I told you so. But I did. I said it in February 2012: The […]

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