Off to Vienna for another Negotiation Skills masterclass for international officials involved in highly sensitive weapns inspections processes. Away all next week, so do not expect too much here. For something unusual to read in the meantime, look at this excellent piece by Mike D’Angelo about the famous jury drama movie 12 […]
Normal service may or not be resumed after the Olympic Games – I am hooked on all sorts of sports I never knew existed. Anyway, I previously have analysed Russian negotiating techniques: Russian negotiators aim to neutralise that approach by conveying a very different proposition: “It doesn’t matter how much […]
Anyone reading this blog regularly will know my views on the Bosnia story and the underlying struggles it epitomizes. But as there is never enough of a good thing, here is a new longer piece from me over at TransConflict: Basically, Yugoslavia was a set of sui generis contradictory and […]
My piece over at Transconflict about Bosnia has attracted all sorts of the usual lively comments. Including the magnificent Owen: The stale odour of complacent Majorite neo-realism, sexed up with an intro of pure, ineffable Foreign Office superiority and disdain for lesser breeds Excellent! Then there’s several from bosniak-Radislav, which get […]
I stir well clear of this one as I don’t know anything significant about it from first-hand experience. Here is a well-turned piece by Tom Phillips, my old colleague from the FCO and its handling of Balkan problems in 1999-2001 and then UK Ambassador to both Israel and Saudi Arabia. […]
Jasmin Mujanovic, a self-styled ‘proud Wobby’ young left-anarchist based in Canada but with Bosniak roots, has written at some length on the problems of the Dayton Peace Accords. He offers his suggestions for making progress, seemingly a BH-wide series of open meetings at which Bosnians define for themselves new constitutional principles. […]
Here is my latest piece at Telegraph Blogs: Our Ambassador to the United Nations Sir Mark Lyall-Grant has come out strongly against this further Russia/Chinese veto: “Russia and China are failing in their responsibilities as permanent members, they are failing the people of Syria … The effect of their actions […]
That depends upon what you mean by ‘the Internet’. I was taught at Harvard that the whole thing works because of the protocols that allow one computer to ‘talk’ to another. And because of ‘packet-switching’ – the way digital information is broken up into tiny scraps that then each make […]
Here is an unusually astute piece by Aaron David Miller at Foreign Policy looking at key negotiation mistakes made at the 2000 Camp David Peace Talks which he followed at first hand. You’ll need to read the whole thing to get the breadth of his argument. What is good is […]
Walter Russell Mead produces smart analysis and informed wisdom at a rate that puts the rest of us to shame. He blogs at The American Interest. Try any of his recent pieces and marvel at the breadth of his knowledge and insight. This one on the problems facing Europe caught […]
