Last week in the Krynica Economic Forum in deep Poland, a highlight was the exchange between former German President (and former IMF Director) Horst Köhler and Polish Finance Minister Jan Vincent-Rostowski. In essence, Kohler argued that the time had come to stop throwing good money after bad in the Eurozone – […]
I returned to the Embassy in Belgrade to be told to watch on TV what was happening in New York. I did. The Twin Towers crashed. My thought then is still valid: This level of Islamist madness is quite different. It can’t be defeated by normal means. Only moderate Muslims […]
My latest DIPLOMAT piece is up: The UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) has an imposing suite of UK-based and e-learning training courses for British diplomats. Some aim at improving skills (Diversity; One Team, Many Cultures; Communication and Assertiveness; Performance Management; First Aid); others look at thematic policy questions (Advanced […]
Over at Commentator is my latest piece on UK engagement with Libya, in which I argue that what happened in recent years was principled, smart and mainly effective. Take that, you chattering classes: there are only two basic choices available to democracies when it comes to dealing with odious regimes: […]
Soon after the US-led attack on Saddam Hussein began, the rattled Gaddafi regime sent an urgent message to London asking to meet a top MI6 officer. The rest is now history. This encounter set in train a series of top-level diplomatic manoeuvres leading to Gaddafi/Libya renouncing its weapons of mass destruction. […]
One of the greatest passages in the Bible: Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?""I know not," he replied. "Am I my brother’s keeper?" When – and to what extent – is X responsible for Y? German President Christian Wulff might be expected with his first […]
Here is the later part of my Commentator piece this morning on Libya, featuring some thoughts on chess and politics – and why the usual clever moaners are wrong again: … slowly and surely and with a lot of pain the capacity of the Gaddafi loyalists to hold out was […]
These extracts from the German Bundesbank August Outlook (via Guido) capture something as basic as basic can be in the way Germany looks at the Eurozone’s problems. The Bundesbank says almost in so many words that if EU member states want the benefit of the full weight of German financial discipline […]
That letter from President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel to Herman van Rompuy (President of the European Council) has shaken rather than stirred the word’s financial markets. I thought it worth a detailed look. But Protesilaos Stavrou has done it for me. Here is his thorough and interesting fisking by someone close […]
Lots of things are incredibly complicated and yet oddly simple when you strip down the issues to the basics. Such as the Eurozone drama. Amidst all the swirling technical/clever analysis of bonds, treaty provisions, sovereign debts and so on, Marshall Auerback gives us this lively thought: Germany is in effect […]
