Always good to be reminded that Europe is not just the wimpy EU or neurotic Balkans. There’s also Ukraine, and where (if anywhere) it fits in to the Bigger Picture. Luckily we have Odessablog’s Blog on the case, watching things with an astute British eye from balmy Crimea. Here’s a […]
A neat little analysis of hypocrisy in politics and what, if anything, it rests on: Consider these two statements from two different potential husbands: “I know I promised to stop drinking forever, honey, but I fell off the wagon again; please forgive me, and I’ll really really try to stay […]
I have written a piece for Financier Worldwide on the dark arts of negotiating in central and eastern Europe: The implicit view is that it is the outcome, not process, which really counts, and that the value of different outcomes can be measured. However, based on my experience as a […]
Remember my lyrical piece about Left student activism at Oxford back in the 1970s? No, you don’t. So read it now. And marvel at the taxonomy of assorted Lefts: Labour Party members and moderates: weedy, hopeful, useful idiots Broad Left: Labour Party members who sucked up to the Communists Communists: small in number, […]
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 leading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC talking about the Mladic arrest, in standard terms. Apart from this: He could – and should – have been taken into custody between 1996 and his disappearance in 2002, but diplomats then did not trust international justice: "The capture of Karadzic […]
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. […]
When Radovan Karadzic was finally arrested in mid-2008 I echoed here a telegram I sent to London from Belgrade in 2001 following the sudden transfer to ICTY of Slobodan Milosevic provocatively titled: "Is Milosevic Innocent?" My piece "Is Karadzic Innocent?" made the point that it would be easier for ICTY […]
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 […]
