Autonomous Mind kindly gave a link and supporting comments to my recent piece about Negotiation Training. And, via Twitter, he asked for More on the Carrot/Stick negotiating paradigm. So, here it is. The psychology of diplomatic negotiating is a vast, interesting and almost unanalysed subject. A couple of years ago […]
This is a brisk piece of work from Guy Sorman, a French economist philosopher who looks at global energy issues with a beady eye. He concludes that the main victim of the Japanese nuclear disaster after the tsunami will be not nuclear power but Green Ideology, at least in its luxuriant […]
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 […]
Researching a speech about Poland I came across the wise words of Thomas Banacek, a 1970s American TV Polish/American freelance insurance investigator who solved all sorts of improbable mysteries in part by delivering droll proverbs supposedly of Polish origin: When the wolf is chasing your sleigh, toss him a raisin cookie but […]
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 […]
Over at Salon24, the leading Polish group blog, are my thoughts on how relations between Poland and the USA (and UK) have evolved down the ages – scroll down for the original version in English. Thus: The point? Simply that things come and go over years and decades and centuries. […]
It’s not all doom and gloom with British diplomats. Over at Odessablog some warm words of praise for Judith Gardiner, Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Kyiv (Kiev, capital of Ukraine, for those who are not abreast of latest European city names). Thus: It is always good to catch […]
For the occasion of the first anniversary last month (10 April) of the Smolensk air disaster which killed President Lech Kaczynski and Madame Maria Kaczynska, I wrote a short piece recalling my own memories of them. It was published in the Polish weekly Uwazam Rze. Here below is the core of the article […]
With so many awful things happening in the world, why o why do UK sports commentators have to add to our woe by their utter inability to pronounce the simple name of the Polish goal-keeper playing for Arsenal? His name is Wojciech Tomasz Szcz
How far is it reasonable to expect diplomats to predict radical developments in their host countries? And what if they do predict them wisely and well – but no-one back home wants to listen? The full gory story is in the latest issue of DIPLOMAT: There are less dramatic examples. […]
