My recent piece about the Amazing Vanishing Referendm in Republika Srpska was picked up by RFE/RL (in Serbian/Bosnian) and so got a rather wider Balkan readership than it otherwise might have done. Any normal person reading it might have thought that it (albeit in perhaps a sardonic and annoying way) […]
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 […]
Here is a strong example from Walter Russell Mead of elegant but tough foreign policy writing, this time on the increasingly dysunctional US/Pakistan relationship. Once upon a time India with its phony anti-Americanist ‘non-alignment’ as encouraged by massive Soviet penetration of the Indian establishment was the main reason for Washington to treat […]
For many years I have been a friend of the Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies, a sturdy enemy of collectivism based in deepest Westminster. they did fine work in mobilising anti-communist analysis and economic thought during the Cold War and thereafter. This week they hosted a fine presentation and discussion […]
"…there are about 50,000 people who read my blog daily. If I don’t write, three days later the blog will be read by 20,000 people. In a week, the number of readers will be 2,000 people and, two weeks later, only your mother will go and see if you wrote […]
Off I dash in the general direction of Belgrade, my first visit back there in quite a few years. I have not mentioned here a new role of mine, namely a member of the Board of trustees of The Lord Slynn of Hadley European Law Foundation. This is a group […]
Dominique Moisi is a clever and agreeable French intellectual. I met him once over lunch. Here he is, bewailing what he sees as the professional limitations of diplomats who fail to see convulsions coming: In the name of “realism,” diplomats and foreign-policy strategists are naturally conservative. Indeed, it is no […]
On the one hand, we have one-man band Dr Gene Sharp (my emphasis): His central message is that the power of dictatorships comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern – and that if the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will crumble. For decades now, […]
I have had a kind message from Stevan Hobfoll (former officer in the Israeli defence forces turned expert on Stress) about a novel he has written, The Imperfect Guardian. The book is a Jewish adventure story, based loosely on his grandfather’s early years in Poland and Russia from 1906 (the failed […]
I remember a senior American diplomat arriving at the FCO in 1992 and describing just how busy he was helping get US food aid to a Russia left reeling after the abrupt collapse of communism. We genteel Brits were startled when he described himself as ‘drinkin’ from a pressure-hose’. The imagery! Still, […]
