I have a complicated relationship with neoconservatives. Laws prohibiting murder complicate things, but also the way ‘neocons’ ruin good ideas with bad analysis. Democratization in the Middle East is tainted by its association with them (though the claim that the Arab Spring vindicates their beliefs is like Jehovah’s Witnesses claiming credit for the Second Coming…).… [Read more…]
December 16, 2011
One of my bugbears is what I call the ‘internationalisation of the national interest’. It is the belief that the world has become so globalised and interconnected that every crisis is a threat to our health and well-being and that it is vital we are involved in sorting it out. The result of such a… [Read more…]
December 14, 2011
British policy in Central and South Asia is in a bit of a bind. We want stability in Afghanistan, a special relationship with India, and have signed up to a strategic partnership with Pakistan. The problem for us in achieving our goals in the region is that the latter two see a stable Afghanistan as… [Read more…]
December 13, 2011
Since the European Summit on Friday, when David Cameron blocked an EU-wide treaty, many in the media have talked a lot of balls about the United Kingdom and “isolation”. Those who have criticised the Prime Minister, (who, funnily enough, have mostly been Europhiles), have bemoaned our lack of “influence” in Europe. If one follows the… [Read more…]
December 9, 2011
I woke up this morning to discover history had been made, or so I was told. Europe and the United Kingdom have parted ways. At a summit in Brussels this morning, David Cameron had used our veto for the first time to stop a ruinous financial transaction tax, but he has also isolated the country… [Read more…]
November 29, 2011
There were two concerns I had when I learned that the British Embassy in Tehran had been stormed today. One concern was whether any hostages had been taken, which continues to be unconfirmed, and I was also worried about the reaction of the “usual suspects”, for whom Iran is worse than Nazi Germany. England has… [Read more…]
November 3, 2011
These last few years have been tough for the Western Alliance and a dispiriting time for those like me who feel the well-being of the world is best served by Western primacy. It isn’t the rise of the emerging powers that has been dispiriting, but rather the self-pity their rise has engendered in the West.… [Read more…]
November 1, 2011
For nerds, there are few things as fun as compiling reading lists. In May, Dan Drezner electrified the foreign policy blogosphere when he challenged writers to choose three books which would help politicians better understand international relations without having to take a graduate course in it. Since then, I have been thinking about which books… [Read more…]
October 11, 2011
How do you take part in someone else’s historical moment? Christopher Coker, a sharp observer of world affairs, posed this question last spring, speaking at an event at RUSI. He asked it in the context of the unipolar moment – when the United States “was really the only country in town” – and how we… [Read more…]
October 4, 2011
Nik Darlington, m’friend and boss at Egremont, has a couple of good write-ups (here and here) of a brunch hosted by the Tory Reform Group today at the Conservative Party Conference. The guests of honour were Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the United States, and Alistair Burt, the UK minister responsible for… [Read more…]
September 26, 2011
Since the September 13th attacks in Kabul, relations between Pakistan and the United States have become so bad that it is rumoured the baddies in the next Indiana Jones film will be the ISI, which is much more damaging to a country’s reputation than being listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. On Thursday, Admiral… [Read more…]
September 19, 2011
Last week, when Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey toured the Middle East, aligning himself with the Arab Street despite his dodgy credentials to do so, a Turkish analyst on Twitter rejected that this was ‘neo-Ottomanism’ on his country’s part. If the region had anything to worry about, it was the neo-colonialism of the Western powers,… [Read more…]
December 20, 2011
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