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foreign affairs in strategic context
Browsing All Posts published on »December, 2010«
Go for growth! A narrative for British grand strategy
December 17, 2010
If work is getting you down, and you feel frustrated intellectually, then the answer is Hew Strachan. My afternoon yesterday was spent reading his 2009 essay ‘The Strategic Gap in British Defence Policy’, which puts succinctly many of the problems I’ve been struggling with for months. As well as the internationalisation of national security and […]
Iran, murder and reason of state
December 15, 2010
There is a new article on the Newsweek site about the ‘covert war’ going on inside Iran to destabilise its nuclear programme, noting the suspicious attacks on its nuclear scientists recently. It brought me back to the discussion about murder and reason of state: are Iran’s scientists ‘fair game’ for targeted killing? Xavier says no: […]
The dearth in Conservative foreign policy thinking
December 11, 2010
The editor of ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie, started an interesting debate this week about the future of Conservatism in Britain. His contention is that there are two brands on offer to the Party, ‘liberal’ and ‘mainstream’. David Cameron and the coalition government are the former, and Montgomerie worries they have taken the Party too far to […]
Mark Sutherland: Reflections on the Reserves
December 8, 2010
As I’m still working on my Afghanistan paper, I haven’t had the time to write as many considered posts as I would like to or the ones I have planned. To keep the love alive between the reader and me, I’ve asked talented and learned friends of mine to guest post on the blog and […]
Can you tell when it’s peacetime and wartime anymore?
December 6, 2010
Wikileaks has released ‘probably the most controversial document yet’, according to the BBC. It is a list of facilities around the world that the United States considers vital to its national security. ‘This is the kind of information terrorists are interested in knowing’, the former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind has said. My reaction was […]
Al-Qa’ida, the Taliban and military Orientalism
December 1, 2010
A new briefing paper analysing the relationship between al-Qu’aida and the Taliban was released today by the think tank Quillam. It was a welcome addition to my workload. My regular readers will know I’m working on a paper about Afghanistan and the UK Conservative Party, and understanding that relationship is important in dealing with their […]
December 19, 2010
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