Subscribe:
RSS feed
foreign affairs in strategic context
Browsing All Posts filed under »Libya«
Conservatives should not praise David Cameron, but whip him
David Cameron is a disappointment as Conservative leader. This view is prevalent throughout the Party; everyone seems to have a reason for being disappointed with the Prime Minister’s leadership. For me, it was his actions over Libya; the intervention was everything we promised we wouldn’t do. For others, it is vacillation on Europe and/or the […]
Has David Cameron re-nationalised the national interest?
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 […]
In which I respectfully disagree with Sir Christopher Meyer
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 […]
What’s in the name of a fascistic, oppressive, unjust foreign policy…?
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, […]
Unhappy families: Libya and Afghanistan
August 25, 2011
I have a new article on Egremont today, pointing out worrying similarities between the intervention in Libya – and its alleged success – and the mistakes we made in Afghanistan in 2001/02. We helped a loose coalition of factions to topple a regime without knowing much about them or about what we wanted the postwar […]
Ellis of Benghazi!
August 16, 2011
This letter, which has been classified for fifty years, sheds a fascinating light on British foreign policy in the early 21st Century and the career of Lord Litherland (more popularly known as “Ellis of Benghazi”…) 16th August, 2011 To the Rt. Hon. William Hague MP, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs My dear, […]
Younes, smugness and the future of Libya
August 2, 2011
I have been smug about Libya for a while now. This afternoon, at lunch, a friend of mine complained that I seem to use Twitter simply to express smug satisfaction about this ill-considered war. “Facebook, too,” I added, with a smirk. The killing of General Abdel Younes, a senior rebel commander, and the retributions going […]
Realism: to be sandwiched between craziness and naivety
June 21, 2011
Late this morning I tweeted sardonically, ‘If I had a pound for every pound I had for each day a government minister said Gaddafi is on his way out…’ The next thing I know, I’m being asked to speak on the BBC World Service about the surprising durability of the regime three months after our […]
Henry Kissinger as a guide to the Arab Spring
April 23, 2011
It won’t surprise readers to learn I’m a fan of Henry Kissinger. Two books which shaped my early thinking on foreign policy were Diplomacy and A World Restored, the latter a textbook in returning order and legitimacy to regions destabilised by revolution. On Wednesday, Kissinger appeared with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Charlie Rose […]
The limitations of a nudge-nudge, wink-wink war
April 11, 2011
My regular sparring-partner on Libya, Daniel Korski, has written today about the frustration felt by some over NATO’s handling of the campaign. They detained a ship carrying weapons to Misrata last week, and the rebels have criticised the organisation for being ‘bureaucratic and backward-leaning’ when it comes to the air campaign. Daniel concludes, ‘it is […]
March 8, 2012
1