Diplomacy

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Breaking: American Diplomats Know How To Read Newspapers

One thing the Wikileaks cables reveal, frankly, is the banality of much diplomacy. People tend to think of diplomats as sophisticated insiders privy to secrets and super-attuned to nuance and intrigue. They are the brightest and best and all the rest of it. Doubtless there are some stations and some levels at which this is the case (it’s worth remembering that none of these cables are “Top Secret”). Much of the reporting, however, doesn’t rise much above the level of reading the daily newspapers. So George Osborne was considered “lightweight and inexperienced”. Who knew? Mervyn King thought Osborne and David Cameron were too interested in politics and insufficiently prepared for

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Brit-free EU diplomacy takes shape

After months of behind-the-scenes work, the shape of the European External Action Service – the EU’s diplomatic corps – is now coming into view. The Bruxelles2 blog has obtained a version of its structure with some of the key names penciled in. You can find it here.      The top three jobs in the EU’s diplomatic headquarters will go to a Frenchman, a Pole and a German. The only senior UK official, besides Catherine Ashton (and her personal aides) is long-serving diplomat and geo-strategist Robert Cooper. But his name, rather mysteriously, is followed by a question mark. Of the EU “ambassadors” that have been appointed until now, there is

Monday

James Forsyth

What’s with the Wiki-fuss?

The whole Wikileaks scandal reminds me of a recent conversation I had, at his request, with a member of a foreign diplomatic service. The country he represented is a long-standing British ally and I saw no harm in talking to him as I didn’t say anything which I hadn’t said, or wouldn’t say, in print. Most of the chat was the usual stuff: what are Cameron’s prospects, what does he believe, will the Lib Dems last out five years, who are the real powers in Downing Street, what will happen to Andy Coulson, who are the new MPs worth watching etc. I suspect that what we discussed, along with many

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron: it’s all about the economy

A minor landmark for David Cameron tonight, as he delivers his first Mansion House speech as Prime Minister. Like occupants of No.10 before him, he will use the occasion to talk about foreign affairs – although the result may be rather more like the Chancellor’s annual speech at the same venue. Judging by the extracts that have been released so far, Cameron’s overall emphasis will be on the economy, and on Britain’s fiscal standing. As he will say, “we need to sort out the economy if we are to carry weight in the world.” Cameron develops this point by claiming that, “whenever I meet foreign leaders, they do not see

Saturday

Daniel Korski

The new Cold War?

In his recent cover story for The Spectator, the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman talked about how, in the United States, China was beginning to take on the appearance of a new Cold War-style foe. Many Americans accuse China of stealing US jobs, of keeping the its currency undervalued, of exporting deflation by selling its products abroad at unfair prices, and of failing to meet its commitments to the World Trade Organisation. Two months ago, a poll from WSJ/CNBC showed that the majority of Tea Party activists oppose free trade – seeing China as the sole beneficiary of a free trade policy. But it is not only the Tea Party that

Friday

Daniel Korski

The London-Jakarta link should be strengthened

President Obama’s return to Indonesia this week was remarkable, in part, for the limited attention it has garnered outside his childhood nation. You can’t walk through an airport bookshop without being inundated by bestsellers about China’s rise. India has always occupied a special part in British hearts. But Indonesia is different. There are few in the British foreign policy establishment who really know the place. Some British military officers know a few Indonesian counterparts through their time at Sandhurst and the Defence Academy. The human rights lobby grew familiar with Indonesia over years of protests against the Sukarno/Suharto dictatorships and the country’s mistreatment of East Timor. But, on the whole,

Saturday

David Blackburn

Ashton’s latest ruse

I’ve obtained this list of Baroness Ashton’s proposed recommendations for the next wave of EU diplomatic appointments. CoffeeHousers’ will notice there are no Brits on it. DELEGATION Nomination proposed Nationality CHINE, Pekin Markus EDERER DEU JAPON, Tokyo Hans Dietmar SCHWEISGUT AUT AFRIQUE DU SUD, Pretoria Roeland VAN DE GEER NLD BRESIL, Brasilia Readvertised ETAS-UNIS (Deputy) Readvertised AFGHANISTAN, Kabul Vygaudas USACKAS LIT ALBANIE, Tirana Ettore SEQUI ITA ARGENTINE, Buenos Aires Alfonso DIEZ TORRES ESP ARYM, Skopje Peter SORENSEN DNK BANGLADESH, Dhaka William HANNA IRL IRAQ, Bagdad Readvertised JORDANIE, Amman Joanna WRONECKA POL OUGANDA, Kampala Roberto RIDOLFI ITA SENEGAL, Dakar Dominique DELLICOUR BEL ANGOLA, Luanda Javier PUYOL PINUELA ESP BOTSWANA, Gaborone Gerard

Friday

John Oconnell

The FCO’s dubious Prevent grants

A few weeks ago I wrote for Coffee House welcoming the Government’s decision to scrap Prevent grants administered by local authorities. In that article, I cautioned that scrapping something should actually mean scrapping it, not just moving resources around. Today, the TaxPayers’ Alliance has released research showing that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) also distribute funds through Prevent. Again, money has gone to projects of questionable value in the fight against extremism, violent or non-violent.   One of the more dubious projects was a “mobile cinema for justice”. What’s worse is that it was administered by an American charity called the International Research and Exchanges Board. Why is that

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

William Hague sets out the government’s Europe policy

Those who hate the new Conservative-led government and those who love it seem to be united in one expectation: that Europe policy may be the coalition’s downfall. David Lidington, the able new Europe minister, certainly has his work cut out for him. In the latest of the Brussels journal Europe’s World, Foreign Secretary William Hague lays out the government’s Europe policy, a policy best described as “pragmatic scepticism”: “The EU is an institution of enormous importance to the United Kingdom and to British foreign policy. And although the Conservative Party has seldom shied away from frank criticism when we have thought the EU has collectively been getting things wrong, we

Saturday

Daniel Korski

Building on the coalition’s good start

A week in, and I am loving the Conservative-led government. The new line-up of Secretaries of State is very impressive and, though a few solid Tory politicians missed out on Cabinet posts, the inclusion of the Liberal Democrat bench has swelled the government’s talent quota. David Cameron has infused No 10 with energy and purpose. You can just feel the umpf. As the former MP John Gummer said, there is now “smile on the face of Britain”. Foreign Secretary William Hague’s trip to the US set the right tone by calling the UK-US link “an unbreakable alliance”. If he now goes on to places where the “economic action” is, to

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Karl Rove’s Idea of the Special Relationship

Dave Weigel has an entertaining takedown of Karl Rove’s new memoir Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight (a title that, oddly, is simultaneously vainglorious and reeking of self-pity). Meanwhile, here’s a snippet of the Rovian style, as relayed by Andrew Rawnsley in his new book*. It’s December 2000 and George W Bush has just become President: [Sir Christopher] Meyer [then British ambassador to Washington] had done his best to cultivate relationships with the Bush team. Karl Rove, Bush’s senior political strategist sent both encouragement and a warning, via Meyer: “You’re going to start with a blank sheet of paper. By your works shall ye be

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Hillary Clinton & the Falklands

Bagehot of the Economist is beginning to have some doubts about the Obama administration: I have hesitated to read drastic slights into the sometimes awkward diplomacy between Barack Obama and Gordon Brown. But this stance on the Falklands cannot be seen any other way. It really is no way for the Americans to treat their most important military ally—as some in America doubtless appreciate. What stance? Well Hillary Clinton has been visiting Argentina and was asked about the status of the Falklands. Here’s what she had to say: And we agree [with Argentina]. We would like to see Argentina and the United Kingdom sit down and resolve the issues between them across the

Friday

Daniel Korski

Dealing with China in 2010

The execution of Akmal Shaikh has brought China to our frontpages, and to the forefront of diplomatic thinking, as the New Year begins. The question is not just how to respond to this single and, in many regards, sad event – but how to deal with growing Chinese power more generally. How will we shape our relations with China for this decade and beyond? It would obviously be wrong to end all UK-China links over Akmal Shaikh’s execution. The Labour government’s use of pique as a guiding principle of foreign policy had little effect on Russia and will not move China. Nor should anger over the excecution – however righteous

Sunday

Daniel Korski

Karzai the Envoy Slayer

I have just returned from DC, where the talk of the town, or at least of the foreign policy community, is how long Richard Holbrooke has left in the Obama administration. A well-connected friend suggested The Bulldozer has, at most, two months left. Perhaps most telling has been Holbrooke’s absence in the recent efforts to persuade Hamid Karzai to accept a second round of voting in the presidential election. The Economist hailed John Kerry’s impromptu diplomacy, which secured Karzai’s consent and gave Holbrooke the epithet “now-absent”. Diplomats I have spoken to say President Karzai is currently refusing to see Holbrooke at all, possibly sensing a chance to divide and weaken

Monday

Alex Massie

How to deal with a problem like North Korea?

As Yglesias notes, it’s uncanny how too many conservative pundits continue to believe that every problem is a nail and the only tool the United States possesses is a hammer. Now, like everyone else, I have no idea how we should deal with North Korea. And even that assumes that there is some kind of a deal that can be made. One thing I would ask, however, is that since NK seems to rather enjoy its pariah status – in as much as any paranoid regime can be said to enjoy anything – one wonders if increasing or tightening sanctions on NK is the most sensible tactic. In some sense,

Wednesday

Matthew Parris

More than politics

Every so often one reads in the Times or the Daily Telegraph an obituary of an old warrior that simply leaps from the page. A heroic rescue mission in the second world war, an escape by tunnelling, Burma, Kenya, Aden, a secret journey to Lhasa disguised as a yak-herder, and that’s just the military stuff. Then there’s the extra-curricular life — the gliding accident, the false start as a trapeze artist at 17, chairmanship of the Benevolent Fund for Abandoned Zoo Animals, the notorious fling with the Foreign Secretary’s wife, the deep love of Shelley, the book on Indian Railways and the passion for rare cyclamen. Crikey, you think, let’s

Wednesday

Philip Ziegler

Challenging Zeus

Senior civil servants are generally expected to be shadowy figures, influential rather than powerful, discreet rather than flamboyant, probably — in Gladwyn’s generation at any rate — educated at Winchester. To describe such a being as a Titan might seem an oxymoron. The Titans, it will be remembered, were a family of giants who had the temerity to challenge Zeus and duly got their comeuppance. In this well-researched and thoughtful book Sean Greenwood convinces one that in the case of Lord Gladwyn — not least in the ill-judged challenge to the superiority of Zeus — this far-fetched analogy is amply justified. Greenwood identifies three fields in which Gladwyn’s contribution was