International politics

I’ve spent the last couple of days in the United States, far away from the brouhaha in Europe. What has struck me most during meetings with US officials is how low down their list of priorities Europe — and indeed Britain — comes. This is an Asian Century, and the US means to focus inwards and eastwards but not elsewhere. As an official put it to me, “we see Britain moving away from Europe and being distant to us.” There is even talk of closing down US European Command. This new focus will have a number of consequences. Take Libya, for instance. The UK and France could have fought the

Politics is serious business, especially when the world’s economy is at stake, but so much of what’s going on in the eurozone now – especially in Italy – resembles opera buffa. Today in Rome, amid rumours that Berlusconi would throw in the towel in January (but not because of bunga bunga, because of bungling over economic reform), a few deputies in parliament came to blows.   The fisticuffs was over that hotly contended if not-very-sexy issue – the retirement age. At least two members of the Northern League, a key party of Berlusconi’s coalition, fought with members from the opposition FLI. ‘Two deputies grabbed each other by the throat as

Gaddafi was buried this morning, but Libya’s problems remain firmly above ground. The news emerging from the country is mostly grim: a possible massacre by anti-Gaddafi fighters; the hint of complicity on the part of Libya’s new leadership; Saif Gaddafi’s continuing elusiveness, and so on. Revolution and civil war are never done cleanly, sure. But just because the current situation is unsurprising doesn’t make it any less shocking. Unsurprising yet shocking. Much the same could be said of Mustafa Abdul-Jalil’s declaration that Islamic Sharia law would be the “main source” of all legislation in Libya from now on. Unsurprising, because Libya is, on the whole, a conservative Muslim country. Shocking,

The sight of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi blood-stained and bewildered, pulled around by a crowd in the final moments of his life is not a sight that will cause much pity. For more than four decades he had none for those Libyans whom he repressed and killed — anymore than he had for the victims on Pan Am Flight 103, his other multiple acts of terrorism, or his pointless and bloody interventions across Africa. Yet there is something pitiful about it: perhaps most obviously because watching his end is to watch the end of a delusion. Even more than Saddam Hussein crawling out of a hole in the ground and saying

Now that Gaddafi has been killed, which television station will the world turn to? I suspect that, right now, Al Jazeera will be on in No.10 and the White House, and indeed television sets across Asia and India. At a time when the BBC is retreating from global news, its Doha-based rival is expanding — and this has harsh implications. The Arab Spring demonstrated the importance of media to world affairs, and the Americans are mindful that they’re losing this battle. The America-style television news formula — celebrity newscasters and short packages rather thin on analysis — go down badly outside America. ‘We are in an information war and we

Yesterday — as Pete pointed out earlier — the Obama administration filed criminal charges against two individuals, Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri, claiming that they worked with Mexican criminals and for the Iranian government on orders to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. The plot has met with denials from Tehran, which “categorically and in the strongest terms condemn this shameful allegation.”     But, if true, the plot would only be the latest in a long-standing feud between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The struggle between Riyadh and Tehran has become the Middle East’s central conflict, overshadowing even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The countries are divided by a Shiite-Sunni