The proverbial shoe is dropping. Following General Stanley McChrystal’s forced retirement, a consensus is forming that President Obama’s Afghan strategy is not working. The Economist says: ‘Since November, when Mr Obama promised 30,000 more of his country’s soldiers to the campaign, little has gone right. General McChrystal’s plan was for a “surge” that would seize
How wrong I was. President Obama, lambasted by his critics for being ponderous, has acted with lightening speed: less than 24 hours after that Rolling Stone article, General Stanley McChrystal was forced out of his job in place of the only person that could pick up where he left off, namely General David Petraeus. In
The Taliban are expanding their area of influence, NATO allies are eager to leave Afghanistan, the forthcoming parliamentary elections are likely to be even more fraudulent than last year’s presidential election – in other words, how can it get any worse for President Obama’s AfPak strategy? Oh yeah, the man the US president has trusted
One of the biggest obstacles for NATO in Afghanistan has been the role of Pakistan and its intelligence apparatus in supporting the Taliban insurgency. Officially, the Pakistani government deny backing the Taliban insurgency, but even Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command,
ABC was the acronym used for meetings of Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger and William Cohen when they all worked for the President Bill Clinton. RAB will hopefully in future be an American-style acronym for the cooperation of the three people voted to chair the parliamentary committees for foreign affairs, defence and international development: Richard Ottaway,
BP is in trouble. Deep trouble. American lawmakers are threatening to take away its dividends and now President Obama is huffing and puffing in order to deflect attention from the role of his administration. BP is struggling to get a word in with the media, pundits, talking heads, politicians and environmental experts monopolising the airwaves.
The Times went big on their story of Britain’s campaign in Helmand, and all the mistakes made in 2005 when the deployment was being planned. It is a good piece of reporting, which adds to the volume of stories about the war, its planning and execution. Britain’s effort Helmand, like the one in Basra, will
After Sir John Holmes retires as the head of the UN’s humanitarian activities later in the year, the Cameron government will have the chance to make its first high-level international appointment. Officially, the job is appointed by UN secretary-general Ban ki-Moon, but the unpopular South Korean is likely to want to keep the new British
Defence Secretary Liam Fox is used to looking across the Atlantic for military inspiration and across the English Channel to France for the future of defence cooperation. But he might do well to look somewhere else – namely to Germany where the young defence minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, has launched one of the Cabinet’s most
Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. diplomat in charge of Afghanistan and Pakistan affairs said Washington has now publicly made clear the US government is serious about negotiating with the Taliban. Speaking at a conference in Madrid, the US envoy said: ‘Let me be clear on one thing, everybody understands that this war will not end in
Last week, Europe’s foreign ministers gathered in Sarajevo under much fanfare – and did very little except issue a repetitive press release about the region’s future in the EU. The only highlight of the event was William Hague’s speech, which was excellent. Enlargement, however, is deeply unpopular among European elites, and the gathered foreign
On Thursday, Andrew Mitchell rolled out the government’s first overseas aid initiative – a transparency watchdog – and took to the airwaves to explain the idea. It makes particular sense in a downturn to ensure that taxpayer’s money is well spent but also to give voters the feeling that independent assessments are carried out to
Having returned from Washington DC, where I spoke to a range of senior policy-makers about Afghanistan and Pakistan, I am struck by how much confusion there is about what President Obama meant when he said that he wanted US combat troops return home in 2011. Did he mean that 2011 would allow the first assessment
David Cameron is caught between a rock and a hard place. His government is rightly committed to its AfPak policy and the need to keep ties with the United States strong and close. But the Prime Minister and his aides probably also know that the assessments offered by a number of senior military officers of
Two groups in the Conservative party that have worried most about Con-Lib government are the social conservatives and the neo-conservatives. The latter have been particularly worried about UK relations with Israel. There is a real concern in parts of the Conservatives Party that three factors would come together to sour Anglo-Israeli relations: what the neo-conservatives
The Department for International Development (DFID) should forsake peaceful but poor countries and instead turn into “a world leader in tackling the problems of fragile states.” That’s what a new Chatham House report by Alex Evans, who used to be an adviser to Hilary Benn, and his colleague, David Steven, argue: ‘If the UK wants
I’m in Washington DC at a high-level seminar on trans-Atlantic relations with the “who is who” of Europe and the US, talking about issues of common concern. The Germans are here in force, as are the French, with high-ranking officials speaking about topics like Russia and Iran. Interestingly, the Brits are notable in their absence.
I hope CoffeeHouse readers will forgive the attention I am heaping on the Afghanistan War these days, but the campaign is moving into a decisive phase with a July donor’s conference in Kabul that Hillary Clinton is reportedly attending, a “peace jirga” scheduled to consider plans to negotiate with the Taliban and only a year
Fifteen days ago Newsweek had an extract, no not from Alistair Campbell’s diaries, but about something that actually matters – Jonathan Alter’s book about President Obama’s AfPak strategy. I have only just read it – apologies — but a soggy May weekend is just the time to snuggle up on a sofa and read about
Four weeks into the new government and the National Security Council machinery is still being put in place and ministers are still getting read into their briefs. The visit by William Hague, Andrew Mitchell and Liam Fox to Afghanistan was important, despite the brouhaha over the Defence Secretary’s comments. Such a visit was simply not
