The greatest challenge facing a new government may be that Britain’s national security institutions are not fit for purpose. They were built for a different era and focused on a set of now obselete threats. Notwithstanding a few exceptions, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the threats during the Cold War were slow-moving and predictable. Even
The Financial Times supplement this weekend contained profiles of the world’s leading climate experts, including – the magazine promised – the world’s leading sceptic. I quickly leafed through the pages to see who had been picked as the whipping boy, expecting to see a Danish name. No, not that of Bjørn Lomborg, who became (in)famous
One of the main charges against the choice of Herman van Rompuy as the first permanent European Council President and Catherine Ashton as the EU’s foreign affairs supremo is the supposed “undemocratic” nature of the selection process. People who opposed the Lisbon Treaty have been particularly critical of the conclave-like decision-making. Daniel Hannan called it
Among a batch of unpopular blogposts, this is the one that will get Coffee Housers to grab their pitchforks and hunt me down. Because I think the appointments of Belgium’s Herman Van Rompuy, as president of the European Council, and Britain’s Catherine Ashton, as EU “high representative” for foreign affairs, are not bad at all.
The British government’s policy on Afghanistan has a spasmodic, yet regular kind of rhythm to it. The issue pops up at intervals, hovers menacingly over Brown’s premiership until the PM awakes from a period of inaction. He then goes into hyper-drive, promises all manner of things, and reverts to inactive type a few days later
The people of Kosovo voted yesterday in the first local elections since the Albanian-majority region won independence from Serbia last year. More than 1.5 million people were eligible to cast their ballot and some 74 political parties, coalitions and independent candidates stood. The elections are a test of Kosovo’s readiness to organize democratic elections on
Liam Fox has made clear that the Conservative Party is planning to slash the number of civilian posts at the Ministry of Defence as a way of balancing the military budget if they win the general election in 2010. “We have 99,000 people in the Army and 85,000 civilians in the MoD. Some things will
I’m in Slovenia, having joined the discussions chaired by Madeleine Albright on NATO’s strategic concept, the alliance’s blueprint. I have managed to grab a seat next President Obama’s NATO envoy, Ivo Daalder, and we have all just listened to Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee. This process is impressive and
The process to pick the two new EU jobs – that of Council President and High Representative – is nearing completion and Britain looks set to walk away empty-handed. Tony Blair’s candidacy is unacceptable to many EU leaders – both because of his record, particularly over the Iraq War, and because of Britain’s odd-man status
There is something oddly comforting about discussing NATO’s Afghan mission in terms of kit, helicopters and troop numbers – or the lack thereof. These are tangible categories. You either have the right amount or you don’t. And if you don’t, then it is because somebody made the wrong decision or failed to make a timely
Gordon Brown says Britain must not walk away from NATO’s Afghan mission. Yet 73 percent of Britons told YouGov that they want British troops withdrawn. Even more probably think they will fail even if they are allowed to stay on. Yet what to do if you believe, like I do, that the allies cannot simply
Whatever happens in Kabul now, the next couple of months will be hard going. Hamid Karzai will form a new government, perhaps with Abdulllah Abdullah. But nobody expects the Karzai III government to be any better or less corrupt than versions I and II. Quite the opposite. In his bid for re-election, President Karzai surrounded
Today, two of my colleagues, former senior MoD official Nick Witney and US analyst Jeremy Shapiro, issued a hard-hitting report about transatlantic relationships. Their message is simple. Europe has the US president it wished for, but Barack Obama lacks the strong transatlantic partner he desired. With EU leaders heading to Washington for their transatlantic summit
Last week, Denmark discovered that two US-based men were plotting a terrorist attack against Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that outraged hard-line Muslims by publishing the infamous Muhammad cartoons in 2005. Allegedly, the two men planned to target cultural editor Flemming Rose and cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. The mild-mannered Flemming Rose is back in the spotlight. Asked
Just when the US administration thought it had turned a corner in Afghanistan by persuading Hamid Karzai to allow a run-off in the presidential elections, things look uncertain again. Having returned from a trip to India, President Karzai’s election rival Abdullah Abdullah looks set to announce he will boycott next week’s second round of voting.
In his column, James asks the key question about Tony Blair’s candidature for President of the European Council: what would it do for the Tories and Britain’s foreign policy. William Hague clearly thinks it would be a bad thing and has been lobbying against Blair’s candidacy. The Shadow Foreign Secretary is letting his anti-EU,
Poland’s Chief Rabbi, Michael Schudrich, told the Today programme that Michael Kaminski is, as far as he knows, not an anti-semite today – though the Jewish leader made clear he “could not read his heart”, and thought Mr Kaminski’s teenage views extremist. The rabbi’s words will further fuel the spat between David Miliband and William
Last night in a speech at the IISS, David Milliband laid out the case against the Tories’ Europe policy. As he started off saying: “It is very strongly in the British national interest for the EU to develop a strong foreign policy; that to be frightened of European foreign policy is blinkered, fatalistic and wrong;
After 14 years on the run, Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, is finally being brought to justice. Today, prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged Karadzic with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to the indictment, Karadzic was one of the authors of
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
