International politics

No way to lead a nation

It’s been terrible a morning for Gordon Brown in the editorials and on the front pages. And David Cameron, scenting blood, has condemned Gordon Brown’s leadership over the al-Megrahi affair. These pieces share the same basic analysis: Brown’s calculated caution is the cause of his problems. John Rentoul, admittedly no fan of the PM, writes in today’s Independent: ‘This has everything to do with a pattern of behaviour, an inbuilt caution that served Brown well enough on the road to No 10, but which is disastrous in anyone actually holding the top job.’ Brown’s leadership style has been unremittingly disastrous because it is not leadership; it is the political equivalent

Diplomatic faux pas

There is now much talk of the need to grow the army or build more ships, even in times of economic distress, lest Britain slip down the scales of international importance. Britain is – and will remain – a world power. Not a superpower, of course, but one of three major powers in Europe, and one of only two with a military and diplomatic reach to complement economic and ideological clout. Britain will need to have military capability, including a nuclear capability, to remain powerful. But the one thing Britain will need above all else, especially if defense expenditures are set to fall and our military is loosing esteem in

Libyagate has its roots in Labour’s devolution

One of the oddest parts of Libyagate is what it says about Gordon Brown’s notions of devolution. The Prime Minister does not want to comment on the affair because, we are told, he sees it as a matter for the Scottish government, not the British government. So, if the actions of a devolved but subordinate level of government go against the state’s interests, the leaders of that state should stay mum? That’s certainly not the view taken by successive US administrations; they have often condemned state-level actions, even when the federal government has been legally powerless to do anything in practice. The UK has no written constitution as in the

Brown breaks his silence

At last, Gordon Brown has something to say about the Lockerbie bomber’s release. He said he was “angry and repulsed” by the welcome the Lockerbie bomber receive in Libya. And he also added: “I made it clear to Gadaffi in July that we could have no role in the release of al-Megrahi”. This doesn’t draw a line under the controversy. As William Hague has argued, the story is now about why it took Brown so long to say those few words and still managed to say nothing. And he hasn’t answered any of the serious questions being asked of the government.

(Some) Afghans vote

So the Afghans have now voted in their second-ever presidential elections. Well, some of them have. But with the extent of voting unclear, accusations of poll-rigging rife and violence claiming countless innocent lives, it is far too early to call the process a success. Today, the Elections Commission will likely release preliminary results, with a full tally expected in a month’s time. Wisely, key US and UK officials have been circumspect in their pronouncements. The EU Monitoring Mission has said the election was “mostly good and fair.”  But Afghan observers cited “some credible allegations of fraud and mistakes by elections officials.”  NDI, the US organisation, said the poll “involved serious

There’s no one like Macavity

Paul Waugh’s spot on: Brown has been reluctant to congratulate England for their Ashes victory because he is so desperate to avoid being dragged into the international furore surrounding al-Megrahi’s release. A Number.10 spokesman described Kenny MacAskill’s release order as a “uniquely sensitive and difficult decision” and one that (surprise, surprise) was taken completely independently of the British government. But, as yet, Macavity’s not here. I suppose I could be doing the PM a disservice. Braying about our Ashes victory would, of course, be uniquely insensitive to our Australian brothers. And besides, giving congratulations is probably someone else’s job.

The Swedish-Israeli War of Words

I am just back from holidaying in Sweden. And while I dutifully kept away from blogging, I did follow the news and the developing Swedish-Israeli dispute, the implications of which may yet become global. For those of you who have yet to read up on this story, it all started last week. In an article for Aftonbladet, Donald Bostroem recounted Palestinian allegations that IDF soldiers killed Palestinians to harvest their organs, and implied a link to the recent arrest, in the US, of organ-trafficking suspects. Many of the suspects were Jewish. Having read the article, the Swedish Ambassador to Israel issued a strong condemnation, saying she found the article “as

The stench of realpolitik

Suggesting that al-Megrahi’s release was the result of a deal being struck to protect commercial interests should be offensive, but there are a number of questions the government need to answer. First, was al-Megrahi’s transfer a condition of the Blair-Gadaffi Deal in the Desert? On Friday, Saif al-Islam said: “In all commercial contracts for oil and gas with Britain, Megrahi was always on the negotiating table”. The Foreign Office deny this and yesterday Lord Mandelson said: “The issue of the prisoner’s release is quite separate from the general matter of our relations and indeed the prisoner’s release has not been influenced in any way by the British government.” In addition

Gove pushes his agenda

If you can divert your attention away from the Ashes for a second, then I’d recommend you read John Rentoul’s fascinating interview with Michael Gove in today’s Independent on Sunday.  The two most eye-catching passages concern Gove’s “ultra-Blarism” and his thoughts on foreign policy.  The Blairism first: “And when I ask if it is wise to paint himself as a Blairite, given the former prime minister’s latter unpopularity, he says: ‘He’s not as popular as he deserves to be, and he’s emphatically not as popular within Labour as he deserves to be – amazing ingratitude on their part. But if someone were to look at some of the views that

Who watches the watchmen?

In the US, a storm is brewing over Dick Cheney’s alleged role in concealing an intelligence programme from Congress. Whatever the details of the alleged offence, it raises an interesting question: should oversight of the intelligence community intrinsically be different from other kinds of parliamentary oversight? Over in the States, Legislators were content to delegate the management of intelligence agencies to the executive until a series of abuses was revealed in the early 1970s, and the House and Senate Committees on Intelligence were set up in 1977. In Britain, however, Parliament has only had scant role in overseeing the intelligence community. Only nine parliamentarians have the legal authority to pry

Good lord

Earlier this week, Lord Malloch Brown announced he’s resigning his brief as Africa Minister in the Foreign Office. I’m sure this will cause some rejoicing, including among my Coffee House colleagues. It was, after all, the Spectator that went to town on the former UN staffer’s grace-and-favour appartment in Admiralty Arch and the other niceties offered to him by the Prime Minister a few years ago. However, I have always found Malloch Brown professional, courteous, and insightful. He may have struggled to find his proper role immediately upon appointment – foolishly describing himself as a Richelieu-type character to David Milliband’s king – and sometimes allowed his sense of self-worth get

National security priorities: your say

Watch out: it’s security review season. The Brown government is about to issue a second version of its National Security Strategy. You can expect Pauline Neville-Jones to put out a revised version of the paper she did for the Tories a while ago. The Obama administration is set to launch a new “Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review,” to be headed up by Deputy Secretary of State Jacob “Jack” Lew and Policy Planning chief Anne-Marie Slaughter. While NATO has just begun work on its Strategic Concept, and Russia recently updated its National Security Strategy. Oh, and the EU disseminated a new Security Strategy under the French EU Presidency, which also saw

Iran’s Dubček moment

Even though the Second Iranian Revolution may, for the time being, be quelled by the Mullahs, many different foreign policy factions in the West see the events of the last few weeks as good for their preferred Iran policy. Writing in the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland argued it has helped the anti-war contingent. Now that the world has seen how freedom-yearning Iran’s youth is, how can anyone condone a bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities that may kill some of the Twitter-using students? But a very senior US official, who spoke on background, told me that the State Department, at least, see the incipient revolution as good for its potential post-engagement

Obama’s bear-hug

Presidents Obama, and Medvedev (and Prime Minister Putin) seem to be having a good summit. Nuclear talks look like they have gone well, there has been mention of expanding NATO’s transit for its Afghan mission through Russia, and the mood – crucial at any summit – has been reasonably good. Nobody stared into any one else’s soul, but the leaders nonetheless agreed, as Bush and Putin did a few years ago, that the US and Russia can do business. But is a rapprochement between the US and Russia really possible? Dmitri Trenin, of Carnegie Russia, says the West and Russia share many threats. But he also says that anti-Westernism is

NATO navel-gazing

Right now I’m sitting at an event in Brussels to launch NATO’s new Strategic Concept, featuring ex-US Secretary of State Madeleine Allbright, the current and future NATO Secretaries-General, the senior NATO military commander, Admiral Stavridis, and 400 of NATO’s Best Friends Forever. The Strategic Concept, what is that? It is the alliance’s main strategic document, meant to update NATO’s view on threats and challenges. The last one was agreed more than a decade ago. But implementing out the new strategy isn’t going to be easy. The alliance is divided into at least three. Those who fret about Russia’s agressive behaviour. Those who think expeditionary operations are key. And, finally, those

The waning authority of the Iranian regime

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East hand, has an interesting analysis of the huge news from Iran, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum have declared the election invalid and the Ahamdinejad government illegitimate. What will happen next is crucial but unpredictable. Gerecht speculates that: “If Khamenei tries to crush Qom in the way that Khomeini crushed Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari in Tabriz in 1979/80, he’ll probably push Qom into open rebellion. If he tries using the Guards Corps as a vehicle of oppression against the clerical establishment, he would surely risk his office. The unthinkable–being dethroned by the Assembly of [clerical] Experts, the institution that constitutionally has

No Brits in Europe’s likely new line-up

With the Swedish EU Presidency beginning, and most diplomats mildly optimistic that the Lisbon treaty will be approved by the Irish in a new referendum, European leaders have turned their attention to filling Europe’s top jobs. But Tony Blair, who looked a shoo-in for the post of President of the European Council (not quite the “President of the EU”), now looks as if he has been dropped. Blair’s main backer, Nicolas Sarkozy, is said to have gone off the idea of bringing his British friend back from the political cold; while Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was never keen. Four candidates have emerged in his stead: Luxembourg’s long-serving leader Jean-Claude Juncker,

Brown puts on his gloomy face for the world stage

How peculiar.  After all the economic optimism coming out of government recently, all the talk of recovery by the end of the year, Brown’s going to warn that the worst of the recession may be yet to come in his meetings with G8 leaders this week.  The Times has the full story here, but this snippet from the Dear Leader’s address in France today gives you the idea: “If we do not take the necessary action now to strengthen the world economy and put in place the conditions for sustainable world growth, we will be confronted with avoidable unemployment for years to come.” So does this mean he’s losing faith

Massive development in Iran, Qum begins to turn against the regime

The situation in Iran might have been knocked off the front pages in recent days and the regime does seem to have regained control of the streets. But things are clearly not over yet. The New York Times today reports that the “most important group of religious leaders in Iran [Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum] called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday”. This is the most important development since Iranians started to protest in numbers against the obvious rigging of the result. If Qum is turning against the regime, it is in real trouble. [I’m baffled that this story isn’t leading the news

More worrying news from Iran

I’m just catching up with the latest New Yorker over brunch, and would recommend that CoffeeHousers read their eyewitness account of the Tehran protests: it captures the scale and sweep of the opposition to Ahmadinejad, as well as the brutality of the state response. Elsewhere, the latest news coming out of the country makes for a worrying addendum.  An Iranian newspaper has said that Mir Hossein Mousavi should be tried for treason; which sounds ominously like an prelude to even more oppression and antidemocratic action.  As always, it’s worth keeping an eye on developments.