Category: International Relations
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The next 40 years, not the next four
Eight years ago, I was in an unseasonably warm Grant Park in Chicago when Barack Obama was elected: I had visited Georgia six weeks previously, after the brief war there with Russia. This is what was left of the tiny Georgian Navy: I then visited Aleppo, Hama, Palmyra and Damascus in Syria, 10 months after…
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Energy security
I had an interesting conversation a few weeks ago with an officer from a British navy ship that had docked in Cork. The subject of the conversation varied, but it tended towards military/strategic plans of Britain and the US. What I pointedly asked was why the British had embarked on a massive navy building programme…
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Litvinenko killing 'had state involvement'
Mark Urban has a scoop over on his blog. The murder of Alexander Litvinenko was carried out with the backing of the Russian state, according to Whitehall sources. A senior British security official has told Newsnight “we very strongly believe the Litvinenko case to have had some state involvement; there are very strong indications that…
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Mugabe's millions
The ‘crackdown’ on Mugabe continues, laughably. Now he might not be able to print his zillions of dollars: The Munich-based company that has supplied Zimbabwe with the special blank sheets to print its increasingly worthless dollar caved in to pressure on Tuesday from the German government for it to stop doing business with the African…
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American Realism for a New World
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice writes an essay in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs. It is essentially a follow up to a similar essay she wrote back in 2000. I like this bit: The United States did not overthrow Saddam to democratize the Middle East. It did so to remove a long-standing threat…
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My reaction
Long-time readers will be aware that the Mahon Tribunal, and more specifically Bertie Ahern’s role in that tribunal, have been a bugbear of mine for some time. Today, finally, we have the announcement that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will resign on May 6. It is welcome news. Mr Ahern spent much of his speech spelling out…
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Democracy vs Democracy?
Daniel Drezner seconds the question posed by Michael Totten at Instapundit this week. Is Totten right to say that the current war is the first example of a democracy going to war with a democracy? Excellent discussion over at Drezner’s blog. Incidentally I agree with Drezner on this, given that the Lebanese forces themselves have…
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Don't forget those other 27,000 nukes
Hans Blix is in the IHT today, talking about the nukes that actually exist, as opposed to the ones Iran might want to build. While it’s desirable that the foreign ministers talk about Iran, they don’t seem to devote any thought to the fact that there are still some 27,000 real nuclear weapons in the…
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National Security Strategy 2006
It was released last week, and is worth a look.
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The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy
Readers might remember that I linked to a piece by Ben Shwarz in the Atlantic earlier this month, concerning a paper on the perils of US nuclear primacy. The paper Shwarz talked about is published in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. Their conclusion is worth quoting in full. During the Cold War, MAD rendered…