American diplomacy in crisis
29 July 2020 Over the last three and a half years the Trump White House has steadily inflicted serious damage on the US Department of State.
July 29, 2020
Russia Report finally disgorged
21 July 2020 After nine months since it was cleared for publication by the British Intelligence Community (IC) but then withheld by Boris Johnson’s government, the Russia Report has finally been released.
An honorary consul in the pandemic
7 July 2020 On 2 July 2020 I received an email from Razvan Constantinescu, the energetic Romanian Honorary-Consul General for the south-west of England based in Bristol and president of the Bristol Consular Corps. This told me how the Covid 19 pandemic first revolutionised the nature of his work load, and then reduced it to [...]
June 14, 2020
The hole in the fence
14 June 2020 I am a keen gardener, and during the lockdown I had the great good fortune to be allowed by our neighbour to take over the care of her very large, tree-lined, and blissfully quiet garden. The weather was also unusually good, so I spent on average 6 hours a day working in [...]
EU-UK video-conferencing. All for show?
12 June 2020 The future relationship negotiations between Britain and the EU, which commenced on 3 March 2020, teach many lessons in the art of negotiation. Among these are the obvious value of certain kinds of deadline and the less obvious value of publicly announcing ‘red lines’ before talks start. For present purposes I shall [...]
May 15, 2020
Where have all the health attachés gone?
15 May, 2020 An influential article of 2014 noted that health attachés were appointed shortly after the Second World War and were thereafter assigned by ‘a growing number of countries … to work in embassies in countries of strategic importance.’ Is this true? If not, why not? And does it matter anyway?
March 13, 2020
Pandemic boost for video-conferencing?
14 March 2020 As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been announced that the second round of face-to-face talks on the UK’s new relationship with the EU, due to take place in London next week with the arrival of an EU delegation of over 100 trade experts, has been cancelled. Video-conferencing has been [...]
January 17, 2020
Choosing the wrong ambassador
17 January 2020 Recent publicity about the hostile reaction in South Korea to Harry Harris, appointed as US ambassador at Seoul by Donald Trump in June 2018, serves to underline an important point:
Will Russia Report ever see light of day?
8 January 2020 Probably not; or, if it does, only with further passages blacked out.
Diplomatic Security under a Comparative Lens—Or Not?
Eugenio Cusumano, Christopher Kinsey, eds. Diplomatic Security: A Comparative Analysis. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019. 280 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-5036-0898-6. “Diplomatic security” is the term now usually preferred to “diplomatic protection” for the steps taken by states to safeguard the fabric of their diplomatic and consular missions, the lives of their diplomatic and consular [...]
December 7, 2019
Brexit Counsellor at British Embassy Washington resigns
7 December 2019 It was just a matter of time before a senior British diplomat got so sick of representing the UK government of Boris Johnson that she resigned.
Barder, Brian, Brian Barder’s Diplomatic Diary
Barder, Brian, Brian Barder’s Diplomatic Diary, ed. Louise Barder (privately published: London, 2019), pp. 307. Paperback ISBN 978-1-944066-29-1; hardback ISBN 978-1-944066-25-3. Available from Amazon, as well as other booksellers. Sir Brian Barder, the senior British diplomat and author of the always sage and sometimes gripping What Diplomats Do, died in 2017 but, courtesy of the [...]
November 2, 2019
Johnson sits on ISC Report on Russian interference
2 November 2019 A report on Russian meddling in British democracy by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee is being suppressed by the Johnson government.
October 24, 2019
The Perm Rep and the unsigned letter
24 October 2019 A recent development in Brexit has provided interesting evidence of the role of ambassadors in clarifying their governments’ intentions, however contradictory they might be.
EU-UK negotiations: normal rules?
4 October 2019 The British government has at virtually the last minute submitted to the EU a detailed proposal on a new withdrawal agreement
September 27, 2019
Foreign Office cleaners’ strike. Diplomacy begins at home
27 September 2019 For those of us who study embassies, consulates and foreign ministries it is easy to forget that they could not work well, if at all, without ‘support staff’.
Parliamentary democracy 11 – 0 Boris Johnson
24 September 2019 Today 11 justices of the UK Supreme Court unanimously declared the non-prime minister of the UK, Boris Johnson, to have unlawfully advised the Queen to suspend Parliament
Non-papers in Brexit negotiations
23 September 2019 On 19 September three ‘non-papers’ on the Irish backstop were submitted to the EU by the non-prime minister of Britain, Boris Johnson,
Room for Diplomacy: The history of Britain’s diplomatic buildings overseas, 1800-2000
Mark Bertram, Room for Diplomacy: The history of Britain’s diplomatic buildings overseas, 1800-2000, 2nd ed. (Spire Books: Salisbury, 2017), pp. 479 incl. index, ISBN 978-1-904965-54-1 Mark Bertram joined the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works after reading architecture at Cambridge and remained in the civil service as architect, project manager, administrator, estate manager and – [...]
If at first you don’t succeed …
4 September 2019 lie, lie and lie again. This is the maxim that, as usual, guided Boris Johnson’s behaviour in the House of Commons last night.