The regrettable resilience of ‘resilience’
27 March 2017 Don’t you get fed up with the over-use of certain words and phrases?
March 27, 2017
A public diplomacy own goal for Trump’s State Department
17 March 2017 The US State Department used to be very good at keeping America’s own diplomatic correspondents abreast of foreign policy developments. It gave daily press briefings
In defence of the House of Lords
7 March 2017 Once more the House of Lords, the ‘upper’ chamber of the British Parliament, has shown itself to be on the side of common decency, not to mention economic prudence.
‘Guarded engagement’ with Russia means what?
5 March 2017 So Boris Johnson, Britain’s diplomatically inept, part-time foreign secretary (his other job is entertainment) is going to Moscow for talks with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
Geneva Prenegotiations on Syria
5 March 2017 UN-led prenegotiations for a settlement of the Syrian civil war tragically seem once more to be going nowhere.
February 10, 2017
Political appointees: more trouble for Trump with the CIA?
10 February 2017 While studying documents on the ‘treaty of friendship’ signed between the State Department and the CIA in 1977, I came across a particularly interesting memo.
January 31, 2017
US diplomats revolt against Trump
31 January 2017 Radical changes of government have in the past often led to tension between the new regime and at least some of the state’s diplomatic servants at foreign posts,
The Trump-Russia Dossier cannot be dismissed lightly
12 January 2017 Published by BuzzFeed here, if this is fake news it was drafted by a master forger.
‘Who would want to be a diplomat now?’
9 January 2017 ‘Who would want to be a diplomat now? Civil servants are judged as though they are reality TV contestants, while reality TV stars have inherited the Earth.’ So writes one of the Guardian’s sharpest columnists,
December 10, 2016
The Embassy: A story of war and diplomacy
(Beaufort Books: New York, 2016), p. 376, incl. index. ISBN 9780825308253 This book tells the story of the vital role played by the US Embassy in Monrovia in helping to mediate an end to the brutal, 14-year civil war in Liberia in 2003. Its successful diplomacy was assisted by a popular yearning for peace, the [...]
November 9, 2016
Donald Trump and the Death of Summitry
9 November 2016 There is sometimes a silver lining to the darkest of clouds, and a case in point in connection with Donald Trump’s election victory might well be the injection of a virus into that sometimes useful but now out-of-control mode of diplomacy, summitry.
July 11, 2016
Diplomatic Interference and the Law
(Hart: Oxford and Portland, Oregon, 2016), 493pp. incl. index. ISBN 9781849464369 (hb), ISBN 9781509902781 (Epub). Q: ‘Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington? A: Because there’s no American Embassy there.’ This old joke serves to highlight the belief – entrenched deeply in poor, weak states – that diplomatic missions too often meddle [...]
June 29, 2016
Boris Johnson ‘negotiate’ with the EU? The idea is laughable
29 June 2016 The best known short work on diplomacy is still probably Harold Nicolson’s, Diplomacy.
May 13, 2016
John le Carré: The Biography
(Bloomsbury: London, 2015). 652 pp. incl. index. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4088-2792-5 TPB: 978-1-4088-2793-2 ePub: 978-1-4088-4944-6[ buy this book ] I thought to review this book because I had enjoyed the spy novels of John le Carré and, having introduced a chapter on secret intelligence into the latest edition of my textbook and mentioned him in it [...]
March 25, 2016
London Court of Appeal (rightly) upholds immunity of ‘sham’ diplomat
25 March 2016 The judgment of Mr Justice Hayden on 8 February 2016 in Estrada v. Jufalli would have established a dangerous precedent if upheld.
January 12, 2016
Embassies in the tense Saudi Arabia-Iran relationship
12 January 2016 On 2 January there were well-publicised attacks on Saudi missions in Iran by mobs angered by the execution of the important Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
June 1, 2015
Back Channel to Cuba: The hidden history of negotiations between Washington and Havana
(The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2014), 524pp. incl. index. ISBN 978-I-4696-1763-3 (cloth); ISBN 978-I-4696-1764-0 (ebook) This book went to press after the much-publicised handshake between US president Barack Obama and Cuban president Raul Castro at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela in December 2013 – but before their historic, simultaneous announcements a [...]
April 17, 2015
Why bother with an Index?
17 April 2015, with 2020 post script Is it a waste of time producing an index for a book when lengthy works are appearing more and more in searchable electronic format?
Ferment in the US Foreign Service
17 April 2015 The American Academy of Diplomacy has just released a major report called ‘American Diplomacy at Risk’,
June 11, 2014
The Demilitarization of American Diplomacy: Two cheers for striped pants
(Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2014), pp. 88 (incl. index). ISBN 10: 1137298545 / ISBN 13: 9781137298546 The trenchant contribution to this subject of the outstanding American scholar-diplomat Laurence Pope is published in Palgrave’s ‘Pivot’ series of short books designed to be brought out quickly. Its contents list and other details, including numerous well-deserved plaudits, can be [...]