DK has managed to dig up an extremely wrong-headed article on the Georgia versus Russia conflict over South Ossetia. Marius Ostrowski tries to put the ‘Russia is terribly terribly bad; just because the people of South Ossetia are Russian, want to be part of Russia and the Georgians keep trying to kill them doesn’t mean [...]

It would be nice to live in a world where the [note: fictional, written by me for the purposes of this post] piece below was a representative sample of the London media. It’d be even nicer to live in a world where it was a representative sample of the Tehran media - but ‘getting your [...]

Professor Victor Bulmer-Thomas, in his last briefing paper as Director of non-profit foreign policy analysts Chatham House, is suitably damning of our dear foreign policy obsessed PM - with a few nice little digs to boot:
“In Blair’s case, of course, the focus on foreign policy may have been accentuated by the difficulty of playing a [...]

After a postponement due to Iraq’s airports being closed in the aftermath of the bombings last week, Iraq’s President, Jalal Talabani, has now been able to visit Iran. Today he met Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As Supreme Leader, Khamenei is the real power when it comes to Iranian foreign policy.

Does the murder of a British citizen, in London, apparently on the orders of a foreign government, constitute an “armed attack” in the sense of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty?

Melanie Phillips writes that Europe needs to become re-Christianised to resist the tide of Islamic extremism:

Home Secretary John Reid has compared the need for innovative ways of unearthing terrorist plots to the fortuitous inventions that helped turn the tide in the Second World War. Once again the maxim that a little knowledge goes a long way is amply demonstrated by governmental short-sightedness.

It is not a fact which pleases me in any way, but: Yes, actually, we did “tell you so”.

Dear Terry,
Many thanks for your letter. If you would be so good as to look behind you and use your binoculars to scan the horizon, there is an outside chance that you might locate the point.
The letter I refer to was printed in last week’s Economist, and relates to the Iraq war (yes, I know, [...]

On the 12th of October 2000, al Qaeda conducted a suicide bomb attack on the American destroyer, the USS Cole. Seventeen members of the crew were killed in the attack.
Those who define terrorism as the deliberate killing of innocent civilians might find it difficult to argue that this al Qaeda suicide bomb attack was terrorism [...]

Much has been said about the recent Israeli attacks on Lebanon and blockade of that country, with the apparent intention of putting back the Lebanese economy by 20 years.

[Israeli] Army Chief of Staff Lt-Gen Dan Halutz said the Israeli military would “turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years” if the soldiers were not returned.

Here I intend to approach the subject from a point of view of European (and especially European Union) foreign policy

Today sees the official launch of the Euston Manifesto and Professor Norman Geras has written an article defending this document against accusations that it is in some way pro-war. Has he missed the point?
The issue can be seen as one of consistency. The Euston Manifesto is scathing in its condemnation of terrorism and those who [...]

Yep - Afghanistan again (remember Afghanistan, kids?). The quote is from Ramazan Bashardost, former planning minister in the post-Taleban regime. According to Reuters, he reckons that “Billions of dollars of aid that have poured into Afghanistan have done little to improve people’s lives”.
Three things to prove he’s talking arse:

The US military has raided an Iraqi Interior Ministry building and found evidence of torture and maltreatment of prisoners: