Diplomacy

Thursday

David Blackburn

The first rat abandons ship?

From our UK edition

Moussa Koussa, one of Gaddafi’s closest henchmen, has given himself up in Britain. He left Tripoli supposedly on a diplomatic mission, but arrived in Britain declaring that he “no longer wanted to serve the regime”. This development suggests that the regime is crumbling and pundits opine that the balance has now tipped against Colonel Gaddafi. It has also emerged that President Obama has authorised covert support to be given to the hotch-potch rebellion, which may yet prove decisive. Gaddafi will now have to make do without Koussa’s skill and clout, which may pose the Colonel a problem if he needs diplomacy to save his neck. However, Gaddafi’s blitzkrieg is still charging east.

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Libya: next steps

From our UK edition

The Libya intervention goes on, with as many question marks hanging over the operation as airplanes in the sky. What is the aim? Who will run it? Can the United States, Britain and France keep allies such as Turkey on board? Behind the scenes, officials are said to be looking at various options, including if and how to support the rebels. But the hand-wringing is now even audible across St James Park. Realistically, the UK should in the first instance work towards establishing a stalemate between loyalists and rebels. From such a stalemate a political process can then begin, which, though it may take many years and continue during the fighting, can help create the foundations for a new Libya.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Removing Gaddafi is key

From our UK edition

The question of whether Gaddafi should be targeted and what the exit strategy should be in Libya are intimately linked. In truth, there is no exit strategy that does not involve Gaddafi’s fall from power. As long as he is there, the threat to those that the international community is now pledged to protect will remain. Even a de facto partition of Libya with Gaddafi in charge of the west and the rebels the east would require — at least — an over the horizon presence to ensure that Gaddafi did not attempt to raid across the line or invade the east. At the moment, the British government appears to be relying on Gaddafi being toppled by his own military in an act of self-preservation.

Sunday

David Blackburn

Gaddafi calls for a ceasefire, again

From our UK edition

Sky News has footage of officials of the Gaddafi regime (if that's not too grand a phrase) saying that the Colonel has called his armed forces to a ceasefire. This announcement has come after a day of intense air attacks on targets across Libya, including in Tripoli, where anti-aircraft guns have been called into action. It also follows the Arab League's sudden crisis of confidence, which Gaddafi may have seen as a chance route to safety.  Statements from the MoD and Foreign Office suggest that the allies have not been perturbed by Amr Moussa's reservations. The bombing is expected to continue. But perhaps this ceasefire, if it is honoured, will make the US, France and Britain scale back their offensive operations.

David Blackburn

The Arab League puts a spanner in the works

From our UK edition

According to Sky’s Tim Marshall, the Arab League is to meet in emergency session to discuss events in Libya. It seems that some of its members are opposed to the action being taken by the French, which it believes exceeds the remit of the UN Resolution for a no-fly zone. The bombing of tanks in particular has raised the ire of its General Secretary Amr Moussa. The Arab League’s assent was crucial to obtaining the Resolution, so Moussa’s reservations are significant – although quite what he thought he was agreeing to in the first place is anyone’s guess. Moussa is a probable candidate in the forthcoming Egyptian presidential election, so perhaps Sarkozy is not the only leader using Libya for personal gain.

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

What were the SAS doing in the eastern desert?

From our UK edition

When the official files are opened in 30 years time, we will see what series of decisions led the government to send a helicopter-born SAS team into eastern Libya when they could have sailed in on HMS Cumberland, disguised themselves as reporters or rung up Mustafa Abdel Jalil, Libya’s ex-justice minister who is said to head the “Transitional Government”. But it is easy to see how it happened. The perfectly sensible idea of sending a British emissary to Benghazi to make contacts must have clashed with bureaucratic protocol and the FCO’s duty of care arrangements. “What?” You can just imagine the officials exclaiming to the ministers. “You intend to send a single person to Libya. But what if he got killed? Or hurt?

Monday

Peter Hoskin

The politics of Prince Andrew

From our UK edition

Uh-oh, the Prime Minster has "full confidence" in Prince Andrew as a UK trade envoy – the sort of endorsement that often means the direct opposite. In this case, though, I suspect that the line is more a hasty attempt to defuse some of the tension that has been building on this matter over the past few days. Only this morning, a Downing Street source told the Beeb that the Prince could be ejected from the role should any more revelations surface. Another suggested that "there won't be many tears shed if he resigns." And then there's the senior Tory putting it about that "there appears to be no discernible mental activity," on Prince Andrew's part. It has been – and continues to be – a right royal rumpus, to say the least.

Saturday

Daniel Korski

A post-Tunisian Foreign Office

From our UK edition

The Foreign Office has come in for a lot of criticism lately, following delays in getting Britons out Libya. Some argue that it is all William Hague's fault. Others that the department is unfit for purpose. Both of these views seem a bit unfair. The FCO managed to help Britons in Tunisia and Egypt, and only came up short when the company they had used failed to take off for Libya. True, there should have been a better contract in place – which would give the FCO alternatives – but that hardly translates into systemic failure. True, ministerial divisions between Jeremy Browne, in charge of consular affairs, and Alistair Burt, who runs Middle East policy, did not help. But that's probably inevitable.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Corporatism is not an adequate foreign policy

From our UK edition

The events of the last two weeks have demonstrated that David Cameron needs a revamped foreign policy. This is not, in itself, a surprise. Foreign policies sketched out in opposition seldom survive contact with reality. Remember Bush saying he did “not do nation-building”? And who can forget the ignominious fate of Robin Cook’s “ethical foreign policy”? David Cameron sought to distinguish himself from the adventuring, idealistic Blair with what he regarded as a ‘pragmatic’ foreign policy – that is, promoting British exporters.

Monday

James Forsyth

Is David Cameron about to have one of his Garibaldi moments?

From our UK edition

To date, this government has not had much of a foreign policy. Where there should have been grand strategy there has been trade promotion. But this appears to be changing. It is certainly striking that Cameron is the first western leader to visit post-Mubarak Egypt. Cameron himself is, normally, at the realist end of the foreign policy spectrum. But, as one close friend observes, one of the most important things to grasp in understanding the Prime Minister is that Garibaldi is one of his great heroes. As Cameron told Charles Moore, he admires Garibaldi’s ‘romantic nationalism'.

Sunday

Daniel Korski

The Bahraini challenge

From our UK edition

The debacle in Bahrain cuts close to the British bone. The Ministry of Defence has helped train at least 100 Bahraini officers and supplied a range of equipment to the Gulf state. Egypt was important because of its regional role and ties to the United States. But there was no link to London, anymore than there was one to Paris or Berlin. Bahrain is different. Only a few months ago, British officials were applauding the Khalifa dynasty for taking steps towards democracy. But the fact is simple: the steps were insufficient – not by British standards, but by Bahraini ones. It should serve as a wake-up call to the Foreign Office and those in government with close ties to Bahrain.

Friday

James Forsyth

Eastern promises | 18 February 2011

From our UK edition

Events in Bahrain are yet another reminder of why the supposed choice between stability and democracy is a false one. The idea that in the medium to long term backing a Sunni monarchy in a Shiite majority country is a recipe for stability is absurd. If this was not enough, by backing the minority monarchy the West is ensuring that, for obvious reasons, the opposition to it will become radicalised and anti-Western. The West is where it is. It, sadly, cannot start again from scratch in the Middle East. But it cannot allow itself to continue being the allies of those who brutally repress the aspirations of their own peoples - a policy that would ensure this troubled part of the world grows even more hostile to Western interests.

Daniel Korski

Pillars of Sand

From our UK edition

The Middle East is set for renewed displays of public anger towards the region's governments. Events in Bahrain are particularly worrying. Troops took control of the capital, killing at least four protesters in the worst violence in the Gulf kingdom in decades. The trouble in Bahrain, which houses the U.S. Navy's 5th fleet and is home to a large U.S. military base, illustrates a point Ben Judah and I make in a new article: that the three pillars of US post-World War II power in the Middle East - commercial ties, military bases and client states - are crumbling: "A new Middle East is taking shape, buffeted by Pacific trade winds and owing allegiance to more than one power.

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Coffee House interview: Mark Sedwill

From our UK edition

Diplomats are often seen as stuffy characters from a different century, men who often appear lost in today’s chaotic world. Nobody could be further from that caricature than Mark Sedwill, the former British ambassador in Kabul and outgoing NATO Senior Civilian Representative to Afghanistan. For more than a year, Sedwill has been, first, General Stanley McChrystal’s right-hand and, more recently, the civilian counterpart to General David Petraeus. Since he took up his ambassadorial post in Kabul, after a stint as Deputy High Commissioner in Pakistan, few Britons have had as much influence on NATO’s strategy as him.

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Hague joins Middle East protests…well, as good as

From our UK edition

Foreign Secretary William Hague has arrived in Tunisia in order to support to the pro-democracy movement. Unlike his previous visit to Syria, which I think was poorly timed, this one is perfectly-timed. It could even end up looking like George Bush Snr’s visit to Poland in July 1989 when the US president publicly backed the revolutions sweeping across the European continent at the time and gave succour to the pro-democracy movements. Visits like this are so important to help the direction of travel. What people forget now is that in the Eastern Europe of 1989, the history of democracy was as limited as it is today in the Middle East. None of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria or Hungary had any experience of democracy.

Thursday

Carole Stone

Much more than a networking event

From our UK edition

What's the point of Davos? This is a question seldom addressed in the reports filed from the five-day "World Economic Forum" which ended on Sunday. Many speeches are made, many issues debated, but it is not a place where decisions are taken. It is not a G20. Manifestos are not launched there. It exists to serve a very particular function: every year for a short period of time it becomes the temporary capital of the globalised world. Top business and political leaders, distinguished academics and journalists - all committed to improving the state of the world - flock there to meet each other, swap ideas and then go home. This year, I went along for my first visit - and I promised to file my own report for CoffeeHouse on what I made of it.

Saturday

Daniel Korski

Hague hasn’t lost his mojo

From our UK edition

There has been no shortage of depressing news for the Tories lately. But, the other day, Benedict Brogan wrote a lengthy post about William Hague that must have made particularly unpleasant in-flight reading for the Foreign Secretary as he jetted around the South Pacific. It argued that: "In his absence – and even when he is back in Britain – Mr Hague is the subject of a whispering campaign among his colleagues, who say that the spark of ambition has died in his heart, and with it his effectiveness as the front man for the nation’s diplomatic effort. The Foreign Office has got its mojo back, just when Mr Hague has lost his.

Sunday

Daniel Korski

South Sudan set for difficult independence

From our UK edition

Today, voters in the southern part of Sudan head to the polls in a referendum which will determine whether they should form their own state or remain part of Sudan, Africa's largest country. Secession – the most likely outcome of the referendum, and called for in the 2005 peace agreement that ended 21 years of civil war between the country's north and south – would mean that the government in Khartoum could lose not only territory, but also over 80 percent of the revenues it receives from oil exportation, as most of the oil is located in the would-be state of South Sudan. As a result, many fear that bloodshed will follow the poll.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Richard Holbrooke: Last of the Big Beasts?

From our UK edition

In a sense, Richard Holbrooke is one of the few American foreign policy hands of recent years whom one can mention in the same league as the Big Beasts that prowled through the Cold War and the Vietnam disaster (Holbrooke was there too: he wrote one volume of the Pentagon Papers). His death - as Brother Korski says - is a great loss for American diplomacy and the Afghan effort. Holbrooke's last words (as reported by his family) were "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan" have occasioned much comment. Blake Hounshell, for instance, considers Holbrooke's views on Afghanistan and asks if, latterly, Dick Holbrooke had discovered a dovish side. I don't know.

Daniel Korski

Holbrooke’s war ends

From our UK edition

He was known as brash and abrasive. A gale force wind. The "bulldozer" some called him based on his time bullying Slobodan Milosevic during the Dayton negotiations to end the Bosnian War in the 1990s. However, veteran US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who died last night, had a far greater register. When he visited London before assuming his latest post, as President Obama's AfPak envoy, he surprised the US embassy staff by travelling alone, with no bag-carrying entourage, and exhibiting none of the airs he was expected to have. His first experience of the Balkans was not as the all-mighty diplomatic trouble-shooter, but as a normal citizen eager to highlight the plight of the refugees. He braved sniper fire and dangerous roads to document Yugoslavia’s tragedy.