Foreign policy

Tuesday

Robert Smith

Philip Hammond signals extra help for the Mediterranean crisis

Philip Hammond was noticeably keen this afternoon to show the government isn't standing idly by while migrants drown in the Mediterranean - especially as the refugee crisis is the global story of the moment; the pictures and reports severe enough to have momentarily knocked the election campaign off a number of front pages. Appearing on today's Daily Politics debate on international affairs, the Foreign Secretary stressed the need for a 'more formidable operation on the sea', and said that David Cameron would head to Brussels on Thursday to call for an 'enhanced operation' to prevent any further crises. Mr Hammond said: 'Of course we’ve got to support search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean. Nobody wants to see people drowning in the Mediterranean.

Saturday

Sam Coates

Don’t let this election turn us into Little Britain

If elections are job interviews, as party leaders like to say, then this interview has so far failed to assess applicants on the one part of the job description that most have no experience in - foreign policy and security. This absence was at its most conspicuous this week when the TV debate didn't spare even a cursory nod to global issues. Maybe the lack of contention on foreign policy is an implicit tribute to the Conservatives' steady hand on the tiller? If not, let's hear why. If so, the Conservatives have been surprisingly, some might argue laudably, reluctant to invoke global insecurity as an issue. Security concerns, global instability, and terrorism are important themes that normally mesh well with a serious, strong-headed, incumbent government.

Wednesday

Paul Wood

Shelling, militiamen and shattered villages: welcome to eastern Ukraine’s ceasefire

  Eastern Ukraine For a moment, the sound of shelling is drowned out by a thumping beat coming from a camouflaged van. ‘Separatysty [Separatists]!’ says the rousing chorus: ‘The day of your death is here!’ We are with a Ukrainian nationalist militia in a village outside Donetsk airport, which is in the hands of pro-Russian rebels, usually referred to by the Ukrainians as terorysty or bandyty. But despite their bravado, the war is not going well for the Ukrainian side. There have been a series of disastrous setbacks, towns and territory lost, whole units put to panicky flight. The shattered village, Piesky, reminds me of Chechnya or Bosnia, the houses’ red roofs caved in, shell craters in the soft earth, rubble everywhere.

Peter Hitchens

It’s Nato that’s empire-building, not Putin

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/putin-s-empire-building/media.mp3" title="Peter Hitchens and Ben Judah debate Putin's empire building" startat=33] Listen [/audioplayer]Just for once, let us try this argument with an open mind, employing arithmetic and geography and going easy on the adjectives. Two great land powers face each other. One of these powers, Russia, has given up control over 700,000 square miles of valuable territory. The other, the European Union, has gained control over 400,000 of those square miles. Which of these powers is expanding? There remain 300,000 neutral square miles between the two, mostly in Ukraine. From Moscow’s point of view, this is already a grievous, irretrievable loss.

Alex Massie

Vladimir Putin is losing the battle for Ukraine

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Untitled_2_AAC_audio.mp3" title="Anne Applebaum and Matthew Parris debate how far we should let Russia push" startat=81] Listen [/audioplayer]It is always tempting, in the field of foreign affairs, to suppose we are led by dupes and fools while our opponents enjoy - or endure -  leaders of boundless cunning. We are over-matched; they are playing three-dimensional chess. We are weak, they are strong. We are easily distracted, they are single-minded. We compromise, they are implacable. It is easy to over-estimate the opposition while under-estimating our own capabilities. Sometimes this has unfortunate consequences. Saddam Hussein, for instance, had to be hiding something.

Thursday

William Cook

Europeans no longer fear Germany. But do the Germans still fear themselves?

In the old Death Strip between East and West Berlin, which runs through the centre of the city, there is a graveyard full of German war heroes and a few war criminals too. From the Red Baron to Reinhard Heydrich, the best and worst of the German military are buried here. There’s also a mass grave full of civilians, killed by Allied air raids, and a memorial to the 136 East Berliners who died trying to cross the Berlin Wall — which ran through this cemetery. The Death Strip is still an empty space. Germany has been marking two anniversaries this year — one a celebration, the other a painful duty. The 25th anniversary of the Mauerfall (as Germans call the fall of the Berlin Wall) is one of those rare events in German history about which they can feel unequivocally happy.

Saturday

J P O'Malley

Jonathan Powell interview: middle-man to the terrorists says ‘secret talks are necessary’

Jonathan Powell is a British diplomat who served as Tony Blair's chief of staff from 1997 to 2007. During this period, he was also Britain's chief negotiator for Northern Ireland. These days, Powell runs a charity called Inter Mediate, which works as a go-between among terrorist organizations and governments around the globe. David Cameron appointed him last May as the UK's special envoy to Libya. His book 'Talking to Terrorists' was published this month, a review of which can be found in the October 4 edition of The Spectator. In it, Powell argues the British government has failed to learn lessons from the history of diplomacy with guerrilla groups.

Thursday

Simon Heffer

What will it take for us to stop doing business with Qatar?

On 17 June, a meeting of the Henry Jackson Society, held in the House of Commons, discussed (according to the minutes published on the society’s website) how a tribal elder in northern Cameroon who runs a car import business in Qatar has become one of the main intermediaries between kidnappers from Boko Haram and its offshoot Ansaru and those seeking to free hostages. It was alleged that embezzlement of funds going to Qatar via car imports might be disguising ransom payments. It was also alleged that Qatar was involved in financing Islamist militant groups in West Africa, helping with weapons and ideological training, and (with Saudi Arabia) funding the building of mosques in Mali and Nigeria that preach a highly intolerant version of Islam.

Jonathan Mirsky

Am I wrong to fear another Tiananmen?

For Beijing, the tens of thousands of protestors choking the centre of Hong Kong are such a dangerous outrage that mainland media cannot report on them. The real outrage is this: China agreed to hold free elections in 2017, but now a Beijing-appointed committee will determine whether candidates for chief executive can be relied on to toe Beijing’s line. On 6 September, a Chinese embassy official wrote to the Times that in 2017 there would be a one-man one-vote election in Hong Kong. He omitted to mention that Beijing has selected the committee that will approve the candidates.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Britain abandons foreign policy. And abandons debates about foreign policy too.

Cynics have long suspected that Britain's foreign policy is as independent as its nuclear deterrent. Cynics have a point. Perhaps, as some suggest, it's time to concede the game's a bogey and cease even pretending to pretend this remains a country of at least some modest importance and influence. Except, if we choose to, we do retain some influence, even some importance. Nevertheless, we certainly do not have an Iraq policy at present. Nor do we really have an ISIS policy. The Foreign Secretary is long on what we're not doing and very short on what we are. Of course this reflects past misadventures. Not just those pertaining to Iraq but others too, including last year's parliamentary determination to avoid having a Syria policy too. So, yes, Prudence runs foreign policy these days.

Thursday

The Spectator

Violence, fear, confusion: this is what comes into a leadership vacuum

The old cliché that ‘nothing happens in August’ has again been brutally disproved. From the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war to the Russian invasion of Georgia six years ago, August is a month often packed with violence — but rarely more so than this year. In Syria, Christians are being crucified for refusing to convert to Islam. In northern Iraq, there are reports of mothers throwing their children from mountains rather than leaving them to the jihadis who are parading the severed heads of their victims. Russian convoys are rolling towards the Ukrainian border as Vladimir Putin tests the resolve of the West. Barack Obama has watched this unfold from his holiday spot in Martha’s Vineyard; David Cameron from the Portuguese coast.

Thursday

Bruce Anderson

Sanctions won’t tame Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Talking might | 24 July 2014

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 26 July 2014 The civilised world felt as if its heart had been touched by an icicle. Photographs of murdered children. Biogs of people like us; we could have been on that plane. We will be on similar ones, now reminded of our vulnerability to frivolous barbarians in possession of terrifying weapons. Grief and fear lead rapidly to anger: to the demand that something must be done to punish the evildoers and rescue us from insecurity. That might seem a comforting thought. It is also false comfort, for there is a basic problem. What can we do? When in doubt, think hard, in a long historical perspective. Paradoxically, that apparently arid discipline may bring real comfort.

Bruce Anderson

Sanctions won’t tame Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Talking might

The civilised world felt as if its heart had been touched by an icicle. Photographs of murdered children. Biogs of people like us; we could have been on that plane. We will be on similar ones, now reminded of our vulnerability to frivolous barbarians in possession of terrifying weapons. Grief and fear lead rapidly to anger: to the demand that something must be done to punish the evildoers and rescue us from insecurity. That might seem a comforting thought. It is also false comfort, for there is a basic problem. What can we do? When in doubt, think hard, in a long historical perspective. Paradoxically, that apparently arid discipline may bring real comfort. The disintegration of empires always makes the earth tremble as it is battered by tumbling geopolitical masonry.

Thursday

Matthew Walther

Hillary Clinton’s autobiography seems destined to join her husband’s – in a bin marked ‘Free’

Last year a Washington-based journalist called Mark Leibovich wrote This Town, a book whose thesis was, roughly, that Washington-based journalists are terrible people. Leibovich’s book exemplified a trend among self-described Beltway insiders who decry as venial and insipid the trivialities they spend their lives reporting. Sounds a bit precious, I know, not to mention suicidal. But it’s supposed to be waggish and endearing and ironical. The latest victim of this coprophagic tendency is Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton’s third book. Barely a week after its publication, with over a million copies in print, it has already been written off by the hacks who spent months doing potted F.R.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Alex Salmond receives a lesson from the school of foreign policy hard knocks

Look: Alex Salmond's indulgent appraisal of Vladimir Putin's record was foolish and naive and all too revealing but let's not lose the heid. Scotland, even an independent Scotland, is not going to be run by  McKGB and Mr Salmond's fondness for wealthy businessmen is not really comparable to the kleptocracy that's run Russia this century. Still, it is a news story and a legitimate one. Tinfoil Nationalists were very upset yesterday. Salmond was being "smeared" by, er, being quoted. GQ, clearly part of the pan-Unionist BritNat propaganda media machine, had "leaked" excerpts of their interview with the First Minister to undermine, eclipse or otherwise divert attention from a speech Mr Salmond was giving in Belgium. Because, obviously.

Monday

Alex Massie

Alex Salmond’s strange – but revealing – admiration for Vladimir Putin

What to make of Alex Salmond's qualified admiration for Vladimir Putin? The First Minister, interviewed for the forthcoming issue of GQ, declared he admires "certain aspects" of the Russian President's record. Asked for his views on Putin, Salmond told Alastair Campbell that: "Well, obviously, I don't approve of a range of Russian actions, but I think Putin's more effective than the press he gets I would have thought, and you can see why he carries support in Russia. "[...] He's restored a substantial part of Russian pride and that must be a good thing. There are aspects of Russian constitutionality and the inter-mesh with business and politics that are obviously difficult to admire. Russians are fantastic people, incidentally, they are lovely people." Well, some of them anyway.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Scottish independence: an exemplary or cautionary foreign policy Rorschach Test?

The eyes of the world are upon us. Or so Scottish Nationalists like to say. Whae's like us? There is some truth to this even if you think unseemly all the boasting we heard about the number of foreign journalists attending, say, the launch of the Scottish Government's White Paper on independence. It's all a bit Sally Field for me. A kind of cringe, if you will. What's less frequently said is that almost all foreign governments would prefer Scotland to vote No. "We all prefer the status quo" one western diplomat told me recently. "That's just the way states operate." Known things are preferable to unknown things, even if the unknown things might be fine. Which brings me to Lord Robertson of Port Ellen's speech to the Brookings Institute yesterday.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron faces down critics on Ukraine

There are few fiercer critics of the way the international community has reacted to the crisis in Crimea than Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Today when the Prime Minister gave his statement on the latest decisions made by world leaders to sanction Russia, Rifkind had another opportunity to scold the Prime Minister and his international colleagues. He did so in typically forceful language: ‘Does the Prime Minister agree that when the history of the Crimea crisis comes to be written, there will be found to be no winners. President Putin has of course control of Crimea but he has lost Ukraine and done much to unite the Ukrainian people.

Friday

Alex Massie

The clock is ticking for Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. He has missed his best chance of victory.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Time is running out in the Ukraine. Time passes and cements the "facts on the ground". Russia controls the Crimea and, one way or another, we should probably expect the province's referendum to endorse a return to Moscow Centre. Whether Crimea's plebiscite can or will be conducted honestly is a different matter but that, in the end, is not the most important issue. Indeed the fate and future of Crimea is, if hardly an irrelevance, a question of secondary importance. It is not the major front in this struggle. Russia's actions in the Crimea are plainly illegal and unjustified but they were supposed to be the catalyst for action elsewhere.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

William Hague insists government’s options remain open on Ukraine

It was clear from William Hague's statement in the Commons just now that no decisions have been taken on what to do about Ukraine. The Foreign Secretary had already distanced himself from that photographed document when he faced MPs at Foreign Office Questions a little earlier this morning, saying that it didn't necessarily reflect the action the government would take. The government's options 'remain open', he said. It's worth considering Labour's response to the situation.