Daniel Korski

Go to any international think-tank conference and you will hear one complaint repeated ad nauseam: the intenational system, built after World War II - and incorporating the UN, NATO, the IMF, WHO etc. - is no longer fit for purpose. It needs to change to accomodate new threats, like climate change, and new powers like India and Brazil. The last point is particularly oft-heard. If India provides the majority of UN peacekeepers, should Delhi not have a permanent say on the UN Security Council? Now that China has become a pillar of the global economy, should the Beijing government not have more votes on the IMF board? The limited representation of these states is thrown into relief when compared with the over-representation of European states like Britain and France.

Today the Burmese junta convicted pro-democracy campaigner Aung Sang Suu Kyi to a further 18 months under house arrest after a U.S. man swam uninvited to her lakeside home in May and stayed there for two days, breaching the terms of her house arrest. Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy have led the world’s outrage, urging the UN Security Council and European Union to impose tougher sanctions on the regime.   Unfortunately, not much is likely to happen to the Burmese generals. They remain protected not only by their neighbors, but by China and India who have both economic and strategic interests in keeping the regime intact. Like China, power-hungry India is keen on exploiting Burma's huge oil and gas resources.

The Iraq Inquiry has now begun. Its chair, John Chilcot, has stressed that he will conduct the inquiry rigorously and, as far as possible, openly. These are sound goals. But I'm concerned about the way the inquiry staff is being organised. Margaret Aldred, a senior Cabinet Office official, will lead the staff effort. That is a real cause for concern. Ms Aldred, originally an MoD official, has been at the heart of British security policy-making in the last couple of years. Though the heads of the Overseas and Defence Secretariat - the PM's de facto National Security Adviser – have regularly changed, recently from Nigel Sheinwald to Simon McDonald, Ms Aldred has remained. Her role in security policy has probably been greater than any other British official.

Earlier this week, James lent his voice to those who want to grow the British army. The British army currently consists of around 98 000 regular soldiers and 34 000 territorial army soldiers taking its size is about 132 000. but this has not proven adequate to deploy anything near enough troops in Helmand or even Basra. But I nonetheless remain a little weary of the proposal. Growing the army will not help the situation in Helmand. The lag time for recruitment, training and deployment means that new forces would be available far too late – perhaps only in five years -- to ease the stresses now facing British forces.

With Labour insiders threatening to “go after” General Sir Richard Dannatt once he retires from his post as Army Chief and takes on the chairmanship of RUSI, it seems only fair to give an early, but balanced, assessment of his tenure. Like most people who reach the top of the army, General Dannatt’s career is the stuff of legend. Though he only meant to be in the army for three years, he distinguished himself while serving in Northern Ireland, earning the Military Cross and setting-off on a career that in would see him serve in Cyprus, Germany, Bosnia, and Kosovo. A tour in the MoD was followed by command of NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. Yet when he replaced the gruff and outwardly popular Mike Jackson, few people knew what to expect of Dannatt.

So Tony Blair will be an official British candidate for the job of EU Council President should the Irish vote for the Lisbon Treaty (and the Polish and Czech presidents sign the document). That's what Baroness Kinnock has said. For many CoffeeHousers, this will combine two things you love to hate. But few Britons have the ex-Prime Minister's international starpower and commitment to a free-trading Europe. The French Presidency has shown that only big country, big personality leadership can make a difference on the key foreign policy issues. But for those very reasons, it is hard to see Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel backing a Blair candidature. Both will be loath to share the limelight with a President Blair when that other President, Barack Obama, comes around for visits.

In the US, a storm is brewing over Dick Cheney’s alleged role in concealing an intelligence programme from Congress. Whatever the details of the alleged offence, it raises an interesting question: should oversight of the intelligence community intrinsically be different from other kinds of parliamentary oversight? Over in the States, Legislators were content to delegate the management of intelligence agencies to the executive until a series of abuses was revealed in the early 1970s, and the House and Senate Committees on Intelligence were set up in 1977. In Britain, however, Parliament has only had scant role in overseeing the intelligence community.

Watch out: it's security review season. The Brown government is about to issue a second version of its National Security Strategy. You can expect Pauline Neville-Jones to put out a revised version of the paper she did for the Tories a while ago. The Obama administration is set to launch a new "Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review," to be headed up by Deputy Secretary of State Jacob "Jack" Lew and Policy Planning chief Anne-Marie Slaughter. While NATO has just begun work on its Strategic Concept, and Russia recently updated its National Security Strategy. Oh, and the EU disseminated a new Security Strategy under the French EU Presidency, which also saw the French government issue its Livre Blanc, a national security-type document.

Presidents Obama, and Medvedev (and Prime Minister Putin) seem to be having a good summit. Nuclear talks look like they have gone well, there has been mention of expanding NATO's transit for its Afghan mission through Russia, and the mood - crucial at any summit - has been reasonably good. Nobody stared into any one else's soul, but the leaders nonetheless agreed, as Bush and Putin did a few years ago, that the US and Russia can do business. But is a rapprochement between the US and Russia really possible? Dmitri Trenin, of Carnegie Russia, says the West and Russia share many threats. But he also says that anti-Westernism is an "obsession" on the part of Russia's elite.

So, a Defence Review has been set in motion even though the Government has for a long time said they would hold off from ordering such a study. But with the operational pressure growing, the financial situation dire, and clamour from the likes of George Robertson and Paddy Ashdown for a security rethink, the Government has been left with little choice. Kick-starting the review process also has the advantage of robbing Liam Fox, should he become Defence Secretary, of a "Bank of England moment" - i.e. a quick, early governmental decision that delivers some new momentum for Team Cameron. And Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth needed to do something to stem the growing scepticism with which his appointment has been met.

Today a Danish journalist came to ask me abut the campaign for the British European elections. "What campaign?" I asked him. Expensesgate has so dominated the airwaves that there has been little room for anything else, let alone elections to a legislative assembly that few people care, or even know, much about. With at least one of the government’s politically-appointed advisers telling me she has begun looking for another job in anticipation of Gordon Brown’s downfall, even most people in politics are focused on the House of Commons, not the European Parliament. That is a shame, because the European Parliament decides some pretty important things.