John Bew

Wednesday

John Bew

What’s Britain’s place in the post-Iran world order?

Midway through James Joyce’s Ulysses, the character J.J. O’Molloytips his hat to ‘Our watchful friend, the Skibbereen Eagle’, a playful reference to an obscure provincial newspaper in the west of Ireland. Under an ambitious new editor, the Skibbereen Eagle had risen fleetingly to prominence in 1898 for its robust response to Tsar Nicholas II’s attempts to gain a warm-water port for the Russian navy by encroaching on China’s Yellow Sea. As its editorial warned in a chiding tone, the Eagle would ‘keep its eye on the Emperor of Russia and all such despotic enemies – whether at home or abroad – of human progression and man’s natural rights’.

Thursday

John Bew

Britain’s decline – and how to reverse it | with John Bew

48 min listen

In this special edition of Coffee House Shots, our political editor Tim Shipman is joined by historian, biographer and foreign policy adviser to four different prime ministers, John Bew. In his 7,000-word essay published in the New Statesman last week, John sets out the historical context which has contributed to the malaise and decline of the British state – and hypothesises that we are currently living in the ‘fourth great disruption’ to the political and economic order. He takes Tim through the previous three disruptions and the lessons that government needs to learn from them in order to stop the rot. Does the secret to forging a new place in the world order lie in fixing the machinery of government? Which figures from the past should we take inspiration from?

Britain’s decline – and how to reverse it | with John Bew

Friday

John Bew

Talking to the Taliban | 29 January 2010

After the London conference, it is clear that “talking to the Taliban” will become part of the strategy in Afghanistan. But the conference left a number of important questions about what this means in practice unanswered. Talking to the Taliban is not a new idea. Even though he expelled a British and Irish diplomat for holding secret talks with Taliban in December 2007, President Karzai has become an advocate for such negotiations over the last two years. In the Spring of 2009, Saudi Arabia hosted tentative negotiations between Karzai’s representatives and former Taliban, with links to the current movement. But the idea now has a head of steam behind it.

Monday

John Bew

We should talk to the Taliban only from a position of strength not weakness

David Miliband has become the latest to suggest that the Coalition must talk to sections of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The foreign secretary said it was necessary to build “an inclusive political settlement” which included former insurgents who could be persuaded to renounce violence. And he made an increasingly familiar distinction between ”hard-line ideologues”/jihadists and more moderate groups who are currently involved in the insurgency, but who could be ‘drawn into a political process’. Miliband’s speech was part of a concerted government push on Afghanistan.