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People involved with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - particularly Brits - tend to get a bit anxious when one compares it with Northern Ireland. Having read Alex’s post on van Creveld’s lessons from Northern Ireland (especially points four, five and six), however, I can’t ignore comments made today by the Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff, [...]

Martin van Creveld, author of the outstanding The Transformation of War, has a new book out. Below, William Lind extracts from it van Creveld’s key lessons on what the Brits did right in Northern Ireland.
Before that, while we’re on the subject of new books, be sure to check out Global Guerrillas author John Robb’s [...]

Heard the one about the World Bank President who launched a personal crusade against corruption in developing countries, only for the world to learn that he instructed the Bank to pay his girlfriend way over the odds for her job in the same institution?
Oh, you have? Well, how about this, then: Heard the one about [...]

Condoleezza Rice, in an interview with the Financial Times this week, was invited to reflect on the dilemmas of promoting democracy in the Middle East. Would the Bush administration continue to push for democratic elections, Rice was asked, even though it was now having to deal with elected militias in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine? Rice [...]

“We have given the Iraqi people the chance to have freedom, to have their own country. It is up to them to decide whether or not they’re going to take that chance,” said Senator Clinton.
Estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed by military intervention so far: 65,000
Come on Iraq, what’s the matter with you? Jesus, they [...]

Laurie David and Sheryl Crowe question Karl Rove about climate change…
We felt compelled to remind him that the research is done and the results are in (www.IPCC.ch). Mr. Rove exploded with even more venom. Like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, Mr. Rove launched into a series of illogical arguments regarding China not doing enough [...]

Fed up with just paying your Oxfam subscription and never seeing where it goes? Help is at hand! Kiva.org uses partnerships with micro-credit lenders all over the world to allow you to browse specific micro-loan applications, and choose which ones you want to lend money to.
Every credit applicant has submitted a photo and a business [...]

This evening I went to see Yeltsin’s body lying in state at the Church of the Saviour in central Moscow. At first, I thought there wasn’t any queue at all, which would have been harsh but appropriate. But actually the police had lined up the queue on the other side of the church. It was [...]

Farewell, then, to the late, great Boris Yeltsin. And by way of a last raising of the glass, here’s the story of when he visited John Major at Chequers (the UK Prime Minister’s country residence)…

Last week’s UK-sponsored debate on climate change in the Security Council this week was always going to be contentious, as the Guardian and the Times of India reported (see also a letter to the FT yesterday from UK special representative on climate change John Ashton). As China put it: “The developing countries believe that Security [...]

Yesterday, in Jerusalem, the acting President of Israel Dalia Itzik offered some advice to Israel’s enemies on the 59th anniversary of Israel’s independence: “Our advice to you is replace your Katyushas and Qassams with computers and loving education, the smile of a boy that has a future, and neighbourliness”.
On the same day, in Gaza, Hamas’s [...]

Yes, really, it’s true…

There’s an excellent account of the flotilla of boats that converged on Lower Manhattan on September 11 2001 to assist with the evacuation of nearly half a million people here (see also earlier post here). The authors note:
Although some thought had been given to circumstances that might require evacuation via bridges and tunnels around [...]

The latest news here in Moscow is that Putin has decreed the country’s elite should not go to this weekend’s Russian Economic Forum in London. The Forum happens every April, and is a merry jamboree where 2000 Russian politicians, CEOs and journalists mingle with British investors, politicians and journalists. It’s perhaps the major social event [...]

For Lind et al (writing in their draft field manual), 4th generation warfare is about fighting an idea rather than fighting for territory (in Afghanistan, the Soviets failed because they ‘could not operationalize a conflict where the enemy’s strategic center of gravity was God’).
Fight an idea with conventional weapons and you often fail. ‘Every physical [...]

I’m in Kiev on a business trip. Kiev is great, actually. It’s sunny, it’s green, it’s full of beautiful women. It may actually have more beautiful women here than Moscow, and Moscow has a lot of beautiful women.

Yesterday I went to a conference by Concorde Capital, a local brokerage. In the day-time, fund managers ran around from meeting to meeting with local managers who want their capital.

Then in the night-time we were all taken to a club called Tsar, where we were greeted by ten women wearing only body-paint and a few feathers. They winked and gave us shots of evil-smelling liquor. Then we went into the main room, where more scantily-clad women were dancing on podiums.

This is usual fare for investment conferences in this part of the world. There are various reasons given to western investors to invest in the former Soviet Union: large populations, close to Europe, lots of oil. But one of the main reasons, which you’ll never find on any brochure, is the girls!

The winner of the US Army Information Operations Proponent (USIOP) essay-writing competition, Elizabeth Robbins, explores [pdf] the rise of the Milblogger and asks:
(1) “Who speaks for the Army?” (2) “If everyone may speak, what is the impact?” and (3) “What controls, if any, should the Army impose on soldiers?”
Her conclusion?
Military blogs written by those in [...]

For those of you following Wolfowitz’s woes, World Bank President has full coverage, including this response, from a World Bank retiree, to the President’s latest attempt to save his job…
“In his email of April 14, Wolfowitz draws our attention to his ’significant facts.’ The ’significant facts’ he omits are:
1) The Board was willing to [...]

This weekend’s light reading: Principles of Emergency Planning and Management, by one David Alexander of the University of Massachussetts. Amid chapters covering such recondite matters as emergency cartography, how many people can be carried lying down by a range of transport helicopters and what a triage tag looks like (this), there’s an intriguing section [...]

As I write this, insipid pop music is being blared out from speakers about 100 metres from my flat. There’s a big stage being constructed there, with expensive lights and monitors, and a giant pile of white balloons.
This is democracy, Russian-style.
Up the road, a slightly less-well-funded protest by the ‘Other Russia’ movement, which is what [...]

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