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Earlier today, I noted George Bush’s cretinous and insulting claim that he had given up golf in solidarity with American soldiers who are dying in Iraq. The move, he said, was prompted by the death of UN envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello:
“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the [...]

No comment needed:
For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.
“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it [...]

John McCain’s out on the campaign trail today promoting his green credentials, but its clear that his climate change proposals would put a McCain administration on collision course with many, maybe most, of its international partners.
Here’s McCain’s headline promise on climate:
By the year 2012, we will seek a return to 2005 levels of emission, by [...]

Yesterday I was at a roundtable on Europe and climate change, hosted by Jim Murphy, the UK’s minister for Europe, with his French counterpart, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, as the main speaker.
France is about to take over the EU presidency and will play a critical role on the road to Copenhagen. Two questions stand out:

Can the [...]

One more post on last week’s Transformational Public Diplomacy symposium (see the others here and here), where the most incisive presentation was given by Sir Peter Marshall, the UK’s perm rep to the office of the UN in the 1980s, and now on the staff of the Diplomatic Academy of London. Sir Peter argued that:
Whereas [...]

Yesterday, I gave a couple of talks at a Diplomatic Academy of London conference on ‘transformational public diplomacy’ (pdf – and read an earlier post here).
One talk drew heavily on my Wilton Park speech on evaluation (read it here), but I also spoke about technology’s impact on diplomacy. The full text is after the jump [...]

I am at the Diplomatic Academy of London for a conference on ‘transformational public diplomacy’ (programme- pdf).
As the title suggests, the launch pad for the conference is US one - the agenda Condoleezza Rice first set out in a speech at Georgetown University in 2006:
I would define the objective of transformational diplomacy this way: to [...]

Last night I was at Gresham College where their Professor of Commerce, Michael Mainelli, was lecturing on global risks (read his lecture here).Mainelli concluded his lecture with this neat throwaway line:
I sometimes think global risks keep us from attacking each other by providing a common enemy. So, if we get started attacking global risks collaboratively, [...]

It’s not just Australia that’s been getting it in the neck this week, New Zealand’s PM, Helen Clark, has been compared to a cockroach by Hilary Clinton, in another deft display of foreign policy experience.
This from an interview with Newsweek:
You have any good jokes?
Here’s a good one. Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand: [...]

Nice to see an integrated approach to UK operations in Afghanistan…
When I asked the men of 3 Para what their first tour had achieved, they all fell silent. “It was very frustrating,” said [Major Paul] Blair. He believes that his men could have achieved something in the town of Gereshk, where they were first [...]

Today, I gave the closing address at the RUSI conference, Protecting the Critical Infrastructure, in a session introduced by RUSI’s head of risk and resilience, Anthony McGee. From the introduction to the conference by RUSI’s head, Professor Michael Clarke:
Protecting the Critical National Infrastructure and ensuring the continuation of political, social and economic activity is vital [...]

Yes, fresh from bringing peace to Northern Ireland and dodging snipers in Bosnia, Hillary Clinton is planning an amazing feat - she’s going to make the US energy independent, switch to renewables, and make energy prices cheaper for working class Americans.
“I told you I wanted to have a conversation so I asked you to send [...]

It’s been a long day, so excuse the bad mood. But, really: is it possible to read an article like this without falling further into deep despair?
Ira Winkler has the delightful job title of ‘penetration-testing consultant’. Hired by a US power utility, his task was to see how hard it was to take over their [...]

Below the jump, Alex and my talk at last weekend’s Progressive Governance summit - it’s a four minute summary of our paper on multilateralism and global risks.

In our Progressive Governance paper, Alex and I argued that ad hoc ‘shared platforms’ are a vital part of the management of a globalised world, particularly at times of rapid change. In Newsweek, David Rothkopf provides a glimpse of how these platforms have swung into action during the current financial meltdown:
To get a sense of [...]

Do, if you get time, read Phillippe Sands on the American ‘torture trail‘ in May’s Vanity Fair. Sands is a law professor at University College London and author of Lawless World, in which he questions US and British commitment to the basic tenets of international law.
Sands, like a growing number of other commentators, believes that [...]

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On Saturday, Alex and I presented our paper on multilateralism and global risks to heads of state at the Progressive [...]

On Saturday, Alex and I will be at the Progressive Governance Summit, where we’ll be presenting a new paper on multilateralism and global risks to twenty or so heads of state.
The summit’s website has just been launched on the Downing Street domain. Our paper will be published there on Saturday morning. Hopefully, we’ll have a [...]

Most politician bloggers are somewhat half-arsed, but when Barack Obama posted for the first time on uber-leftie group blog, Daily Kos, back in 2005, his post essay was so impressive that he had to come back a while later for two reasons. First, to reply to eight hundred or so comments, and second to chide [...]

A few weeks back, John McCain was asked whether taxpayers should fund contraception to combat AIDS. Here’s the response:
Mr. McCain: “I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know [...]

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