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I’ve got a short piece about organised crime on the Guardian’s blog Comment is Free. From the intro:
The annual report from the Serious Organised Crime Agency, published yesterday, is a mix of self-congratulation and spectacular underachievement. While the rhetoric from politicians has been to get tough on organised crime, the reality is more humbling: we [...]

General Richard Dannat, the head of the British army, once remarked that the British Armed Forces are less understood and less honoured for their commitment and sacrifice by ordinary Britons than in comparable societies, like United States, and probably even less than in earlier periods.
But this is not unique to Britain. And it is part [...]

Last night I had dinner with a group of security experts and sat next to Chatham House’s Robin Niblett . We got to talking about the role of Ministers and how they seem to struggle with their role in overseeing today’s counter-insurgency missions i.e. operations like in Iraq. They shy away from detail, but are forced into [...]

President Putin built up his authority by promoting mates of his from KGB to senior posts in the government and economy. Now president Medvedev is doing the same, but instead of promoting spooks, he’s promoting people from a legal and business background, like him.
In his first cabinet reshuffle, announced today, Medvedev began to promote [...]

For three weeks, Europe’s “big men” have been polishing off their CVs in the hope of getting one of the new top EU jobs to be created if the Lisbon Treaty comes into force. They all want to be at the other end of the phone when the U.S wants speak to Europe, as Henry [...]

Today American Defence Secretary Robert Gates recommended that General David Petraeus be appointed head of US Central Command. Until Admiral William Fallon was sacked earlier in the year, the idea had been for  General Petraeus to replace General John Craddock as Supreme Allied Commander and help fix the failing mission in Afghanistan, especially after Paddy [...]

I had meant to write something wildly insightful about Gordon Brown’s visit to the U.S. and his rather good speech at the Kennedy Library on world order - a distinct improvement in terms of both intellectual clarity and phrasing on his previous outings on the subject in London and Delhi. But then Daniel Korski [...]

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 [...]

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

I recently interviewed Sergei Markov, who is a key spin-doctor to the Kremlin. He told me that the West had completely underestimated the extent to which things will change under Russia’s new president, Dmitry Medvedev.
He said: “Most western observers expect no change because Medvedev is the new president. On the contrary, Putin chose Medvedev precisely [...]

The foreign banks active in Russia tend to have a far more informed and less cliched view of Russian politics than foreign policy analysts in Washington or London. They also tend to have better contacts with Kremlin sources than foreign diplomats, particularly the woeful British embassy in Moscow.
Banking analysts and strategists have been quick to [...]

Ian Katz’s Observer interview with Jonathan Powell - chief of staff to Tony Blair throughout his time at Downing Street - was definitely worth a read, if for no other reason than that this was, incredibly, Powell’s first media interview since 1997.  You get the impression that if Powell gave more such interviews, it might be [...]

You just can’t keep a good man down.  You might think he’d want a rest after a decade as Prime Minister.  You might suppose he’d have his hands full sorting out the Middle East.  You might reckon he’d be busy planning his impending role as the next President of Europe.  But - pah!
You need to [...]

Who set out this admirable vision of decentralised policy coherence?
Without democracy, you have no understanding of what is happening down below; the situation will be unclear; you will be unable to collect sufficient opinion from all sides; there can be no communication between top and bottom; top-level organs of leadership will depend on one-sided and [...]

The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson has an excellent comparison of the effectiveness of Brown’s and Cameron’s inner circles (hit-tip: Red Box).  As Nelson reports, the new Leo McGarry double act in Number 10 - Stephen Carter running the special advisers, Jeremy Heywood the officials - seems to be delivering:
The PM no longer takes part in the [...]

I am sure Alex and/or David will post something about Miliband’s speech to the FCO leadership conference which happened yesterday. My advice - don’t get too carried away with the speech - it’s good and runs through a familiar set of themes, instead watch the video embedded into the speech.
Two things stand out. Miliband’s plea [...]

Am back in Moscow for a week, working on a story. The impression I get from my meetings so far is that the West has underestimated the extent to which a new era has begun in Russian politics, and the extent to which Russia genuinely has a new leader, with his own agenda, in Dmitry [...]

In late 2006 Manuel Miranda accepted an offer by the Department of State to join their diplomatic mission in Baghdad as a Senior Advisor to the Iraqi Prime Minister’s legal office and the Government of Iraq on legislative process.  In the following year he established the Office of Legislative Statecraft. When he left in 2008 [...]

Two days, two very similar broadsheet leaders. Yesterday The Times called for a national security strategy that narrowly defined ‘security’ (read defence), today the FT calls for strategic thinking on national security (read defence). Without some background knowledge both these pieces seem sensible enough but you wouldn’t expect us at Global Dashboard to give you [...]

Excellent comment piece in today’s FT on how the Pentagon needs to plan for climate change.  According to the authors there are five key areas in which effective military planning can be undermined by uncertainty over when and how the major carbon-emitting countries combat climate change.
First, climate change poses a threat to fragile states that [...]

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