MTS, Non-MTS

This reads well:

Imagine what modern Europe would look like now if Poland had the political status of Georgia, lying in some sort of political-moral twilight zone with former Soviet interests linked to the KGB having a far freer time to penetrate into that society and play games with Polish assets.

As does this:

More on Russia, always a rich seam for foreign policy First Principles.

Thus Max Hastings gives us a striking Russia metaphor:

The Russians yearn for respect, in the same fashion as any inner-city street kid with a knife. They will become willing to play with the west by western rules only if or when they no longer perceive those rules as disadvantaging themselves. Today they cannot compete on the EU's terms, still less those of the US, so they make up their own.

It is unnecessary for the west silently to acquiesce in the Russians' excesses, but it must tread cautiously in the face of their sensitivities.

Maybe the fact that we in the UK tread cautiously in the face of the sensitivities of street kids with knives accounts for this?

More from Max:

America must stop pretending that democracy is, of itself, the answer to all the world's ills ... US policy towards Moscow for almost two decades has been based upon the assumption that since the Russians were losers, their wishes could be ignored or defied on every front. No useful business could result from such a posture.

Blimey.

Democracy may not deal with the world's ills but it makes a good step in that direction. Indeed, the problem in Georgia is that the Russian leadership want to send a profound anti-democratic signal that Might is Right - that what Russia wants or needs is the uber-value in that part of the world. See this latest outburst from the reportedly mild-mannered President Medvedev.

Plus the USA in fact has spent large sums of money in and with Russia on all sorts of common projects, aimed at building a new sense of partnership. The problem is not that the Americans treat the Russians as losers. It is that the Russians behave like losers, unable to make do with their sprawling eleven time zones of territory and hankering after regaining former imperial lands elsewhere.

One recurring theme in Russian and some Western analysis is the deterministic but weird idea that Russia has to behave differently (ie badly) because it is 'surrounded by enemies'.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once said that the fall of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical disaster. This didn't mean that he wanted to retain the Soviet state; rather, it meant that the disintegration of the Soviet Union had created a situation in which Russian national security was threatened by Western interests.

As an example, consider that during the Cold War, St. Petersburg was about 1,200 miles away from a NATO country. Today it is about 60 miles away from Estonia, a NATO member. The disintegration of the Soviet Union had left Russia surrounded by a group of countries hostile to Russian interests in various degrees and heavily influenced by the United States, Europe and, in some cases, China.

If a country occupies such a vast land mass as Russia does, it necessarily has plenty of neighbours and all sorts of complex questions to deal with. The Russian problem is that it tends to see anything it does not like as 'hostile'. And that attitude extends even to the Bambi-ish spread of EU values and processes into eg Ukraine.

Because, of course, the point is not that 'Russia' has a problem with that. Rather the Russian post-KGB elite have the problem, since the spread of Western democratic values brings with it new transparency and reliance on open rules rather than shadowy power-plays. And that threatens both their biznes interests and their world-view.

Above all, the Western democracy which is sneered at so much in the West brings with it a sense that political behaviour has (and depends on) Limits - limits of law, of convention, of personal self-restraint..

Here is the profound cultural/philosophical difference between Russia and the West.

'The West' sees Limits as a source of strength. 'Russia' sees Limits as a form of weakness.

Max does not seem to get this:

... the west (sic) will find it easier to coexist with this tormented, intransigent, melancholy and oil-rich neighbour when Russia feels comfortable with itself, not when its nose is rubbed in its long history of failure.

This has to be mainly wrong. No serious community policy can be based round the idea that we all wait for the inner city street kid with knife to 'feel comfortable with himself', if his idea of being comfortable is to slash away at smaller kids who disagree with him.

If we are not brave enough to take away his knife and haul him off to therapy, we at least need to limit his room for slashing, and do a lot more to help those he threatens to defend themselves? 

Via Brian Barder, this really good - and meaty - assessment of the current plight of Kosovo by Jeremy Harding.

It in fact headlines the Kosovo situation, but really it is about the Limits of Diplomacy - how far can countries on their own or in teams act deliberately (a) to change things and (b) for the better?

A couple of my own speeches have attempted to tackle this Limit from different Balkan angles. But the arguments apply just as well to 'assistance' for Africa, or intervention in Iraq, or the Korean War or whichever example you choose.

The awesome fact about Kosovo is that many billions of UN dollars and EU Euros have been poured into this tiny territory not much bigger than North Yorkshire.

And the results? According to Jeremy Harding, not good:

If intervention was supposed to bring about development, which optimists see as a prelude to civility, it has not been a success. The most startling features of Kosovo, now that the cleansing of the Serbian minority is on hold, are the poverty of the province – for Albanians and Serbs alike – and the pitiful economy that keeps it locked in.

Despite the creation of a small millionaire class, 45 per cent of its inhabitants are below the poverty level (unable to meet basic needs). Around 15 per cent live in extreme poverty, earning less than a euro a day ... Earlier this year, the British government put infant mortality in Kosovo at ‘35 to 49 deaths per thousand live births’ – at least twice as high as the rest of Serbia and greater than that in Mexico or the Occupied Territories.

How much have we paid to get this outcome?

Much of the disappointment centres on the fact that UN expenditure, now in the order of £25 billion, was ill judged: too much spent on traineeships and seminars – ‘institution-building’, ‘capacity-building’, ‘technical assistance’ – not nearly enough on infrastructure.

Let's recall the wit and wisdom of Major General Gen Raul Cunha:

The situation here is not brilliant and we are a lot to blame. We, I mean the western international community. We have maybe invested here in the worst way and we were not very careful with the money. Each time I take a look at the numbers, I notice that 80% of the investment was made on consultancy and capacity building and, practically speaking, we didn’t build any capacities.

Commenting on Brian Barder's gloomy Kosovo analysis, another former British Ambassador Jeremy Varcoe argues for ... Even More:

I consider the EU now has a duty to orchestrate assistance on a sufficiently large scale to kick-start development and to try to rekindle a sense of hope for all the communities, not forgetting all the minority groups, in this limpingly independent state.

No.

No!

Let's try Much Less.

If we start reducing EU assistance to the level we have given eg to Serbia, we begin finally to compel the Kosovo population and its leaders to think long and hard about how they might use the modest resources of their bleak Balkan plateau to make something like an honest living in today's Europe.  

This will mean some painful political and other sacrifices. Not least a stand by the mass of the population against the violence and corruption presided over by a few powerful Albanian clans. And adopting a much more realistic attitude to how they need to cooperate with their neighbours.

There is only one thing worse than being abandoned by the International Community.

Being rescued by the International Comunity.

Here's something new.

A husband-and-wife couple doing a job-share at Ambassador level, for the first time ever, anwhere.

Tom Carter and Carolyn Davidson are off to represent HM The Queen as High Commissioner in Zambia, taking it in turns to run the High Commission for four months at a time.

Here are their careers so far.

Ignoring if we can in the Guardian piece the witty and unexpected reference to Ferrero Rocher chocolates (and the vacuous innacuracy over another senior diplomatic husband and wife team mentioned who are no longer Ambassadors at Post in Bratislava and Vienna respectively), we ask ourselves: is this a Good Idea?

The Guardian article does not tell us. It tweebles on about the grimness of the diplomatic spouse's role, the handiness of the arrangement for the married couple themselves and the 'positive feedback' they had as job-sharing Deputy Head of Mission in Slovakia.

Nothing serious about the main issue: how to advance hard-headed British interests in that tricky part of the world? 

The point of course is that it is, mainly, not a Good Idea. Or at least that it is an idea whose goodness applies only in marginal cases which (HMG hope) do not matter overmuch.

The point of an Ambassador or High Commissioner is to represent British interests in the country concerned. Judgement calls are constantly being required. More often than not, they do not make much of a difference. But sometimes they matter hugely. Even in Africa.

Remember Sandline?

Say that there had been a husband-and-wife jobshare in Sierra Leone during that crucial period. Or in Uzbekistan trying to work out how best to balance all the moral and policy factors Craig Murray was tackling. Or for that matter in Warsaw when the UK EU Presidency was trying to negotiate a complex EU Budget deal.

Is it really likely or even desirable that two professional people in tough situations like that are going to agree fully on the analysis and on the recommendations on tactics and strategy, and will have equally good relations with key local interlocutors and in Whitehall?

One of them will be more credible and effective. When his/her four-month stint ends, is Whitehall going to be pleased to see him/her standing down to do an Open University course rather than grip the crisis?

Obviously not. It is weird even to pose the question.

Thus a job-share at this Ambassadorial level looks to rely on one core and unspoken assumption.

That in the greater scheme of things the job they are sharing is relatively unimportant to permit an experiment of this nature; that the UK's relations with the country concerned - here Zambia - can take some knocks from the obvious inefficiency/inconsistency the arrangement involves.   

Would we try this with China, or Russia, or Pakistan, or India, or France, or the USA?

No. 

And if we did, the countries would ask us to come back in three years or so after the job-share posters left, when we had decided to behave seriously again.

That said, if (as must be the case) the Zambians approved the shared posting, they carry a share of the cost of any mishaps and missed opportunities which occur. 

And, last but not least, good luck to Tom and Carolyn themselves. I am sure they'll give the job their best shot.

Does not all this remind us of the famous Gay Flag problem? How - and where - can the modern Foreign Office safely 'tick the boxes' of political correctness and 'diversity' while expecting to be taken seriously?

Memo to next Government:

• Just Say No to artful diversity dodges of this sort.
• Treat all countries with equal and significant respect
• Take diplomacy seriously

Oliver Miles picks up on my reference to the possible indictment by the ICC of the President of Sudan and commends to me to an article by Palestinian author and editor Rami Khouri: Whose Crimes? Against Whose Humanity?

This is a good article of a certain Arab liberal genre - well worth a read for Big Picture thoughts on international justice from a 'non-Western' point of view.

Khouri notes that the ICC charges have to be taken seriously:

The critics of the ICC should not be dismissed as hopeless despots, nor should the court’s potential indictment of President Bashir be dismissed as neo-colonialism administered through the UN Security Council that asked for the investigation in the first place.

And the facts are tough:

The chilling details in the prosecutor’s summary of the case revolve around charges that include acts of murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, rape, attacks on civilians, and pillaging towns and villages. They state that Bashir “masterminded and implemented” a plan to destroy three of the largest ethnic groups in Darfur (the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa) by using the armed forces, the Janjaweed militias, and the entire government apparatus, to specifically and purposefully target civilians.

The charges state that over 35,000 were killed and 2.7 million displaced, and refugee and displaced persons camps were also attacked and harassed, in a policy aimed at destroying these people as distinct groups or tribes.

However:

[T]hese criminal charges against Arabs in Sudan have to be weighed against three other realities: massive crimes committed against Arabs by their own leaders in other Arab countries; crimes committed by Israel; and, the mass suffering, death, destitution, refugee flows, and other consequences of invading foreign forces -- especially the American-led troops in Iraq.

Will any of the crimes by Arab, Israeli or American leaders be equally investigated in due course? ... Criminal acts must be investigated and punished wherever they occur; and, the same standard of culpability and morality should be applied to all situations around the world.

The moral force and political validity of the rule of law emanate from its universality above all other attributes. Investigating and indicting Sudanese leaders while ignoring the crimes of Arab, Israeli, American and other officials are seen as a sickening example of double standards that reek of colonialism and tinged with racism. Yet we cannot ignore crimes by Sudanese in Sudan by arguing that other criminals and killers in the region are not prosecuted.

Sickening double standards? Racism?!

This issue deserves more than a blog posting, as it is at the heart of a lot of diplomatic work.

It goes to the deep legitimacy of what we all do - the legitimacy each government thinks it has, and the legitimacy others ascribe to those actions and their own. And Legitimacy is one important aspect of Effectiveness.

Still, a quick thought or two.

I happen to think that the world is becoming more democratic, albeit in an unruly and maybe ultimately danerously anarchic way. It is just harder to push people around at the local, national or international level. Authority is challenged head-on. People armed with hi-tech devices can quote back the law and organise to thwart attempts by ostensibly more powerful forces to control them.

Thus charges of 'double standards' resonate and circulate fast. They point up operational inconsistency and/or some sort of hypocrisy - why are you being tougher on X than on Y?

Yet in my experience the claim of 'double standards' almost always comes from leaders or commentators defending policies/practices based on no standards at all.

In Western democracies such as our own, leaders have to defend themselves in great detail. Papers leak. The media are free in any normal sense of the word. Elections come round - voters can throw out those they dislike.

So if those leaders are pursuing some sort of inconsistent/hypocritical or unwise/unjust policy, they are not going to do so quietly. There is real-time pressure at home and overseas - accountability - to correct mistakes or change course.

Contrast this with the 'Arab world'. Almost no leader is freely elected. The media are not free - they tend to be crude propaganda outlets. There is no comparable way to apply criticism and force change. Human rights abuses are far greater across that region than in 'the West'. No meaningful accountability.

These deficiencies are home-grown. The overwhelming mass of the millions of Muslims who have died in recent decades have been killed not by Western military action but by other Muslims, killing under one or other banner of political/religious fanaticism.

US-led intervention in Iraq has led to deaths. It also has saved many deaths which the Saddam regime would have inflicted, as it had inflicted in the past. Do saved lives not count too?

Is Israel to blame for this?

How are we to have 'universality' in international justice? What is the point of including on international tribunals or UN human rights fora representatives from countries/regions rotten with injustice and oppression?

Here's my solution.

Tha Arab world calls a Summit. It admits that it is in a historical and moral cul-de-sac, and underperforming accordingly. It calls for a transformation in human rights (above all for women). It opens the way to UN-supervised free and fair elections in every state within a year. It calls for full religious tolerance. It calls for top-end open dealings in public money, and an end to corruption. Those states which fail to sustain democratic pluralism are to be excluded from taking part in any international fora pronouncing on justice or human rights.

A couple of decades pass to allow the new governments to bring in these momentous changes and be replaced democratically and peacefully. Then the Arab world proclaims itself ready to take on the responsibilities of applying universal reasonable standards in a reasonable way. Indeed it is ready.

As its standards are now close to if not surpassing those of Israel, that dynamic changes for the better too.

Until all that happens, the Arab world accepts that even if others exhibit 'double standards', those standards are higher than the standards the Arab world itself is now able to deliver. So in a spirit of purposeful humility but also hard-headed ambition, work is needed to catch up.

Bosnia's President Izetbegovic made many political mistakes. But he was a brave and insightful man.

I understand that he got up at a meeting of the Islamic world in Saudi Arabia and told the assembled Islamic leaders that they had to learn from the West, where democratic principles and practices were simply better. Indeed.

The true pernicious racism in all this lies not in the likes of Bush and Blair bullying brown-skinned people.

It lies rather in the zeal of Western chattering classes to explain away brown-skinned people's dismal treatment of each other. In the idea that 'democracy can never work in the Middle East'.

Can't we all do better than this?

Anglican Bishops have been marching against world poverty - then tucking in to a worthy feast.

Hypocrites!

When Pope Benedict XVI visited Krakow in 2006 the Polish authorities were determined to prevent any unseemly scenes of drunkenness among the vast crowds thronging to see him.

So alcohol sales were banned in Krakow and for miles around.

In Krakow for the Pope's Mass I went for dinner at the Hotel Stary, where as it happened the main restaurant had been booked for a mass of Catholic Archbishops and others from the Church hierarchy. There they were, finely berobed.

Imagine my suprise to see the long bar groaning with bottles of champagne and wine, laid out in long rows beautifully for their benefit. They did not hold back.

Research needed? 

EU Referendum do a number on a judgement by the European Court of Justice which sets a precedent

for thousands of other couples residing in Ireland and, more widely [and] better defines the rights of EU states to manage their own immigration policies.

Under the EU directive on free movement of citizens, all citizens may reside in another member state as workers or students if they have sickness insurance and sufficient funds that they do not become a burden on the social welfare system.

Family members of a citizen of the European Union also have the right to move and reside in the member states with that citizen.

The ECJ ruled today that application of the directive is "not conditional on their having previously resided in a member state".

"The directive applies to all union citizens who move to or reside in a member state other than that of which they are a national, and to their family members who accompany them or join them in that member state. The definition of family members in the directive does not distinguish according to whether or not they have already resided lawfully in another member state," the ruling stated.

The court also held that a "non-community" spouse of an EU citizen who accompanies or joins that citizen in the host country can benefit from the directive "irrespective of when and where their marriage took place and of how that spouse entered the host member state".

EU Referendum:

So, what we have here is an open door for illegal immigrants. As long as they can get themselves over here – or to any other member state - and evade the authorities long enough to find themselves wives who are EU citizens (who themselves may have been recent immigrants, as was Metock's spouse), EU law gives them an absolute right to stay here or anywhere else in the EU.

Whatver happened to Ex turpi causa non oritur actio ?

Are international tribunals for war crimes suspects a Good Idea?

And if so, are they being Done Well?

If not, does that mean that the Idea is in fact not so Good?

Two excellent pieces on these themes: one by John Lloyd, the other by Bill Montgomery.

It goes without saying that there are going to be shortcomings in any process of this sort, especially if the accused is bent on turning the whole affair into a circus as the best way of confusing the issues and trying to 'relativise' his/her guilt.

To this end Vojislav Seselj is putting in a powerful performance (NB a rare example of courtroom transcripts being Not Suitable for Work?).

Likewise any such Tribunal needs to rely on certain cooperative countries' police/military forces to arrest and hand over suspects, and to provide hard evidence perhaps from Top Secret sources.

This means that those countries inevitably start to have some influence over the timing of arrests and even the issue of indictments. Political and other calculations creep in. "You help us - we help you."

So if Milosevic had to be indicted, surely Croatia's President Tudjman who also played his part in some ghastly events should be too? Indeed. 

Yet somehow the indictment with his name on it was never quite issued. 

Did some governments not want that to happen and suggest that ICTY delay matters as Tudjman was ill? Tudjman generously solved the problem by dying. Unindicted - his reputation undeservedly intact to that extent at least.

Similarly Bosnia President Izetbegovic was under ICTY investigation when he died in 2003, when investigations were dropped. Was it really not clear by 2003 (ie almost a decade after the Bosnia conflict) that Izetbegovic too should face some war crimes indictments? Why was it all dragging on in this way?

Lloyd's article includes the following quote from a senior disillusioned British observer of ICTY:

And I saw that the UN, which is supposed to supervise, has no moral compass. It enjoins even-handedness, on ethnic grounds, not on grounds of justice.

Maybe in the circumstances of what happened in former Yugoslavia, which most people would see as some sort of ethnic civil war, this sort of thing is not only inevitable but desirable? If justice is to be seen to be done - most importantly among the communities involved in the fighting - all the issues need a fair objective airing?

NB All of which is not - of course - to say that each leader was "equally guilty".

One thing is for sure. If ICTY and other such Tribunals can not find a way to deal with intimidation of witnesses as happened in the case of indicted Kosovo leader Haradinaj, the process might as well not continue.

To carry on and reach unsatisfactory verdicts when this is going on simply shows weakness, and tells ICTY indictees and their supporters that the worse they behave, the better the outcome - for them.

Exactly the opposite of the message ICTY was set up to send?    

In Sudan too the authority of UN-led international processes is now being directly challenged.

Will ICC keep its nerve and follow through by indicting President al-Bashir?

See the words of wisdom of Radovan Karadzic aka Dr Dabic - at his site! (The Ever Increasing Need for Alternative Viewpoints in the Modern World)

Try this one:

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.

Via Tim Worstall and Tom Paine.

Can this be real, or is it a fast assembled Serbian spoof?

Who cares?

As I always say, some things are so stupid they can't be true. Others are so stupid they must be true.

What a great place the Balkans is/are.

This describes the current UK problems rather well.

Not that that cheers one up.

For those of you not paying attention, Craig Murray was HM Ambassador in Uzbekistan before a terrific row with the FCO broke out and his FCO career ended in acrimony.

He did not go quietly. Since then we have had:

• CM:   Parliamentary candidate
• CM:   Dundee University Rector
• CM:   Anti-War speaker
• CM:   Author
• CM:   Impresario

I have written about this case on several occasions, most recently here and here. See the Craig Murray Saga blogoir index tag for the whole lot.

This Blog is all about the interface between Policy and Practice. I spent most a long FCO career overseas. Here I try to describe in different ways my own practitioner's grappling with the practical and moral aspects of attaching British Foreign Policy to Real Life. And I draw from that experience wider conclusions about the technical/operational features of democracy, and of policy and public life in general.

I also since leaving the FCO on early retirement have had intermittent friendly contact with Craig Murray himself, to explore whether he would be interested in joining me in a public debate on all these questions. Craig has been travelling, so no decision taken.

Before that while we were in the FCO together I did not know Craig personally, but of course followed his Uzbekistan adventures as an insider with keen interest from my then vantage-points in Belgrade and Warsaw.

Along with every FCO diplomat I was fascinated to know what was 'really' going on; I talked to various FCO colleagues involved in the high-profile matter as and when I encountered them, so I have a sense of some aspects which have not been given a public airing for one reason or the other.

But broadly speaking I have no special insider insight/knowledge other than my own long years toiling at the diplomatic coalface, mainly in post-communist Europe.  

Anyway, Craig suggested that before opining further on his case I should read his book. Which arrived yesterday. Half read so far.

I am going to review this book. Not in one major piece, which would be unmanageable, and (worse) unreadable. Rather in stages, to bring out where I think Craig got it right and (more often) where he got it wrong. 

My unique selling point will be to explain what the book shows about the way the FCO/Whitehall policy system works and how Craig set about his Uzbekistan task, drawing on his own words.

A lot of what follows will be critical. But it can not be dismissed as some sort of belated hatchet-job on Craig Murray by the Establishment.

My own FCO career featured numerous maverick moments. I was known if not notorious for blunt, provocative and even tendentious analysis, work liked by Ministers but dismissed by many serious people as irretrievably self-indulgent.

Yet I somehow moved upwards, one of the few diplomats this century from any country to have achieved three prominent Ambassadorships before a 50th birthday.

So I am as well placed as anyone to offer in-depth thoughts on Craig Murray's own definitive and considered account of how he crashed from the FCO.

All right, all right. Just get on with it.

I will. 

Tempting as it is to disagree on sight with everything written by Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, I did think about this one arguing the case against the International Criminal Court indicting the President of Sudan.

Spared as I am from knowing the slightest thing about Sudan, what might I offer by way of First Principles?

JS distinguishes this case from the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic:

The Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, was under military attack from Nato. Negotiations had been cut off. Ultimately, they were renewed but only with the good offices of the Russians who had shown no enthusiasm for the Hague tribunal's indictment.

All sort of true enough. But not the best argument for politically and morally supporting that indictment.

The point is that up Milosevic's indictment we all had been tempted to keep a number of policy eggs in his basket ("better the devil you know", "we have no choice but to deal with the people in power", "realpolitik has to prevail" etc etc).

This meant not throwing our full weight behind the democratic opposition, who consequently were even more demoralised: "even if we do everything we can in these appalling conditions to make Serbia a decent society, the West may not support us wholeheartedly".

Hence lots of unhappy neurotic tweebling at high levels of the FCO and elsewhere as the prospect of the indictment loomed: "now we'll face a cornered animal, even more dangerous and unpredictable... a bad situation could get a lot worse..."

The indictment of course as I expected had several excellent effects:

• Milosevic became a skunk - almost no-one serious would engage with him any more
• therefore all eggs thereafter placed in the opposition basket
• this allowed us quietly to drop hints to key regime supporters that the game was ending - better to jump ship than sink with him. Wedge-driving and all that. Worked a treat.
• and we could turn round his slogan that "in the end the world would come to Serbia via me".
• Instead we could at last say convincingly "Not true! Milosevic is Serbia's obstacle to rejoining the civilised world - throw him out!"

All this worked remarkably well. Out he was thrown.

Does any of this apply to Sudan? Probably some of it. Especially the wedge-driving bits - if the President is indicted we can start picking away much more effectively at those around him.

Not an overnight win, but a big change in the psychological climate, empowering at least a bit more those normal people caught in the Sudanese struggle.

As for Jonathan Steele:

Holding people to account for their actions is a desirable goal, but it has to be weighed against the difficulties it creates if the indictees still hold power. Bashir is not Pinochet, who was long out of office as well as out of favour in Chile when he was indicted (by a foreign judge, not by an international court).

The list of practical problems that would flow from an indictment of Sudan's president is long. It far outweighs the benefits. The ICC's prosecutor should think again.

Does this not miss the most basic point? That if the ICC thinks he ought to face charges for vile atrocities, they indeed must indict him regardless of the political inconvenience and practical problems?

Otherwise it is not an implacable independent Court, but a whim of whatever political fashion happens to be prevalent?

Plus, of course, if they sense ICC weakness local lunatics everywhere only have to threaten to create an even longer list of "practical problems" for the Guardian to bewail the 'likely' impact of any indictment.

Which rather defeats the point of setting the ICC up in the first place?

There are not too many UN Security Council vetoes.

So when one comes along it shows that things at that top table are not in good shape - lack of grown-up consensus and/or serious miscalculation by those who pushed the offending Resolution.

Although of course there may be cases where a Resolution is pushed in expectation of a Veto by one or other Permanent Member in the hope of embarrassing said Permanent Member before world opinion.

Last night the world saw the unedifying spectacle of Russia and China backed by South Africa, Vietnam and Libya blocking a Resolution to impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe as well as financial measures against key Zimbawe leaders.

The Russians and Chinese hid behind the pious rubbish that Zimbabwe is not a 'threat to international peace and security', the legal 'trigger' needed for action of this sort. Since it is quite easy to imagine Zimbabwe collapsing with dangerous ramifications for its neighbours, that argument is unconvincing if not downright dishonest.

The stance of Mbeki/Mandela South Africa, itself a victim of Zimbabwe's collapse, goes beyond shame.

So there it is.

Three countries with no democracy lining up with Russia which is doing its best to diminish its democracy, aided and abetted by South Africa led by a Soviet-trained narcissist, voting against meaningful pressure on a vile and incompetent regime which counts for nothing.

But why? 

The decision of course has nothing to do with Zimbabwe. The Chinese and Russians want to be obstinate just to show that as their post-Cold War wealth increases apace they can do what they darn well please, regardless of what the 'West' wants. Zimbabwe's luckless population are collateral damage. 

No better time to do flex these muscles than in the dying months of the unhappy Bush Presidency and with Gordon Brown's domestic credibility also low. A strong school of thought has it that when someone is down there is never a better time to kick him.

So, a new phase begins.

Mugabe and his core villains gloat heartily at the success of their daring smash and grab raid on their country's integrity.

Western measures of different sorts intensify.

Zimbabwe's already parlous situation gets worse. The Chinese may step in to buy the place if it gets cheap enough. Ruin. Human desperation and misery on a massive scale.

All as I warned. 

Plus there could be bigger picture effects too. The idea of a League of Democracies separate from the UN may get a boost. But would this move allow a significant League of Authoritarians to set themselves up in business? Is this the best the world can do?

Yet if one looks at these things from a grander perspective, one sees different patterns emerging.

Policies have Consequences, even if those consequences bite you far in the future.

For example, when did the UK wield its first UN Veto acting alone?

Perhaps on 13 September 1963: over ... the situation in Southern Rhodesia. 

A reader not unreasonably draws attention to a link in my previous post to a fascinating original FCO document reporting a conversation with Craig Murray.

He  wonders whether diplomats who 'temper' their reporting themselves create the impression that others who report more passionately are the only FCO people with a conscience.

In other words, those dwelling in the Land of the Mute and Timid should not condemn as unnecessarily/improperly noisy a rare someone who speaks clearly.

Interesting. Not a point I had thought about in this immediate context - as an ex-FCO insider who knows Simon Butt (we joined on the same day back in 1979) but not Craig Murray, I read Butt's minute with a very different eye.

The professional point raised is in fact subtle. Here goes.

Officials are paid to report and to offer their analysis and judgement.

Officials' views and judgements sent in to HMG from far-flung posts may not coincide with those of their official colleagues at HQ, or more importantly with those of elected Ministers.

Quite right too.

Those in HQ tend to lack the feel for what is happening in other countries, and what that might mean for future developments. But they know a lot about what is in the public eye in the UK. And the public pay everyone's wages. 

In turn someone who pores day and night over the intricate goings-on in Uzbekistan (or Poland or Serbia or Paraguay) knows a heck of lot about all that, but maybe risks losing a sense of where that country fits into the great scheme of the foreign policy aims which the British Government of the day are pursuing.

So a dynamic synthesis emerges.

A skilful diplomat overseas manages (a) to keep HQ alert to the implications of local developments where s/he is posted, and (b) is consistently persuasive on what (if anything) we should be doing by way of response.

And good officials back home need to keep an open mind - part of their job too is to warn Ministers of troubles perhaps to come.

Achieving that synthesis intelligently in practice depends on a lot of factors, not least personalites which come and go, as well as other Big Issues at the time.

Plus the hard fact is that for British Ministers some places are just more important than others. 

Greeks and Turks in many constituencies have some votes, and are voluble on the subject of Cyprus. The Uzbek community in the UK (if one even exists) has no such profile or weight.

So wooing Ministers and the system away from immediate problems causing them operational grief now to spend time on likely problems some way down the road is a struggle to be waged with guile, patience and insight. Maybe, above all, with good networked teamwork.

In short, when good diplomats 'temper' their work it is not because they are spineless or unambitious, although perhaps some can be.

It is in part because they know that it is not enough to be Right - in a democratic system where so many clever and urgent ideas buzz about, you have also to be Effective and Convincing. 

And that if you strive too hard to show that your insights are uniquely important, you may just overdo the adverbs and rhetoric and lose your HQ audience.

A bit like a noisy belligerent orator at Speakers Corner - fleetingly amusing with some good points, but if the tone and content do not vary the crowd drift away.

So read the excellent FCO documents on Craig's site with all that in mind.

If you had any thoughts about how he and the FCO fell out so spectacularly and what it all meant, do you find your mind changing a bit - one way or the other? 

The long-awaited Mark Steyn 'trial' in Canada begins.

Can a Human Rights Tribunal seemingly operating in an untransparent if not dishonest way suppress free speech in Canada, primarily because someone does not like what has been said?

Vast (pro-Steyn) Background here.

The live-bogging begins.

This polemic by Simon Jenkins hits many nails on the head.

Anyone who has seen the 'international community' in action in a troublespot can not but be dismayed.

Generous tax-free salaries and fleets of expensive 4x4s contrast luridly with the surrounding poverty. Armies of local and imported female 'sex-workers' setting up camp nearby. A Cargo Cult arrival of unanticipated succour but on an unmanageable scale. Ugh.

Another feature is the capture of internationalised taxpayers' money by different interest groups and factions not subject to normal processes of common sense.

No-one in any international body dares say that some things are just more important than other things. That would be Judgmental! Reactionary. Divisive. Or whatever.

A few years ago when I visited the UNMIK office in the sad shabby divided town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, there in the outer office of the senior local UN official was a bored-looking woman from Africa, assigned to the office at a senior level to monitor 'gender issues'.

Everyone else there knew that in practice, given what was going on in Mitrovica (periodic ethnic battles beside and across the bridge), she had nothing to do.

But there she sat, self-importantly doing nothing, being paid a large tax-free salary which might have gone to helping a good selection of poor people, eg in Mitrovica.

As Simon Jenkins says, it is extraordinary that HMG give so much of our taxpayers' money to organisations whose accounting practices and general transparency are so far below what HMG structures themselves have to accept.

Is one way forward the emerging US idea of a new 'League of Democracies', to try to bring to international processes some healthy - or at least healthier - accountability?

Former UN official Shashi Tharoor tries to persuade us that this is a Very Bad Idea:   

... the reason that decisions of the UN enjoy legitimacy across the world lies not in the democratic virtue of its members, but in its universality. The fact that every country in the world belongs to the UN and participates in its decisions gives the actions of the UN - even that of a security council in urgent need of reform - a global standing in international law that no more selective body can hope to achieve. This is the time to renovate and strengthen the UN, not to bypass it. 

But as he must know, the fact that so many undemocratic and corrupt regimes have serious influence via the UN is in itself a major obstacle to reform in the direction he claims to want.

Regimes which make no serious claim at all to be upholding human rights sit on UN Human Rights groupings. This 'legitimises' bad behaviour and blocks progress. The African voting bloc closes ranks to stop any meaningful voting on African candidates to the key UN Human Rights Council. Such manoeuvring combined with the cynical obstruction of Russia and China is condemning millions of Zimbabweans to disaster. 

Institutional reform? No way! Too many governments need to keep the organisation over-staff and wastefully run to win lucrative UN appointments as a form of patronage.

Western taxpayers are obliged to pay for all this, and then nagged to fork out for huge 'development assistance' to these regimes as well.

See also this unusual coincidence of US and UN views on the suffering in Burma. The USA generously has made available resources no-one else can deploy to help the cyclone victims. The Burmese regime's UN-legitimised socialist paranoia is condemning thousands of people to likely death and disease.

Should we continue to accept that this UN and all the other offshoots of it are the best of all options, albeit coming with a puny prospect of 'renovating and strengthening' themselves?

No.

It will all crash at some point, of course.

In our networked world, popular and populist opposition to the double whammy absence of reasonable accountability and reasonable efficiency will tend to grow . Especially from those compelled to pay for it.

The fact that at least some victims of murderous regimes can now make cheap mobile calls to the UN Security Council to scream for help as their killers approach no doubt will help focus minds.

For a few minutes of portentous debate. Then all those grandly excellent but deadlocked diplomats repair to their tax-free UN bars, to muse amicably on the world's wickedness.

Samizdat via Brian Micklethwait wonders what convulsive forces might collide with the UK's currently volatile political scene:

Perhaps the EU will actually inform Britain, publicly, clearly, that it now rules it, and that merely British elections really do indeed now count for absolutely nothing, and maybe the British people will accept that, which will change things rather, will it not? Or maybe they won't accept it, ditto...

Perhaps there will be a new Peasants Revolt (Peasants Revolts always happen just when, and just because, nobody expects them, not even the Peasants)...

Perhaps Scottish independence will (a) soon happen, with (b) all kinds of dramatic and unpredictable knock-on effects, such as England leaving the EU but not Scotland. Or Wales...

The deep problem is that the interaction of UK and EU normative processes now makes government so complex and unwieldy that the handling of many policies is inexplicable to ordinary voters or indeed most politicians. So politicians default to populist issues and noises instead.

The public sense that this is not right, but as there is no obvious way of effecting radical simplification a sense of frustration and detachment grows apace.

Thus party politics here and across Europe slumps into a sort of decadent Reality/Gladiator Show, where the team with the hottest looks and best lines gets to preside for a while but ultimately unhappily over this confusion.

Basically, in Life there are only three Political Options:

• either the sensible centre stays wide and robust, and marginalises the lunatic extremes (UK politics for the past 200 years or so)
• or the lunatic extremes expand and squeeze - even eliminate - the sensible centre (Stalin, Hitler, Mugabe, Iran)
• or an uneasy equilibrium is established (today's Russia, China?)

How would we know if we Brits were approaching a Tipping Point, moving from the first Option-state to one of the others?

This was the sense of my MTS/Non-MTS analysis for former Yugoslavia back in 1984.

The unbendable official policy assumption was that Yugoslavia would 'muddle through somehow'.

I questioned that assumption. I was chided for being 'argumentative'.

But Yugoslavia didn't muddle through somehow.

Are we now right to expect to continue indefinitely to do so?

Not long before I left Belgrade in 2003 I had a good discussion with the then Serbia and Montenegro Foreign Minister, Goran Svilanovic. An astute operator.

He said that one of the problems in dealing with the EU is that "you don't do deals. The Americans love deals, but you don't".

He's right of course. Important to realise why.

The EU is essentially about Grand Process. The slow but steady if not relentless creation of a non-imperial empire.

The massive EU peers down at little Serbia from a lofty height and sends a simple message. Be absorbed. Or be ignored. Either you want in, on EU terms. Or you don't. The rest is 'detail'.

In this vast sense the EU side has no reason to do deals. What about? Why bother? Sooner or later the EU's position will prevail through its sheer massiveness.

There also are operational considerations. The offering of a credible deal implies a tactical nimbleness and an ability to deliver one's own side of the bargain.

The EU has neither, and if anything is proud of the fact. Everything needs laborious polite processing and cross-checking. The EU slogan might be "You can trust us - we are boring, and we'll never surprise you!"

In fact to a degree which Britishers struggle to fathom, many non-EU Europeans quite like that approach. They have had centuries of being very surprised by Big European Powers storming into and across their territory, with ghastly results.

So inexorable Europeanisation takes time and patience, and EU Europeans are good at that.

But Europeanisation eg in the Balkans is much less effective than it might be since it lacks sharp, short-term methods for tackling criminal and other extremists.

The bulky EU plods across the post-communist heavily polluted brown-field Balkans, planting nice fresh seeds of reasonableness. The locals watch all this and are impressed by the EU's methodical diligence.

Yet they also see that not far behind the EU come a small motley group of well-armed war crimes suspects and drug-smugglers, doing what they can to pour toxic waste on all those fresh seeds.

So the locals ask themselves various questions: "Does the EU not realise what is going on behind them? They must do! But why are they pretending not to? It can only be because they secretly want them there? What is really going on here?"

The EU of course does know that these villains are trying to thwart the European plan. It makes a half-hearted attempt to impose on the locals some 'conditionality'. "You'll get all the seeds you need only if you arrest these people and hand them over!"

But saying that while continuing to plant seeds is not really convincing. And, as every parent or dog owner learns the hard way, "You'll get nothing if you behave badly!" all too easily morphs into "We'll give you something if you stop being bad".

So the locals conclude that they'll get enough of the seeds they want by doing nothing, and/or that if they are Behave Badly Enough the EU will bribe them to stop.

Plus they suspect that for all its ponderous hugeness the EU is rather ... cowardly. "The EU is far bigger than us. If the EU will not risk harm to itself by nabbing these villains, why should we? And if the EU will eventually absorb us anyway, why bother to work for it? 'Oces kafu?"

Also watching these processes are the Russians, at once highly suspicious of the EU's non-imperial empire-building and quite keen to counter it by some quite-imperial empire-building of their own.

Their message to Serbdom? "These so-called Europeans are trying to cheat Serbia, just as they've always done. They are humiliating you: pretending to offer you EU membership as long as you hop down the road with Serbia's Kosovo leg brutally cut off! By them! Is this the sort of club you want to join? Have you no pride?"

These are some of the considerations running through the political psychology of Serbia's forthcoming elections on 11 May.

Interesting.

The goings-on in Canada over free (or is it free?) speech and the activities of Human Rights Commissions seem complicated to outsiders.

So it is helpful to have the whole sorry business explained once and for all.

Reader Robbie has sent in a pertinent comment on my post about Objectives, Targets:

Not sure I agree with you on the wider point about targets ... Given the size and complexity of modern public service delivery, no Minister can reasonably be expected to have a strong sense of what is happening in all of their department, all of the time.

Therefore they need to identify priorities that need to be achieved for the benefit of the public, and by which the success of that Minister can be measured.

Once a priority has been identified, an outcome must be set (for without an idea of what the achieved outcome should be, the priority is meaningless). And once an outcome has been set, the department must set out how it will achieve that outcome. Progress towards that outcome is made in steps, which can only be measured by...targets.

It seems to me that if ministers don't set targets, how can they be responsible for what their departments achieve (or fail to achieve)? And if ministers aren't responsible for the success or failure of their departments, we have government by bureaucrat - unelected and unaccountable.

Value for Money: Government in a modern developed nation these days is a massive enterprise, which uses up lots of money. Unlike other organisations, it has the ability to decide how much money it needs; and can then (with relative ease) get that revenue (through tax hikes). Given that power, a responsible government must be able to prove it is spending its money in a way that gives value for money. How else can it do that except by showing progress against objectives?

Phew. Where to start?

No-one says that Governments should simply do what they damn well please with our money, even if often they do. So wanting to achieve specific things as promised in election campaigns is good.

My point is that the sprawling bureaucracy in the UK now associated with doing what Robbie proposes is choking intelligent government and public process. Much of it is in fact hilariously incoherent or even utterly stupid, or at the very best 'merely' distorting and wasteful.

And it is gnawing away at some of our most precious assets.

If we Brits have one global comparative advantage it is the English language, an amazingly clever, unrivalled tool for precision and clarity in communication in a new global era when Communication is Everything.

What else needs to be said for eg English in our schools other than "Pupils leaving school at 16 are expected to have read at least 50 of the 300 key books in Annex A and at least two Shakespeare plays. Marks will be deducted severely for poor spelling and grammar."? Then let schools just get on with it.

What do we actually get?

In effect the state for decades has nationalised most of the means of production of the English language, and as with all nationalised industries brought in clueless incentive structures and messed things up.

Each successive blunder leads to bad outcomes which in turn force civil servants to invent ever more elaborate schemes to try to solve the problem, which in turn make the problems worse.

The setting of Targets as opposed to Standards has led to teachers wasting massive time filling in forms while dwelling more on narrow exam outcomes and less on actual education.

Plus we see a stunning officially driven dumbing down in basic literacy, which now shows itself in almost every communication one receives.

Basically, Serbian and Polish children are learning good English to higher standards than ours are.

How bad is this?

I was lost for words a few years ago when an FCO fast-stream young officer and English graduate from Oxford University served me up a draft with the word 'sebatical' in it. What absence of education and basic reading and grasp of the way English works had produced that level of ignorance after some fifteen years in the better parts of the UK education system?

We now see the phenomenon of officials so gormless that not only can they not spell properly, they also do not grasp that there is a Spell-Checker on their computer or are unable to choose which of the options offered is the right one.

Another relatively new but growing official disease is Risk Management.

Embassies have to complete every few months a spreadsheet which lays out 'risks' to policy and the accomplishment of our Objectives.

The first demand for one of these arrived in Warsaw, attaching the Asia Directorate's model as a splendid example. I crossly sent back an email saying that maybe, after everything which had happened in the Asia region not that long ago, a risk assessment which omitted the word tsunami might be thought to be a little ... ridiculous? I predicted that in a few years' time these banal exercises like so many others would have collapsed under the weight of their manifold contradictions.

I was told off for being 'unhelpful'.

My answer, Robbie, is that there is no theoretical or operational basis for treating such time-consuming exercises within the current Objectives/Targets/priorities industry as being in any meaningful way meaningful. 

Any honest risk analysis for any Embassy would put at the top of its list:

• good chance that a domestic political drama will take Ministers' eyes off the ball here and/or divert resources from our problems to other problems, probably for reasons driven by internal Party focus groups or Spin or Ministers' own election prospects (a couple are in marginal seats with truculent ethnic minority communities)
• non-trivial risk of Iran attacking Israel or vice versa, prompting vast global instability affecting for the worse everything we do

But if any Embassy in Europe wrote that, they would be told off for being unhelpful.

My recommendation to FCO staff?

Act! Boldly!

Seize all FCO/HMG papers you can find with the words Targets/Priorities/Risk Assessments/Strategies/Survey/Outcomes/Outputs/Road-maps on them.

Pile them in the centre of the FCO Main Courtyard. 

Park the new Ministerial fleet of Ford Focuses a good way back for Health and Safety reasons.

Set fire to the paper mountain, dancing and cheering around the shooting flames. (Note: a tiny blow to FCO recycling policy and Global Warming, but hey, No Gain without Pain.)

March en masse to the Foreign Secretary's office. Insist that he sign new FCO Basic Policy Guidelines:

• Work flat out to stop the EU passing new Directives which harm British interests
• Ditto to stop the UN sucking up to dictators and extremists
• If necessary, threaten to stop paying for such nonsense, and mean it - Ministers will support you
• Keep a close eye on the Russians, who play hard and tricky.
• Ditto the French (less hard, even more tricky)
• In fact keep a close eye on foreigners in general - they are often up to something tricky and/or hard
• Climate Change needs attention, but don't put all our eggs in one basket - the science keeps changing faster than the climate
• End all 'development assistance' programmes - they waste money and encourage idleness/corruption
• Never appear Weak
• Be as helpful as you can to all UK business people who show up.
• Ditto to Brits who have got into trouble
• Don't waste public money or cheat on your expenses - Big Trouble if you do
• Now just get on with it

Then just get on with it.

And see if five years' time anything is really that much different/worse.

Back in 1998 in Sarajevo I gave a speech to The Congress of Bosniac Intellectuals.

In it I talked about the role of 'ethnic' political parties and identity politics, praising the thoughtful words of Bosnian writer Ivan Lovrenovic:

He said that the first step in renewing Bosnia and Herzegovina was the "relativisation" of political and national identities: "if we in Bosnia are only Bosniac Muslims, only Serbs, only Croats then we have nothing more to talk about...if you want Bosnia you have to be a Bosnian, and if you want to be a Bosnian you can not be 'only a Bosniac, only a Croat, only a Serb...I am not less a Croat because I am not only a Croat. If all Bosnians from all national identities can say the same for himself we are right on the road towards rebuilding Bosnia and Herzegovina".

Fine words. What do they mean for politics?

First, they rule out ethnically exclusivist political parties and philosophies. Under the BH Constitution - under your law - all discrimination on ethnic or other grounds is illegal. So what is a Serb or Croat or Bosniac political party fighting for?

Any party organizing itself or campaigning directly or indirectly on an ethnic ticket aims to practise discrimination. "Vote for me not because my policies for everyone are good but because I’m a Serb (or a Croat, or a Bosniac). If I achieve power trust me to look after the ethnic interests of my people first and foremost."

Of course our own very nomenclature reinforces one or other stereotype in such cases. Thus from the start of the Bosnia drama (as still now) we have talked about the 'Bosnian Serbs' and 'Bosnian Croats' - not the 'Serbian/Croatian Bosnians'. Somehow the ultimate identity emphasis is put by us - as indeed by them - on their Serbness or Croatness, not their Bosnian-ness.

This of course suits those who say that there can never be a meaningful shared non-ethnic Bosnian identity anyway, hence the whole Bosnia and Herzegovina project as supported by the US/EU is doomed to fail.

The Bosniacs'/Bosnian Muslims' must take a view on these questions. President Izetbegovic once told me that after what had happened in Bosnia there could be no 'ethnic disarmament' for 50 years.

Quite why it should happen then after five decades of the different communities firmly emphasising their distinctness was not clear to me. The Yugoslav regime did a pretty determined job in pushing the idea of 'brotherhood and unity' for nearly 50 years, and look what happened then.

Meanwhile in the USA the debate rages in a different form. Are more women inclining to support Hillary because she is a woman? Are more 'blacks' inclining to Obama because he is (sort of) black? And if so are they the real racists? Read the heated exchanges until you come to the thoughtful intervention of JT234 and then the witty T Gracchus.

And then read Mark Steyn:

It's the identity-uber-alles blocs that prevent the black guy from finishing off the feminist or vice-versa. As the Bee Gees so shrewdly observed:

Whether you're a mother
Or whether you're a brother
You're Staying Alive... 

Maybe I follow US politics too much. Those who wisely do not might like at least to be aware of one Professor Bill Ayers.

As a younger man Bill Ayers had the full 60s' experience to the point of being an original member of the Weathermen, a group of charmless people dedicated to achieve the destruction of U.S. imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world Communism.

On the way to this noble end they perpetrated various terrorist explosions and robberies; happily some of them ineptly blew themselves up.

The point?

In a majestic cynical attack on candidate Obama, candidate Clinton has pointed up Obama's relationship(s) with Ayers, now (lordy) a professor in Chicago.

This does an elegant job describing Professor Ayers and his views. How did these people manage to be both ultra-cool and diamond hard simultaneously? 

And this does the same in pointing up Hillary Clinton's own slight Weathermen problem.

Still, the Clinton campaign wanted to hit Obama by insinuating that he was soft on terrorism.

And one way or the other it worked.

Update: more, with pictures!

More on this subject via Instapundit who compares the bloody quagmire in Chicago to violence in Mosul, Iraq:

Still, they're different: One has crooked officials, violent gangs with their hooks into government and law enforcement, and a culture of corruption that has resisted the central government's effects to clean it up, and the other is a city in Iraq.

As previously discussed, one of the Problems with Government these days is its philosophically confused preoccupations with targets.

Yet HMG did not start this madness.

Back in the 1930s one leadership set ambitious targets, and told its functionaries to go forth and meet them.

Which they did.

After leaving the FCO in a noisy cloud of sparks, my former colleague Craig Murray has made a name for himself as an activist promoting all sorts of Progressive Causes.

This BBC account from 2004 does a good job in summarising some of the professional issues the Murray saga threw up (so to speak).

I don't recall having any significant dealings with Craig during my FCO career - we were on different FCO circuits.

But I do recall dropping Craig an email of congratulations when he first started firing off some heavy reports to London pointing up the scale human rights abuses in Uzbekistan.

He made good sense in pointing to examples (eg the Taleban) where 'the West' had backed local extremists for short-term reasons, those extremists thereby flourishing and eventually taking on virulent anti-Western positions; it was (he argued) unwise to invest in the Uzbekistan regime for Iraq reasons, only to stoke up trouble for the future.

However, in subsequent FCO reports he banged on in a similar vein to and beyond the point of being persuasive or even credible. I dropped him another private email saying that while I did not follow the Uzbek/Iraq question in any detail, he came over as getting too shrill: maybe he should think about other more subtle ways of trying to win (or at least make a small policy gain or two in) this argument.

Anyway, it all then crashed as far as his career was concerned.

For anyone interested in this matter as an example of professional ethics and technique, Craig Murray's website is noteworthy as it contains various official telegrams and other documents of the sort rarely seen by the public.

Craig asserts that they go to show the justice of his c