Christopher Meyer has not made the direct connection between the endemic paranoia of Stalin's regime, and the endemic paranoia of the John Forbes Nash mode of managerialism which underpins neoliberalism

How is it possible that the wise and careful Lord Hurd, a former foreign secretary and professional diplomat, could get up in the House of Lords this year and speak of "a malaise becoming increasingly apparent" in the working of the Foreign Office; of an organisation that has been "hollowed out", because it is no longer "a storehouse of knowledge providing valued advice to ministers and is increasingly an office of management ... of a steadily shrinking overseas service"?

What lies beneath accusations made in 2008 by the human resources consultancy Couraud, hired by the Foreign Office itself, of "institutional timidity", "a cultural fear of failure", "people getting to the very top of the Office by never making any mistakes"?

The use of outside consultants is itself part of the problem: the symptom of weak leadership that cannot see what needs to be done; or, if it does, dares not make changes without some sort of validation from the private sector.

This is not a phenomenon peculiar to the Foreign Office.

New Labour's obsessive reliance on the alchemy of consultants has infected much of Whitehall.

The culture of targets, set by the Treasury, has acquired the madness and mendacity of Soviet statistics.

While I was in Washington as ambassador, from 1997 until 2003, I had to engage in an annual objective-setting exercise.

In principle, it is absolutely right to set clear goals for your embassy. But the Foreign Office, throttled by the Treasury's grip on its budget, insisted on a bureaucratic exercise of elephantine proportions.

The Office had its own objectives. Each department within the Office had its own. Each embassy and high commission had theirs, as did individual officials.

The idea was that there should be a "cascade" of objectives from the top to the bottom. Getting all these objectives to fit together took ages. Finally, like the annual promulgation of the theses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the objectives would be published, often months into the year to which they were meant to apply.

They were, for all practical purposes, dead on arrival ...

The three pillars of the national interest are security, prosperity and values. Sometimes these pillars are, as they should be, mutually reinforcing.

Sometimes one – especially values – will be in conflict with the others.

Either way, there are sharp lessons to be drawn from the past to guide us through the turbulent present.

The sharpest of them all is that, despite the profound changes in international affairs over the past 500 years – geopolitical, demographic, economic, environmental, technological – a nation that loses sight of its interests, and neglects its diplomacy, is a nation lost.

Britain risks such a fate.

Christopher Meyer, 2009. Extracted from 'Getting Our Way: 500 Years of Adventure and Intrigue: the Inside Story of British Democracy', published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, on sale now at £18.99.

Christopher Meyer will be presenting a major BBC television series also entitled 'Getting Our Way', which will be broadcast in February and will be produced by Wingspan Productions

Telegraph  02 November 2009

UK called to account over torture allegations

The Government’s own human rights watchdog has demanded a public inquiry into claims that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of more than 20 detainees in the War on Terror, The Times has learnt.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) says that it can no longer ignore the growing body of allegations against MI5 and MI6.

The commission’s chairman says in a letter to Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, that the Government’s blanket denials are an inadequate response. Trevor Phillips says: “Not enough has been done to reassure the commission and the public that these allegations are unfounded.”

A dossier of 25 cases has now been built up, including complaints of ill treatment, illegal detention and torture. The EHRC is concerned about mounting evidence that these actions were condoned by British agencies.

Mr Phillips told The Times: “Given the UK’s role as a world leader on human rights, it would be inexplicable for the Government not urgently to put in place an independent review process to assess the truth, or otherwise, of these allegations.”

He also criticised as “inexplicable” a year-long delay by the Government in reporting to the United Nations Committee against Torture ...

Times  20 Feb 2010    Torture

Argentina imposes shipping rules in Falklands oil row

Argentina has imposed new controls on shipping to the Falkland Islands in a growing oil dispute with the UK ...

The Argentine government has ordered ships heading to the islands via its waters to apply for permission first.

The move comes as Argentina has become increasingly agitated at the forthcoming start of oil drilling in Falkland Islands territorial waters ...

A drilling rig from the Scottish highlands, the Ocean Guardian, is expected to arrive in the coming weeks to begin oil exploration ...

BBC NEWS  17 Feb 2010    Peak Oil

Chances of finding Falklands oil are slim

Argentina seeks US backing in dispute with Britain

US refuses to endorse British sovereignty in Falklands oil dispute

Argentina rallies regional support

Drilling for oil set to start

No talks on Falklands, says Brown

Oil billions beckon Falkland Islands

American spy chiefs alarmed by Binyam Mohamed ruling

Rule of Law? R.I.P.

Alarmed US spy chiefs are seeking urgent assurances from British counterparts that intelligence they share on terror threats will remain classified after a London court authorised the release of secret CIA interrogation records ...

The White House, State Department and US intelligence had previously issued unusually outspoken warnings at the highest level that the release would cause major damage. And within hours, American officials were reviewing how they collect and share intelligence with their closest ally, The Sunday Telegraph has learned ...

The court ruling, coming on the heels of the British arrest warrant issued in December for former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes in Gaza, has created another concern for some US agents involved in interrogating terror suspects under the Bush administration.

"They're wondering now if a British court might try to have them arrested for alleged torture in a crackdown for what was done on the last guy's watch," said Dan Goure, a national security analyst with close ties to the intelligence community.

He also believed, however, that the UK-US intelligence relationship would survive the challenge. "Are we going to refuse to share intelligence with you because we can't trust you? No, you're not the French," he said.

Telegraph  14 Feb 2010    Torture

Armed forces 'must increase cooperation with international partners'

'Tough choices'? Not much sign of them!

Britain's armed forces will have to cooperate more closely in future with international allies such as France to provide a full range of defence capabilities, Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, said today ... (he) ... warned that the forces face some "tough choices" in the years ahead.

The paper did not refer to specific programmes – apart from confirming the decision to go ahead with the £20bn update of Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent.

But Ainsworth said the "likelihood" was that the Royal Navy would still get its two planned new aircraft carriers, although he refused to be drawn on American-built Joint Strike Fighters (JSF) intended to fly from them ...

... the immediate priority for the forces remained the campaign in Afghanistan, with funding from the Treasury reserve set to increase from £3.5bn this year to £5bn next year ...

Guardian  03 Feb 2010

Top officers in the firing line as MoD forced to face cuts

Britain and genocide

The annual commemoration of “Holocaust Memorial Day”, now in its tenth year, has become an established part of the national political calendar ...

Britain is the locus of these activities, but what of its own relationship to the histories and practices being commemorated?

Tony Blair’s reply to a parliamentary request in June 1999 that invited him to institute such a day is revealing here.

(He) ... said: “I am determined to ensure that the horrendous crimes against humanity committed during the Holocaust are never forgotten. The ethnic cleansing and killing that has taken place in Europe in recent weeks are a stark example of the need for vigilance.” ...

The implication of so placing Britain in relation to acts of genocide is that there is no need for the country to engage in (for example) the ... need for academic debate about Britain’s connections to the history of genocide ...

The British government, in invading Iraq in 2003 and failing to administer the country properly afterwards, bears great responsibility for creating the circumstances in (which) murderous attacks were inflicted (not least by the Sunni-based “resistance” against Shi’a and other non-Sunni Iraqis, terrorising them out of areas they controlled).

The low-grade genocidal conflict created a situation where around 1.9 million Iraqis (the UNHCR estimates) became refugees; a number exceeded by the 2.6 million internally displaced. The gravest of all charges against Tony Blair (and George W Bush) may be that they have a clear responsibility for this outcome ...

openDemocracy  29 Jan 2010

Blair v Chilcot. No contest: we and the truth are the losers

Blair’s world view: simply goodies v baddies

Tony Blair at the Chilcot inquiry

Blair attacked over Iran stance

Tony Blair: world leaders need to take urgent action over Iran

Chilcot inquiry member Sir Martin Gilbert praises Gordon Brown

Attorney-General in briar patch con shock

Tony Blair's Iraq letters to stay secret

Britain 'complicit in mistreatment and possible torture' says UN

United Nations human rights investigators have concluded that the British government has been complicit in the mistreatment and possible torture of several of its own citizens during the "war on terror".

In a report published today that will make difficult reading for ministers who repeatedly denied the UK's involvement in torture, UN officials have indicated that there is clear evidence of the UK's role in the secret detention overseas of several British Muslims.

The officials say that such secret imprisonment – or "proxy detentions" – not only facilitates torture, but may amount to torture in its own right. In one starkly worded passage, they warn that if a state's use of proxy detention had been systematic or widespread it would amount to a "crime against humanity" ...

Listing those cases in which they conclude that a state has been complicit in a secret detention, the authors highlight "the United Kingdom in the cases of several individuals, including Binyam Mohamed, Salahuddin Amin, Zeeshan Siddiqui, Rangzieb Ahmed and Rashid Rauf".

Ahmed, 34, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, was detained in Pakistan in 2006. MPs have heard that after evidence of his terrorist offences had been gathered he was allowed to fly from Manchester to Islamabad, and that MI6 then suggested to a notorious Pakistani intelligence agency that its officers should detain him as he was a dangerous terrorist.

After MI5 and Greater Manchester police drew up a list of questions to be put to Ahmed, the Pakistani agents who were questioning him ripped out a number of his fingernails. Ahmed alleges he was also beaten, whipped and deprived of sleep. He was later deported to the UK, tried and convicted of terrorism offences and is now serving a life sentence at Full Sutton prison near York ...

Guardian  27 Jan 2010

Victims target MI5 chief over torture claims

UK should stop policing the world, says Howells

Britain should give up trying to punch above its weight internationally and stop routinely deploying troops to world trouble spots, the chairman of the parliamentary committee that oversees the intelligence services said yesterday.

Kim Howells told The Independent that the succession of British deaths in Afghanistan proved the time had come to abandon the pretence that the UK could be at "the very, very sharp end" of United Nations military operations.

Mr Howells, a former Foreign Office minister, called for a fundamental rethink of the nation's place on the world stage.

Independent  15 Jan 2010

Falling pound forces 'hard decisions'

This piece of doublethink was written for The Guardian by Blair's old pal, Charlie Falconer.

He opens up with an attack of Radovan Karadzic, apparently without realising that the former PM is at the same end of the moral spectrum as the Serbian monster:

The application of the criminal law to the conduct of governments and their agents will, over time, reduce the commission of heinous war crimes such as genocide, torture, serious breaches of the Geneva conventions and crimes against humanity.

For every Radovan Karadzic who is put on trial there is another homicidal head of state who will realise there are personal consequences if he or she breaches those international criminal standards.

Like Blair, the case of Israel is another exception to Karadzic Rule: you're only a war criminal if you are on the other side.

Unlike Iran, Israel is exempt from any international inspection of its nuclear weapons programme.

With the support of the US and the UK, Israel was also able to ignore the Goldstone Report - and it's support at the UN - in respect of Israel's criminality during the Gaza War.

Blair's toady goes on to justify a change in the law based on the failure to arrest ...

... two Rwandans who were living in the UK demonstrated the need for the change. There is evidence these two Rwandans had participated in the Rwandan genocide.

The English courts would not extradite them to Rwanda because the criminal justice system in Rwanda does not sufficiently accord with our standards of justice.

The right course therefore is to try them in the UK. However, because they were not technically resident in the UK, the English courts had no jurisdiction over them. A presence test – making it sufficient that they be in England, even if only as a visitor – would have removed that obstacle.

As a result of our amendment, changes were made to the residence test for genocide that will give the English courts jurisdiction over the two Rwandans, though the test was not removed.

For some of these crimes, including torture and grave crimes against the Geneva conventions there is already a presence test in the UK ...

So actually no impediment against arraigning an ex-foreign minister for war crimes committed in Gaza, Charlie?

It will be argued, of course, that Palestinians firing rockets into Israel should also be tried.

Fair comment.

However, as far as we know, none have been 'present' in the UK.

But, we should remind ourselves, that arresting members of an aid convoy on the M65 was a fiasco because that's all the convoy was: aid for Gaza, which the partial BBC - in the shape of its Zionist Director General - refused air time.

Guardian  17 Dec 2009

The Attorney General could be given a veto over arrest warrants for foreign leaders in an attempt to placate Israeli ministers who fear war crimes prosecutions if they visit Britain.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal, who is in Jerusalem, discussed an amendment to British law that would give her office the power to review arrest warrants in private prosecutions against political figures, according to Foreign Ministry sources.

Israel warned that a failure to resolve the situation soon would have consequences for both countries.

Any further deterioration in diplomatic relations could damage Britain’s counter-terrorism effort which has drawn heavily on Israeli experience and expertise, notably in dealing with suicide bombers ...

Times 06 Times 2010

Quirk of law leaves larger issues at play

Miliband moves to placate Israel over Tzipi Livni arrest warrant

The National Audit Office found that the MoD cannot afford all the new equipment and vehicles it is currently contracted to buy and has resorted to cutting and delaying vital projects ... the programme of new equipment will overspend by £6 billion over the next ten years.

However, the NAO found that the MoD based that projection on the assumption that its budget will grow after 2011.

In fact, Government spending is set to shrink from 2011. The NAO said the MoD overspend is will be £36 billion if its budget is frozen.

If it is cut, the gap will be even larger. “The budget remains consistently unaffordable over the next ten years,” the NAO said.

The NAO looked at 15 major MoD equipment programmes, which it estimates will cost a total of £60.2 billion.

Telegraph  15 Dec 2009

Bob Ainsworth announces MoD cuts

RAF Cottesmore base to close in defence budget reshuffle

MoD to buy 22 new Chinooks

RAF base and Tornado fleet set to fall victim to £1.5bn Ministry of Defence cuts

Afghan war 'to be funded by UK job cuts'

Foreign secretary claims security would be harmed by disclosing CIA files on UK involvement in abuse of terror suspects abroad ...

Efforts will be stepped up tomorrow to suppress evidence of British involvement in the unlawful treatment of a UK resident, Binyam Mohamed, who says he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco, and Afghanistan before being secretly rendered to Guantánamo Bay.

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, is appealing against six high court judgments ruling that CIA information on Mohamed's treatment, and what MI5 and MI6 knew about it, must be disclosed ...

At the heart of the dispute is a seven-paragraph CIA document that the British government insists must remain secret.

The two high court judges, who have seen the document, insist it does not contain any sensitive intelligence material.

"What is contained in those seven redacted paragraphs gives rise to an arguable case of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" ...

Guardian  13 Dec 2009

Inquiry into torture allegations announced

MI5 officer gave false evidence

Profile

Binyam Ahmed Mohamed

Reprieve

Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 senior British officials have gently hinted that what went wrong was the fault of the Americans and, if there is any blame left over, it belongs to Tony Blair.

The first day of the Chilcot inquiry suggests, on the contrary, that British mandarins of the day had little more idea of the mechanics of Iraqi politics than the most rabid and jingoistic neo-cons in Washington.

At no time, going by their evidence, did British officials in 2003 realise that the invasion of Iraq meant revolutionary change in the region. It would mean that the Sunni Arabs, who had traditionally ruled the country, would be displaced by the Shia and the Kurds. The Sunni were unlikely to go quietly.

The fall of Saddam Hussein was also going to start a political earthquake in the Gulf if it meant, as seemed likely, that the Sunni elite went with him.

The main beneficiaries were going to be the Iranians, who had, after all, spent eight years of war trying to get rid of Saddam in the 1980s.

Now the Americans and the British were doing it for them ...

Independent  25 November 2009

Churchill's Folly

The long-awaited report by businessman Bernard Gray was highly critical of the performance of the Ministry of Defence.

The report estimated that the total budget over-run on the equipment programme was around £35 billion ...

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey said the findings were "devastating" and warned that they would have serious consequences for future defence policy.

"The Government has presided over a decade of overstretch and spiralling costs without being straight with the public about the consequences," he said.

"Gray raises fundamental questions about Britain's ability to support the kind of military we have had in the past. Nobody can be under any illusions about the extremely tough choices we now face on defence policy." ...

Telegraph  15 October 2009

With memories of the 1979 revolution - in which the US lost a friend when the Shah was deposed - still fresh and hurting, Iran has come back into the frame in its role as a threat to the West. Well, Israel actually. With a holocaust denier running the country, Iran doesn't do tact and diplomacy, but underneath the rhetoric there are a number of questions hanging over the new coalition targeting Tehran. Should the West succeed in detaching Russia from supporting Iran, then it will be a matter of time before there is a 'popular' uprising which will end the threat to Israel. If not, then expect the 'War on Terror' to open a new front.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said "no sane person" would look to attack Iran over its nuclear program "without real concern".

Interviewed on the BBC, he said the UK was "100% committed" to finding a diplomatic solution.

But Mr Miliband refused to rule out military action altogether, declining to say whether it was "inconceivable" ...

Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has called for an "unequivocal" response from Western leaders.

"The revelations of this second nuclear enrichment site in Iran prove beyond any doubt that this country wants to equip itself with nuclear weapons", he told Israeli public radio ...

BBC World Affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds:

Iranian ambitions for this site are not known. It could be that they wanted a back-up in case their main plant at Natanz was attacked.

But another fear is that they intended to enrich uranium more highly at the secret plant, to a level suitable for a nuclear explosion.

The discovery will strengthen the demands by the US and its allies for further sanctions to be imposed on Iran unless it suspends all enrichment, as required by the Security Council ...

BBC NEWS  26 September 2009

F-35

Gates in plea to Israel for 'patience' over Iran

Iran defiant over secret nuclear facility

Iran test-fires short-range missiles

Miliband refuses to rule out military action

U.S. to Demand Inspection of New Iran Plant ‘Within Weeks’

Venezuela Denies Iran Is Helping It

Iran defiant amid new nuclear row

World reaction to Iran's nuclear sites

Iran's nuclear plant admission brings sanctions showdown nearer

Revelation may galvanise Security Council

Iran's second nuclear plant 'a vindication for Israel'

Iran: Time to come clean

The combined cost of replacing the Trident nuclear missile system and building, equipping and running two large aircraft carriers will be as much as £130bn, far more than the government has admitted, an in-depth study of the huge defence projects ... reveals today.

Ministers have said replacing Trident would cost up to £20bn, but key factors the government has left out of the calculation will push the final cost up to £97bn over the system's 30-year life, according to Greenpeace, the environment group.

Estimates of the cost of the proposed two carriers have already increased from £2bn to £5bn over the past 10 years. However, today's the report, In The Firing Line, says these ignore running costs of an estimated £10bn and do not include spending on the US-made F35 aircraft designed to fly from the ships.

Costs of the various aircraft planned for the carriers amount to £10bn. The price has risen by more than 70% – $50m (£30.3m) per aircraft – since 2001, according to official US figures.

The project has been subjected to such delays that the government has admitted at least one of the carriers will go to sea without any of the fighter bombers on board ...

Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat economics spokesman, added that the report provided "powerful evidence to support claims that MoD equipment plans are totally unrealistic in the light of Britain's serious budgetary constraints."

Guardian  18 September 2009

The 20 August Afghan election has been overshadowed by allegations of fraud against all the main candidates.

The Electoral Complaints Commission says it has investigated nearly 2,000 complaints. It has ordered a number of recounts and audits and on 10 September invalidated ballots from polling stations in three provinces ...

BBC NEWS  10 September 2009

Afghan fraud ballots invalidated

Afghanistan: Now the political fighting breaks out

Afghan sceptics alarm Nato chief

Our troops have paid the blood price for free elections in Afghanistan

Tony Blair’s government believed the UK would spend no more on the 2003 invasion of Iraq than it did on the 1991 Gulf war, according to documents released under freedom of information rules.

In an insight into how British officials failed to predict both the length of the UK engagement in Iraq and the financial drain, Treasury documents from September 2002 show it greatly underestimated the costs, believing British troops would need to remain “fully engaged” in Iraq for just six months.

However ... the total cost of UK military operations in Iraq from 2003 to 2009 was £8.4bn ...

FT  21 August 2009

The government must do more to ensure arms exports are not being used against civilians in war zones, a joint report by four select committees says.

The committees on arms export control welcomed Foreign Secretary David Miliband's decision earlier this year to revoke export licences to Israel.

But there are fears arms exported from the UK have been used against civilians in Sri Lanka's civil war.

The government said it shared the committees' concerns.

Britain is one of the world's biggest arms exporters.

But it has repeatedly been criticised by MPs for failing to live up to its own policy of ensuring equipment is not used to abuse human rights.

Britain and other EU countries are reported to have sold arms to the Sri Lankan government in the final three years of its conflict with the Tamil Tigers.

BIGGEST ARMS EXPORTERS
1. USA - $12.8bn
2. Russia - $7.4bn
3. France - $6.2bn
4. Israel - $4.4bn
5. UK - $4.1bn
Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Figures are for 2007 and exclude China, which does not release data on the value of its arms exports.

BBC NEWS  19 August 2009

UK dealers accused of selling Soviet weapons to blacklisted countries

Arms exports assurances worthless

CAAT

SIPRI

Control Arms Campaign

buddha9
17 Aug 09, 12:21am

thought the more discerning readers might be interested in this take from a blogging site www.iraq-war.ru

Published on Thursday, August 13, 2009 by The Toronto Star

Afghanistan and the New Great Game

Prized pipeline route could explain West's stubborn interest in poor, remote land
by John Foster

Why is Afghanistan so important?

A glance at a map and a little knowledge of the region suggest that the real reasons for Western military involvement may be largely hidden.

Afghanistan is adjacent to Middle Eastern countries that are rich in oil and natural gas. And though Afghanistan may have little petroleum itself, it borders both Iran and Turkmenistan, countries with the second and third largest natural gas reserves in the world. (Russia is first.)

Turkmenistan is the country nobody talks about. Its huge reserves of natural gas can only get to market through pipelines. Until 1991, it was part of the Soviet Union and its gas flowed only north through Soviet pipelines. Now the Russians plan a new pipeline north. The Chinese are building a new pipeline east. The U.S. is pushing for "multiple oil and gas export routes." High-level Russian, Chinese and American delegations visit Turkmenistan frequently to discuss energy. The U.S. even has a special envoy for Eurasian energy diplomacy.

Rivalry for pipeline routes and energy resources reflects competition for power and control in the region. Pipelines are important today in the same way that railway building was important in the 19th century. They connect trading partners and influence the regional balance of power. Afghanistan is a strategic piece of real estate in the geopolitical struggle for power and dominance in the region.

Since the 1990s, Washington has promoted a natural gas pipeline south through Afghanistan. The route would pass through Kandahar province. In 2007, Richard Boucher, U.S. assistant secretary of state, said: "One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan," and to link South and Central Asia "so that energy can flow to the south." Oil and gas have motivated U.S. involvement in the Middle East for decades. Unwittingly or willingly, Canadian forces are supporting American goals.

The proposed pipeline is called TAPI, after the initials of the four participating countries (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India). Eleven high-level planning meetings have been held during the past seven years, with Asian Development Bank sponsorship and multilateral support (including Canada's). Construction is planned to start next year.

The pipeline project was documented at three donor conferences on Afghanistan in the past three years and is referenced in the 2008 Afghan Development Plan. Canada was represented at these conferences at the ministerial level. Thus, our leaders must know. Yet they avoid discussion of the planned pipeline through Afghanistan.

The 2008 Manley Report, a foundation for extending the Canadian mission to 2011, ignored energy issues. It talked about Afghanistan as if it were an island, albeit with a porous Pakistani border. Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he "will withdraw the bulk of the military forces" in 2011. The remaining troops will focus mostly on "reconstruction and development." Does that include the pipeline?

Pipeline rivalry is slightly more visible in Europe. Ukraine is the main gateway for gas from Russia to Europe. The United States has pushed for alternate pipelines and encouraged European countries to diversify their sources of supply. Recently built pipelines for oil and gas originate in Azerbaijan and extend through Georgia to Turkey. They are the jewels in the crown of U.S. strategy to bypass Russia and Iran.

The rivalry continues with plans for new gas pipelines to Europe from Russia and the Caspian region. The Russians plan South Stream - a pipeline under the Black Sea to Bulgaria. The European Union and U.S. are backing a pipeline called Nabucco that would supply gas to Europe via Turkey. Nabucco would get some gas from Azerbaijan, but that country doesn't have enough. Additional supply could come from Turkmenistan, but Russia is blocking a link across the Caspian Sea. Iran offers another source, but the U.S. is blocking the use of Iranian gas.

Meanwhile, Iran is planning a pipeline to deliver gas east to Pakistan and India. Pakistan has agreed in principle, but India has yet to do so. It's an alternative to the long-planned, U.S.-supported pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India.

A very big game is underway, with geopolitics intruding everywhere. U.S. journalist Steven LeVine describes American policy in the region as "pipeline-driven." Other countries are pushing for pipeline routes, too. The energy game remains largely hidden; the focus is on humanitarian, development and national security concerns. In Canada, Afghanistan has been avoided in the past two elections.

With the U.S. surge underway and the British ambassador to Washington predicting a decades-long commitment, it's reasonable to ask: Why are the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan? Could the motivation be power, a permanent military bridgehead, access to energy resources?

Militarizing energy has a high price in dollars, lives and morality. There are long-term consequences for everyone.

Canadian voters want to know: Why is Afghanistan so important?

This blog was subsequently removed by The Guardian's moderator, but is available from The Toronto Star

Guardian 16 August 2009

A law that lets Afghan husbands starve their wives if they refuse to obey their sexual demands has been quietly slipped into effect, despite promises from Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, that it would be reviewed and rigorously debated in the country's parliament.

Women's activists have accused the President of abandoning human rights in a bid to appease hardline clerics who support the law, in exchange for votes in the presidential elections next week ...

Human Rights Watch last night demanded that Afghanistan's international paymasters intervene to protect the country's oppressed women. "Karzai has made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in return for the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election," said Brad Adams, the group's Asia director. "So much for any credentials he claimed as a moderate on women's issues."

Civil society groups, say the law, which regulates the personal affairs of Afghanistan's minority Shia community, still includes clauses which allow rapists to marry their victims as a way of absolving their crime. It also tacitly approves child marriage.

Hundreds of Afghan women took to the streets to protest against the legislation. They were met by mobs of angry men outside parliament who pelted them with spit and stones ...

Independent  15 August 2009

Row over Afghan wife-starving law

Law will let Afghan husbands starve wives who withhold sex

Women in Afghanistan

Afghan women 'still suffer abuse'

The combined wealth of the Karzais runs into many millions of dollars, and it has been built mostly since Hamid Karzai took over as president in 2001 after the Taliban's overthrow ...

Thirty years of war have left Afghanistan in a pitiful condition, desperately short of roads, power, hospitals and clean water. But, amid the rubble, there have been some winners as donors have pumped £20 billion into the ambitious project to stabilise the country. And few have done better than the president's brothers Mahmoud and Ahmed Wali.

"He [Hamid Karzai] has a medieval way of running things," said one Afghan expert. "He has sold off land and mines and allowed thugs to rule. He doesn't have a basic concept of how to run a remotely modern country."

But after a year of heavily criticising the president – with Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, denouncing Afghanistan as a "narco-state" – and fruitless behind-the-scenes pressure on Mr Karzai to clean up government, the British and Americans have had to resign themselves to the likelihood of a victory for the incumbent ...

Last year, Transparency International said Afghanistan was seen as the fifth most corrupt country in the world, up from ninth the previous year.

Privately, Western diplomats have little faith that the president will use a second term to tackle corruption or rein in his family. One gloomily concluded: "We are losing this war to corruption." ...

Telegraph  08 August 2009

Kabul's new elite live high on West's largesse

Corruption Undercuts Hopes

Britain’s mission in Afghanistan could last for up to 40 years, the next head of the Army warns today in an exclusive interview with The Times.

General Sir David Richards, who becomes Chief of the General Staff on August 28, said: “The Army’s role will evolve, but the whole process might take as long as 30 to 40 years.”

He emphasised that British troop involvement, currently 9,000-strong, should only be needed for the medium term, but insisted that there was “absolutely no chance” of Nato pulling out. “I believe that the UK will be committed to Afghanistan in some manner — development, governance, security sector reform — for the next 30 to 40 years,” he said ...

The Times  08 August 2009

An independent inquiry into claims that the Government was complicit in torture is now necessary after the refusal by two senior Cabinet ministers and Britain's security chief to answer questions on the issue, a parliamentary inquiry has concluded.

Both David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and Jacqui Smith, the former Home Secretary, refused three times to appear before a parliamentary committee examining allegations that the Government was complicit in the torture of terrorist suspects in Pakistan and Egypt. Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, also turned down the invitation three times, even failing to provide a written statement.

In a damning report into allegations that Britain received information obtained using torture, published today, the group of MPs and peers accuse the Government of being "determined to avoid parliamentary scrutiny". It also states that Britain would be in breach of its human rights obligations if it is found to have "turned a blind eye" to the use of torture in obtaining evidence.

The Joint Human Rights Committee called for the publication of legal advice handed to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues concerning Britain's complicity in torture, as well as the advice given to security officers. All such instructions have been kept secret so far. Major reforms to increase the accountability of the secret services were also recommended to tackle the Government's "woefully deficient" approach.

"Our experience over the last year is that ministers are determined to avoid parliamentary scrutiny and accountability on these matters, refusing requests to give oral evidence, providing a standard answer to some of our written questions, which fails to address the issues, and ignoring other questions entirely," the committee states. "There is now no other way to restore public confidence in the intelligence services than by setting up an independent inquiry into the numerous allegations about the UK's complicity in torture."

The findings follow new evidence of MI5's alleged knowledge of the torture of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian national now resident in the UK. High Court papers published last week revealed that an MI5 officer had been in Morocco on three occasions at a time when Mr Mohamed claims he was tortured there. Both the Attorney General and Scotland Yard have launched investigations into his case ...

Independent  04 August 2009

MPs and peers call for inquiry into torture

MPs, peers urge torture inquiry

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, has acted "in flagrant and continuing breach of international law" in failing to suspend arms exports to Israel, the high court will be told.

In what is thought to be the first legal challenge resulting from Israel's operation in Gaza, lawyers representing more than 30 Palestinian families have accused Miliband, along with the ministers for defence and business, of acting illegally by failing to suspend arms sales and government assistance after alleged Israeli human rights violations ...

The demands of the case, including a call for an immediate suspension of arms trading with Israel, come just days after Amnesty International drew further attention to allegations that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, including its use of white phosphorus.

It also emerged last month that Israeli combat and target drones had been fitted with British-made engines, raising further concerns about the lack of rigour in monitoring arms sales to Israel.

The government denies drone engines have been exported for use in Israel, but admitted it could not confirm their status. "We cannot categorically confirm that we physically checked that the engines have been incorporated," Jayne Carpenter, of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, said ...

Guardian 25 February 2009

Youthful foreign secretary David Miliband, just a year ago the pin-up boy of New Labour, is discovering just how nasty real politics can be.

He’s having to defend the US decision to prevent two British judges, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, from releasing information about the torture of British subject Binyam Mohamed.

The judges say they wanted to release details of the torture in the interest of safeguarding the rule of law, free speech and democratic accountability (all those things New Labourites like Miliband are supposed to believe in).

The US has said, forget all that, if you let everybody know what we’ve been doing we’ll stop sharing our intelligence with you, which, according to the judges, would increase the terrorist danger to the UK. So the aforementioned information is staying under wraps.

This, as Tory MP and former shadow home secretary David Davis points out, is an outrageous intervention in UK democratic business.

The boy Miliband, however, denies it’s any such thing, claiming that “it is for the US to decide when to publish their information” (about torturing UK citizens) and the UK has “never condoned the use of torture.” ...

Blatherskite 04 February 2009

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, will today set out the clearest exposition yet of Labour's recast foreign policy when he will argue that mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan must not cloud the moral imperative to intervene - sometimes militarily - to help spread democracy throughout the world.

He will warn that the rise of China means that the world can no longer take "the forward march of democracy for granted", and that Britain must unambiguously be on the side of what he describes as "civilian surges" for democracy.

In a speech in Oxford today entitled The Democratic Imperative, Miliband will say that he believes the debate about the Iraq war "has clouded the debate about promoting democracy around the world. I understand the doubts about Iraq and Afghanistan, and the deep concerns at the mistakes made."

But he will add:

"My plea is not to let divisions over those conflicts obscure our national interest, never mind our moral impulse, in supporting movements for democracy ...

"The neo-conservative movement seemed more certain about spreading democracy around the world. The left seemed conflicted between the desirability of the goal and its qualms about the use of military means.

"In fact, the goal of spreading democracy should be a great progressive project; the means need to combine both soft and hard power. We should not let the debate about the how of foreign policy obscure the clarity about the what."

Guardian 12 February 2008

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel.

The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world.

This situation has no equal in American political history.

Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?

One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’ ...

Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members.

It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace ...

London Review of Books 23 March 2006

The main characteristics of the postmodern world are as follows:

· The breaking down of the distinction between domestic and foreign affairs.

· Mutual interference in (traditional) domestic affairs and mutual surveillance.

· The rejection of force for resolving disputes and the consequent codification of self-enforced rules of behaviour.

· The growing irrelevance of borders: this has come about both through the changing role of the state, but also through missiles, motor cars and satellites.

· Security is based on transparency, mutual openness, interdependence and mutual vulnerability.

The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards.

Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security.

But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself.

Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle.

In the prolonged period of peace in Europe, there has been a temptation to neglect our defences, both physical and psychological. This represents one of the great dangers of the postmodern state.

The challenge posed by the pre-modern world is a new one. The pre-modern world is a world of failed states. Here the state no longer fulfils Weber's criterion of having the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Either it has lost the legitimacy or it has lost the monopoly of the use of force; often the two go together. ...

The premodern state may be too weak even to secure its home territory, let alone pose a threat internationally, but it can provide a base for non-state actors who may represent a danger to the postmodern world.

If non-state actors, notably drug, crime, or terrorist syndicates take to using premodern bases for attacks on the more orderly parts of the world, then the organised states may eventually have to respond.

If they become too dangerous for established states to tolerate, it is possible to imagine a defensive imperialism. It is not going too far to view the West's response to Afghanistan in this light.

How should we deal with the pre-modern chaos?

To become involved in a zone of chaos is risky; if the intervention is prolonged it may become unsustainable in public opinion; if the intervention is unsuccessful it may be damaging to the government that ordered it.

But the risks of letting countries rot, as the West did Afghanistan, may be even greater.

What form should intervention take?

Those left out of the global economy risk falling into a vicious circle.

Weak government means disorder and that means falling investment.

In the 1950s, South Korea had a lower GNP per head than Zambia: the one has achieved membership of the global economy, the other has not.

All the conditions for imperialism are there, but both the supply and demand for imperialism have dried up.

And yet the weak still need the strong and the strong still need an orderly world.

A world in which the efficient and well governed export stability and liberty, and which is open for investment and growth - all of this seems eminently desirable ...

Robert Cooper is a senior serving British diplomat, and writes in a personal capacity. This article is published as The post-modern state in the new collection Reordering the World: the long term implications of September 11, published by The Foreign Policy Centre.

The Observer 07 April 2002

In this book ten historians re-assess Winston Churchill's career in politics.

For the purposes of this page, I want to concentrate on what has been the longest-lasting impact of his career: his relationship with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the impact of that relationship on his dealings with General Charles de Gaulle, and the ramifications both for Britain's relationship with the European Union, and Blair's involvement in, and support for, the NeoCon policy of "benevolent hegemony".

Hindsight played a big part in establishing Churchill’s near-deification, which is understandable when you realise by what a “narrow margin” defeat was avoided in the summer and autumn of 1940.

Quite properly, we all should realise what a comprehensive disaster defeat would have been.

In the course of that recollection, much opprobrium has been heaped on “the appeasers” - Baldwin, Chamberlain and Halifax - who, at the time, were held in a very different light.

Churchill’s name has rightly become synonymous with the realisation that Hitler was not an ordinary nationalistic politician whose aim was to “right the wrongs” of the Treaty of Versailles, but something much more sinister.

This was something which Neville Chamberlain did not realise until March 1939, when Hitler dismembered Czechoslovakia, and absorbed into the Third Reich what is today the Czech Republic.

At this point Hitler's position was very much stronger than it had been at the time of Munich, and the Anglo-French position correspondingly weaker.

Churchill had been proved right about Munich. In itself, this altered nothing. As defeats in Norway and France demonstrated, the German forces were at that time invincible. Britain alone was not going to defeat Hitler.

In the nineteen months between becoming Prime Minister and Hitler’s declaration of war on America, Churchill’s sole aim was to bring the US into the war. There was in his view no other option.

He played a dangerous game. What if Hitler had not declared war on America? Fortunately for all of us he did.

Churchill’s links with America, as is well known, were through his mother. And they must have been stronger than we thought. Because, as is revealed in John Charmley's essay, Churchill’s dream was quite simply the re-uniting of Britain and America.

This seems to have gone unnoticed by many of Churchill's biographers, but it does explain a lot.

It is not revisionism to argue, as John Charmley does, that Roosevelt (like Stalin) had his own post-war agenda, and that agenda did not include the survival of the British Empire.

This was not simply a matter of recalling the War of Independence, but of wanting an end to "imperial preference" and gaining access to markets which were closed.

However, as Eden complained, Churchill, had no post-war agenda, no war aims other than victory. Churchill seems not have realised that Lend Lease was the end of Britain's great power status, and the start of a new special relationship: Britain as client state of the USA.

This caused a particular problem when, forced to choose between Roosevelt and de Gaulle, Churchill had already made his choice.

When Churchill visited France for the Armistice Day ceremony in 1944, de Gaulle offered him an Anglo-French treaty which would be the start of a western European alliance.

The British Foreign Office were in favour. Eden was in favour. Churchill was not. De Gaulle did not forget the snub, as Harold Macmillan found out when he tried to negotiate entry into the-then Common Market.

Churchill’s long-term gift to his country was the continuing illusion of great power status, and the notion of a “special relationship” with the USA, which has in fact been that of a subordinate, and a marginal place in the European Union.

Iraq and Afghanistan may not be the last of the favours called in by the USA for services rendered in the 1940s.

Repayments of debts from that period were only completed on 31 December 2006.

Publisher: Cambridge University Press (January 31, 2005)

ISBN-10: 0521845904

ISBN-13: 978-0521845908