World

Sunday

Dan Hitchens

What the Pope’s visit means for Iraq

You could be forgiven for taking a cynical view of Pope Francis’s visit to Iraq this weekend. How could the Pope’s rhetoric about ‘fraternity’ alter the brutal reality for the country’s Christians, whose population has dwindled from 1.3 million to 200,000 since the US-led invasion? Might the visit end up legitimising a political class that has failed to defend Christians against discrimination and jihadist persecution? Even the Archbishop of Erbil bluntly remarked that the first papal trip to Iraq was ‘not going to help Christians materially or directly, because we are really in a very corrupt political and economic system. No doubt about that. [Pope Francis] will hear nice words…

Saturday

Tim Ogden

What does Belarus’s opposition leader want?

There is an assumption that those fighting tyranny must instead want Western-style democracy, that the arc of history bends towards liberal representative government, allied inevitably to Washington and Brussels. Many former Soviet Union countries saw their politburos overthrown by young middle-class people espousing the desire for this kind of politics — from the Rose Revolution in Georgia to the Orange Revolution and Euromaiden protests in Ukraine (whether or not they eventually received that form of government is a different matter). But there is no logical imperative that connects dissatisfaction towards an autocrat with the kind of government and geopolitical order that will replace him, whether in Eastern Europe or elsewhere. Belarus,

Karan Thapar

The Lady I knew: Aung San Suu Kyi’s tragedy

Shakespeare’s tragedies have heroes but they are not heroic. As the plays unfold you witness their crumbling. In fact, they destroy themselves because the flaw is embedded deep in their character. It’s an inevitable and irresistible process. It’s an outcome that cannot be prevented. That’s why it’s tragic. I think that could also be true of Aung San Suu Kyi. I’ve known her since I was five. At the time, her mother was the Burmese Ambassador in India, and Suu, as I have always called her, was an undergraduate at Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College. Our parents became friends and Suu and my sister Kiran would often drive together to

Friday

James Lewisohn

The ECJ’s air pollution ruling against Britain is hard to swallow

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that the UK ‘systematically and persistently’ breached EU limits for nitrogen dioxide (NOx) emissions in 16 areas including London, Manchester and Glasgow between 2010 and 2017. It’s a judgement that means, despite Brexit, that a multi-million euro fine may be on its way. The UK is leaving the ECJ behind us; but as part of the withdrawal deal, we have agreed to respect its rulings on cases already in progress – and this one started in 2018. I’d be wholly in favour of the UK being fined gazillions for our historically appalling emissions – with one important caveat, which I’ll come to. After

Charles Parton

How the West can avoid Beijing’s propaganda trap

This time next year the Winter Olympics will have drawn to a close. Beijing will have become the first city to have hosted both the summer and winter games. The Chinese Communist party’s (CCP) central propaganda department will have worked to ensure a gold medal performance in harnessing sport to bolster the party’s image (before we get too self-righteous about that, remember that all hosts use the games to boost soft power). Or maybe not. A year out, global momentum is gathering for an Olympic boycott in reaction to the genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley has called on the Biden administration to

John Keiger John Keiger

Barnier and France fear Brexit Britain’s next moves

Michel Barnier – still officially the EU’s Brexit taskforce leader – gives few interviews. As a Savoyard and keen mountaineer, as he habitually reminds us, he is a cautious man who advances step by step with the long climb firmly in his sights. So it was something of a surprise to see him appear on 16 February before the French Senate Brexit follow-on committee (renamed ‘groupe de suivi de la nouvelle relation euro-britannique’). It is a sign of the importance of how Brexit will play out for the French that the Senate has formed a very senior 20-strong commission to monitor and react to Brexit implementation and next stage negotiations.

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Are loyalists plotting a return to violence?

What are we to make of Loyalist paramilitary groups withdrawing support for the Good Friday Agreement over the invidious trade border that now exists in the Irish sea? The Loyalist Communities Council, a group that represents the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Red Hand Commando, has written to Boris Johnson and Ireland’s Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, warning of ‘permanent destruction’ of the 1998 peace agreement unless changes are made to the Brexit agreement.  ‘If you or the EU is not prepared to honour the entirety of the agreement then you will be responsible for the permanent destruction of the agreement,’ David Campbell, the chairman of the LCC, said.

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Sunak’s Covid budget offers a glimpse of Britain’s Brexit freedoms

Rishi Sunak’s planned corporation tax hike is a reminder of the importance he sets by trying to put the public finances on a sounder footing. He think that his room for manoeuvre in this crisis has been, in part, because the public finances were in reasonable shape before it.  The vaccination programme remains this government’s most important economic policy As I say in the magazine this week, his concern about debt has long been about the cost of servicing it (which remains low) rather than its precise level. But the debt pile is now so large that small movements in interest rates have big consequences. But straightening out the public

Andrew Tettenborn

The EU is sliding into a United States of Europe

When a proposed constitution for the EU was mooted in 2005, many in the UK and elsewhere in the bloc smelt a rat. This looked like a bid to shoehorn national governments into a nascent United States of Europe. The French and the Dutch agreed: and being constitutionally guaranteed a referendum on the matter, both took the obvious step and voted the scheme down. No matter. As we now know, the proposal was re-packaged in almost the same form as a consolidation measure called the Lisbon Treaty. It is now part of the EU treaty system. The Cassandras were, of course, absolutely right. The EU was indeed playing a long

Edward Howell

Biden must learn from Trump’s mistakes on North Korea

Anniversaries are usually celebratory occasions, but not this one. It’s now been two years since the infamous Hanoi summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, and there is precious little to show other than an important lesson in how negotiations with North Korea can sour.  Joe Biden is now nearing his first one-hundred days in office. Little has been said about dealing with the North Korea problem. But one thing is for sure: a US-North Korea summit is far from imminent. Following their first encounter in Singapore in June 2018, it suited Trump and Kim to meet again. For both leaders, the theatre and optics of their gathering was too good to resist a second

Wednesday

Daniel DePetris

Russian sanctions are futile

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised to approach Russia and its irascible President Vladimir Putin with a new sense of toughness and purpose. Now calling the shots in the White House, President Biden appears to have made good on that promise — at least symbolically. On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced several sets of sanctions against Moscow for last summer’s attempted assassination of the Russian activist Alexei Navalny, a plot that involved the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. The sanctions, taken in concert with the European Union’s own measures, included asset freezes and travel bans on seven Russian officials deemed responsible for the poisoning, imprisonment, and prosecution of Navalny.

Tuesday

Dalibor Rohac

Welcome to Trump’s second term

President Biden’s emphatic assertion that ‘America is back’ at the Munich Security Conference last month was met with a lukewarm reaction from European leaders. ‘Europe has moved’, William Galston explained in a Wall Street Journal column pointing to a recent survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations that revealed a persistent distrust of the United States among Europeans and a resistance to taking the US side in America’s competition with China. Yet there is another side to the story. America is not really back. True, president Biden was quick to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and to extend warm and fuzzy feelings toward our traditional allies. But the sentiment

William Nattrass William Nattrass

Covid is tearing the Czech Republic apart

The Covid-19 situation is rapidly deteriorating in the Czech Republic, with new efforts to stop the spread of the virus descending into bitter rows and a climate of cynicism and fear. In a government press conference held late on Friday night, harsher measures were announced to tackle the alarming spread of the ‘British variant’ of coronavirus in the Czech Republic. These restrictions included the closure of more shops and services, the closing of primary schools and nurseries, the reintroduction of mandatory face mask wearing outside, and a ban on movement between municipalities. Cases and deaths have risen to new heights in recent weeks, leaving Czech hospitals on the verge of

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The West’s vaccine complacency

On Monday, in their first bilateral summit, Joe Biden will meet (virtually) Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Among other things on the agenda, Lopez Obrador is expected to ask Biden to share America’s vaccines with his country. With 186,000 deaths, Mexico has one of the world’s highest Covid-19 death tolls and it desperately needs these jabs. After Mexico’s Pfizer supply dried up, it has had to rely on Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, as well as China’s Sinovac and CanSino (which was developed by the Chinese military). Could America relieve this pressure? It doesn’t appear so. Some reports suggest that Obrador will offer to repay any American vaccines with Mexico’s own

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Nicolas Sarkozy and a very French corruption scandal

Nicolas Sarkozy, 66, President of France from 2007 to 2012, currently a valued member of Emmanuel Macron’s informal council of advisors, was today sentenced to a year in prison for bribery and corruption in a case with roots in his murky relationship with the late Muammar Gaddafi, the not much missed brotherly leader of Libya. This scandal is a tangled web, even by French standards. For those who have spent years attempting to get to the bottom of it, it offers the tantalising prospect that Sarkozy could become the first former French President ever to be thrown in the Paris prison called La Santé – although it doesn’t have a

Matthew Lynn

Can the EU be trusted to introduce vaccine passports?

The contracts were badly drafted. The orders were late. Too few resources were made available for the scale of the task, and the regulators dithered and delayed. Even the most fanatical federalists such as Guy Verhofstadt have admitted the EU’s vaccine programme was little short of a catastrophe. But hey, what does that matter? Ursula von der Leyen has decided this is the moment to double down on the EU’s Covid-19 strategy, and launch a centralised vaccine passport. What could possibly go wrong? Well, er, as the EU’s vaccine fiasco has taught us, lots actually. Von der Leyen has today tried to bounce back from her difficulties with the vaccine

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

The rapid fall of Germany’s health minister

Young, polished and confident, Germany’s health minister became the country’s most popular politician in 2020. A darling of the conservative right, Jens Spahn, was even tipped as a candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor. At the peak of his popularity last November, surveys indicated approval from nearly two-thirds of all Germans. He seemed to reflect the success story that was Germany’s handling of the pandemic, the personification of friendly German efficiency. Fast forward to last week, and you find a defensive Spahn facing a hostile one-hour long grilling in parliament. His arms crossed and his jaw set, the 40-year-old was visibly tense as he braced himself for questions from

Saturday

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Iran doesn’t hate Israel

The decades since the Islamic revolution have weighed heavy on the people of Iran. Living in fear, under extreme levels of surveillance and oppression, ordinary citizens have seen their quality of life plummet and their horizons shrink, as their country became an international pariah. Those who dared to protest have been brutally repressed by regime goons with knives, axes and heavy weaponry. And while forced to suffer the deprivation of draconian sanctions, hardworking families could only look on as their despotic leaders splurged billions of dollars on military meddling overseas. When the senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar boasted in December that the regime had given him £15.8 million of government

Friday

Daniel DePetris

What the Khashoggi murder report means for US-Saudi relations

Today, after pressure from senior US lawmakers and staring at an impending statutory deadline, the Biden administration authorised the release of a declassified intelligence report on one of the most grisly state-sanctioned murders in recent history. The killing of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi may have occurred 16 months ago, but the murder has hung around the US-Saudi relationship like a wet blanket. The US intelligence community’s assessment that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the heir to the throne, was intricately involved in Khashoggi’s death was a bombshell heard around the world. And yet media reactions notwithstanding, MbS’s role in Khashoggi’s demise was hardly a surprise. This