World

The mad hermit strikes

North Korea has again put itself at the centre of international relations. As the US pushed for a start to six-party talks, Pyongyang lifted the veil on a hitherto secret uranium-enrichment facility and launched an artillery barrage on a South Korean island,  injuring four soldiers, and damaging several buildings. The South Korean military scrambled fighter jets and returned fire and the situations remains tense. Conflict with nuclear-armed North Korea has intensified in recent years. North Korea launched nuclear and missile tests last year and sank a South Korean warship in March this year, killing 46 sailors. But the first ground-to-ground assault across the DMZ represents a new escalation in the

Stop blaming Israel alone

Reading the British press – or even listening to some ministers – you would be forgiven for thinking that the only obstacle preventing Middle East peace is Israeli obstinacy and Benjamin Netanyahu’s unwillingness to force his political allies – like Shas – to the negotiating table. But, as always, things are a bit more complicated than the newspaper headlines would suggest. From Israel’s position, the region is looking increasingly hostile. Talk of a war in Lebanon with Hezbollah persists. In Syria, President Assad looks less interested in a rapprochement than he has done for years. Turkey is now closer than at anytime to declaring Israel an enemy – military-to-military links

From The Annals of the Gord

This snippet from Anthony Seldon and Guy Lodge’s latest book merits repeating: ‘As Barack Obama waited in a cavernous building in London, he suddenly noticed Gordon Brown stomping towards him down a corridor, with a flurry of aides in his wake. Unfortunately — probably because he has a glass eye as the result of a rugby injury — the Prime Minister didn’t see the President. To the surprise of Obama and his entourage, the British premier was doing a passable impression of an erupting volcano. He was clearly furious about something his aides had or hadn’t done. It was hardly the behaviour anyone would expect of a G20 summit host,

Fraser Nelson

The death knell for the Euro?

Are we witnessing the start of a very long death scene for the Euro? Asked if the Euro will survive, William Hague replied simply: “who knows?”. The new president, Herman Von Rompuy, has said that the Euro faces an “existential test”. We are looking at the very real prospect of the Euro’s collapse. And that “if we don’t survive with the eurozone, we will not survive with the European Union”. This would, by necessity, require a new treaty – and give Britain an unprecedented opportunity to renegotiate its membership on terms the public regard as acceptable. In my News of the World column today, I say (£) that this presents Cameron

James Forsyth

Pakistan refuses US request to expand drones’ area of operations

Part of what makes the war in Afghanistan so complicated is how easily the Taliban can be supplied from over the border in Pakistan. Pakistan has been more cooperative recently but the Washington Post reports today that Pakistan has refused a US request to expand the areas in which its drones can operate. The Pakistanis are also resisting requests from the US to take a military grip on North Waziristan, a base for several of the groups fighting the US in Afghanistan. Worryingly, the Post quotes a senior Pakistani military official as saying, “You have timelines of November elections and July x’11 drawdowns – you’re looking for short-term gains,” the

Israel, radical Islam and the EDL

I realise the title of this post looks like an open invitation to every lunatic conspiracy theorist on the web. But I’m afraid there’s no avoiding this. Israel and the radical right (be that of the Islamic variety or the most traditional sort) are taking up a lot of my thinking time at the moment. Anyone who cares about these issues should look up two stories in this week’s Jewish Chronicle. The first contains the news that one of the most senior figures in the British Jewish community has said that diaspora Jews should be free to criticise Israel. Mick Davis is not a particularly well known figure outside the Jewish community, but

Alex Massie

Australian Cricket Sells Its Soul

Hard though it may be to imagine, it is entirely possible that Cricket Australia (as they style themselves these days) are even more cloth-headed and reprehensible than their counterparts at the ECB. At the very least they give a more than passable impression of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. If press accounts are reliable indicators, Cricket Australia is a shameless organisation. If they weren’t such a collection of Ocker Moneygrubbers they might not have arranged the recent meaningless, pointless, set of one day matches against Sri Lanka that have hampered their players’ preparations for the Ashes. Nor, had they a clue, would they have insisted

Alex Massie

Blaiming the Euro for Irish Woes

On the other hand, Philippe Legrain makes the case that too much blame is being apportioned (perhaps opportunistically) to the euro and not enough is being fixed to the Irish government: The problem is not that savings flowed from Germany to Europe’s periphery. It is that they funded property bubbles rather than productive investment. But the blame for that lies with herd-like investors, flawed banks and foolish governments, not the euro. After all, America, Britain, Iceland and other non-euro countries all had huge property bubbles too. Granted, joining the euro did slash Irish interest rates, creating cheap borrowing that fuelled the boom. But at a macro level the Irish government

Kate Maltby

THEATRE: Say it With Flowers, ‘The Man With the Flowers in His Mouth’

  For a writer who died in 1936, Pirandello still feels remarkably contemporary. In the short plays, like the newly revived The Man With the Flower in His Mouth, he hones in on emerging details of the twentieth century experience which still pattern our lives today. A woman narrowly misses the sliding doors of a train, while shopping for her family, so she decides to stay up all night in a 24 hour café until the first morning train. When she’s joined by a colourful stranger, almost a pearly king in his badges, shreds and patches, she complains to him about the frustrations of family holidays in hotels, but he’s

Will there be peace in the Middle East in time for X-mas?

Two years into her term, and after carefully avoiding any success-free issues, Hillary Clinton has finally launched herself into the Middle East peace process. According to Roger Cohen in the New York Times, “The heavy lifting is now in Clinton’s hands”. As evidence of Clinton’s new role, Cohen lists a video conference with the Palestinian prime minister, where the US secretary of state announced $150 million in US aid to the Palestinian Authority and said the Obama administration was “deeply disappointed” by recent Israeli behaviour. Mrs Clinton’s foray into the Middle Eastern quagmire  is interesting. It shows that the Obama administration is not going to give up and will, despite

Alex Massie

Eliminating the US Deficit is Easy

If you’re a dictator, that is. The New York Times has a fun silly thingy whereby you too can take a machete to the US budget deficit. It’s easy! My Cunning Plan even produces surpluses in both 2015 and 2030. 65% of my proposals are achieved by cutting spending; 35% by taxes. And I didn’t even use the Fantasy Catch-All of “capping Medicare growth”. I even let the Congress peeps keep their earmarks. Just for fun. So, yes, balancing the budget is easy. Provided you never need to run for election yourself. No-one would win if they promised my, or anyone else’s, plan – at least not given the choices

Rod Liddle

At last, a new approach to international aid

Did the government pay money for the release of the poor Chandlers, that elderly couple who decided to do a spot of yachting off the coast of Somalia? Indirectly, without question. What passes for a government over there, the Somali Federal Republic, has confirmed that some of the £30m aid we bunged the country recently had been passed on to Mr and Mrs Chandler’s kidnappers, in the form of a ransom payment. I suppose they thought they were helping matters by making this admission, and that we’d be pleased that some of the money we give them actually produces tangible results for two British people. However, there are worries that

How different will Sarkozy 2.0 be?

After months of rumours, plummeting approval ratings, and battles with anti-reform protesters, French President Nicolas Sarkozy reshuffled his Cabinet yesterday. With a new government in place, the worst of the reforms behind him and the G-20 chairmanship in the offing, President Sarkozy is hoping to rebuild his profile before the next presidential election. But will it work? The popular François Fillon continues as Prime Minister despite a strained relationship with the Élysée. But Defense Minister Hervé Morin and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner have been replaced by Alain Juppé, a former prime minister and protege of former President Jacques Chirac, and Michèle Alliot-Marie, a former justice minister in the last cabinet.

Richards: we’re in it for the long haul

General Sir David Richards does like thinking in decades, doesn’t he? A year or so ago, he was warning us that “the whole process [in Afghanistan] might take as long as 30 to 40 years.” Today, in interview with the Sunday Telegraph, he says that the wider battle against al-Qaeda could last around 30 years. In both cases, he deserves our attention. To hear the head of our military suggest that the West’s current conflicts will stretch across generations is sobering, to say the least. More noteworthy, though, is Richards’ claim that a “clear cut victory” over Islamist terror is “unnecessary and would never be achieved” – but that we

James Forsyth

Saluting the fallen in Afghanistan

It is to be hoped that Prince William’s visit to Afghanistan for Remembrance Sunday was a morale boost to the troops out there, a reminder that the nation appreciates their courage and salutes their dedication to duty. It was a gesture—but a worthwhile and important one. The idea for Prince William to spend Remembrance Sunday in Afghanistan was Liam Fox’s. Fox was keen to have senior representation in theatre to show the troops that they were not a forgotten army and the whole visit was arranged several months ago. Fox and the Prince flew out to Afghanistan on a scheduled military cargo flight yesterday morning. They was nothing grand about

The new Cold War?

In his recent cover story for The Spectator, the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman talked about how, in the United States, China was beginning to take on the appearance of a new Cold War-style foe. Many Americans accuse China of stealing US jobs, of keeping the its currency undervalued, of exporting deflation by selling its products abroad at unfair prices, and of failing to meet its commitments to the World Trade Organisation. Two months ago, a poll from WSJ/CNBC showed that the majority of Tea Party activists oppose free trade – seeing China as the sole beneficiary of a free trade policy. But it is not only the Tea Party that

Generation jihad

Driving through Gaza City last weekend, in an armoured UN land cruiser, I ask our guide what the ubiquitous green flags symbolise. ‘Hamas,’ he replies. And the black ones? ‘Jihad.’ It is almost five years since Hamas won 74 out of 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council election, in a massive rejection both of the corruption of Fatah politicians and of the peace process with Israel. Since then, under a land and sea blockade imposed ostensibly to protect Israel from rocket attack and Egypt from Islamist contagion, Gaza has sunk ever deeper into a mire of victimhood and fundamentalism. It’s an alarming thought: young Gazans — 60 per cent

White man’s burden

Suffering has had at least one benefit for white Zimbabweans, says the writer Peter Godwin – it has brought them closer to the rest of the population When Robert Mugabe dies — when the blood transfusions, the vitamin jabs, Botox and hate-filled rants come to an end — few Zimbabweans will miss him. Yet while reading Peter Godwin’s new book, The Fear, it strikes me that one group will have a reason not entirely to curse him: Zimbabwe’s whites. An unintended consequence of Mugabe’s persecution of his Caucasian citizens — a revelation in Godwin’s book that might hasten the 86-year-old despot’s death in one last carpet-chewing frenzy — is that

From the archives: The end of the First World War

A blast of celebration – and of reflection – from The Spectator, written after the armistice in 1918. There is more than a touch of foresight in the warning that, “True peace and valid reconstruction demand … as much time, renunciation and self-sacrifice as the winning of the war.” Thanks be to God, The Spectator, 16 November, 1918 The thought that has filled the mind of the nation on Monday, and has possessed it ever since, is the thought, Thanks be to God. Under a thousand names and forms, consciously and unconsciously, realised fully or only half realised, this it is that has given unity to the nation and made

The London-Jakarta link should be strengthened

President Obama’s return to Indonesia this week was remarkable, in part, for the limited attention it has garnered outside his childhood nation. You can’t walk through an airport bookshop without being inundated by bestsellers about China’s rise. India has always occupied a special part in British hearts. But Indonesia is different. There are few in the British foreign policy establishment who really know the place. Some British military officers know a few Indonesian counterparts through their time at Sandhurst and the Defence Academy. The human rights lobby grew familiar with Indonesia over years of protests against the Sukarno/Suharto dictatorships and the country’s mistreatment of East Timor. But, on the whole,