All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Among America’s self-described foreign policy ‘realists,’ there is a common trope according to which the best way for the United States to get its allies to do more is to show them some tough love – particularly by doing less. That theory has just been put to a test in Afghanistan. It has failed spectacularly.
When America decided to save Afghanistan from the tyranny of the Taliban, it acted on two major beliefs. The first was that the US had the might, the tech and the ability to reshape Afghanistan — what could a superpower have to fear from a ragtag bunch of insurgents? — the second was a belief
The papers have been full of speculation this month about rumours of a rift between Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson. The pair are reported to have clashed over travel quarantine rules amid speculation about Sunak’s designs on the top job. Such tensions are nothing new in Westminster politics of course – not for nothing has
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With Kabul now taken back by the Taliban and the Americans in full retreat after two decades of war, what will the USA learn from this catastrophe, if anything? Freddy Gray talks to author of After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed, Andrew Bacevich about the goals not met, allies abandoned and lives
Richard Leonard, former leader of the Scottish Labour party, has posted a photograph of himself standing beside Ken Loach on his public Facebook page. The Central Scotland MSP, who was succeeded by Anas Sarwar as leader of Labour’s Holyrood wing in February, commented: ‘Ken Loach is guilty of applying his rare talent to exposing the
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Defeat in Kabul now means that the Taliban have effectively taken over Afghanistan. Katy Balls talks to Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman to discuss the West’s response to the occupation. ‘we have got a peacekeeping military, not a war fighting military, but still I think we’ve got this muscle memory from the days when Britain
Joe Biden is facing what will likely be the defining event of his presidency. The gains made in Afghanistan are evaporating in record time under his watch. But Biden doesn’t want to be a foreign policy president. He wants to be the man who ended wars, taking credit for America’s Covid recovery, funnelling trillions of
The fall of Afghanistan has provoked much comment and soul-searching on both sides of the Atlantic. Along with the usual talking heads and thumping op-eds, the Taliban’s imminent victory has prompted some truly awful takes from some of the less distinguished figures in public life. Below is Mr Steerpike’s guide to some of the most tone-deaf,
The debacle in Iraq. The fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. The failed ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion of Cuba. You can debate where exactly the collapse of Afghanistan ranks in the list of American military and foreign policy disasters. But one point is surely certain. It is a major setback, and
Every now and again, Gordon Brown makes a decent point – as he does today, pointing out that 80 per cent of the jabs have gone to the 20 richest countries. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organisation chief, warned in January that ‘even as vaccines bring hope to some, they become another brick in the
It is very easy to dismiss Wednesday’s recall of Parliament as a pointless exercise in handwringing that sums up the way most MPs approach foreign policy. There will certainly be plenty of frustrating hindsight on offer from politicians who haven’t taken a blind bit of notice of Afghanistan right up until the point where they
There’s a grim mood in Westminster today. The images coming out of Kabul of desperate Afghans trying to board crowded flights out of the country have been juxtaposed in recent days with the Taliban assuming the trappings of power. Parliament here in London has been recalled to debate the situation on Wednesday though no one
The speed of the Taliban’s advance, culminating in Sunday’s capture of Kabul, has been widely put forward as proof that Joe Biden was wrong: that his decision to end the 20 year-old Afghan mission was a historic mistake that will blight his presidency. For all that, as he himself has said, he was the fourth
After the Taliban took over Kabul and announced victory in Afghanistan, a scramble is underway by diplomats and many Afghans to flee the country. There are videos overnight of distressing scenes at Kabul airport where crowds have assembled in an attempt to get out. The US embassy has since issued an advisory to American citizens
Rather than the six to twelve months predicted by the US intelligence services, the Taliban ended up needing just a few days to take Kabul – and with it, control of Afghanistan. Only this morning, the US was asking the Taliban to wait just two weeks until an interim government could be set up. But the US,
The speed of the Taliban’s advance in Afghanistan is remarkable. Even those who thought that the Trump / Biden policy of withdrawal was a folly, did not expect that Kabul would be surrounded before the end of August. Their only mistake was to believe our assurances about having an enduring commitment to the country What
After a year out of the headlines, John Bercow is back. The former Commons Speaker appeared on the Observer front page in June to announce his membership of the Labour party, eighteen months after retiring from Parliament. The onetime Tory right winger is still smarting over the government’s refusal to award him a peerage and thus
When Joe Biden ordered the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, he was able to say that they’d leave behind a formidable Afghan army with 300,000 troops, paramilitary police and some 30,000 special forces. That is, on paper, more than enough to secure the country against an insurgency if skilfully deployed and well motivated. The best of these troops
When a British security guard was killed in an Iranian drone attack last month, the response from the government was robust. Boris Johnson warned that Iran will have to ‘face up to the consequences’. But has the West fully grasped the reality of what Iran and its ‘Ghost Armada’ is really up to at sea? And how can Britain deal
Sometimes, a nutter is just a nutter, even when he’s a homicidal nutter. In the case of Jake Davison, the Plymouth killer who murdered five people, then himself, the indications are that he was a sad, bitter, angry man with a grudge against society in general and women in particular. He didn’t have a girlfriend,
On 11 March this year my father passed away from prostate cancer after several weeks in a hospital in central Athens. As we sat around his bed, I remember thinking that I was watching 3,000 years of Greek history slowly perish before my eyes. My father was an only child, and I am British. His
On Thursday, teachers planning residential trips were told that it may be just fine for teenagers of the opposite sex to share a room. In 25 years of teaching, I have seen many daft ideas trickle down from government, but the Scottish government’s latest guidance, ‘Supporting Transgender Pupils In Schools’, takes the biscuit. Of course it
Last month Steerpike reported news that Tony Blair was plotting a return to Parliament. One of the many unwanted consequences of Covid was the former Prime Minister’s return to the spotlight, in part due to the work of his eponymous institute on issues like mass testing and vaccines. With polls suggesting that members of Starmer’s Labour now
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The south of Afghanistan is now under Taleban control, after the group took the cities of Kandahar and Lashkar Gah this week. Meanwhile, Britain and America are deploying thousands of troops – as many as were there before the withdrawal began earlier this year – to evacuate expats and the majority of embassy staff. After
Sometimes things that don’t happen are as important as those that do. In the Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze, about the theft of a racehorse, the failure of a dog to bark is the central fact that allows the crime to be solved. Holmes mentions this ‘curious incident of the dog in the night-time’ to
Enoch Powell was a great admirer of General de Gaulle. That didn’t stop him, at the end of his career, rallying to the Ulster Unionist cause — rather ignoring the fact that de Gaulle happily sacrificed the French Algerians to the higher cause of France. In the same spirit as Powell, one hears talk today
When Angela Merkel leaves office after Bundestag elections next month, she will have forever changed the course of German history. Merkel has steered Germany through a recession, the Eurozone and migration crises and the Covid-19 pandemic. During the Trump presidency, Germany’s chancellor became an icon for liberals around the world. Yet her legacy in terms of Germany’s domestic
The new Premier League season has begun and I don’t know what to think. I tried to watch all of England’s Euro 2020 matches, but I never made it to the end of any of them. When the final against Italy kicked off, I retired to a quiet room feeling angst and confusion. Why was
After 20 years, 456 UK military deaths and £22 billion spent, Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan is over. With the last American forces leaving within a month, news out of the war-torn nation has been predictably grim, with the Taliban sweeping the country amid reports of executions, evacuations and troops switching sides. The situation is now so
One of the worst features of devolution is the tendency of devocrats to insist on doing their own thing in all circumstances and at whatever cost. The idea that decentralisation would lead to experimentation and the sharing of best practice now seems hopelessly naive. Instead, politicians in Edinburgh and Cardiff try to use nationalism to
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With things on the ground in Afghanistan accelerating from bad to worse so fast that the Americans are now even worried about the safety of their embassy. Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman about what the UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s attitude towards this 20 year conflict has been like in statements
The lead figure in the World Health Organisation’s work on the origins of Covid-19 has given a remarkable interview to Danish TV. Peter Ben Embarek has revealed just how much political pressure the investigation came under and made clear that he thinks the lab leak hypothesis should not, pace the official report, be dismissed as
Earlier this week Mr S brought you news of the latest interminable row splitting the Lib Dems: what to do about Vince Cable? The ex-leader has alienated his party’s youth wing with his comments about the Chinese Communist party and Beijing’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims. Cable has denied that genocide is taking place in Xinjiang and also defended the Hong Kong