By sending ground troops into the Gaza Strip, Israel has crossed a line that brings it perilously close to strategic failure.

Just as with the Lebanon war of 2006, an air bombardment has failed to stop rocket fire into Israel – and has been followed by a ground invasion. The Israeli government says it has learnt the lessons of its stalemated war with Hizbollah, the Lebanese militia. Gaza is more hospitable terrain than southern Lebanon; Hamas is militarily weaker than Hizbollah; Israel is better prepared and is using new tactics.

Maybe so. But what are Israel’s strategic needs? The first is the protection of Israeli citizens; the second is the re-establishment of Israel’s deterrent power; the third is the preservation of international support; and the fourth some prospect of durable peace. Each one of these objectives is now in peril.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

I am on holiday this week. This has the advantage, from my point of view, of meaning that I didn’t have to write a newspaper column on Gaza for yesterday’s FT. It is a depressing subject - to put it mildly. And it is hard to find anything to say about the Israel-Palestine conflict that is either original or constructive.

But my respite will not last. I am back at work next week. And given the likelihood that the fighting will still be going on, I may be writing about Gaza.

So while the world appeals for a ceasefire, let me appeal for some insights from blog-readers. I realise that this too might be a foolhardy endeavour since - in the past - discussions on this subject have tended to bring out the worst in everyone. If this particular thread degenerates into abuse, we will just shut it down. Anyway, here are my questions: Continue reading "Questions about Gaza"

Historians are sometimes divided into lumpers and splitters. The splitters like to chop problems up into lots of small bits. The lumpers like to link them altogether.

Would-be Middle East peacemakers can be categorised in the same way. The lumpers want a “comprehensive peace settlement” that links together all the problems in the region – Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Israel-Palestine, even Iran. The splitters want to deal with all these problems separately.

David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, used the day of the US presidential election to come out as a “lumper”. He made a speech arguing that “the only way to settle the Palestinian issue is as part of a wider drive for a new alignment in the Middle East … At its core is a Palestinian state, but as part of a broader peace between Israel and the Arab world.”

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

I love Thailand. In many ways it is a serious country: a dynamic economy, a big power in South-East Asia, an important tourist destination. Yet there is a deep vein of sillyness in the country’s public life that makes it a great source of entertainment.

Only in Thailand, I think, would a prime minister lose his job for making guest appearances on a television cookery programme. Who knows whether the dismissal of Samak Sundaravej will resolve the country’s political crisis? But the reason for his downfall is delightfully original.

It also seems typically Thai. After the military coup in 2006, I was sent a copy of the Foreign Correspondents magazine. Its cover photo was of soldiers in tanks in downtown Bangkok - posing next to the tanks were girls in bikinis, with flowers in their teeth. Somehow this made the whole scene seem less threatening.

Gordon Brown was physically in Brussels yesterday. But it was clear that mentally he was already travelling to the emergency oil summit which is taking place in Saudi Arabia tomorrow.

At his closing Brussels press conference he kept repeating a single number - $3 trillion. This - Brown claims - is the amount that oil consuming countires have transferred to oil-producing countries as a result of the recent spike in oil prices. As the FT reports today, that is causing huge budgetary and political strains in many consuming countries. Continue reading "Begging the Saudis"

In A Choice of Enemies, Lawrence Freedman has taken one of the most analysed and controversial subjects in modern politics – US policy towards the Middle East – and set himself two near-impossible tasks. The first is to write a book that will be perceived as scholarly and impartial. The second is to say something new about the subject.Freedman, professor of war studies at King’s College, London, succeeds triumphantly in the second task. A Choice of Enemies is both a fast-paced introduction for lay readers and a fresh analysis that will appeal to experts.

The novelty of the book lies mainly in its effort to provide a comprehensive account of American engagement with the broader Middle East, from Afghanistan to Israel since 1979 – a year that saw the Iranian revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the arrival of Saddam Hussein as president of Iraq. Continue reading "Book review: A Choice of Enemies"

I am 35,000ft above Afghanistan. Beneath me, in the snowy hills, an insurgency is raging. In front of me sits David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, who is leaning forward in his cream-coloured leather seat on a flight from Kabul to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

“Amartya Sen is a brilliant man,” remarks Miliband. “I think his argument that there is a fusion tradition – a liberal tradition that is concerned with social justice – is right. And I admire his work on capabilities, and on freedom as capability.”

At 42, Miliband is one of Britain’s youngest-ever foreign secretaries. As his musings on Amartya Sen [the Harvard academic and Nobel prize winner] suggest, he is also one of the most intellectual. The son of Ralph Miliband, a famous Marxist academic, he worked in a think-tank before serving as head of Tony Blair’s policy unit at 10 Downing Street. With the predictable British reaction to anybody who might seem a bit clever, Miliband’s colleagues in Downing Street nicknamed him “Brains”. He entered parliament in 2001 and rose swiftly. When Tony Blair was forced to step down as Labour leader and prime minister in 2007, despairing Blairites appealed to Miliband to run for the leadership against Gordon Brown. But Miliband resisted the temptation, and was rewarded with the job of foreign secretary when Brown formed a government.

A rise from the backbenches to one of the great offices of state in just six years demands real political skill. And a couple of days in Miliband’s company have convinced me that he is much more than a jumped-up intellectual. He has a politician’s knack for rarely saying the wrong thing – which makes him a tricky man to interview when there is a tape recorder running. He is also formidably energetic. His day began with an early morning visit to British troops in Kabul. It will end with a late-evening meeting in Dhaka, with politicians and businessmen. His schedule includes no “down time”. He doesn’t seem to sleep much, and his staff claim that they have to remind him to eat.

Continue reading "Lunch with the FT: David Miliband"

Thank you to Pacifist et al, for drawing my attention to the White House’s displeasure at Zalmay Khalilzad’s decision to appear alongside the Iranian foreign minister at Davos. I was at that session and - I must say - I don’t think the Bush administration has much to fear. There were no surprises. The Iranians ranted about their right to nuclear energy and about injustice in the world. Khalilzad said nothing that was out of line with American policy.

But his general demeanour was cool and unconfrontational - and maybe that was the problem. As it happens, Khalilzad has impeccable neocon credentials. He studied under Albert Wohlstetter, a fiercely conservative strategist, and was a founder member of the Project for a New American Century. But, in other ways, he does not fit the stereotype. He is not a headbanger and has gone down very well as American ambassador to the UN. Unlike his predecessor, John Bolton, he does not go out of his way to offend people. And he also has a deep knowledge of the countries he is dealing with. He was born in Afghanistan and - at Davos - he listened to the Iranians without using the headphones.

Continue reading "Khalilzad for Afghan president?"