British combat operations in Iraq came to a formal end today. “Iraq is a success story”, proclaimed Gordon Brown, our prime minister.

But is it? There is an ominous increase in terrorism in Baghdad. I was shocked to read in this morning’s paper that three car bombs had gone off in Baghdad, killing 41 people (the death toll is now over 50). This was shocking both because of the news itself, and because it merited no more than a “news in brief”. That reminded me of the dark days when violence in Iraq was so widespread that it barely merited comment. Are we getting back to that? Earlier this week, there was another spate of car bombings that killed over 80 people.

So what is going wrong? The casual observer might blame all this on Obama’s plan for a withdrawal of US troops. But the pull-outs have barely started. A more plausible explanation might be that, as part of its handover of responsibilites to the Iraq government, the US has stopped paying the Sunni paramilitaries whose support was so critical to suppressing the activities of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The Brits and Americans are still emphasising the huge improvement in the security situation over the past two years. But the current spate of violence threatens to vindicate those who always warned that “the surge” had not solved the Iraq problem, and that communal tensions and violence were bound to re-emerge.

Stephen Walt, the Harvard academic, has blogged about his ten favourite political films. It is a great idea, and I thoroughly approve of his top two choices: Dr. Strangelove and Casablanca. But overall, I think his list is a bit disappointing. And – as a couple of the commenters on his site point out – all the films he lists are American, which is a bit odd for a professor of international relations.

That said, it leaves a gap in the market for the rest of us. So here is my list of the top ten, non-American political films. This is very much a first effort. I scribbled them down in about half-an-hour. They are listed in a very rough order of preference:

1. The Marriage of Maria Braun – Fantastic Fassbinder movie about the rise of post-war Germany, made in 1979.

2. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie – This is not strictly speaking a political film, it is too surrealist for that. But Bunuel’s 1972 masterpiece contains the funniest diplomatic reception scene I’ve ever seen – as well as an excellent scene in which the ambassador of Miranda takes pot-shots at anarchists scoping out his embassy.

3. Burnt by the Sun (1994) – Gut-wrenching movie, set against the background of Stalin’s purges.

4. The Sorrow and the Pity – Famous masterpiece; a documentary about France under the Nazis that was so sensitive that it was not released for many years.

5. Monsieur Klein (1979) – On a similar theme, a Joseph Losey film about a Parisian art-dealer who tries to avoid being caught up in the deportation of the Jews, but it all goes horribly wrong.

6. The Yacoubian Building – A recent and very successful Egyptian film that paints a very depressing and compelling picture of modern Egyptian society.

7. The Lives of Others – Recent Oscar-winner, set in East Germany.

8. Apartment Zero – Homo-erotic thriller, made in the late 1980s, and set against the background of the dirty war in Argentina.

It strikes me that all the films I’ve listed so far are a little on the depressing side, so here are two more cheeeful ones to round things off.

9. L’Auberge Espagnol – Who would have thought that you could make a genuinely funny and touching film, centred around the EU’s Erasmus programme for exchange students? This was hugely popular among Eurocrats in Brussels. It came out about five years ago.

10. Carry on Cleo (1964) – Contains the best line in British cinema, when Caesar is attacked and shouts -”Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” Much better than “Et Tu Brute”.

Which reminds me, that – of course – Shakespeare was quite good on politics, so Carrying on Regardless:

11. MacBeth – the Polanski version.

12. And if you are allowed television series, Michael Dobbs’s “House of Cards” – with a particularly evil and murderous chief whip. Striking isn’t it, that only the British political movies are comedies.

In retrospect, it is pretty clear that the UN anti-racism summit was an accident waiting to happen. And so it has proved. About an hour ago, there was a walk-out by European delegates – after President Ahmadinejad of Iran unleashed his usual anti-Israel rant. The Americans and Canadians would doubtless have walked out as well – but they were already boycotting the conference.

The UN Human Rights Council, which is running the conference in Geneva, was meant to be a marked improvement on its predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights. That had been widely condemned in the west for focussing obsessively on Israel – while studiously avoiding the discussion of human-rights violations in places like Burma and Sudan. But the new council has fallen into the old trap. It was brought into being in 2006. By spring 2007 it had passed eight resolutions condemning Israel – but none that specifically targeted other countries.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration was initially inclined to take part in the Geneva conference – in line with its new policy of diplomatic engagement But, in the end, the Americans pulled out. It was not just the Israel issue that bothered them. They, and the Dutch, were also bothered by the council’s recent endorsement of a Pakistani-sponsored resolution against the condemnation of religions – which sounds like a restriction on freedom of speech.

So this great revamped council was left with the heads of just three states attending the Geneva meeting – Iran, Togo and Montenegro. But, rather than walking away from a conference that was obviously turning into a farce, Ban Ki-Moon – the UN secretary-general – has thrown his prestige behind the meeting This looks like a bad mistake. With the Obama administration in power, the US is clearly keen on the idea of re-engaging with the UN. Obama has made Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, ambassador to the UN – and given her a cabinet position. But the Geneva conference will play into the hands of all the UN-haters in America.

The prestige of the economics profession is meant to be at a low ebb at the moment. But prominent academic economists are still regularly recruited for the very top positions in the American government – Ben Bernanke is at the Federal Reserve, Larry Summers is co-ordinating economic policy from the White House.

By contrast, it is no longer fashionable to pick political scientists for the top positions making US foreign policy. The days when Henry Kissinger could go directly from Harvard to a job as the director of the National Security Council seem long gone.  Some blame this on anti-intellectualism in American life. But there are also eminent professors who see the fault as lying within the groves of academe themselves. Joe Nye, former head of the Kennedy school at Harvard, has just published a piece bemoaning the irrelevance of much political science to practical policymaking. Steve Walt, another Harvard professor, backs him up – arguing that academics who pursue real-world issues are even penalised and looked down upon.

To a certain extent, Walt and Nye are living refutations of their own thesis. Nye served in a high position in the Pentagon during the Clinton administration and is tipped for an ambassadorship under Obama. Walt has influenced the policy debate with his co-authored book on the “Israel Lobby”.

Still, I know what they mean. I can still remember my shock and confusion when I first sampled a political science course at Princeton. I was used to the empirical, rather literary style of political analysis that is taught if you take a history degree in Britain. But I now found myself confronted with a world, dominated by abstract models and obsessed with number-crunching.  I looked at something called the “Journal of Conflict Resolution” and found articles about real-world political problems which seemed just to be a mass of quadratic equations. It is hard to believe that anybody actually trying to resolve a conflict would find this kind of stuff useful, or relevant.

Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Thai prime minister, claims that the Bangkok demonstrations are now under control. Maybe – but whatever happens on the streets over the next few days, I think the only plausible way out of this crisis is to hold fresh elections.

Of course, that is hardly a risk-free option. In the current climate, the elections are quite likely to be a violent affair. And given that Thailand’s “reds” and “yellows” clearly do not accept each other’s legitimacy, it’s not obvious that the elections would spell the end of the political crisis. All the same, I think Abhisit has to look for a new mandate. His legitimacy has been badly tarnished by the fact that he was voted in only by parliamentary vote, after the mass “yellow” demos of late last year.

Both Abhisit and his rival, Thaksin Shinawatra have their flaws. The events surrounding Abhisit’s arrival in power have tarnished his democratic credentials – and, whatever his instincts, events have pushed him too close to reactionaries in the army and the palace. Thaksin does have passionate support among the rural masses. On the other hand, I am pretty sure that an Abhisit government would be less corrupt than a Thaksin administration – and less likely to tolerate human-rights violations in the name of a war on drugs or some other cause.

Abhisit could still make a good prime minister. But he badly needs a proper mandate.