{"id":1297,"date":"2010-05-14T13:52:25","date_gmt":"2010-05-14T11:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1297"},"modified":"2010-05-14T13:53:24","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T11:53:24","slug":"1297","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1297","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Foreign Policy<\/strong><\/p>\n

William Haig is off to the US immediately to meet Hilary Clinton for talks. This is very good news. Hilary should be impressed. Haig has the potential to be the best British foreign secretary for some time. This blog has always followed the theme of my book to urge a more independent foreign policy than that of the New Labour era, which is less focussed on the U.S. Present circumstances demand some revision of that position.<\/p>\n

Obama and Clinton are steadily gaining in prestige and the U.S is now following a more enlightened and pragmatic foreign policy that for decades. This is very good news and already tensions are easing. However in the U.S itself there is still a neo-con agenda, there are woeful voices like Palin and Bolton still to be heard, all proclaiming a message which is simplistic, naive and dangerous in equal measure. Obama and the\u00a0voices of reason\u00a0need unstinting support.\u00a0 We should now offer that, coupled with realistic appraisal of what can and cannot be done in the areas of difficulty and in particular those where troops of both nations sacrifice their lives daily.\u00a0<\/p>\n

America has become more relaxed with Russia and we should follow suit and find an end to the spat over Litvinenko’s murder, even if we have to agree to differ. Israel is no longer getting a free ride in Washington and we should support that. We should kick out Blair from his Middle East role where he is a complete waste of time and put in somebody who can get some progress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We must talk about Afghanistan very seriously. The present policy is very similar to the Russians’, which failed and the American policy in Vietnam, which failed there. The idea that the\u00a0Afghanistan is prevented from going over to Al Qaeda is futile. If we sterilize Afghanistan they go into Pakistan and destabilise that rather fragile nuclear power, or off they go to regroup in Yemen or wherever.\u00a0 Moreover the Karzai government is impossibly corrupt, delivers rotten government and will be overthrown as soon as we leave by the Taliban, aided by the security forces we have trained and equipped, who will follow tradition and change sides. There is no mileage in\u00a0the current\u00a0\u00a0policy which is not a realistic\u00a0strategy. It is wishful thinking.\u00a0It is not worth brave lives. New thinking is needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Foreign Policy William Haig is off to the US immediately to meet Hilary Clinton for talks. This is very good news. Hilary should be impressed. Haig has the potential to be the best British foreign secretary for some time. This blog has always followed the theme of my book to urge a more independent foreign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1297"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1304,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions\/1304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}