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This is where the global struggle for peace and security gets incisive, informed, coverage
20:59 UK time, Friday, 18 May 2012
As we have heard many times, the exit strategy for Afghanistan relies upon setting up substantial local security forces to take over.
With leaders of Nato and other donor nations heading for a summit meeting in Chicago on Sunday, there are clear signs that an Afghan "Plan A" is no longer possible because people no longer feel able to fund it.
02:55 UK time, Friday, 11 May 2012
The kindest way of describing the government's U-turn over its new F35 fighter fleet is to point out that it should never have rushed to decide on the subject back in its Strategic Defence and Security Review or SDSR of October 2010.
Today a defence source conceded, "it's taken 18 months to figure out all of the detail".
18:25 UK time, Friday, 27 April 2012
The inquest into the death of intelligence officer Gareth Williams, who died in August 2010, has brought new evidence and expert analysis to light.
However it is hard to escape the conclusion that it will have brought little comfort or "closure" to his family.
17:10 UK time, Tuesday, 24 April 2012
PARIS: The first round of the French elections has provided a salutary lesson in the effects of the economic crisis in a Western democracy.
There has been polarisation to the extremes, a refusal by many to engage with the country's basic economic dilemmas, taking refuge instead in fundamentalist ideas about the country's ills, and the search for scapegoats.
19:43 UK time, Monday, 16 April 2012
What does the wave of spectacular attacks in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan on Sunday tell us about the capabilities of the Taliban? Very little, since it was not the Taliban, narrowly or correctly defined, that is believed to have carried them out.
The bloodshed does though give us some insights into the increasingly fraught endgame being played out by actors in the Afghan tragedy.
14:06 UK time, Wednesday, 4 April 2012
PARIS: In the presidential election campaign going on here, the candidates must tailor their message to a public that wants to protect the "French model" of a welfare state, coupled with a high-profile role in international politics and a strong defence.
Somehow, the public seems to believe these things possible despite a public spending crisis, France's adherence to the new European Union Fiscal Compact (that will supposedly compel deficit reduction), and needing to improve its international competitiveness.
10:16 UK time, Thursday, 15 March 2012
Reports suggest that opposition fighters have been forced out of the city of Idlib, close to the Turkish border in northern Syria.
Following on from their abandonment of the Baba Amer district in Homs, it has prompted resignations in the rebel leadership as well as questions over their poor judgement in trying to hold ground, inviting large scale government military operations in response.
18:40 UK time, Monday, 12 March 2012
The charge that an American soldier murdered 16 civilians near Kandahar, most of them children, is one of those moments where the Western view of events in that country tends to differ vitally from that of Afghans.
Having visited Afghanistan many times over the space of 25 years, I would wager that the average person there is more angry about the Americans burning Korans at Bagram airbase.
13:29 UK time, Friday, 24 February 2012
Talk to General Mansour Dhao, one time head of Muammar Gaddafi's People's Guard, a paramilitary force of regime loyalists, and one of his right hand men, and you get the impression that the late dictator's Green Revolution is still alive and vibrant.
"Gaddafi is dead, that's true," he told us, "but his ideas as a philosopher or as a thinker will live on".
15:07 UK time, Tuesday, 21 February 2012
SIRTE - The fate of this city, ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's hometown, symbolises what may await supporters of dictatorial leaders across the Middle East.
From the grizzly end meted out to Gaddafi himself, to the suffering of those who once supported him, it serves as a reminder of the dire price of failure, as well as the human consequences of revolution.
19:51 UK time, Thursday, 16 February 2012
TRIPOLI: On the outskirts of Misrata, there is a poster by the roadside. It is a slickly produced ad, funded by local businesses, carrying the slogan "Tomorrow Will Be Better."
Does it represent the kind of inherent optimism you find in many Islamic countries? Or is it an admission that, one year after the revolution to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi began, there are many respects in which there is disappointment and apprehension?
17:35 UK time, Wednesday, 8 February 2012
In the aftermath of the failed UN vote, the countries of the Saudi Arabian led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have expelled Syrian diplomatic missions, and there is credible talk that leading members of that alliance intend to step up arms supplies to the Free Syrian Army.
But do the UK and France, who have been vocal in support of the same Arab countries, share the same objectives?
18:09 UK time, Monday, 6 February 2012
For Western countries, their policy in Libya was defined in large part by how it differed from what they did in Iraq.
For Russia and China however, the similarities, particularly the outcome of regime change, were the more striking point, one that now leads them to thwart US or British designs in Syria.
16:19 UK time, Monday, 30 January 2012
When we came here in December, it was 26 against one, with Britain facing public opprobrium for standing in the way of agreement. Now it is 26 against one, with Germany insisting that its views prevail on austerity and the bail-out funds, but all the other countries too frightened of the economic crisis to criticise - or to do so out loud at any rate.
So what happened to Britain's stand in defence of the 'UK national interest' and in particular the City?
17:02 UK time, Friday, 27 January 2012
The decision by the French group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to withdraw its fieldworkers from prisons in the Libyan city of Misrata is an important and disturbing indicator of the situation in that country.
While some NGOs are guilty of trying to apply western 'best practice' in unrealistic ways, or to put the safety of their own teams ahead of project work, MSF's reputation, built over decades of operations in the most inhospitable parts of the world, suggests they should be listened to carefully both by the interim government in Libya and the western countries that assisted it to overthrow Muammar al Gaddafi's regime.
16:43 UK time, Monday, 23 January 2012
The crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions is inflamed again with Western nations pursuing a strategy designed to bring the issue to a head during the coming year.
The European Union has agreed a boycott of Iranian oil, and the US Navy has sent a carrier group back into the Gulf in defiance of Iranian threats.
17:44 UK time, Wednesday, 18 January 2012
British efforts to help topple Colonel Gaddafi were not limited to air strikes. On the ground - and on the quiet - special forces soldiers were blending in with rebel fighters.
Read my article detailing the previously untold account of the crucial part they played here.
19:00 UK time, Thursday, 5 January 2012
The Obama administration has dusted off a new strategy for these cash-strapped times: "Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense."
The title sums it up really, for the word "priorities" hints at the cuts to come, but the promise of sustained leadership speaks of a superpower status that even this current White House does not have the courage to abandon.
19:23 UK time, Monday, 12 December 2011
We sometimes get told that the British Diplomatic Service is a Rolls Royce operation - a finely tuned machine able to charm foreign governments under the most adverse circumstances.
So how should we interpret the result of the summit in Brussels last Friday, a diplomatic debacle, in which the UK ended up heaped with opprobrium as the lone country that stood in the way of European harmony?
18:43 UK time, Friday, 9 December 2011
BRUSSELS: Journalists like to put forward stark alternatives, while diplomats, particularly in this town, usually insist there is third way - a negotiated solution.
But as the leaders pack up this summit it is hard to avoid the conclusion that these months of crisis over the euro have finally exposed a division between the UK and the others that will demand resolution.
Mark has covered diplomatic and defence matters for more than 20 years at the BBC.
His major stories have included: the 1990 invasion of Iraq and subsequent Desert Storm campaign; the collapse of the Soviet Union; the Oslo peace process in the Middle East; the wars that broke out in the former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s as well as the diplomacy that stopped them; the Second Palestinian Intifada; 9/11 and its aftermath; the Coalition campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq; and the Arab Spring.
Before joining the BBC as a reporter he was Defence correspondent for The Independent newspaper for four years, covering the end of the Cold War and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He is also the author of several books on military matters, both current and historical. Mark read International Relations at the London School of Economics and served for a short time in the British Army.
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