I have been making enquiries about the build up of the EU External Action service. In the UK there is a tendency  to play this down, to say that it is limited in scale and will not detract from our own Foreign Office and foreign policy.           &n...

Those who hate the new Conservative-led government and those who love it seem to be united in one expectation: that Europe policy may be the coalition's downfall. David Lidington, the able new Europe minister, certainly has his work cut out for him. In the latest of the Brussels journal Europe's World, Foreign Secretary William Hague lays out the government's Europe policy, a policy...

There is widespread coverage of EU Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton’s confirmation hearing in front of the European Parliament yesterday, with the Telegraph reporting that MEPs and diplomats have warned that Baroness Ashton’s political inexperience has allowed the European Commission to seize control of Europe's foreign policy from national governments.

             I have written before that for centuries one of the main aims of UK foreign policy has been to avoid one single power dominating the continent of Europe. The question today is why has the modern Foreign Office changed its mind on this fundamental issue? Why is it now UK government policy to

Plaid Cymru's policy in respect of nuclear power has become even more bizarre. It was already very strange in that party leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones supports a campaign to build a new nuclear reactor on Ynys Mon, while Plaid policy remains opposed, in principle, to the development of any new nuclear generation. Now another of Plaid's big guns, Presiding Officer of the Assembly, Lord Elis Tho...

This site provides free access to the full text of the paper published by the Chatham House Commission on Europe after Fifty: Policy Implications for Britain, (chaired by Sir Stephen Wall) in September 2008. ISBN 978 1 86203 207 1. The 74 page report argues that Britain needs to take a new foreign policy approach towards Europe. Topics covered include: developing more proactive European foreign an...

Barack Obama is the first Democrat to be Commander in Chief in the post 9/11 era. The election of a Democrat was a necessary requirement for the emergence of a new, settled American foreign policy for this time. You can’t have a bi-partisan foreign policy consensus when only one party knows the foreign policy challenges from the inside. Certainly the Bush administration made mistakes on fore...

How the game has shifted Noted for his command of the ministerial brief, David Miliband is arguably the most cerebral occupant of the Foreign Office in a generation. The main challenge confronting him, and indeed Gordon Brown, since he assumed office in June 2007, has been the shaping of a foreign policy for the post-Blair years. This has proved a testing proposition – on the one hand&n...

Our foreign policy priority must be to transfer responsibility for Afghan security to their local army and police as quickly as possible. Our wider foreign policy must embrace stronger links and more diplomatic interest in the emerging powers. I welcome today’s change of emphasis in foreign policy. You could have read it here first. The

The connection is confirmed that the “Ganley order” for Europe is about the maintenance of the American hegemon- and the European project could be in danger because of it…It is know that Declan Ganley is associated with the Foreign Policy Research Institute out of Philadelphia. A glance at this website reveals that it is the same old American realist notions about foreign policy...