One by one they took the podium. The Chief of the Constitutional Court. The Sheikh of al-Azhar, traditional Sunni Islam’s highest authority. The Coptic Pope. Mohammed el-Baradei, Nobel laureate and Egypt’s chief liberal. A young revolutionary from the Tamarrod movement that had brought millions onto the streets. Even a bearded Salafi leader, considered a fanatical […]
Garvan Walshe was National and International Security Policy Adviser for the Conservative Party until 2008. Follow Garvan on Twitter. As I write, Mohammed Morsi’s address to the nation has been postponed indefinitely. Is he negotiating with the army, or his own movement? Is there a deal being done? And if so, how much will the […]
Garvan Walshe was National and International Security Policy Adviser for the Conservative Party until 2008. Follow Garvan on Twitter. Intervene in Syria? Arm the rebels? Is Iraq collapsing again? Just what is Qatar up to. How secure is the Egyptian government? Will Jordan’s monarchy survive? Why does Russia care so much for Bashar al Assad? […]
Garvan Walshe was National and International Security Policy Adviser for the Conservative Party until 2008. Follow Garvan on Twitter. I remember once reading in the New Yorker that American special forces were working in Iran looking for nuclear weapons sites. My immediate thought was “Good. That’s exactly where they should be.” So with the “revelations” […]
Garvan Walshe was National and International Security Policy Adviser for the Conservative Party until 2008. Follow Garvan on Twitter. Let’s see, he thought to himself, just two doors along now, opposite the entrance to Paddington station, beside the newsagent’s Francis Urqhart used as a forwarding address in House of Cards. A quick glance at his […]
Garvan Walshe is a former National and International Security Adviser to the Conservative Party. Follow Garvan on Twitter Chinese diplomats appear uniformly excellent. Polished, fluent, articulate, urbane, seemingly immersed in the culture of the countries to which they are posted, in this field at least, Beijing appears to have found the best its 1.3 billion […]
Garvan Walshe is former National and International Security Policy Adviser for the Conservative Party. Follow Garvan on Twitter The planes lined up in two rows separated by a flat expanse criss crossed by buggies and food-skiffs of the air; laid out like Canaletto's Venetian merchantmen against the spring sunset. Frankfurt airport, a temple to commerce […]
Garvan Walshe is a former National and International Security Adviser for the Conservative Party. Follow Garvan on Twitter. You know those envelopes that come in the post. They start out plain, maybe with a company logo in the corner. You put them in the drawer, promising to get back to them later, but life gets […]
Garvan Walshe is a former National and International Security Policy Adviser for the Conservative Party. Follow Garvan on Twitter. “It couldn’t have been al-Qaeda,” she said to me, “the attacks weren’t competent enough.” The very fact that the bombings of the Boston marathon, awful though they were, prompted speculation like this, shows that the terrorist […]
Follow Garvan on Twitter. Most wars start as miscalculation. Think of Napoleon III deciding that the Prussian King’s apparent provocation had to be answered by the force of arms. Or Tsar Nicholas II’s desire to distract attention from his domestic troubles with a “short, victorious little war” against Japan; Likewise General Galtieri’s hope for the same […]
Follow Garvan on Twitter. “Please, five statues will be enough,” insisted the man with the aggressive moustache. “Two in the capital, the rest in the other big cities.” His left eye twitched, a hint his oldest comrades could recognise as the faintest sign of doubt, one he had worked hard to suppress, and which this time […]
Follow Garvan on Twitter. “Roll up! Roll up! Come see the Man in the Red Beret. The irrepressible! The irresponsible! The only Bolivarian Revolutionary! Hugo Chavez! The Illusionist…” “Watch how with the sweep of his Presidential arm, the Amazing Hugo Chavez can make poverty tumble. Yes, that’s right, poverty down twenty-percent! …” Gazing rapt, the […]
Follow Garvan on Twitter. Kenyans go to the polls today to elect a president for the first time since their last violently disputed general election five years ago. Some 1300 people died in the fighting that broke out in December 2007 and January 2008, as supporters of rival candidates clashed on ethnic lines, and began […]
Follow Garvan on Twitter. As Argo and Zero Dark Thirty battled for votes at the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, another real-life spy story emerged. Its adaptation, produced by the Taiwanese NME came too late to be nominated for Best Animated Film. Their superbly sinister pandas, metonyms of the Middle Kingdom’s “democracy with […]
Follow Garvan on Twitter. The all too brief appearance made by a Mr Pamuk in Downton Abbey, I’m sorry to say, did not give rise to the term “Turkish model.” It is, rather like the “Turkish vice,” a figment of the Western mind. If in Victorian times it was thought that the Ottoman court had […]