Cicero's Songs

The sixtieth anniversary of the signing of the NATO treaty in Washington in 1949 is now upon us. The organisation designed, in the words of Lord Ismay, its first Secretary General, to "keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down" has been a considerable success. To mark the occasion, the two states that fought three wars within sixty years, France and Germany, are co-hosting the anniversary summit and inevitably the contrast between the last sixty years of general peace and the previous sixty years of horrific bloodshed will be a great part of the symbolism of the meeting. However, there are two items of substantive business on the agenda and yet they too will be occasions of great rejoicing. On Monday the flags of two new member states will be raised outside NATO headquarters in Brussels after the formal ratification and acceptance of Albania and Croatia as NATO member states. I have worked closely with the government in Albania and have visited the count...

The news that HMS Cumberland attacked and captured a Somali pirate vessel in the Gulf of Yemen was one of those slightly quaint pieces of news that is somehow rather cheering. On the one hand while we know how desperate the situation is in Somalia and the autonomous Puntland , Pirates, by definition, are the bad guys. The seizure of the Ukrainian ship " Faima " and its cargo of weapons was clearly the last straw for the international community. The fact is that we can not allow global logistics chains to be disrupted like this. On the other hand, there is not the global political will to actually sort out the truly awful situation on the ground in the wreckage of Somalia. Personally, I think it is about time to admit that Somalia as a state is not fixable. To my mind that means recognising the independence of Somaliland - the former British Somaliland - and allowing that country to develop more normal relations with the rest of the world. It is, after all a more or less ord...

For a long time this blog has warned of the dangers of the aggressive regime in place in the Moscow Kremlin. In common with commentators like my friend Edward Lucas , I have pointed out the consequences of the lack of property rights and the extraordinary level of corruption in modern Russia. This prickly and aggressive approach has had an impact on any country that is the focus of Russian policy. As Vygaudas Uzackas- the Ambassador of Lithuania in London- observed in a conference last week, Russia still has trouble escaping the mindset that it must deal with other states either as enemies or as vassals. This zero-sum world view of the Kremlin looks not only old fashioned, but self defeating. The Russian Federation , during the past five years, has built up an extraordinary war chest of liquid reserves. Indeed, although there is some uncertainty about the actual level of reserves, it seems clear that they are now around the third largest in the world. This gave confidence that the Rus...

The European chessboard has grown complicated. The hostile regime in Moscow is exploiting any opportunity to damage the cohesion of both the European Union and NATO. The Kremlin continues to spread black propaganda against any state that annoys it in some way . Indeed the perceived enemies of the Putin regime have often come under attack- whether in the realms of cyberspace, as Russian hackers launch attacks designed to shut down most of the apparatus of the modern state, or quite literally, with state sponsored assassination and physical intimidation of diplomats. The straight theft of foreign owned assets in Russia is also routine- as the latest twists in the campaign against BP in Russia makes quite plain. It is not a surprise that polls in the UK now show that Putin's Russia is considered the greatest threat to the country after Al-Qaida and Iran. After all, Russia- unlike Iran- has actually used a nuclear weapon on the streets of London. Other states are much more sanguine a...

Russia continues to attack Estonia. The denial of service attacks launched from Russia against Estonian sites are extraordinary. Edward Lucas gives the details here . This is nothing more than a co-ordinated act of aggression against a NATO and European Union member state. The West continues to handle this with kid gloves- but for how much longer?

The latest release of public documents throws up the interesting story that Guy Mollet , the French Prime Minister of the time, suggested in 1956 that France and Britain form a Union . The idea of France joining the Commonwealth- then an organisation of far more substance than it has today- was taken seriously at the time in London. France under the Fourth Republic was yet to develop the robust nationalism that has been the hallmark of the Fifth Republic. It is interesting to speculate what kind of Europe we would see today, had France moved so decisively into the British camp, rather than, as it turned out, building the bridges to Germany that ultimately became the Franco-German motor. Arguably, a Franco-British deal would have simply reinforced the continuing bitterness against Germany, and perpetuated the divisions that caused the First and Second World Wars, Perhaps Germany would have quietly slipped into the Soviet orbit- a state of affairs that would have made a third world war ...