Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

George W. Bush was the ‘cool head’ at the White House who ruled out military intervention in the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia. Sean’s Russia Blog cites Ronald D. Asmus in his book ‘A Little War That Shook the World’ which alleges that senior figures in the American administration urged ’limited’ military action against Russia. The President showed enough sense to realise that ‘confrontation’ would be inevitable, if the US had directly attacked Russia. Sean believes the fact that the United States even considered bombing the Gori Tunnel, through which Russian troops and supplies reach South Ossetia, bolsters the thesis that the White House gave Saakashvili a ‘green light’ to confront Moscow. It certainly provides a prime example of the type of hysteria which characterised American and British responses to the war. Had the President not provided calmer counsel, best case scenario, the US would have had to explain its intervention in a conflict which an independent EU in...

Overwhelming attention, this week, has been focused on the G20 summit and the argument for international fiscal stimulus . Although Gordon Brown might like us to believe that the resultant communiqué will offer a blueprint capable of saving the world, ‘sherpas’ and officials are even now expending enormous intellectual resources seeking a form of words ambiguous enough to satisfy widely diverging views of the financial crisis. These meetings may represent impressive showcases of draftsmanship by world political elites, but contending domestic agendas dictate that their planet changing potential is grossly exaggerated. Remember Gleneagles, when Tony Blair oversaw an end to African poverty? That is not to say that important developments are not possible when international political power is suddenly concentrated in one venue. It is just that real progress is unlikely to be reflected in the nuances of an agreed text and it is not necessarily framed by the official agenda of the summi...

I assume that I’m not the only man, who when he pushes his choice of film for a prospective cinema visit, ends up squirming in his seat with an uncomfortable sense of personal responsibility when the movie turns out to be crap? Having expressed meaningful ambivalence toward ‘Easy Virtue’ and some manner of psychological examination of Kristin Scott Thomas in French, I particularly didn’t want Oliver Stone’s ‘W.’ to be as poor as it was. Quite honestly, Stone’s film is not a substantial biopic of the most controversial American president since Nixon. It is lightsome, simplistic, unconvincing and occasionally brutally poorly acted. The director never quite seems to decide whether he is attempting a serious examination or playing it for laughs. There is little sense here of what animates Bush as a politician. Instead he is portrayed as an innocent abroad, bumbling along through a series of ‘gut decisions’ (graphically illustrated by Josh Brolin who occasionally gives his belly a dem...