Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

O’Neill highlights the crude ethno-nationalist sentiment which informs an SNP aide’s recent analysis of the political situation in Northern Ireland, in the light of republican murders. A Herald article examines Mark Hirst’s comments and political reaction to them, both from his own party and its opponents. His argument can be summarised, in blunt terms, as advice to nationalists to outbreed unionists, switching strategy ‘from the bomb … to the bedroom’, as he charmingly puts it. It is not, of course, a unique contention in nationalist circles and it finds echoes on this side of the Irish Sea. Neither the SNP, nor other modern nationalist parties in the main, expressly articulate such crude ethnocentric narrative. Hirst’s article has, however, prompted Scottish Unionist to consider the Scottish Nationalists’ tendency to endorse multiple separatist causes, throughout Europe and beyond. Far from restricting its ambition to the independence of Scotland, the SNP supports campaigns ...

Taking its cue from European Union foreign ministers , Nato has agreed to limited reengagement with Russia . The decision represents a victory for those European states which favour a less belligerent approach to their eastern neighbour and a defeat for ‘new Cold War’ hawks in Washington. Germany and France have reiterated their determination that no shortcuts to Nato membership should be available to Georgia or Ukraine. In the States, the meeting, which took place in Brussels between Nato foreign ministers, is being spun rather differently . By this interpretation, the US government, represented by Condoleeza Rice, has agreed to reengagement only on condition that work continues to prepare Georgia and Ukraine’s route to membership. The Germans and French now insist that the two aspirant members must fully complete the MAP process, reversing the position they assumed at the Bucharest conference earlier this year. War in South Ossetia exemplified the danger associated with subsumin...

George Bush’s insistence ahead of the NATO summit in Bucharest that Georgia and Ukraine should be set on the road to full membership exposes the train of thought which is souring relations between Russia, America and other western states following the American line. The attitude is not simply that Russia’s foreign policy concerns are not legitimate. Effectively the way the US is acting denies that Russia has any legitimate foreign policy concerns at all. To advance this military alliance, historically hostile to the USSR, in a way that will encircle Russia and penetrate deep into the country’s sphere of influence undermines Russia’s interests without a shadow of a doubt. If Russia were to enter a military alliance with Canada and Mexico would the US remain unconcerned because the Kremlin insisted the alliance was not a threat to the US? The US may maintain that expansion does not pose a threat to Russia, but ask the states which are poised to join why exactly they wish to join th...