British national interest in the Gulf: rediscovering a role? 20, May 2014
Posted by thegulfblog.com in The Gulf, UK.Tags: British national interest, British relations in the Gulf, National Interest, Persian Gulf, Raison D'etat
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My article for the journal International Affairs has been published in the May 2014 issue. The abstract is below and the link to the article ($) is here.
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The British government is in the process of re-energizing its relations with the Gulf states. A new Gulf strategy involving a range of activities including more frequent elite bilateral visits and proposals sometimes touted as Britain’s military ‘return to east of Suez’ are two key elements of the overarching strategy. Such polices are designed to fall in line with British national interest as identified by the government-authored 2010 National Security Strategy (NSS), which emphasizes the importance of security, trade, and promoting and expanding British values and influence as perennial British raisons d’etat. In the short term, the Gulf initiatives reflect and compliment these core interests, partly based on Britain’s historical role in the region, but mostly thanks to modern day trade interdependencies and mutually beneficial security-based cooperation. However, there is yet to emerge a coherent understanding of Britain’s longer-term national interest in the region. Instead, government-led, party-political priorities, at the expense of thorough apolitical analysis of long-term interests, appear to be unduly influential on the origins of both the Gulf proposals and the NSS conclusions themselves. Without a clear strategic, neutral grounding, both the Gulf prioritization and the NSS itself are weakened and their longevity undermined.
Ban Ki Moon slammed in FP magazine 25, June 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: Ban Ki Moon, Foreign Policy Magazine, Jacob Heilbrunn, National Interest, The UN
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Jacob Heilbrunn launches a scathing attack on Ban Ki Moon in Foreign Policy Magazine. Slating Moon for being idle in the midst of crisis, employing too many South Koreans, collecting too many honorary degrees and buying too many Samsung TVs, Heilbrunn clearly steps far, far over the line from objective analysis to angry, has-an-agenda, patronising, ill-informed ranting. And what a surprise, Heilbrunn is a commentator for the National Interest. What a surprise.
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