Tim Willasey-Wilsey
Biographic Data
| ID | 5791592 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tim Willasey-Wilsey |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tim |
| FAMILY NAME | Willasey-Wilsey |
| SIGNATURE | WILLASEY-WILSEY T |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London and formerly of the FCO, UK |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 57 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Peacemaking and peacebuilding in South Africa
Journal Article Peacemaking and peacebuilding in South Africa: the National Peace Accord, 1991–1994 Get access Peacemaking and peacebuilding in South Africa: the National Peace Accord, 1991–1994. By Liz Carmichael. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. 2022. 520pp. £25.00. Isbn978 1 84701 256 2. Available as e-book. Tim Willasey-Wilsey Tim Willasey-Wilsey King's College London and The Royal United Services Institute, UK Search for other works by this aut…
How Britain broke the world
Journal Article How Britain broke the world: war, greed and blunders from Kosovo to Afghanistan, 1997–2022 Get access How Britain broke the world: war, greed and blunders from Kosovo to Afghanistan, 1997–2022. By Arthur Snell. London: Canbury Press. 2022. 384pp. £25.00. Isbn978 1 91245 460 0. Available as e-book. Tim Willasey-Wilsey Tim Willasey-Wilsey King's College London and The Royal United Services Institute, UK Search for other works by thi…
Jihadism in Pakistan
Journal Article Jihadism in Pakistan: Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and the local militants Get access Jihadism in Pakistan: Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and the local militants. By Antonio Giustozzi. London: I.B. Tauris. 2023. 256pp. £75.00. Isbn978 0 75564 735 4. Available as e-book. Tim Willasey-Wilsey Tim Willasey-Wilsey King's College London and The Royal United Services Institute, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Sch…
Beyond Versailles
Journal Article Beyond Versailles: the 1919 moment and a new order in east Asia Get access Beyond Versailles: the 1919 moment and a new order in east Asia. Edited by Tosh Minohara and Evan Dawley. London and Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2021. 310pp. £97.00. Isbn978 1 49855 446 6. Available as e-book. Tim Willasey-Wilsey Tim Willasey-Wilsey King's College London, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Internati…
The Bin Laden papers
Admiral William McRaven, Commander of the United States Joint Special Operations Command, took a calculated risk in the early morning of 2 May 2012. He allowed the Navy SEAL team an extra 18 minutes in Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad to collect any computers and papers that might help the CIA deplete the remnants of Al-Qaeda. DOCEX (Document exploitation) was not new to Special Forces operators: it had become a standard practice on an al…
The ledger
The events at Kabul airport last August represented one of the most humiliating moments in United States overseas history. The western allies are only spared their full share of the opprobrium because they were barely consulted. Such was the chaotic end to a 20-year campaign in Afghanistan which had started so well. David Kilcullen and Greg Mills, the two authors of this fascinating book, held influential positions in the coalition and are well p…
The Afghanistan file
Prince Turki AlFaisal has chosen a good moment to publish the narrative of his involvement with Afghanistan, just as publishers are rushing out accounts of the shambolic end to NATO's 20-year war in that hapless country. It is rather unusual for a senior Saudi prince to write a book, and doubly so when that prince was the chief of the Saudi intelligence service (the General Intelligence Directorate, GID) for the 24 years leading up to the 9/11 at…
We are Bellingcat
Afghan crucible
Post wall post square
As I write this review there is a Russian army encamped on Ukraine's eastern border while President Putin demands that Ukraine must never be admitted to NATO. How on earth did we get here only three decades after the remarkable events of 1989 and 1990? This is a superb book by Kristina Spohr. In 600 pages of text, she describes the fall of the Soviet empire in 1989 and 1990, and the negotiations that resulted in the world as we know it today. The…
Animosity at bay
The nine lives of Pakistan
The nine lives of Pakistan: dispatches from a divided nation The nine lives of Pakistan: dispatches from a divided nation. By Declan Walsh. London: Bloomsbury. 2020. 332pp. Index. £20.00. Isbn978 1 40886 847 8. Available as e-book. Tim Willasey-Wilsey Tim Willasey-Wilsey King's College London and formerly of the FCO, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 97, Issue 2, March 2021, …
Legacy of empire
‘Conciliation is useless,’ wrote the 1937 Peel Commission, ‘there can be no question of fusion or assimilation between Jewish and Arab cultures’ (p. 223). It was brave of Gardner Thompson, an expert on British colonialism in east Africa, to immerse himself in the cauldron of the Arab–Israeli dispute. The result, however, is a book of impressive clarity, as he charts the story of the Zionists’ quest for a homeland in Palestine, from the days when …
The anarchy
Thomas Twining, the tea merchant, visiting the site of the battle of Buxar in the 1790s pondered how a group of merchants—the British East India Company—had achieved dominion over India. ‘Results so disproportionate to the means which produced them seem quite inexplicable’ (p. 202). How did a joint stock company with a modest headquarters in Leadenhall Street come to rule most of India and to have an army of almost 200,000 soldiers? William Dalry…
No go world
No go world: how fear is redrawing our maps and infecting our politics No go world: how fear is redrawing our maps and infecting our politics. By Ruben Andersson. Oakland: University of California Press. 2019. 337pp. £25.00. Isbn978 0 52096 770 0. Available as e-book. Tim Willasey-Wilsey Tim Willasey-Wilsey King's College London and formerly of the FCO, UK Corresponding author: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford…
Not even past
As I read this book, Zalmai Khalilzad was in Qatar deep in negotiation with Mullah Barader and the Taliban delegation trying to end the 19-year war in Afghanistan. The Americans are determined to leave and the Taliban (and Pakistan) will make sure they do. All the achievements of the coalition, from education and infrastructure to disrupting terrorist groups, risk being lost. The end will not be ‘peace with honour’ but defeat. This appealing set …
Marque and reprisal
Marque and reprisal: the spheres of public and private warfare Marque and reprisal: the spheres of public and private warfare. By Kenneth B Moss. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2019. 452pp. Index. £38.37. Isbn978 0 70062 775 2. Available as e-book. Tim Willasey-Wilsey Tim Willasey-Wilsey King's College London and formerly of the FCO, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 9…
The room where it happened
This book provoked a press frenzy when it was published and the text was hurriedly filleted by journalists for evidence of President Donald Trump's unsuitability for high office. But what does John Bolton's memoir tell us about United States foreign policy during his brief tenure as national security advisor (NSA)? I was ready for tales of Washington's foreign policy dysfunction. I had witnessed interdepartmental discord during numerous trips to …
National secession
Between 1945 and 2010, there were 171 campaigns of national secession, of which only 26 were successful (pp. 5–6). And, of those 26, 14 were a direct result of the fall of the Soviet Union. Philip Roeder's treatise, that national secession is extremely hard to achieve, is founded on this statistical analysis. Furthermore, most successes are brought about not by moments of ‘bold action’ (p. 20) by the secessionists but because (in 75 per cent of c…
Indian nuclear policy
Harsh Pant and Yogesh Joshi explain in their preface that the size constraints of the publication require them to be focused and disciplined. The result is a marvellously concise and well-produced book, comprising only 165 pages of text, which explains the evolution of Indian nuclear policy with great clarity and erudition. The focus is almost entirely on the military aspects of the programme. On page three the authors declare that ‘India's nucle…
The cauldron
The cauldron grabs readers’ attention from the outset. Those who feel that the Libyan intervention has been a disaster will be propelled into the text in search of an explanation. Rob Weighill was successively Director of Plans and Director of Operations at NATO's Joint Force Command in Naples, which conducted most of the military campaign. His contention is that NATO in Naples rigorously stuck to the mandates set out in the Security Council Reso…
The people next door
‘Neither the extent of goodwill nor the extent of hostility’ between India and Pakistan ‘can be underestimated’ (p. 303). This is the conclusion of T. C. A. Raghavan's remarkable account of the tortuous relations between the two nations since Partition in 1947. Unlike most writers on the subject, Raghavan focuses as much on the goodwill as the hostility, as he charts the almost endless succession of highs and lows in bilateral relations. Indeed, …
From Byron to Bin Laden
‘Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home’. So said James Mattis, the former US Defence Secretary (p. 228). At times, nations have tried to prevent the phenomenon of foreign volunteering. In Britain and elsewhere, there has been legislation over the past three centuries, but it has been selectively used. Even today, there is a distinct difference between how the state and the public view British nationals…
World of War
In 1978 General Sir John Hackett (with the assistance of a small group of military and civilian colleagues) published his novel The Third World War: August 1985 (New York: Macmillan) with the primary aim of demonstrating how poorly the West was prepared for a conflict with the Soviet Union. It begins with a scenario in which the Soviets launch a limited conventional attack on the West and ends with the nuclear destruction of Birmingham and Minsk.…
Directorate S
‘Can someone remind me why we are in Afghanistan?’ asked Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, during her trip to London in February 2008. It was doubtless meant as a rhetorical device to get the official discussions under way, but it led to some contorted explanations. It did not feel convincing. Few books have left me feeling as uncomfortable as Steve Coll's Directorate S. For this is an account of lost opportunities. It is a ‘humbling c…
The room where it happened
This book provoked a press frenzy when it was published and the text was hurriedly filleted by journalists for evidence of President Donald Trump's unsuitability for high office. But what does John Bolton's memoir tell us about United States foreign policy during his brief tenure as national security advisor (NSA)? I was ready for tales of Washington's foreign policy dysfunction. I had witnessed interdepartmental discord during numerous trips to …
Waging insurgent warfare
In this absorbing book Seth Jones tells us that there has been a palpable revolt against counter-insurgency (COIN) theory in recent years (p. 176). Little wonder. The West has proved inept at COIN in both Iraq and Afghanistan. There were several reasons. Too much COIN theory was based on the period of colonial withdrawal, particularly the British in Malaya, the French in Algeria and the Americans in Vietnam. A wider problem was that COIN theory h…
The anarchy
Thomas Twining, the tea merchant, visiting the site of the battle of Buxar in the 1790s pondered how a group of merchants—the British East India Company—had achieved dominion over India. ‘Results so disproportionate to the means which produced them seem quite inexplicable’ (p. 202). How did a joint stock company with a modest headquarters in Leadenhall Street come to rule most of India and to have an army of almost 200,000 soldiers? William Dalry…
From Byron to Bin Laden
‘Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home’. So said James Mattis, the former US Defence Secretary (p. 228). At times, nations have tried to prevent the phenomenon of foreign volunteering. In Britain and elsewhere, there has been legislation over the past three centuries, but it has been selectively used. Even today, there is a distinct difference between how the state and the public view British nationals…
We are Bellingcat
Jihad as grand strategy
When the Soviets departed from Afghanistan in 1989 there was a satisfied feeling in western capitals of a job well done. But there were to be consequences. By 1993 two of the mujahideen groups were fighting for control of Kabul and in Kashmir there were terrorist attacks against Indian forces. What on earth was going on? Over the coming months and years the view developed that Pakistan must have decided, as a matter of national policy, to continu…
Unwinnable
Theo Farrell has written the best book so far on Britain's recent war in Afghanistan. He provides a detailed analysis, in narrative form, of the campaign in Helmand from 2006 to its conclusion eight years later. His book is also beautifully written, not easy when the subject-matter, military campaigns, is littered with acronyms and impenetrable doctrine—I glided through the pages in one day. But it does not make for comfortable reading. I was onl…
The Bin Laden papers
Admiral William McRaven, Commander of the United States Joint Special Operations Command, took a calculated risk in the early morning of 2 May 2012. He allowed the Navy SEAL team an extra 18 minutes in Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad to collect any computers and papers that might help the CIA deplete the remnants of Al-Qaeda. DOCEX (Document exploitation) was not new to Special Forces operators: it had become a standard practice on an al…
The ledger
The events at Kabul airport last August represented one of the most humiliating moments in United States overseas history. The western allies are only spared their full share of the opprobrium because they were barely consulted. Such was the chaotic end to a 20-year campaign in Afghanistan which had started so well. David Kilcullen and Greg Mills, the two authors of this fascinating book, held influential positions in the coalition and are well p…
Afghan crucible
Directorate S
‘Can someone remind me why we are in Afghanistan?’ asked Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, during her trip to London in February 2008. It was doubtless meant as a rhetorical device to get the official discussions under way, but it led to some contorted explanations. It did not feel convincing. Few books have left me feeling as uncomfortable as Steve Coll's Directorate S. For this is an account of lost opportunities. It is a ‘humbling c…
Peacemaking and peacebuilding in South Africa
Journal Article Peacemaking and peacebuilding in South Africa: the National Peace Accord, 1991–1994 Get access Peacemaking and peacebuilding in South Africa: the National Peace Accord, 1991–1994. By Liz Carmichael. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. 2022. 520pp. £25.00. Isbn978 1 84701 256 2. Available as e-book. Tim Willasey-Wilsey Tim Willasey-Wilsey King's College London and The Royal United Services Institute, UK Search for other works by this aut…
Jihadism in Pakistan
Journal Article Jihadism in Pakistan: Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and the local militants Get access Jihadism in Pakistan: Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and the local militants. By Antonio Giustozzi. London: I.B. Tauris. 2023. 256pp. £75.00. Isbn978 0 75564 735 4. Available as e-book. Tim Willasey-Wilsey Tim Willasey-Wilsey King's College London and The Royal United Services Institute, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Sch…
Legacy of empire
‘Conciliation is useless,’ wrote the 1937 Peel Commission, ‘there can be no question of fusion or assimilation between Jewish and Arab cultures’ (p. 223). It was brave of Gardner Thompson, an expert on British colonialism in east Africa, to immerse himself in the cauldron of the Arab–Israeli dispute. The result, however, is a book of impressive clarity, as he charts the story of the Zionists’ quest for a homeland in Palestine, from the days when …
National secession
Between 1945 and 2010, there were 171 campaigns of national secession, of which only 26 were successful (pp. 5–6). And, of those 26, 14 were a direct result of the fall of the Soviet Union. Philip Roeder's treatise, that national secession is extremely hard to achieve, is founded on this statistical analysis. Furthermore, most successes are brought about not by moments of ‘bold action’ (p. 20) by the secessionists but because (in 75 per cent of c…
The 2020 commission report on the North Korean nuclear attacks against the United States
In the 1970s and 1980s we were painfully conscious that we lived on the brink of a catastrophe, perhaps even oblivion. There was no shortage of books or films about nuclear war. Then came Mikhail Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War and we all relaxed. Now, when an old ‘protect and survive’ leaflet is found in a cupboard it is more a source of amusement than horror. However, the threat of nuclear war has not gone away. In fact, it is every bit a…
Deadly impasse
This slim volume reviews relations between India and Pakistan from 1999 to 2009. The narrative of events is well and clearly described, as is the profusion of violent incidents from the Kargil War of 1999 through to the assault on the Indian parliament in 2001, the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 and the two bombings of the Indian Embassy in Kabul in 2008 and 2009. In fact it is surprising that, in spite of such circumstances, so much dialogu…
Talking to terrorists
Talking to terrorists: how to end armed conflicts. By Jonathan Powell. London: The Bodley Head. 2014. 408pp. Index. £20.00. ISBN 978 1 84792 229 8. Available as e-book. Jonathan Powell, as Downing Street Chief of Staff, was Tony Blair's chief negotiator in Northern Ireland. In that capacity he played a key role in negotiating and then delivering the Good Friday Agreement: the subject of a separate book, Great hatred, little room (The Bodley Head,…
We love death as you love life’
On a miserable Saturday afternoon in January 1999, I was summoned to a meeting in the Foreign Secretary's Office. Robin Cook was otherwise engaged, fighting for his political life in the wake of the publication of his former wife's book. The tone of the well-attended meeting was sombre. It appeared that a group of British jihadists, probably under the influence of Abu Hamza (later famous in the tabloids as the hook-handed imam of Finsbury Park mo…
The army of Afghanistan
The army of Afghanistan: a political history of a fragile institution. By Antonio Giustozzi. London: Hurst. 2015. 309pp. £35.00. ISBN 978 1 84904 481 3. In the autumn of 2005, when Britain was considering its deployment to Helmand, I asked a group of military officers if they had studied the Soviet experience in Afghanistan (1979–89) and whether there were lessons to be learnt. Some had indeed read Russian texts, but the consensus around the tabl…
Unconventional warfare in south Asia
This work is a beguiling prospect for anyone who has been involved in south Asia or has an interest in the region. The idea of analysing so many distinct insurgencies and counter-insurgency (COIN) campaigns within the covers of one book is both ambitious and tantalizing. From Islamist groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) through to the Maoist Naxalites and the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka there are so many contrasting themes: separatism, religion, tr…
Pakistan
I would not normally read a book about Pakistan written by a former Indian diplomat for fear of bias. However, I knew Tilak Devasher when he was posted to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad and was aware of his fascination with Pakistan and of his scholarship. Indeed, this is a thoughtful, meticulously researched and well-written work. It is certainly tough on Pakistan's failings and not quick to identify its strengths (like its vigorously f…
At the end of military intervention
For those of us who were involved in Iraq or Afghanistan, this volume of 20 separate chapters is uncomfortable but essential reading. The key question is how to manage the orderly withdrawal of a force after a military intervention, while leaving a sustainable and functioning state behind. It was the West's failure to handle this transition phase successfully in Iraq and (possibly) in Afghanistan that led directly to the marked reluctance to put …
Deadly impasse
This slim volume reviews relations between India and Pakistan from 1999 to 2009. The narrative of events is well and clearly described, as is the profusion of violent incidents from the Kargil War of 1999 through to the assault on the Indian parliament in 2001, the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 and the two bombings of the Indian Embassy in Kabul in 2008 and 2009. In fact it is surprising that, in spite of such circumstances, so much dialogu…
Hopeless but optimistic
Douglas Wissing has produced a work of disarming starkness. His contention is not just that the United States' strategy in Afghanistan has been delusional but that it has also been corrupt. He concludes that ‘the same toxic system that connected ambitious American careerists, greedy US military and development corporations, Afghan kleptocrats and their jihadi collaborators was alive and well in Afghanistan’ (p. 165). The format of the book is dec…
Waging insurgent warfare
In this absorbing book Seth Jones tells us that there has been a palpable revolt against counter-insurgency (COIN) theory in recent years (p. 176). Little wonder. The West has proved inept at COIN in both Iraq and Afghanistan. There were several reasons. Too much COIN theory was based on the period of colonial withdrawal, particularly the British in Malaya, the French in Algeria and the Americans in Vietnam. A wider problem was that COIN theory h…
World of War
In 1978 General Sir John Hackett (with the assistance of a small group of military and civilian colleagues) published his novel The Third World War: August 1985 (New York: Macmillan) with the primary aim of demonstrating how poorly the West was prepared for a conflict with the Soviet Union. It begins with a scenario in which the Soviets launch a limited conventional attack on the West and ends with the nuclear destruction of Birmingham and Minsk.…
Directorate S
‘Can someone remind me why we are in Afghanistan?’ asked Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, during her trip to London in February 2008. It was doubtless meant as a rhetorical device to get the official discussions under way, but it led to some contorted explanations. It did not feel convincing. Few books have left me feeling as uncomfortable as Steve Coll's Directorate S. For this is an account of lost opportunities. It is a ‘humbling c…
Jihad as grand strategy
When the Soviets departed from Afghanistan in 1989 there was a satisfied feeling in western capitals of a job well done. But there were to be consequences. By 1993 two of the mujahideen groups were fighting for control of Kabul and in Kashmir there were terrorist attacks against Indian forces. What on earth was going on? Over the coming months and years the view developed that Pakistan must have decided, as a matter of national policy, to continu…
Unwinnable
Theo Farrell has written the best book so far on Britain's recent war in Afghanistan. He provides a detailed analysis, in narrative form, of the campaign in Helmand from 2006 to its conclusion eight years later. His book is also beautifully written, not easy when the subject-matter, military campaigns, is littered with acronyms and impenetrable doctrine—I glided through the pages in one day. But it does not make for comfortable reading. I was onl…
The 2020 commission report on the North Korean nuclear attacks against the United States
In the 1970s and 1980s we were painfully conscious that we lived on the brink of a catastrophe, perhaps even oblivion. There was no shortage of books or films about nuclear war. Then came Mikhail Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War and we all relaxed. Now, when an old ‘protect and survive’ leaflet is found in a cupboard it is more a source of amusement than horror. However, the threat of nuclear war has not gone away. In fact, it is every bit a…
National secession
Between 1945 and 2010, there were 171 campaigns of national secession, of which only 26 were successful (pp. 5–6). And, of those 26, 14 were a direct result of the fall of the Soviet Union. Philip Roeder's treatise, that national secession is extremely hard to achieve, is founded on this statistical analysis. Furthermore, most successes are brought about not by moments of ‘bold action’ (p. 20) by the secessionists but because (in 75 per cent of c…
Indian nuclear policy
Harsh Pant and Yogesh Joshi explain in their preface that the size constraints of the publication require them to be focused and disciplined. The result is a marvellously concise and well-produced book, comprising only 165 pages of text, which explains the evolution of Indian nuclear policy with great clarity and erudition. The focus is almost entirely on the military aspects of the programme. On page three the authors declare that ‘India's nucle…
The cauldron
The cauldron grabs readers’ attention from the outset. Those who feel that the Libyan intervention has been a disaster will be propelled into the text in search of an explanation. Rob Weighill was successively Director of Plans and Director of Operations at NATO's Joint Force Command in Naples, which conducted most of the military campaign. His contention is that NATO in Naples rigorously stuck to the mandates set out in the Security Council Reso…
The people next door
‘Neither the extent of goodwill nor the extent of hostility’ between India and Pakistan ‘can be underestimated’ (p. 303). This is the conclusion of T. C. A. Raghavan's remarkable account of the tortuous relations between the two nations since Partition in 1947. Unlike most writers on the subject, Raghavan focuses as much on the goodwill as the hostility, as he charts the almost endless succession of highs and lows in bilateral relations. Indeed, …
From Byron to Bin Laden
‘Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home’. So said James Mattis, the former US Defence Secretary (p. 228). At times, nations have tried to prevent the phenomenon of foreign volunteering. In Britain and elsewhere, there has been legislation over the past three centuries, but it has been selectively used. Even today, there is a distinct difference between how the state and the public view British nationals…
Legacy of empire
‘Conciliation is useless,’ wrote the 1937 Peel Commission, ‘there can be no question of fusion or assimilation between Jewish and Arab cultures’ (p. 223). It was brave of Gardner Thompson, an expert on British colonialism in east Africa, to immerse himself in the cauldron of the Arab–Israeli dispute. The result, however, is a book of impressive clarity, as he charts the story of the Zionists’ quest for a homeland in Palestine, from the days when …
The anarchy
Thomas Twining, the tea merchant, visiting the site of the battle of Buxar in the 1790s pondered how a group of merchants—the British East India Company—had achieved dominion over India. ‘Results so disproportionate to the means which produced them seem quite inexplicable’ (p. 202). How did a joint stock company with a modest headquarters in Leadenhall Street come to rule most of India and to have an army of almost 200,000 soldiers? William Dalry…
No go world
No go world: how fear is redrawing our maps and infecting our politics No go world: how fear is redrawing our maps and infecting our politics. By Ruben Andersson. Oakland: University of California Press. 2019. 337pp. £25.00. Isbn978 0 52096 770 0. Available as e-book. Tim Willasey-Wilsey Tim Willasey-Wilsey King's College London and formerly of the FCO, UK Corresponding author: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford…
Not even past
As I read this book, Zalmai Khalilzad was in Qatar deep in negotiation with Mullah Barader and the Taliban delegation trying to end the 19-year war in Afghanistan. The Americans are determined to leave and the Taliban (and Pakistan) will make sure they do. All the achievements of the coalition, from education and infrastructure to disrupting terrorist groups, risk being lost. The end will not be ‘peace with honour’ but defeat. This appealing set …
Marque and reprisal
Marque and reprisal: the spheres of public and private warfare Marque and reprisal: the spheres of public and private warfare. By Kenneth B Moss. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2019. 452pp. Index. £38.37. Isbn978 0 70062 775 2. Available as e-book. Tim Willasey-Wilsey Tim Willasey-Wilsey King's College London and formerly of the FCO, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 9…
The room where it happened
This book provoked a press frenzy when it was published and the text was hurriedly filleted by journalists for evidence of President Donald Trump's unsuitability for high office. But what does John Bolton's memoir tell us about United States foreign policy during his brief tenure as national security advisor (NSA)? I was ready for tales of Washington's foreign policy dysfunction. I had witnessed interdepartmental discord during numerous trips to …
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