Iraqis don’t need more propaganda
At the end of last year, the Baghdad bureau of the Al-Arabiya news channel was shut down when twenty Iraqi policemen stormed the building in protest at what Donald Rumsfeld…
Articles, Briefings and Essays
The views expressed in the articles are those of each respective author and do not necessarily reflect the views or position of the Foreign Policy Centre.
Launch of the Civility Programme on Middle East Reform
It's a great honour for me to open this first conference of the Civility Programme. I want to talk today about why modernisation and reform in the Arab world matters…
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Profile of Rem Koolhaas
As a student in the 1970s at London's Architectural Association, Rem Koolhaas had to produce a "Summer Study" to get his diploma. Koolhaas wrote about the Berlin Wall, then the…
Spain is not Europe’s 9-11
Many Americans will see the backlash against Aznar as a victory for Al-Qaeda or further evidence of the limp-wristed nature of European allies. But the fact that it happened in…
Kosovo is a test of European will
March 2004 may mark a crucial month in the evolution of Europe’s post-Cold War strategy. Visiting Kosovo Polje, Javier Solana announced that the international community “cannot tolerate and will not…
What ever happened to globalisation?
“Everything about our world is changing – its economy, its technology, its culture, its way of living”, the Prime Minister told his Sedgefield constituents on the fifth of March. In…
California crosses the Atlantic; Observations on the European Constitution
Buried deep in the new draft European Union constitution is a single sentence that could bring California-style democracy to Europe. Article I-46 states that if you can collect a million…
After Abu Ghraib
Though Egypt's President Mubarak ridiculed the State Department's Middle East Plan as "push-button democracy" that would "open the door to chaos", and this year´s Arab League collapsed for daring to…
The EU has its own nation-building problems
In a month in which US hubris has met its nemesis in Najaf, Europhiles are indulging in some of their own. Speaking to the Financial Times, Gustav Hägglund, outgoing chief…
Can There be a New Compact Between Diplomats and Aid Agencies?
The development community's uneasiness about entering into dialogue with foreign policy makers is warranted. Much of the foreign policy community is instinctively inclined to prioritise stability or short-term political advantage…