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David Miliband must stop playing with fire
Robert Skidelsky
The Times
| Thursday, August 28, 2008
Russia, according to President Medvedev, is ready for a “new Cold War”. If politicians, including our own, want a new Cold War, they will get one. But the fault will lie as much with us as Russia.
Every move in Russia's foreign policy is greeted by the West with alarm and suspicion. But its policy has been perfectly consistent for years. Russia's aim has been to rebuild itself as a great power, and use that power to regain a dominant position in the old Soviet space it surrendered in the 1990s. In Russia's perception, the United States wants to take over the space vacated by Russia as fruit of its victory in the Cold War, using Nato as a ...
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The Press versus Privacy
Robert Skidelsky
Project Syndicate
| Wednesday, August 13, 2008
| 
Russian
Privacy has become a big issue in contemporary jurisprudence. The “right to privacy” is enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. But Article 8 is balanced by Article 10, which guarantees “free expression of opinion.” So what right has priority when they conflict?
Under what circumstances, for example, is it right to curtail press freedom in order to protect the right to privacy, or vice versa? The same balance is being sought between the right of citizens to data privacy and government demands for access to personal information to fight crime, ...
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KGB humour will not reassure foreign investors
Robert Skidelsky
Vedomosti
| Thursday, July 31, 2008
In a major speech last Thursday in NizhnyNovgorod Vladimir Putin accused the coal and steel company Mechel of price-fixing. In a phrase which reverberated round the world, he hoped its absent chief, Zyugin, would get well soon ‘or we will have to send him a doctor to clean up all these problems’. On Friday, a third of the value was knocked off Mechel’s shares, and the RTS fell by 5 per cent.
So much we know, but what lies behind Putin’s speech? It can be read –and this is the official line – as a statesmanlike pronouncement on the Russian economy, which drew attention to the problem of inflation, and the contribution of metal companies to ...
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A tragedy in Zimbabwe
Robert Skidelsky
Vedomosti
| Thursday, July 17, 2008
Robert Mugabe is a disaster for Zimbabwe. In his 28 years in power he has reduced a former thriving British colony to a political and economic hell. He rules by massacre, torture, and intimidation. He shamelessly steals the elections he still allows. No wonder he boasts that only God can remove him from power.
The once-prosperous Zimbabwean economy is in meltdown, with prices doubling roughly once a week, GDP shrinking at a rate of 10 per cent a year, most farms abandoned, millions living off food aid from abroad, and the few remaining commercial enterprises subject to illegal or pseudo-legal confiscations. Life expectancy which was still ...
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Re-Thinking the Iranian Nuclear Threat
Robert Skidelsky
Project Syndicate
| Sunday, July 13, 2008
| Russian
Would it be a great disaster if Iran had nuclear weapons? As a habitual contrarian, I pose the question because almost everyone seems to believe that it would, and that it must be prevented at all costs. But is that true?
John Bolton, the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, said in April that “if the choice is [Iran] continuing [towards a nuclear bomb] or the use of force, I think you’re at a Hitler marching into the Rhineland point.” Bush, too, has compared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler.
But these so-called statesmen never consider what might have happened had Germany and Britain both had nuclear ...
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