Cold War

Ukraine, 1 year on: China’s peace plan is not a plan

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

A year after the renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine, China has come forward with a 12-point statement of its position on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis. That, at least, is what is called by both the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and

It is widely reported in the international news media as a peace plan. See, among others, AlJazeera, AP, BBC, CNN, DW, Guardian, New York Times, Reuters, Sky, Time (though it calls it a proposal).

But it is not a plan and China does not say it’s a plan – it’s a position according to the government and to CGTN, Beijing’s state-run English-language news channel (though, to be fair, CGTN joined the crowd and called it a plan on the second day of coverage). Further, it does not outline either what a peace settlement could consist of or a pathway for getting there. It is a statement of opinion that stays away from specifics about what its support for dialogue and negotiation could mean in practice.

And I think that in ramping up a statement of position into a peace plan that can then be criticised for lacking specifics, the news media are missing something.

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Impressions from Moscow – MCIS 2018

/ Dan Smith / 2 Comments

The seventh Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS) was on Wednesday 4 and Thursday 5 April. Listening to the speeches and chatting with various people during and after it, my first thoughts concern three related issues: the growing confidence of Russian policy; soft power; and shared concern about the increasing risks in global politics, together with deep differences about where those risks come from.  Continue reading →

The international security conference tell

/ Dan Smith / 2 Comments

And so to Beijing, as I might write in the diary I don’t keep, for the Seventh Xiangshan Forum, a big day-and-a-half conference on international security affairs. It is the third such event I have been to this year – first Munich, then Moscow and now Beijing. In some ways quite similar yet also very different, what can be gleaned from each? Continue reading →

European security. Crisis? What crisis?

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

The tone of this year’s Munich Security Conference – the Davos of global security – was captured by the Munich Security Report’s theme: ‘Boundless chaos, reckless spoilers, helpless guardians.’ The front page headline on The Security Times, a conference special edition from the stable of Die Zeit, featured a box of matches and urged an appropriate response: ‘Don’t do stupid stuff.’ Continue reading →