The endgame is in sight in the Middle East. It has been brought into view by the growing recognition that Syria and Iran have to be involved, not just in negotiating an Iraqi settlement, but in underwriting peace in the Middle East as a whole. It is increasingly accepted that the American-British-Israeli policy of reshaping … Continue reading Opinion: A peace deal for the whole of the Middle East
Author: Robert Skidelsky
Economist and member of the House of Lords
Could the poisoner be from Prince Putin’s court
THE POISONING in London of the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko confirms what we already know: that it is dangerous to criticise the Kremlin. It comes less than a month after the shooting in Moscow of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who tirelessly exposed Russian atrocities in Chechnya. Paul Klebnikov, another crusading journalist, was shot dead … Continue reading Could the poisoner be from Prince Putin’s court
Clustering on the Hi-Tech Bandwagon
By Robert Skidelsky and Pavel Erochkine Economists have started to become interested in the economics of clusters. Why do many industries concentrate in one or two locations? Why do some countries, regions and districts grow much faster than others? In the past the answer was obvious: What determined industrial location was climate or proximity to … Continue reading Clustering on the Hi-Tech Bandwagon
Drawing a Dog in Iraq
The Prince of the Marshes and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq by Rory Stewart Harcourt, 396 pp., $25.00 1. The British governed Iraq under a League of Nations mandate, and with some success, between 1920 and 1932. They returned to southern Iraq in 2003 as a junior member of the US-led coalition … Continue reading Drawing a Dog in Iraq
Hayek versus Keynes: The Road to Reconciliation
Published in The Cambridge Companion to Hayek, edited by Edward Feser, (Cambridge University Press, 2006) ‘[Keynes] was one of the great liberals of our time. He saw clearly that in England and the United States during the nineteen-thirties, the road to serfdom lay, not down the path of too much government control, but down the path … Continue reading Hayek versus Keynes: The Road to Reconciliation
Hot, Cold and Imperial
1945: The War That Never Ended by Gregor Dallas Yale University Press, 739 pp., $40.00 Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors by Charles S. Maier Harvard University Press, 373 pp., $27.95 The question of how the world should be run, and America's part in its running, is the subject of much academic and political … Continue reading Hot, Cold and Imperial
Book Review: John Bull’s Small Ideas
Review of Absent Minds by Stefan Collini Oxford University Press, £25 This ambitious work is about British attitudes to intellectuals. Specifically, it is about why the British have been so reluctant to admit that they have intellectuals. Collini calls it the "denial" or "absence" or "exceptionalist" thesis. The claim to immunity from intellectual influences is … Continue reading Book Review: John Bull’s Small Ideas
What to do with the Stabilization Fund?
By Robert Skidelsky and Pavel Erochkine President Vladimir Putin used the bulk of his state-of-the-nation address to spell out measures aimed at improving the living standards of ordinary Russians. The measures will cost money — lots of money — but Russia can afford to spend as it is sitting on an ever-growing pile of cash … Continue reading What to do with the Stabilization Fund?
Obituary J. K. Galbraith
For 20 years in the middle of the last century, John Kenneth Galbraith, who died yesterday at 97, was the "best known living economist". But he was not, and will never be, regarded as a great economist by economists. He is best thought of as a sociological economist, who tried to develop a theory and … Continue reading Obituary J. K. Galbraith
The madness of bombing Iran
THERE IS no doubt that Western opinion is being softened up for a US or Israeli strike against the Iranian centrifuges at Natanz. “Can anyone within range of Iran’s missiles feel safe?”, screams a full-page advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, displaying a map of the Eurasian land mass with Iran at its centre. As … Continue reading The madness of bombing Iran
Robert Skidelsky 