Georgia's decision to seize large parts of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, on the evening of 7 August was a disastrous political miscalculation, even in an era that is increasingly defined by spectacularly poor judgement.

Within three days of the assault, Russian forces had responded by in effect neutralising Georgia's military capacity, which President Mikhail Saakashvili's government in Tbilisi had spent several years and considerable [...]

Looking a little like God in a Cecil B DeMille film, Radovan Karadzic was genuinely unrecognisable when he was arrested on a Belgrade bus last Monday evening. Yet even more astonishing was the news that he had been working as a crystal-rubbing therapist promoting well-being to audiences around Serbia. The killer as New Age healer - you couldn't make it up.

Several people who came into regular contact with Dragan [...]

As I trundle across America on a book tour during the Democratic primary race, I can't help recalling Jay McInerney's infelicitous response to 9/11 - about it being a bad week to have a book come out - even if this is in bad taste. In every city I go to, there's only one story. Except, that is . . . in Chicago. As I arrive in the Windy City, [...]

Scoops and shocks are thin on the ground in Moscow these days. As events of 2 March should confirm, elections are hardly nail-biting affairs, and nobody expects journalists to publish revelations about Vladimir Putin or his anointed successor, Dmitry Medvedev, dallying with a lobbyist. So when police grabbed 61-year-old Sergei Schneider on Moscow's fashionable Arbat Street and bundled him into an awaiting Black Maria on 24 January, they also shook [...]

Most people in the Balkans have seen the Kosovo train wreck coming for the past two years. But now that it is upon us, apart from some dark warnings, few have been able to spell out what the failure of talks on Kosovo's final status actually means.

The international significance of a debacle that reflects poorly on all participants is, by contrast, very clear: Russia and the United States have [...]

The Brown cabinet is feeling its way towards a foreign policy. Gordon Brown's first move was the pointed decision to appoint Mark Malloch Brown as a minister at the Foreign Office. A loyal servant of the United Nations and an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, the newly ennobled Malloch Brown is loathed by the Cheneyites.

As if that wasn't enough, Douglas Alexander then confirmed to the Council on Foreign [...]

Britain is caught in a vicious circle in Helmand Province. Its ill-conceived war on drugs in Afghanistan may hand the Taliban a huge victory - the collapse of Nato. It was perhaps appropriate that Britain, as the biggest consumer of Afghan heroin, take on the role of "lead nation" in counter-narcotics in Afghanistan. But this has been prosecuted on the cheap while Nato has refused to back the poppy eradication [...]

First, the historical record of Slobodan Milosevic. He won power by manipulating the mechanisms of a one-party state, toppling his mentor and close friend of 20 years, Ivan Stambolic, in a process of unadulterated Stalinism. (In 2000 his henchmen completed the parricide by murdering Stambolic.) He whipped up Serbian nationalism to strengthen his power base in the Yugoslav federation. He never won a democratic election that he didn't rig. He [...]

According to Tony Blair, Britain did not support America's action against Afghanistan solely be-cause of the war on terror. He also claimed that it presented a great opportunity to obliterate the opium industry - it is estimated that Afghanistan supplies 90 per cent of the heroin consumed in the UK. Yet even the government now admits that opium production in Afghan-istan has run out of control since the removal of [...]

One of the less familiar guests at the Labour conference this year will be Vlado Buckovski, the youthful prime minister of Macedonia, who has been invited to Brighton by Tony Blair. Macedonia may be off most people's radar screens now, as at any other time, but it is close to pulling off a medium-sized miracle. In November and December, the European Commission and Council of Ministers will rule on whether [...]