Adrian Hamilton

The Independent’s comment editor, Adrian Hamilton writes a weekly column largely on international affairs with particular focus on the Middle East, Iran and foreign policy issues. Before joining the paper he was deputy editor of the Observer newspaper.

Adrian Hamilton: Cooper hasn't learnt from Labour's mistakes

With the euro teetering on the verge of collapse, a new report by the European Council accusing the Prime Minister of Kosovo of murdering Serbian captives and trading in their body parts, and total uncertainty overhanging Afghanistan's future, foreign policy is no longer a matter of vague principles. It is about what stand you take on the specifics.

Recently by Adrian Hamilton

Adrian Hamilton: We shouldn't give up on the euro just yet

Thursday, 9 December 2010

International Studies: People worry too much about the euro. Not, of course, the commentators and politicians who never believed in it in the first place and are now revelling in its incipient collapse.

Adrian Hamilton: The same blind alley, the same old consequences

Thursday, 2 December 2010

So American diplomats and security officials, according to the latest leaked documents, are desperately anxious that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal might find its way into the hands of terrorists. What is new in that, you may well ask? Well, only that apparently another leaked document contains the view of a US official that Saudi Arabia remains a major source of funds and arms for jihadists round the world, despite all the promises by the Riyadh government that it was cracking down on such support.

Adrian Hamilton: Obama risks making the Korean crisis worse

Thursday, 25 November 2010

The very worst response to the Korean crisis is to do what President Obama did yesterday: that is to announce a joint US-South Korean military exercise on the border this weekend. The State Department then explained that the exercise had been planned for some time and that its aim was one of deterrence rather than aggression. But it also announced that it would be moving an aircraft carrier from Japan to Korean waters forthwith.

Adrian Hamilton: Of course Iran wants to meddle in its region

Thursday, 28 October 2010

When a friend of mine from university joined the Foreign Office, his first posting was to Yemen where one of his duties was security. Opening his instructions for what to do in case of rioters attacking the embassy building, he was told to go to the safe and get out the bag of gold coins kept there. If the rioters broke through he was to stand at the top of the stairs and toss the coins down to the crowd below and then make his escape.

Adrian Hamilton: Multiculturalism needs defenders

Thursday, 21 October 2010

Multiculturalism was once a term of tolerance, an acceptance of difference in an increasingly cosmopolitan and urbanised western world. Today it has become just a convenient label which politicians can use to assault immigration. Now Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has seized on it to read the funeral rites over an open society. "Multikulti," she declared at the weekend, "has utterly failed." It was wishful thinking, she argued, to believe that Germans and foreigners "could live happily side by side.... We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn't stay, but that's not the reality."

Adrian Hamilton: Israel has no future as a purely Jewish state

Thursday, 14 October 2010

More cynical observers of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, tend to dismiss his latest offer to the Palestinians, to stop settlement building if only they would recognise Israel as a "Jewish" state, as typical of the man – a meaningless gesture to evade commitment. "Bibi", in the eyes not just of the left in Israel but increasingly the officials of Washington and Europe, is the "Tricky Dicky" of the Middle East, only without Nixon's vision of international affairs.

Adrian Hamilton: You can't blame it all on a rogue trader

Thursday, 7 October 2010

If you thought that Britain was adept at putting the blame for disaster down the line and never up it, you should look across the Channel. The Paris trial of the rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel for nearly bringing Société Générale down with €4.9bn losses on unauthorised trades ended as you would have expected, with the full majesty of the French law being brought down on the little man.

Adrian Hamilton: Those not against Iraq were with it

Thursday, 30 September 2010

There's a wonderful exchange in Billy Wilder's fast-talking comedy of post-war Berlin, One,Two, Three, when the Coca-Cola executive, played by James Cagney, asks his German assistant: "Just what did you do in the War?" "I was in the underground," comes the reply. "You mean fighting Hitler?" asks Cagney. "No, just digging it."

Adrian Hamilton: Global poverty isn't what it was

Thursday, 23 September 2010

Gordon Brown says he feels "anger" at the failure of some rich countries to stump up the money for the Millennium Development Goals decided at the UN 10 years ago. Nick Clegg, attending the conference in New York of 140 countries to review progress, yesterday called "on others to show equal resolve" to Britain in "honouring their commitments."

Adrian Hamilton: More speed, less haste in defence

Thursday, 16 September 2010

The current rushed strategic review is being "money-driven rather than driven by the threats to our country," accuses James Arbuthnot of the Defence Select Committee. Well, come off it. When has Britain's defence ever been other than "money-driven"? The only countries driven by military needs are those which have planned aggression. The rest, even one with as global an imperial past as the UK, have muddled along with budgetary constraints reinforced by public indifference until the threats become real and actual war takes over.

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