John Sweeney

"Buy this book" – John Sweeney "Engrossing and frankly deeply troubling" – The Bookseller "I cannot recommend this book highly enough" – Monocle "Engaging, authentic and original analyses ” – Shakespeare & Co Description Turmoil in the 2020s. • Russia is destroying Ukraine. • China threatens Taiwan and Southeast Asia. • Endless war in the Middle East sends waves of migrants and terrorists washing around the world. • And the biggest nations on Earth cannot agree effective action to stop the worst effects of global heating. Instead of being a global force for good, Britain has often fostered instability and division. In fact, the UK’s careless ‘humanitarian’ interventions, grandiosity and greed have helped to fracture the global order built after World War II. Why is the world so dangerous now? How Britain Broke the World is by former senior British diplomat Arthur Snell. It critically assesses UK foreign policy over the past 25 years, from Kosovo in 1998 to Afghanistan in 2021, while also scrutinising British policy towards the powerhouses of the USA, Russia, India, and China. Far from being unimportant, Snell reveals, Britain has often played a pivotal role in world affairs. For instance, London supplied the false intelligence that justified the Allied invasion of Iraq and plugged Russia’s corrupt elite into Western economies. Then come the bungled humanitarian interventions in foreign states. Without the UK’s marginal but key role, the author argues, it’s likely that wars would not have blighted the Balkans, Iraq, and Libya, hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved, and the world would be a safer place in the 2020s. Taking in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Snell charts the key political, economic and geographic factors that drive the behaviour of the most powerful and populous countries. Like a diplomatic version of Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall, How Britain Broke the World reveals the ignominious reality of UK foreign policy and the true state of world affairs. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Britain's role in international affairs. Buy the book to carry on reading Table of Contents INTRODUCTION. Former diplomat Arthur Snell starts with a car boom in Baghdad in 2005, amid the failure of the Allied operation after the Iraq War - which was a blow to the International rules-based order and shredded the credibility of Western governments, benefitting autocratic China and Russia 1. AN 'ETHICAL' FOREIGN POLICY. In 1997 the Labour Foreign Secretary Robin Cook set out the 'ethical' approach of Tony Blair's government to foreign policy. It spawned a doctrine of liberal intervention in foreign countries, starting with Kosovo, but extending to Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan 2. KOSOVO: WAR IN KOSOVO. Tony Blair's Labour government put together a global coalition to bomb Serbia to protect Kosovar Albanians, but, despite headlines to the contrary, the operation was not a success. Slobodan Milošević's forces increased their repression before NATO ground troops invaded 3. IRAQ, MI6 AND A BOTCHED INVASION. The Allied invasion of Iraq in 2003 was built on bogus intelligence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, largely supplied by Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. Mismanagement of Iraq post-Invasion fomented strife between Sunni and Shia 4. AFGHANISTAN: 'GOVERNMENT IN A BOX'. Britain failed to learn from the failures of its previous embarrassments in Afghanistan when it joined US forces in invading the country after the 9/11 attacks. The UK and US wrongly believed they could impose top-down rule on a massive, complex tribal country 5. LIBYA: CREATING A POWER VACUUM. Britain's role in unseating Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi in 2011 shows that Britain had not learnt the lessons from earlier failed liberal interventions. Its basis was false: no massacres were imminent. Post-invasion Libya has collapsed into chaos 6. SYRIA: A CONFLICT WITHOUT END. The ethnic composition of Syria is such that Bashar Al-Assad was always likely to cling to power. While there have been actual massacres involving actual weapons of mass destruction, Britain and other Western powers have allowed the Syrian civil war to rage for years 7. RUSSIA AND THE LONDON LAUNDROMAT. Britain has welcomed Russian billionaires to London, where they spend lavishly on financiers, lawyers, accountants. Ill-gotten riches have been ploughed into the heart of the UK financial system 8. CHINA: THE GOLDEN ERROR OF KOWTOW. Despite China respecting power and toughness, David Cameron's government prostrated itself before Beijing in an attempt to lure Chinese money, which has been pumped into UK telecommunications and the nuclear industry 9. SAUDI ARABIA, OIL AND INFLUENCE. Britain helps run the Saudi military in exchange for big defence deals and other riches, while turning a blind eye to Saudi human rights abuses, sponsorship of Islamic extremism and its destruction of Yemen 10. INDIA AND THE POLITICS OF EMPIRE. Britain has swithered over its response to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has fostered Hindu extremism that threatens other religious groups in India such as Muslims and Christians. More recently the UK has misunderstood India's post-Brexit demands 11. THE US AND THE UK 'SPECIAL' RELATIONSHIP. Britain has consistently overestimated the strength of its strategic alignment with America, which is on a par with that of France or Germany. The US-UK relationship is primarily about security as part of the 'Five Eyes' intelligence network 12. BREXIT: ISOLATION IN EUROPE. While an important regional power, with considerable resources, the UK can overestimate its ability to shape events and in recent decades has tended to be chronically short-termist CONCLUSION. Britain has considerable gusto for bold initiatives, such as the interventions in Kosovo, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq. But it does not have the enthusiasm for considering their long-term implications. The system lacks expertise and is unwilling to listen to external experts. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. 'Many of the people I owe the most to cannot be named. They know who they are and I am eternally grateful. These people collectively have centuries of experience in every corner of the world and it has been my privilege to work alongside them.' REFERENCES. A full list of notes and sources for key facts about British foreign policy. The sources range from books about the UK's military interventions to think tank reports to newspaper coverage. INDEX. From Abdullah, King of Saudi Arabis, to Zimbabwe, an extensive list of pages references

Murdered in Mongolia in 1935 on the orders of Stalin, the Welsh investigative journalist Gareth Jones is a national hero in Ukraine for reporting the truth about the Holodomor (the Soviet Union’s politically-driven famine that killed millions) and is widely believed to be the inspiration for the character Mr Jones in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. A graduate of Aberystwyth, Strasbourg and Cambridge universities, Jones—who spoke five languages—was talented, well-connected, and determined to discover the truth behind the momentous political events of the post-war period. He travelled widely to report on Mussolini’s Italy, the fledgling Irish Free State, and the Depression-ravaged United States, and was the first foreign journalist to travel with Hitler and Goebbels after the Nazis had taken power in Germany. Jones’ quest for truth also drew him to the Soviet Union in 1934 where his reporting of the Holodomor incurred the wrath of Stalin. The following year, on the eve of his 30th birthday, Jones was shot dead by Chinese communist bandits with links to the NKVD, the Soviet Union’s secret police, and is buried in his hometown of Barry in Wales. Now the subject of Mr Jones, a feature film that depicts his battle against the Kremlin’s ‘fake news’ agenda of famine denial, The Man Who Knew Too Much is the first biography of Gareth Jones and reveals the remarkable yet tragically short life of this fascinating and determined Welshman who pioneered the role of investigative journalism.

The acclaimed travel writer's youthful journey - as an 18-year-old - across 1930s Europe by foot began in A Time of Gifts, which covered the author's exacting journey from the Lowlands as far as Hungary. Picking up from the very spot on a bridge across the Danube where his readers last saw him, we travel on with him across the great Hungarian Plain on horseback, and over the Romanian border to Transylvania. The trip was an exploration of a continent which was already showing signs of the holocaust which was to come. Although frequently praised for his lyrical writing, Fermor's account also provides a coherent understanding of the dramatic events then unfolding in Middle Europe. But the delight remains, 20 years after first publication, in travelling with him in his picaresque journey past remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges.

Winner of The Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2022 Winner of The Michel Déon Prize 2022 Winner of the An Post Irish Book of the Year Award 2022 Winner of the An Post Irish Book Award for Nonfiction 2022 A Financial Times Best Political Book of 2022 A Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2022 A New Yorker Best Book of 2022 A Guardian Best History and Politics Book of 2022 The Western world has turned its back on migrants, leaving them to cope with one of the most devastating humanitarian crises in history. Reporter Sally Hayden was at home in London when she received a message on Facebook: “Hi sister Sally, we need your help.” The sender identified himself as an Eritrean refugee who had been held in a Libyan detention center for months, locked in one big hall with hundreds of others. Now, the city around them was crumbling in a scrimmage between warring factions, and they remained stuck, defenseless, with only one remaining hope: contacting her. Hayden had inadvertently stumbled onto a human rights disaster of epic proportions. From this single message begins a staggering account of the migrant crisis across North Africa, in a groundbreaking work of investigative journalism. With unprecedented access to people currently inside Libyan detention centers, Hayden’s book is based on interviews with hundreds of refugees and migrants who tried to reach Europe and found themselves stuck in Libya once the EU started funding interceptions in 2017. It is an intimate portrait of life for these detainees, as well as a condemnation of NGOs and the United Nations, whose abdication of international standards will echo throughout history. But most importantly, My Fourth Time, We Drowned shines a light on the resilience of humans: how refugees and migrants locked up for years fall in love, support each other through the hardest times, and carry out small acts of resistance in order to survive in a system that wants them to be silent and disappear.

A fascinating account of Russia's famous dissident and the politics he embodies. Who is Alexei Navalny? Poisoned in August 2020 and transported to Germany for treatment, the politician returned to Russia in January 2021 in the full glare of the world media. His immediate detention at passport control set the stage for an explosive showdown with Vladimir Putin. But Navalny means very different things to different people. To some, he is a democratic hero. To others, he is betraying the Motherland. To others still, he is a dangerous nationalist. This book explores the many dimensions of Navalny's political life, from his pioneering anti-corruption investigations to his ideas and leadership of a political movement. It also looks at how his activities and the Kremlin's strategies have shaped one another. Navalny makes sense of this divisive character, revealing the contradictions of a man who is the second most important political figure in Russia--even when behind bars. In order to understand modern Russia, you need to understand Alexei Navalny.