Second Chances?

While the Foreign Secretary David Miliband pontificates about moving on from the mistakes made in Iraq and implementing a "second wave" of foreign policy — though providing no details as to how this second wave might be any different from the first, just as Gordon Brown failed to explain in his speech yesterday how a "second decade" of Labour would be any different from the first — United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has opened the UN general assembly by saying that he expects the year ahead to be among "the most challenging in our history."

Thinking about Darfur, Zimbabwe, Iran, China, Russia, and the Middle East — to name but a few of the international issues that we have examined in recent months — I suspect he may be right. However, I also suspect he is being rather optimistic when he goes on to suggest that "together we can make it one of the most successful."