Anne Penketh has reported from all over the world and currently works in Washington. She is a former foreign correspondent, and was posted to Moscow, Paris and New York for the AFP news agency before joining The Independent in 1999. She was Diplomatic Editor of The Independent until 2009.
When you are the most powerful leader in the world, you want to be seen to be manipulating events, not the other way round.
Unfortunately for President Barack Obama, he’s in trouble on the foreign policy front, seven months from a presidential election. At best the situation is unpredictable, at worst, it’s a disaster.
The [...]
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Sunday, 15 April 2012 at 5:37 pm
You might complain about how well-informed the Kony 2012 video is, or criticise it for being condescending. You might ask, as the Indy’s Archie Bland does, whether collective outrage is the best way to call for change. You might focus, as Fox News has, on how the charity that produced the video about the notorious leader of [...]
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Saturday, 10 March 2012 at 1:18 am
If President Barack Obama thought he had managed to restrain Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from ordering preemptive military strikes on Iran to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon, he might have to try again.
Judging from the prime minister’s speech to the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC in Washington, an Israeli attack is coming sooner rather than later. Noting [...]
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Tuesday, 6 March 2012 at 4:32 am
America’s top general has been talking to Egypt’s top military leader about the future of US military aid, or “choices and consequences,” as a Pentagon spokesman put it delicately.
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Sunday, 12 February 2012 at 8:51 pm
Mitt Romney had to win big last night in the New Hampshire primary, to solidify his status as the putative frontrunner in the Republican presidential race.
He did, coming in with 40 percent of the vote, after scraping through in the Iowa caucuses with only eight votes more than his nearest rival. The result may [...]
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Wednesday, 11 January 2012 at 1:38 pm
It’s hard to keep abreast of events in Europe, even earth-shattering ones such as the Brussels summit, from across the Atlantic. Then again, this might help you put things in perspective: the Washington Post put its account of the summit on page 19 today. The divorce of the UK from the rest of Europe does not merit a TV headline. The America media are far more interested in Mitt Romney’s $10,000 gaffe in the Republican presidential contenders’ debate last night than in how the country’s economy might be affected by the decisions in Brussels.
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Sunday, 11 December 2011 at 8:00 pm
Iran’s ransacking of the British embassy in Tehran, which prompted the recall of all British embassy staff and the expulsion of Iranian diplomats from London, means that the chances of miscalculation by both sides in this spiraling crisis have suddenly intensified.
Iran has deliberately set itself on a path of isolation, even though Britain, long considered [...]
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Wednesday, 30 November 2011 at 4:30 pm
The media were played for fools ahead of the publication of the UN watchdog’s report on Iran’s nuclear programme, which concluded there was “credible” evidence that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon.
Step One involved the leak of Israeli cabinet discussions on possible preemptive military strikes last weekend. Then newsrooms across the world [...]
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Thursday, 10 November 2011 at 12:59 am
One of the great mysteries of the Republican presidential contest is the continued popularity of former pizza chain CEO Herman Cain.
I would have thought that his handling of the sexual harassment scandal that broke last weekend would have dented his soaring approval ratings and raised questions about his fitness to be president. First he denied [...]
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Friday, 4 November 2011 at 4:23 pm
It’s election season in America. President Obama should therefore expect that anything he does is going to be criticised by the Republican opposition. But even on foreign policy, the president can’t win for losing. Only the killing of Osama bin Laden got him a grudging credit from across the aisle – and his bump in [...]
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Saturday, 22 October 2011 at 8:22 pm
1How the Mail Online turned us into misogyny addicts
2It was Bayern who denied the Germans victory in the Champions League final, not Chelsea
3Charitable rape: Peacekeepers’ dirty little secrets
4Islam is not “the enemy” – irrational hatred is
5The next couple of months could shape the future of Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal
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