Therapeutic historiography, (Europe view 173)

The end of history, revisited
Feb 25th 2010
From Economist.com


The ex-communist states of eastern Europe are leaving their pasts behind
WHERE would they be without their past, the ex-captive nations? (Or "ex-communist countries", "former Soviet satellite states", "the old Eastern block": so much history even in the category). The region between the Baltic and the Black Sea is so shaped by history that at first sight the question seems absurd. Trianon, Yalta, Molotov-Ribbentrop, Munich—the gloomy echoes of past betrayals and atrocities are inescapable.

For the past 20 years, the countries of this region have been involved in what might be called "therapeutic historiography": tearing up old communist propaganda versions of history, and writing new ones. That has been an exhilarating, messy and sometimes disconcerting process. For Estonians and Latvians, for example, it meant the chance to honour those (heroes or victims, but not villains) who fought against the impending Soviet occupation in 1944-45. Yet many outsiders see these men as no more than Nazi collaborators: they wore uniforms of the SS, the epitome of wartime evil, and served alongside some war criminals. Context and comparison (far more Russians than Balts fought on Hitler's side) become irrelevant.


Slovaks and Croats want to de-demonise their wartime republics (Nazi puppet states from one viewpoint, a snatched breath of national regeneration from another). Germans and Jews, once seemingly vanished from the region, have emerged from the shadows (and from abroad), with their own unhappy memories that undermine the self-righteousness of both Communist and ethno-nationalist versions of history.


Yet re-examining taboos is a self-limiting process: you run out of them after a bit. And historical inquiry inevitably bogs down in complexity. The communist version of history may have been mostly lies, but the western version has holes in it too. If you like closely reasoned historical monographs, you may spend your evenings examining the interplay between the Munich agreement (when Britain and France betrayed Czechoslovakia) and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (when Hitler and Stalin carved up Europe). For most people, it is enough that the latter deal is no longer secret or glorified.


In the luckier half of the continent, history has a much shorter half-life. Who worries about the Schleswig-Holstein question when looking at Danish-German relations? Who cares that Norway was once part of Sweden, or that Finland used to be a Grand Duchy of tsarist Russia?


Now central and eastern Europe may be joining the club of the ahistorical and apathetic. Historical rows are already the exception, not the rule. Poland is the signal example. In recent years it has successfully pursued reconciliation with Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Germany and even (albeit in limited terms) with Russia. The picture is marred only by a recent flare-up with Belarus, and a tiresome squabble with Lithuania about spelling. The recent ripple of protest in Poland when Ukraine's outgoing president, Viktor Yushchenko, made the wartime nationalist leader Stepan Bandera a "Hero of Ukraine" was interesting not because it exemplified the two countries' rows over history, but because it came after years in which they had sorted out so much.


Hungary's neighbourhood is transformed too. Relations with Slovakia are tense, thanks to a badly drafted language law there and some silly politicking. But Hungarians' real animosity is directed towards the Austrians, who have (they feel) betrayed them by selling shares in MOL, the Hungarian energy company, to Russians against their will. The historically difficult relationships with Serbia, Romania and Ukraine, all home to Magyar minorities, look chummy in comparison.

That reflects a big shift. As western Europe flounders, the old patronising and unfair treatment of the "east Europeans" is no longer sustainable. Change is in the wind. Power is up for grabs. And it is more fun than history.

Latvia and Greece

Latvia and Greece

Baltic thaw, Aegean freeze

Feb 25th 2010 | RIGA
From The Economist print edition

Latvia’s economic free fall has halted, and it may now do better than Greece

DOOM-MONGERS are licking their wounds. For two years bankers have said that a Latvian devaluation was inevitable. The struggle to save the lat’s peg to the euro was bound to end in tears. And a panic in Latvia could topple the wobbly economies of Estonia and Lithuania, which have similar exchange-rate regimes, with repercussions extending across eastern Europe and to Scandinavian banks that lent recklessly in the Baltics.

Yet despite a fall in GDP last year of 17.5%, Latvia seems to have achieved something many thought impossible: an internal devaluation. This meant regaining competitiveness not by currency depreciation but by deep cuts in wages and public spending. In a recent discussion of Greece, Jörg Asmussen, a German minister, praised Latvia for its self-discipline.

Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency, has raised its outlook on Latvia’s debt from negative to stable (ie, it no longer expects further downgrades). The current account, in deficit to the tune of 27% of GDP in late 2006, is in surplus. Exports are recovering. Interest rates have plunged and debt spreads over German bonds have narrowed (see chart). Fraught negotiations with the IMF and the European Union have kept a €7.5 billion ($10 billion) bail-out on track, in return for spending cuts and tax rises worth a tenth of GDP.

At the centre of Latvia’s crisis was its biggest locally owned bank, Parex. Until it went bust, Parex was a byword for high living and murky dealings. Its new American-born boss, Nils Melngailis, has refinanced its debts, divided its assets into good and bad, and aims soon to unfreeze depositors’ cash. He found plenty of savings. Selling a fleet of sports cars and ending the use of private jets cut travel costs by 90%. Overall, he cut the bank’s costs by 40% in 2009, with 30% more to come.

Even if a catastrophe has been averted for the moment, Latvia’s economy remains troubled. Unemployment, at 22.8%, is the highest in the EU. Growth is unlikely to resume until late 2011. After a decade of prosperity based on a construction boom, cheap manufacturing and transit from Russia, Latvia needs new sources of income. The biggest task is to harness local brainpower. Emigration has been a safety valve for jobless Latvians, but the country loses if fraying public services, high taxes and low pay drive its more productive workers abroad. And nobody seems to be trying to stop them. Even his fans would hesitate to call the prime minister, Valdis Dombrovskis, charismatic or visionary.

Confidence in institutions is feeble—support for the EU is lower than in any other member state. Politicians are uninspiring, with most parties run by tycoons who escaped blame for economic mismanagement. A sense that the rich and powerful evade justice is pervasive. At Vincents, a Riga restaurant where dinner for two can cost $400, the owner, Martins Ritins, says business is booming. On Valentine’s Day he opened on a Sunday for the first time in years and almost every table was taken.

As politicians’ credibility dwindles, Russian influence grows. A pro-Russian party won control of Riga last year. Latvia’s president, Valdis Zatlers, will go to the Soviet-tinged celebrations in Moscow on May 9th to mark the 65th anniversary of Victory Day. Hawks see this as a sell-out. A visit to Riga by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in April may be a step towards normal relations—or a sign that Russia sees Latvia as a swing state in the Baltic.

Even so, Latvia looks good when compared with Greece. It did not lie about its public finances or use accounting tricks. Strikes have been scanty. Protests are fought in the courts, not the streets. Both Greece and Latvia have had hard knocks, but Greeks became used to a good life that they are loth to give up. Latvians remain glad just to be on the map.

Libel latest

Media and the law

Publish, perish, protest

Feb 25th 2010
From The Economist print edition

Bad news for dodgy journalism—and for libel tourists

LIBEL law in England is too expensive and restricts free speech. But journalistic dirty tricks are a disgrace and self-regulation of the media isn’t working properly. So the rules need lots of tweaks and a couple of big changes. Those are the conclusions of a much-awaited parliamentary committee report on the British press.

It makes uncomfortable reading for many. But the sharpest criticism was reserved for the News of the World, a tabloid that is Britain’s best-selling Sunday newspaper; its owner, Rupert Murdoch’s News International; and its practice of stealing messages from the voice mailboxes of prominent people, including members of the royal family. A reporter, Clive Goodman, was jailed for four months for the offence, later receiving a generous pay-off from his erstwhile employer for “unfair dismissal”.

The report says the number of phones hacked must have been far bigger than the handful admitted by the company, and calls it “inconceivable” that nobody else knew what was going on. It criticises the “collective amnesia” of the company’s witnesses and their “deliberate obfuscation” (some refused to give evidence; others said things that the MPs implied were untrue). But the report makes only indirect criticism of Andy Coulson, then the paper’s editor and now a close adviser to the Conservative leader, David Cameron. In response, News International rejected the allegations, accused the MPs of bias and said they had produced nothing new. Calls for a further inquiry are growing.

The report gives other journalistic misconduct a savaging too, especially the “abysmal” standards of reporting in the frenzy surrounding Kate and Gerry McCann, the parents of a British child who went missing in Portugal in 2007. (The McCanns later won hefty libel damages from newspapers that wrongly blamed them for abducting their own daughter.) The MPs also note that the McCanns were failed by the Press Complaints Commission, a self-regulatory body which is meant to deal with such conduct.

The committee’s original aim was to focus on media misbehaviour. But its investigation has ranged more widely. The report has plenty of comfort for more serious-minded journalists, as well as for the campaigning groups, scientists and others who worry about the chilling effect of libel law on press freedom. In English libel law (Scotland’s is different), the fact that the public has an interest in knowing about something offers only a limited defence against a charge of libel. (This is not unlike the rest of Europe, but it is shockingly different for Americans used to the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.) When sued, journalists usually have to prove that what they wrote was right, fair or at least conscientiously reported. That can be costly (even a preliminary defence can easily exceed £100,000). Foreigners may sue other foreigners, as long as they can show that their reputation was damaged in England.

Many lawyers and judges have dismissed media campaigns for changes in the law as self-interested. The committee rejects sweeping proposals for reform, such as statutory caps on the size of libel damages. But it does suggest that the Ministry of Justice, which is examining the libel law, make some important changes.

One is reversing the burden of proof for corporate claimants: if they want to sue for libel, they would have to show that the published material actually damaged their business. That could help people such as Simon Singh, a science writer facing a lawsuit from the chiropractors’ trade body for calling their treatments “bogus”. The MPs also want to discourage “libel tourism” by requiring a claimant who is not based in Britain to produce a very solid argument as to why the case needs to be brought there.

As for the cost of libel actions, which can be ruinous to all but the biggest defendants, the MPs have few specific ideas, though they appeal to lawyers’ sense of responsibility. That is about as realistic as urging tabloid journalists to act ethically.

Poland's big chance

This is the English version of my most recent column for Wprost
Poland leads. Who will follow?

Europe’s new foreign policy is somewhere between tragedy and farce. Lady Ashton, who is meant to be in charge of it, is arousing a mixture of ridicule and astonishment. She is still commuting from London to Brussels, fails to turn up to important meetings, has yet to gain the necessary security clearance and turns her mobile phone off at eight o’clock in the evening. Meanwhile the Spanish government is pretending that the Lisbon treaty has never happened and that national governments still run the European Union on the basis of a rotating presidency. Nobody is in charge. Nothing is happening. It is not surprising that Barack Obama has found something else to do instead of turning up to the planned EU-US summit in May.

The vacuum in Brussels is a big chance for Poland. Next year, the EU presidency will be held first by Hungary and then Poland (with Denmark taking over for the first half of 2012). Given that the Spanish presidency is proving a disaster, and that low-key Belgium is in charge for the second half of this year, that means that Poland is the only big country running the EU until Italy takes over in 2014.

The first priority for Poland is to coordinate its efforts with Hungary. That is well under way. Poland is supporting the “Danube strategy” and Hungary’s plans for greater energy security. In return, Hungary will support Polish efforts to boost the EU’s defence capability. For 24 months, either Hungary or Poland or both will be in the “Troika” of countries in charge of the Union.

Poland is already becoming a diplomatic heavyweight in Europe. The Kaczynski era of grotesque stunts and blunders is receding into the past. Poland’s economic growth makes the country stand out and gives people like Donald Tusk, Jacek Rostowski and Radek Sikorski added weight in international meetings.

The best example right now comes from Moldova, the poorest country in Europe and one where we are in danger of missing a huge chance to improve things. After a messy and contested election, accompanied by plenty of official brutality, Moldovans booted out their corrupt authoritarian communist rulers and elected a pro-Western, pro-reform government under the leadership of the professorial Vlad Filat. America has leapt in, giving him a warm reception in Washington DC and unblocking hundreds of millions of dollars in development aid.

America understands that Moldova matters: the unrecognised statelet of Transdniestria creates a sump of smuggling-based corruption for crooked politicians in Ukraine and elsewhere. Romania—which shares a language and history with Moldova—is now also playing a constructive role. But the absence of interest from the rest of Europe has been shameful.


Poland is the honourable exception. It is offering a $15m immediate bridging loan to help the cash-strapped government meet its commitments. Despite the impressive bureaucracy-busting reforms of the past 100 days, the economy remains stricken. Seasoned foreign officials who visit Moldova say it reminds them of Poland on the brink of the Balcerowicz reforms, or the Baltic states in the early 1990s. The problems are huge. But so are the possibilities.

Poland has plenty more to offer too: it understands the need to engage with the nomenklatura in Belarus, with seductive offers on the lines of “do you want your children to work in Brussels as equals or Moscow as slaves?”. It understands the need for deep strategic patience in dealing with Ukraine, and the need to provide a resolute, American-backed security guarantee to the Baltic states. The recent joint initiative on tactical nuclear weapons by Radek Sikorski and Carl Bildt struck just the right note: reasonable to western ears, but deeply tricky for the nuke-loving Russian leadership.

Big western countries like France and Germany may find it tiresome that the big ideas and bold leadership is coming from the east now. But they had better get used to it. They had their chance and we ended up with Lady Ashton. Now it’s Poland’s turn.

Ambassador Habsburgshvili

The Habsburgs' new empire

The princess and the bear
Feb 18th 2010
From The Economist print edition


Europe’s aristocracy, alive and kicking

GEORGIA struggles to make its case in Germany, which sees trade ties with Russia as vital and the ex-Soviet Caucasian republic as troublesome. So who better to burnish Georgia’s image there than a German-educated Habsburg? Georgia’s new ambassador to Berlin, once she presents her credentials to the president next month, will be Gabriela Maria Charlotte Felicitas Elisabeth Antonia von Habsburg-Lothringen, princess Imperial and Archduchess of Austria, Princess Royal of Hungary and Bohemia. A name like that, says Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili, should open doors.

The towering figure on the Berlin diplomatic scene is the Russian ambassador to Germany, Vladimir Kotenev, an indefatigable socialite who runs what is probably the biggest embassy in Europe. Ms von Habsburg (the name she prefers) will not, despite her titles, have the cash to match his efforts. But she may still help Germans think again about Georgia’s European roots and future. Born in Luxembourg, brought up in Germany and Austria, the polyglot Ms von Habsburg is an avant-garde sculptor, specialising in large steel outdoor works. She has lived in Georgia since 2001, has become a Georgian citizen and gained a command of the language (it is “improving every day”, says Mr Saakashvili).

By the standards of her family, a spot of diplomacy in Berlin is not particularly exotic. The heirs to the Habsburg emperors helped speed the downfall of the Soviet empire, particularly by arranging the cross-border exodus from Hungary to Austria in the summer of 1989 that punched the first big hole in the iron curtain. Among Ms von Habsburg’s six siblings, her younger sister Walpurga is a leading conservative politician in Sweden; her brother Georg is an ambassador-at-large for Hungary. Another used to be in the European Parliament.

Her father, Otto von Habsburg, now aged 97, is one of very few who can remember the Austro-Hungarian empire (his father, Karl, was its last emperor and it collapsed when Otto was six). He does not mourn the demise of that world: liberated from court etiquette, he says, he can call someone an “idiot” if he wants, instead of “your excellency”. His daughter may find German diplomatic protocol rather more constraining.

Missile defence: Kremlin protests backfire

Missile defence in Europe

The next salvo
Feb 18th 2010
From The Economist print edition


America’s reconfigured anti-missile shield still irks Russia

READ the small print. That would have been good advice for foes and allies alike when America announced in September last year that it would abandon its plans for anti-missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic, in favour of a new system initially based on ships.

Some saw that as a sell-out. Russia was being appeased as part of President Barack Obama’s “reset” of relations with the Kremlin, and the ex-communist countries were being punished for supporting the Bush administration. Five months later, that reading of events looks mistaken.

The new system, the Obama administration officials said at the time, will be more flexible and will have a land component from 2015. Poland will eventually host one base. And earlier this month Romania—after the briefest of talks—announced that it would be the site for interceptors. American officials are trying to find a consolation prize for Bulgaria, the runner-up, which says it would like a base too.

This has annoyed Russia. Its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the Kremlin had complained to America about the Romanian “surprise” followed by a Bulgarian one. In fact, America itself seems to have been caught unprepared by the enthusiasm of its allies. It had expected protracted negotiations, of the kind it had pursued with Poland. This would have provided a chance to soothe Russian feelings at a time when America is seeking its help to impose sanctions against Iran.

Echoing earlier Russian threats (now rescinded) to deploy nuclear missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave, a Russian-backed separatist enclave in Moldova has offered to host Russian Iskander short-range rockets in response to the planned base in Romania. That may have more to do with wrong-footing the new pro-western, pro-Romanian government in Moldova than pleasing Russia, which declined the offer.



If American technology develops as expected, by 2018 the new shield would cover almost all of NATO’s European members against an Iranian attack—only a small part of Turkey would be exposed. That is a big change from the previous scheme, which was intended mainly to protect America from an intercontinental threat, leaving chunks of Europe unprotected. The new system poses even less of a threat to Russia’s nuclear arsenal (the Americans say neither ever did). The SM-3 interceptors now planned have a shorter range and fly less quickly than the rockets proposed by the Bush administration. Moreover, much of the system—the tracking radars and the Romania-based interceptors—will be deployed further south, unable to interfere with Russian missiles heading for America over the Arctic.

The main basis for the Kremlin’s complaint is political. Though Russia grudgingly accepted that ex-communist countries could join NATO, it sees the creation of American bases there as a breach of a promise made when the Soviet Union consented to German reunification. (American officials insist no such promise was ever given.)

Regardless, America is making other security arrangements. It is placing Patriot anti-aircraft missiles in Poland. More significantly, it has pushed NATO into agreeing to draw up military contingency plans to defend the Baltic states. It will hold drills there later this year. Russia’s growling may have brought results—but probably not the ones that Moscow wanted.

Europe view nr 172

Europe.view

Stay off the potash
Feb 18th 2010
From Economist.com


Eastern Europe-friendly boycotts are difficult to pull off

VOTING with your wallet is a tempting substitute for real politics. Time was when the British left demonstratively boycotted South African oranges. The same people usually regarded Israel as no better than the apartheid regime. They also ruled out “fascist” Spain and Portugal, and Greece under military dictatorship. Barring the odd shipment from Costa Rica or Cuba, progressive politics was bad for the fruit bowl.

Much the same dilemma now faces those who care about the security of the ex-communist region. In Tallinn last week, your columnist, wining and dining one of the country’s top foreign-policy thinkers, learned a new Estonian phrase: “Palun tooge eesti kraanivett jääga” [Estonian tap water with ice, please]. The only bottled water available at the otherwise admirable Ö restaurant was Vittel or Perrier, both French brands. Paris has just agreed to sell some formidable amphibious-warfare ships to the Russian navy, with potentially dire consequences for the security of the Baltic states. French foodstuffs are encountering a certain froideur across the region as a result.

Finding alternative brands of drinking water is easy (and tap water is better on ecological grounds anyway). Dealing with the wine list is more difficult. Most European wine-producing countries are unsound on security questions: as well as France, the list includes Italy (Berlusconi, Russia's biggest chum in the EU), Germany (the Russia-sponsored Nordstream pipeline) and Austria (almost everything). Georgian, Moldovan, Croatian or Macedonian wines would be ideal but are hard to come by, so new world vineyards have to fill the gap. Champagne creates an even bigger problem. The Crimean labels are rare and usually too sweet. Your columnist likes an English sparkling wine called “Nutty”; his friends and family are unconvinced.

The choice is hardest when it comes to cheese. It is difficult to find anywhere that produces tasty soft cheese and is not subject to unhealthy Russian influence. Even the kind of conspiracy theorist who wears a tinfoil hat to protect his brain from being zapped by Kremlin mind-rays would have to accept that this is a coincidence. But it is certainly an annoying one for Atlanticist cheese lovers.



Penalising weak-kneed European countries is hard enough. It is even more difficult when trying to put pressure on the source of the problem. If you want to boycott Belarussian goods, say, because of that government’s persecution of its Polish minority, you are unlikely to change your lifestyle much, unless you use industrial quantities of potash or need a lot of cheap tractors. Similarly, unless your consumption pattern includes weapons and vodka, giving up Russian goods is easy but pointless.

But the real problem with personalised sanctions regimes is conceptual. For a start, they risk seeming silly. Why punish a hapless French cheese-maker or Italian vineyard for the sins of their governments? The thinking is that plunging export sales might create pressure for a change in foreign policy. But this seldom happens in practice.

For countries like Belarus, a trade boycott is outright counterproductive. The more Belarus trades with the rich industrialised world, the weaker will become the ties binding it to Russia. It may be reasonable to try to take custom away from companies that owe their existence to commercial ties with sleazy politicians. But such bodies tend not to sell anything that a normal consumer in the outside world is likely to buy directly. You may not like the fact that some pennies from your fuel bills eventually trickle into the coffers of Kremlin cronies, but there is not much you can do about it.

The occasional flourish, especially with the wine list, is fine. But systematic sanctions are self-defeating. Trade opens borders and minds; protectionism closes them. That principle is worth fighting for too.

Murder and spies

Assassinations and technology

Hitmen old and new
Feb 18th 2010
From The Economist print edition


Modern technology makes killing easier—but harder to get away with

ONLY a decade ago the assassins who killed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh would have disappeared into oblivion. Now that is much harder, and not merely for the obvious reason that lenses are ubiquitous. Modern cameras capture more than blurred images: they record the precise bone structure of people’s faces. Digitised and interpreted by an algorithm, this information is fed to police computers all over the world.

The net is closing around old-fashioned secret-service methods. Biometric passports are already the norm in most European countries. Their chips hold easily checkable data such as retina scans, which are both unique and unfakeable. The thought of an easily disproved false identity fills spymasters with horror. They remember the fate of western agents, in the Soviet Union after the second world war, whose painstakingly forged identity documents had a fatal flaw: they used stainless steel staples, rather than the soft iron fastenings found in authentic Soviet documents. The tell-tale absence of rust allowed Stalin’s secret police to spot them.

The age of Facebook creates another problem. Creating a false identity used to be simply a matter of forging a few documents and finding a plausible life story. Nowadays, leaving an internet trail of convincing evidence for a fake identity is increasingly difficult—and a phoney detail is worse than none at all.



Even poisoning, for a long time the best way to hide a killing, may have become more difficult. The Soviet Union developed formidable expertise in the art of assassination, and (as a by-product of its germ-war and poison-gas efforts) in making toxins. A book published in Britain last year and written by Boris Volodarsky, described as a former Russian military-intelligence officer, provided a glimpse into “The KGB’s Poison Factory” from 1917 until the present day. Its “successes” included the killing of a Soviet defector in Frankfurt with thallium in 1957, and that of a Bulgarian dissident, Georgy Markov, in 1978, in London with a ricin-tipped umbrella.

Toxin analysis has improved but sometimes it is only luck that reveals ingeniously administered substances. Alexander Litvinenko, a renegade Russian security officer living in London, was killed by poisoning with polonium, a rare radioactive substance, in 2006. His assassins—said by British officials to have had help from Russia’s security service—nearly got away with it. Had their victim died sooner, nobody would have tried the highly unusual test for that kind of radiation poisoning.

As another sign that sending hit squads to distant lands can go wrong, consider the tale of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a Chechen ex-president killed in 2004 by a car-bomb in Qatar. The Qatari authorities, using well-honed surveillance, arrested three Russian officials; one had diplomatic immunity, but the other two were sentenced to jail. Only after a messy row between Russia and Qatar, and much damage to Russia’s ties with Islam, did the pair return to Moscow—and a hero’s welcome.

Europe View nr 171: Ashton to Ukraine

Europe.view

Turn east, Lady Ashton
Feb 11th 2010
From Economist.com


The EU could make a real difference in Ukraine

PIGEONHOLING and false analogies are not part of formal international relations studies. But from the way that diplomats, policymakers and analysts talk about Ukraine, you would think they were compulsory courses.

Take the optimistic point that Ukraine’s elections are now unlike Russia’s. True, Ukrainian voters had a real choice in that country’s recent presidential poll. The incumbent, Viktor Yushchenko, gave up power peacefully. (In Russia, he might have handed power over to an ex-spook, amid bogus terrorist attacks to panic the public into accepting authoritarian rule). The vote count was fair. Ukraine’s media is far more pluralist than Russia’s. And so on. All this is fine. But Ukraine’s election was also unlike Kazakhstan’s. It is easy to make something look good by choosing a dismal comparator.

It is also tempting but wrong to compare Ukraine now with Russia in the 1990s. True, oligarchs rule the roost in both countries, with politicians as their puppets. True, Western money keeps Ukraine afloat, as it did in 1990s Russia. There, the West hoped to avert nuclear anarchy or a Communist revanche. In Ukraine the money is intended to stave off take-over by Russia.

But there is no sign of, or appetite for, a Ukrainian version of Vladimir Putin, not least because the West has not (yet) incinerated its credibility in Ukraine the way it did in Russia in the 1990s. Ukrainian politicians of all stripes, and the public, continue to want European values and European integration.

Brussels has yet to respond to that desire. European leaders missed the chance presented by the orange revolution (though to be fair, Mr Yushchenko and other Ukrainian politicians botched their opportunities even more badly). The European Union’s leaders also failed to make much of the recent election. Ukraine is a long way from Spain, which holds the rotating EU presidency. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s nominal foreign-policy chief, seems distracted, to put it mildly. The EU is treating Ukraine like Turkey—too big, too poor, and destined to wait indefinitely for membership. (That’s a false comparison too, but never mind).

Yet Ukraine is perhaps the one place where Lady Ashton and her new External Action Service could make a real difference. Ukraine badly needs attention, and unlike America or China it is not a place over which other EU leaders will be jostling for influence. Done properly, the gains from renewed EU involvement could be huge.

The European policy so far has been engagement with Ukraine’s political class. This has proved expensive, and mostly fruitless. Attention should now move to the citizenry. Imagine the effect if the EU opened 50 “Europe Houses” in the main towns and cities of Ukraine. The excellent new House of Europe in Tbilisi should be the model. That project aims to be the Georgian centre for all sorts of Europe-related cultural events, as well as debates and lectures, with a library and internet café as added attractions (readers with spare cash please note: it needs donors). It will have far more impact than the piecemeal efforts of individual European countries’ cultural institutes.

In the tense Ukrainian region of Crimea, a big EU presence would make it harder for Russia to hide its mischief-making (that should be a lesson from Georgia, where the EU’s absence was a lethal element in the run up to the 2008 war). More generally, the new policy will focus the EU’s biggest asset: its soft power. The EU’s military capability is meagre; its ability to stand up to Russian divide-and-rule tactics in energy security is feeble. But the EU does have something that the Kremlin doesn’t: attractiveness. Projecting that into Ukraine will give Lady Ashton and her staff something worthwhile to do. It could even work.

Asmus book review

Georgia and Russia

Ungodly suffering
Jan 21st 2010
From The Economist print edition


An American take on a war that fed conspiracies throughout Europe

A Little War That Shook the World: Georgia, Russia, and the Future of the West. By Ronald Asmus. Palgrave Macmillan; 250 pages; $27 and £20.

TWO points about the war in Georgia in 2008 have stuck in outsiders’ memories. One is that it was quite unexpected. The other is that Georgia started it. Both, in Ronald Asmus’s view, are wrong.

The real cause of the war, he argues, was Russia’s determination to block Georgia’s American-educated and America-loving president, Mikheil Saakashvili. He had embarked on “a crash course to turn Georgia from a semi-failed state into a reform tiger that could become the catalyst for creating a democratic pro-Western corridor in the southern Caucasus…it was a breathtaking vision.”

Mr Asmus’s metaphors may be breathtakingly mixed, but his big point is right. Situated on the most promising east-west route for oil and gas, Georgia was becoming an economic and political success story under Mr Saakashvili, who took power in the “Rose revolution” of 2003. Its pluralism was a profound challenge to the authoritarian crony capitalism taking root in Russia under Vladimir Putin.

Mr Saakashvili’s growing sway in two Russian-backed breakaway regions of Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, was also an increasing nuisance for the Kremlin. He had restored Georgian control over a corner of Abkhazia and set up a loyalist administration inside South Ossetia—an untidy place with villages of varying ethnic and political make-up.

For Russia, that was intolerable, Mr Asmus argues. The Kremlin, therefore, deliberately provoked the Georgian leader into starting a war that he was bound to lose. Humiliating Georgia was also a way of paying back NATO for the recognition of Kosovo, a breakaway province of Serbia. And it signalled the limits of America’s role in Russia’s back yard.

Mr Asmus writes with authority. He is a former American official who masterminded the first enlargement of NATO to the ex-communist east. In his office, now at a Brussels think-tank, souvenirs include a commemorative sword given by the “grateful nation of Poland”. He has lobbied hard for new candidates, including the Baltic states, which joined NATO in 2004, and most recently for Georgia.

His book lays bare the dilemma facing Mr Saakashvili in the summer of 2008. Russian provocations against Georgia had been escalating for months, with a mixture of economic pressure, subversion and military attacks, chiefly by air. The West’s response was feeble. It made anodyne pleas to both sides to refrain from using force. It was not prepared to say unequivocally to Russia that destabilising Georgia would have serious inevitable consequences.

On July 29th 2008, Russia’s proxies in South Ossetia started shelling pro-Georgian villages there. What was Mr Saakashvili supposed to do? If he ignored the shelling, leaving his supporters to flee or be killed, the loss of prestige would be catastrophic. His pleas to the outside world to intervene were ignored. Moreover, Mr Saakashvili received intelligence (probably exaggerated) that large numbers of Russian troops were crossing into South Ossetia, perhaps as reinforcements, perhaps as a prelude to a full-scale invasion.

Mr Saakashvili decided to act at once, ordering troops into South Ossetia to stop the shelling but not to fight the Russian troops there. As Mr Asmus recounts with painful clarity, that decision was a disaster. The Georgian army lacked plans, troops, equipment, training and communications. All it had was hopes of a quick victory, of Russian hesitancy and of Western support. In fact, huge Russian reinforcements poured in, and within a few days were poised to take Tbilisi.

America stood back, though Mr Asmus gives an intriguing hint that at least some officials were arguing, albeit tentatively and unsuccessfully, for a military response to defend Georgia. That could have ended the war quickly—or led to a terrifying escalation. In the end, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, on behalf of the European Union, brokered a messy ceasefire.

The book’s detailed inside accounts of Georgian and Western manoeuvring before, during and after the war are gripping. Mr Asmus is caustic about the outside world’s failure to forestall the conflict. Hundreds of people died and many thousands of people lost their homes because of that. In particular he highlights the weakness of NATO (crippled by feuding over the Iraq war) and of the self-centred and complacent EU.

He is rather kinder—too kind, many might feel—to the Georgians. Many decisions and actions may have been mistaken and deserve scrutiny, he concedes. But the author flinches from condemning even the most lamentable mistakes outright. In particular, the heavy-handed crackdown on opposition demonstrators and media in November 2007 played a big role in tarnishing Georgia’s image abroad. This deserves more than the couple of sentences Mr Asmus devotes to it here. Mr Saakashvili’s exasperating habits were similarly damaging: disorganisation, self-indulgence, verbosity, favouritism and vindictiveness are just a few. Mr Asmus also ignores how far the Georgian leadership’s American cheerleaders, especially in some corners of the Republican Party, may have made it overconfident.

Insights from the Russian side are also missing (because officials in Moscow declined to talk to him, says Mr Asmus). What were the Kremlin’s real war aims? How badly did Russia’s military forces do? What conclusions did Russian leaders draw? The definitive book on that is still to come, but Mr Asmus’s work sets a high standard.

Europe View 170--Prickly Poles

The furious reaction to the earlier piece on the Polish blogosphere provoked this exasperated response


Europe.view

Better say nothing
Feb 4th 2010
From Economist.com


The minefield of writing about Poland

POLAND is the largest and most successful of the eastern European countries. A safe enough statement? Probably not. Someone will immediately start quibbling that “eastern” Europe doesn’t exist. That will start a long argument about whether “east central Europe” or “central Europe” is the best way of describing the ex-communist region (at which point someone else will chip in and say that the term “ex-communist” is anachronistic). “Largest” is dodgy too—not least because it may prompt a discussion about the fragile and tragic foundations of Poland’s eastern and western frontiers. Ukrainians and Russians will be quick to ask, justifiably, why they have been excluded from this notional category.

Most dangerous of all is to praise the achievements of Poland’s current government, as this newspaper did recently (see article). Clearly, some readers said, the author of such an article has never been to Poland. Otherwise he would know that a small and coincidental spurt of economic growth does not make up for pervasive corruption, ineffective administration of justice, two-tier public services and a cartel-like political system in which insiders feast (literally) and outsiders starve (metaphorically). Any possibly praiseworthy reforms are either superficial and belated, or else were introduced by the previous government.Alamy

The same applies to foreign policy. If Poland is friends with its neighbours, has sorted out its relations with America and is seen as a constructive heavyweight inside the European Union, that does not mean success. It means that the sneaky traitors running the country have sacrificed national interest in order to feather their own nests. In truth, runs this argument, poor Poland is yet again being misruled, betrayed and looted. Any claim to the contrary is either the result of pitiful ignorance, or has been ordered into print by the powerful hidden interests that control the world media.

The outsider who dares to voice such criticisms himself, however, will be met with an opposing but equally incensed strain of argument. Clearly, the author of such an article has never been to Poland. Otherwise he would know that Poland is still struggling with the consequences of centuries of tragic history. Any discussion of Poland’s poor public administration, for example, must acknowledge the role of the missing middle class, eviscerated by foreign occupation, mass murder and emigration. And who are these outsiders to criticise, anyway? The author should write about Greece or Italy if he wants to highlight problems in European countries. Why pick on Poland? Ill-will rather than ignorance surely lies behind the writing of such an article. It must have been ordered into print by the powerful hidden interests that control the world media.

Both those allergic to praise and the foes of criticism agree on one thing. The article’s greatest failing is that it does not include every salient point from Polish history, and a book-length analysis of all features of the country’s contemporary political, economic and social development. If the author pleads lack of space, he should demand more from his editors. Writing about a country as important as Poland in an article the size of a postage stamp is an insult in itself.

And so on and so forth. For the record, your columnist was a student in Poland in the mid-1980s, speaks Polish, has relatives in the country and visits regularly. He normally counts as a Polonophile, especially when arguing with other journalists who use phrases such as “Polish death camps” and a “vicious history of anti-Semitism”. He notes that writing about the other 20-odd countries on his beat does not arouse quite the same neurotic reaction. Why is that? Better, perhaps, to leave that question to the Poles.

Sikorski for President?

(when I wrote this, it seemed a bit outlandish. Now the WSJ describes Radek as the "Polish Obama")

Poland's strong economy

Horse power to horsepower
Jan 28th 2010
From The Economist print edition


Economic growth and a strong, stable government to boot: time to rethink old notions about Poland

OUTSIDERS often have fixed ideas of Poland: a big, poor country with shambolic governments, dreadful roads and eccentric habits. Old stereotypes die hard, but the facts paint an increasingly different picture. By the grim standards of recent centuries, Poland has never been more secure, richer or better-run. 

It was the only country in the European Union to register economic growth last year, at 1.2%. As Jacek Rostowski, Poland’s finance minister, likes to point out, GDP per head rose from 50% to 56% of the EU average in 2009—a record jump. By the same (somewhat flattering) measure, which adjusts for the greater purchasing power arising from lower prices, Poland now has Europe’s sixth-biggest economy.

Foreign investors like what they see. Whereas supposedly “west” European countries such as Greece flounder, ex-communist Poland is borrowing cheaply, for example with a $4.3 billion (€3 billion) Eurobond issue this month. Lenders’ generosity allowed the government to run a budget deficit of 7% of GDP in 2009 (though officials promise that a new public-finance law will cut spending growth sharply in the years ahead).

These good results owe much to luck. Poland’s stodgy banks came late to the wild foreign-currency lending that proved so disastrous in such countries as Latvia and Hungary. Poland’s big internal market has cushioned demand. Stimulus measures in Germany have spilled across the border. But the country has also benefited from some canny political leadership. Poland has something rare in the EU and all but unique in its ex-communist east: a sensible centre-right government with a majority in parliament.

Many criticise the government for its caution, and more recently for sleaze (a scandal about lobbying by the gambling industry is outraging Poland’s puritanical media). Some long-term problems are unsolved, such as a low rate of participation in the workforce and patchy public services. As many as 2m Poles have voted with their feet by working abroad. 

Even so, by the standards of Poland’s governments in the past, and of the rest of Europe now, the present lot look pretty good. The government has made inroads into some of Poland’s worst problems, notably with a tough, if partial, pension reform. It has belatedly started a programme to modernise roads and railways (2,000km of new fast roads will be built by 2012, when Poland and Ukraine co-host the European football championships).

It has also made some badly needed changes in the country’s stifling bureaucracy. Poland ranks low on most indices for friendliness towards business. A recent study by the World Bank put the Polish tax system at 151st out of the 183 countries it surveyed. But some improvements are under way, including online tax filing and faster customs clearance. A new law has liberalised the housing market, allowing short-hold tenancies. That should encourage Poland’s workers to move within the country in search of work, rather than emigrating. It can be easier to make a weekly commute to Britain by air than between Polish cities by road.

A big symbolic and practical change is that citizens can increasingly use a simple signed declaration (an oswiadczenia) instead of a costly, time-consuming notarised one (a zaswiadczenia) in their dealings with the state. “We assume that citizens are telling the truth unless there is evidence to the contrary. In the past, the reverse applied,” says Mr Rostowski. Sceptical Poles, scarred by their dealings with suspicious, nit-picking bureaucrats, may take some convincing of this.

A new Polish foreign policy has been a success, after a spell when the aim seemed to be to lose friends and alienate people. Under Radek Sikorski as foreign minister, Poland has managed to improve relations with all its neighbours and, despite some hiccups, won a favourable security deal from America under Barack Obama. After much haggling, a battery of American Patriot missiles will arrive in Poland in March.

Germany now claims that it wants its relations with Poland to be as close as they are with France. Guido Westerwelle, Germany’s new foreign minister, chose Warsaw for his first foreign visit. Poland’s relations with Russia, once equally neurotic, have calmed down. Even the unearthing of a Russian spy, who had been living for many years under a false identity in Poland, has caused only a ripple.

Some talk of Mr Sikorski as a future president. If he ran this autumn, it would solve a problem for the prime minister, Donald Tusk. Until he ruled himself out on January 28th, Mr Tusk had been dithering about whether to run himself against the incumbent, Lech Kaczynski.

Mr Kaczynski’s record is dire (his popularity rises only when he makes no public statements). His main role has been destructive, vetoing laws and blocking appointments. He is widely believed not to want a second term, but to have been pushed into it by his bossy twin brother, Jaroslaw, who leads the main opposition party, Law and Justice.

Mr Tusk wants to unseat Mr Kaczynski as part of a long-term plan to break up Law and Justice and absorb bits of it into his own Civic Platform party. But he was uneasy about relinquishing the prime minister’s job, especially as he hopes to trim the president’s power in future. Mr Sikorski is electable. He is Poland’s most popular politician and also something of an outsider (he was educated at Oxford; his wife is American; he has worked at a Washington think-tank). So he is no threat to Mr Tusk. As president, he might even help to dispel more of those tiresome stereotypes.

Europe View 169-- RIP Roman Kupchinsky

Say not the struggle naught availeth
Jan 28th 2010
From Economist.com


Roman Kupchinsky, a scourge of communists and post-communist kleptocrats alike

IN THEIR freedom they had no homeland. And in their homeland they had no freedom. Roman Kupchinsky, a warrior in and out of uniform, who died on January 19th aged 65, was one of the most remarkable of those who fought a seemingly hopeless but ultimately triumphant struggle against the Soviet seizure of power in the eastern half of Europe.

Much of what he did in the cold war is still secret. The son of Ukrainian émigrés to the United States, he served with the American army in Vietnam*. Then he worked “for the government”. He campaigned for political prisoners and fought hard in the information war against Soviet rule in Ukraine. RFE/RL







But unlike many of his fellow cold-warriors, he did not declare victory and retire in 1991. He turned his fire on a new, more insidious enemy: the overlap between organised crime and ex-Soviet intelligence services, and in particular the staggering corruption of the oil and gas industry. He edited a gripping fortnightly digest on crime and corruption in the ex-Soviet region for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. (For readers who know that outfit only in its pale modern incarnation, a trip into the archives is recommended.)

Those who read his reports there, and later for the Jamestown Foundation, a think-tank, found them eye-poppingly well-informed and insightful. Yet they were only dilute versions of what he really knew. Western energy companies and governments took him into their confidence, using him as a consultant to explain the monstrous menagerie of cronyism, spookery and greed that they encountered in the wild east. He kept their secrets.

Many people enjoy the title of a “walking encyclopedia”. Mr Kupchinsky deserved it. But that was only part of it. His companionship was uproarious; his determination to outwit the bad guys inspirational. Your columnist once needed urgent help against a seemingly unbeatable enemy from that world. “Romko’s” salty humour calmed my nerves; his deep knowledge helped win the battle.

Mr Kupchinsky was emblematic of a generation that had escaped totalitarianism and found new homes in the west. Others of the same ilk can be found all over the region: Valdas Adamkus and Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the former presidents of Lithuania and Latvia respectively, or Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Estonia’s serving head of state. From the past 20 years you could find plenty more, of all ages, in and around public life in the ex-captive nations.

Their great asset was binocular vision. Having lived in the west, they understood far better than most of their compatriots at home how life in the rich, free world, for good or for ill, really works. But they also enjoyed a deep knowledge of their own countries’ history and traditions—more so, in some cases, than those who lived under Soviet rule. It didn’t always work: after 1991 some returning émigrés proved to be patronising, bombastic and outright flaky. Some of them died too early: Stasys Lozoraitis, Lithuania’s top diplomat in the West, was struck down by liver cancer in 1994, aged 70, robbing his country of his integrity, charm and vision. But the best and luckiest of them have played a huge role in securing their countries’ future after the collapse of communism.

Mr Kupchinsky was one of the most formidable: equally at home in dealing with troubled bureaucracies such as the FBI and CIA or with Ukraine’s also ill-run intelligence bureaucracies, as well as the private sector, the media and think-tanks. He continued reading, writing and talking—fuelled by a prodigious intake of nicotine and alcohol—right up to his death.

What will we do without him?

Europe View nr 168 -- Europe's borderlands

Europe.view 

The centre cannot hold
Jan 21st 2010
From Economist.com


The borderlands of Europe should not be left behind

PLENTY of places have a claim to be Europe’s geographical centre. French geographers calculated in 1989 that it lies on a hill near Purnuškės in Lithuania. Belarusian cartographers think it is near the town that Russians call Vitebsk (Vitsyebsk in Belarusian). In 1887 in the then Austro-Hungarian empire, geographers erected a monument at Dilove, in what is now the Ukrainian province of Transcarpathia, marking what they reckoned was Europe’s real mid-point.

None of these claims can be definitive; finding Europe’s middle depends on what you count as its edge—the Azores? Iceland? The Ural mountains? The methodology of some claims is unclear. The more exotic ones bear as little relation to geography as the Loch Ness Monster does to aquatic biology. In other words, their purpose is to attract tourists. But at least for the Ukrainians visiting Dilove to be photographed by the monument, this is as far west as they can get.


“Where Europe Ends”, a powerful new film by Alina Mungiu Pippidi, a Romanian scholar and activist, shows the effect of the European Union’s expansion in dividing Europe. The combination of physical decay and human dislocation is poignant. The footage of disintegrating churches, ruined public buildings, shabby homes and bumpy roads leaves the viewer in no doubt of both the region’s rich heritage and its dirt-poor present.

Many of the people interviewed in the film have first-hand experience of the atrocities of the past century. Their grasp of the geopolitics is sometimes hazy, but their memories of shootings and deportations are sharp. Lines on the map drawn by outsiders have divided families and farms, bumping them around like shuttlecocks between different countries and political systems. The creation of a solid eastern frontier to the EU hardly matches the horrific consequences of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, but the victims are the same people.

People left behind by history are often those who find coping with the present day most difficult. Humble farmworkers in rural areas find it hard enough getting Ukrainian or Moldovan officials even to issue a travel document. Getting a visa to cross the border is even harder. The film shows the humiliating crowded queues outside EU member states’ consulates and the dismal life of illegal labour and squalid living that awaits those who make it across.

The film is partly paid for by the EU. It should be compulsory viewing for anyone who works in a consulate or visa office dealing with people from what one might call “left-behind” Europe. Some of the local staff there seem to have been hand-picked for their rudeness. Corruption is still troublingly prevalent. The system for visa applicants often appears to have been designed to deter, rather than enable, travel to the west. It may be unrealistic to expect a big liberalisation of visas in the short term. But it is hard to see any arguments against being polite, honest and efficient.

Enlargement has brought huge benefits for those on the inside, while putting the harshest costs on outsiders, particularly those least able to bear it, such as the citizens of Moldova, Europe’s poorest and most neglected country.

The mantra of EU and NATO expansion has been “Europe whole and free”. That may have now outstripped the willingness of voters in the luckier and richer parts of Europe to pay the taxes and accept the dislocation of further expansion.

But opportunities are opening up in Belarus (wriggling away from Russia), Moldova (with its reformist, pro-European, pro-American government) and even post-election Ukraine, assuming that the political paralysis of recent years ends. Treating the centre of Europe as a hopeless and irrelevant borderland cannot be right.