Heaven on earth

Positing paradise
Jun 29th 2006

From The Economist print edition

For 3,000 years people have tried to imagine what paradise might look like. Two new books trace the history of the hereafter

Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on EarthBy Alessandro ScafiUniversity of Chicago Press; 400 pages; $55. British Library Publishing; £35Buy it atAmazon.comAmazon.co.uk

Paradise: A History of the Idea that Rules the WorldBy Kevin RushbyConstable & Robinson; 272 pages; £18.99. To be published in America by Carroll & Graf in November

Buy it atAmazon.co.uk

WHERE do you find paradise on a map? To the modern eye, used to the cheap and functional cartography of roads and frontiers, the very question is absurd. Maps show real things, not imaginary ones. You might as well look for happiness in a telephone directory.
As Alessandro Scafi shows in his erudite history of the Christian effort to map paradise, pre-modern mapmakers focused on spiritual navigation, not the secular kind. They tried to portray time and space in a way that is still beautiful, but can seem baffling. Their maps showed God, history, and human woes and joys, often biblical ones. The Garden of Eden was a real place, just as Adam was a real man.
Such maps depicted paradise as imaginatively and confidently as they did earthly topography. The world was like a plate; paradise was up a mountain, across a sea, perhaps guarded by angels, maybe in China, or Armenia, or Abyssinia, or Mesopotamia. Christopher Columbus, encountering the Amazon river's freshwater, thought it must flow from paradise.
Mr Scafi's book illustrates beautifully (though, sadly, all too often in black and white) how Eden shifted from the centre of maps to the periphery, and ultimately to the margins. The Renaissance and the Reformation boosted mankind's intellectual and cultural self-confidence. Although belief in a long-ago Eden's literal existence survived, most agreed with Martin Luther that it had perished in the flood. Even pious mapmakers found it hard to reconcile the clues in the Bible (a place where four rivers rose) with the realities of physical geography. Paradise became not just inaccessible, but something out of this world.
Even today, on the fringes of Christianity and in popular journalism, there are people who claim to have found the Garden of Eden. It may not be paradise now (especially if it is a dusty and desolate corner of Iraq). But it jolly well was once. Mr Scafi tells this story well from the sublime start to the ridiculous end, with spectacular flourishes of art history and confident quotes from Latin, Greek and Hebrew. But the focus is tight; other cultures' heavenly ideas are barely mentioned.
Kevin Rushby's book, by contrast, starts earlier, spreads wider and ends later. His enjoyable and informative canter through three millennia of intellectual and religious history highlights the many ways, ingenious, beautiful, wrongheaded or mad, in which humans have tried to define paradise, seek it or, latterly, create it.
The idea predates Christianity, coming from ancient Babylon, where a paradeiza was an enclosure used for easy hunting. That idea of abundance, or “endless bacon” as Mr Rushby nicely puts it, is a persistent thread. It comes up again in the Muslim idea of flowing streams and plentiful virgins, though he notes that huri (Persian for nymph) may be a Koranic mistranslation of the Aramaic for “white raisin”.
Yearning for abundance alternates with the idea that real paradise is swapping earthly pleasure for something better. For Pythagoras, true happiness came from knowledge, in particular from the order and harmony of maths. He had a point. The loveliest architecture uses phi, the constant he derived from the proportions of a pentagram (the discussion on phi is a rare moment of truth in the otherwise nonsensical “Da Vinci Code”).
The third, darker, thread is that paradise means purging the world of unbelievers, sin, filth and so forth. That gets its first outing in the Book of Revelation, a lurid account of the apocalypse probably best read as an allegory of the individual Christian's journey to salvation. Millenarian sects, especially tiny ones, gleefully quote the text showing that only 144,000 people will be saved. All three threads weave in and out of human history. The Pythagoreans resurface whenever scientific and intellectual enlightenment glistens. Mr Rushby's account of the saintly John Tradescant's museum in 17th-century London, with its collection of natural wonders and curiosities from the newly discovered worlds of East and West, is gripping. So is the story of its shameful hijacking by the duplicitous Elias Ashmole. Visitors to the Ashmolean museum in Oxford may ponder the extraordinary unfairness: how many other “ambitious, ingratiating” social climbers have stolen so completely a hero's legacy?
Modernity, and the luxury it created (initially for a few, then for many) made earthly abundance seem within reach. The Pilgrim Fathers hoped for an earthly paradise without the sin and selfishness of the Old World. Philanthropists such as Robert Owen wanted that too, but without divine inspiration. His experiment only bankrupted him. Later attempts to build paradise on earth cost millions of lives.
The prospect of acquired perfection lies behind many big ideas and most bad ones. If you do the right thing, believe the right thing, suffer enough, love enough, work hard enough, kill enough of the wrong people or breed enough of the right ones—then you will end up in paradise. That is a great motivator, often with awful results.
Neither modern consumerism nor the back-to-nature sentiments that make people yearn for rural bliss get a good write-up from Mr Rushby. Trying to transcend our own imperfections, rather than eradicating those of others, is the best bet, he argues. Amen to that.

The mysterious assassination of Mr Saakashvili

The next posting shows the text of the "paper" and a scanned copy of it is available at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EdwardLucas/

You have to subscribe (which is free), and then go to "Files" and there you can download it

By Edward Lucas

Just don't ask me where I got it," said a beautiful, mysterious and well-connected woman, as she slipped a document into my pocket at a party last week.

The title was Mikhail Saakashvili: A Psychological Study of the [sic] Character and at first sight it looked like a well-sourced academic paper. The abstract says that the Georgian president suffers from "certain psychiatric disturbances" and offers practical advice to those dealing with him. It thanks half-a-dozen impressive-sounding western mental health institutes, such as the "Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, University of Vienna Medical School".
For a split-second I was puzzled, wondering what kind of western think-tank would produce something like this. But then the Kremlin bells started ringing alarmingly in my head. The English was clumsy, and unmistakably translated from Russian. There were no footnotes, no ISBN number, no quotes, no proper sources (just uncheckably vague ones). It looked very like a classic piece of Soviet-style dezinformatsija aimed at undermining a politician, and a country, which are the immediate target of Putinland's gravest displeasure.
Later that night I studied it more closely. It begins by saying that Mr Saakashvili was a disturbed adolescent who "immersed himself in a lifestyle of destructive behaviour, parties and sex", including making amateur porn films. He is egocentric and hysterical in behaviour; and though clever and highly motivated, he is over-excitable. The "Diagnosis" it states, rather baldly, is "Expansive type of paranoid dysfunction (according to ICD-10) combined with narcissist type of hysteroid personality" - a piece of clumsy psychological jargon that seems to have been translated from Russian by a computer. It concludes by recommending politeness, firmness and patience in dealings with him.
All this, cleverly, sounds convincing but has a repellent effect. I have known Mikheil (to use the proper transcription of his name from Georgian) Saakashvili since 1999. He is (like many politicians) a bit vain and (like many Georgians) rather impulsive. But the document cleverly exaggerates his weaknesses and leaves out his strengths. It portrays someone so volatile, self-obsessed and untrustworthy that they would be quite unsuitable to have as a partner for NATO or the EU.
I faxed it over to Saakashvili's office for a comment. The document, aides say, started being circulated in western Europe about a month ago. They say it is part of an intense Russian campaign to discredit and destabilise their country which also includes the recent attempted assassination of an opposition leader.
Cynics will argue "they would say that, wouldn't they". And short of the Kremlin's mischief-makers defecting and publishing their memoirs it's impossible to prove. Pro-Kremlin people may even argue that the Georgians have produced this themselves in order to stoke sympathy in the west.
I think the real significance is that Russia is losing the new cold war in the Caucasus. Ten years ago, there was a real chance that Georgia - penniless, friendless, war-torn and appallingly badly run - would collapse. But since then progress has been huge. Ajaria, a tinpot mafia statelet, is under Georgian government control. Political life is bumpy, and talent is still scanty, but the government now is one of the least bad (to put it no more strongly than that) the country has ever had. Economic growth is soaring, despite Russia's trade war (banning wine, mineral water and fruit).
Most importantly, the west realises that the only way to import central Asian oil and gas safely is through pipelines across Georgia. That means accelerating that country's Euro-Atlantic integration. I think Putinland is getting desperate.

Edward Lucas is central and eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist.

the spurious "Psychiatric" assessment of Mr Saakashvili

This is the document that goes with this week's European Voice column

(apologies for poor text quality). I am trying to post the original PDF as well

-- Mikhail Saakashvili: A Psychological
Study of the Character


[Abstract] The present study examines psychological characteristics of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, concludes from the analysis of available data that he has certain psychiatric disturbances and makes a diagnosis. The study offers also practical advice which should be followed while dealing with President Saakashvili. In view of its sensitivity the study is for limited distribution only. We wish to acknowledge the contribution to the study made by: Tonsberg Psychiatric Centre, Orsnessale, Norway; National Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway; Department of Psychiatry, Kuopio University Hospital, Finland; Centre for Nervous Deceases[SIC], Christian Albrecht University, Kiel, Germany; Department of Psychiatry, University of Geneva, Switzerland; Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, University of Vienna Medical School, Austria; Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. –


1. Anamnesis and family history Information about Saakashvili's childhood and adolescence is insufficient. Raised in a single-parent family environmenthe grew much attached to his mother. Early in his life due to a deep emotional trauma he became very negative and aggressive towards his biological father. His relationship with his stepfather later in his life was also tense and bitter. He also had difficultiesin undemanding and etablishingrelationswith other people of his age and was often treated as an outcast and a "loner". This situation was partially corrected and his social skills improved when in high school he joined a school theatre group and took part in some of its theatrical productions. At the same time, together with some other classmates, he became actively involved in an amateur film production, including pomo films. When this incident finally became public and a scandal broke at school he had to leave his homctown and went to Kiev. During the following period he immersedhimselfinto a lifestyle of destructive behaviour, parties and sex. His apartment at that time was often offered to his fellow students and friends as a place for intimate encounters and he used this as a way to gain popularity and establish his place in the "in crowd". By the end of his freshman year he got involved in yet another confrontation with the establishment and was expelled from Komsomol organization. In order to calm things down he volunteered in the Anny and spent two years in service. 2. Behavioural pattern

The overall pattem of SaakashvjJj's social behaviour is defined by persistent conflict existing.between this exteriorized behaviour a.ndhis internal emotional component. While demonstrating and often exaggerating his sincerity, expressiveness and communication skills on the outside,he presents all the signs of internal tension,nervousness,suspicion and emotional vulnerability.The nonverbal component of his behaviour is especially representative and informative in this respect. While his facial expression is usually lively and matches the behavioural context, his gesticulation (his hand movements tend to be uchopping-like" with palms being constantly spastic and this "closed-inUpattern doem!t change during the whole period of verbal communication,even when the communication environment is in its most positive and favourablephase),body postureand rigidbody languageare all out of context I~

On the scale of motivational factors his fOOitionon pride and self-esteem and his egocentrism prevail over altruistic tendencies and public interests that he pretends to demonstrate in public. This detemUnes his inability to adequately control his internal outbursts of resentment when he feels that he is not being appreciated enough. These outbursts may happen even when he consciously and sincereJy intends to express his loyalty and readiness to cooperate with the counterpart. Saakashvi1i has demonstrated th.8the finds it difficult to organize his thoughts and express himself when he is being coniTonted with unexpected, compHcated and personally unpleasant issues. Though in general be has a fairly good level of verbal skills, under the above circumstances he tends to get confused and resorts to obviously meaningless, lengthy and empty wording in order to avoid a clear-defined and down to business answer and thus intends to oVeIWhelmhis counterpart.

A situation when during one of his public appearances he was askedabout his income can be a good illustrationof such a pattern of behaviour. Extremeegocentricity of Saakashvili's personality often becomes an obstacle for himself when a situation is cal1ing for a fresh and original ideas and spontMieousreactions. He intuitively recognizesthis constraintand tries to mask his egocentrism by acting out in a verbose and extremely eloquent manner, expecting to produce a "spell- like", mesmerizing effect on his opponents. -- - - - Saakashvili's behaviour consistently demonstrates that his emotionaJ response and his abiJity to express signs of excitement and genuine interest primarily occur when his persona., his exceptionalityan-dsignificancebecome the centretopic of the discussion. He looked exited and radiant,if not happy. when he Wasonce posing in front of hjs car, showing bullet holes in the windshield.To him the fact that he was a "target"of an assassinationattempthad put him in line with other world leaders and dignitaries. His exaggerated, theatricaJ and openly deliberate personal style nevertheless lacks spontaneity, easiness and showmanship, so typica1for other hysteroid types.

3. Psychologicalaspect

3.1. Intellectual component IQ level is above average with active type of reasoning, good levelof abstractand analytical capabilitiesand ideation. Subject's ideation activity on one hand combines impulsiveness,tendencyto followemotional logic and initial internal impulse and on the other hand above average ideationrigiditywith tendency to constantly conceptualize, create static, emotionally saturated ideas and groups of ideas, capable of asserting the importanceand exclusivity of his own personality.Due to the extreme rigidity of these ideas Saakashviliisopen onJyto the informationthat agreeswith his conceptual structure and he totally excludesthe rest that exists outside this scope.Takento the extreme, this tendency may beCQme transformedinto megalomania, obsessive or maniacal syndrome characterized by a personal convictionof being destinedto be the "chosenone", Thoughhis general education level is above average and his ability to form channels of verbal communicationis sv.,ift,smooth and even with a hint of artistry, his reasoning Jacks depth, originalityand independence. Pretending to be special, creative and exclusive his reasoning nevertheless is rather ordinary, predictable and often based on common knowJedge and plagiarism.Finding himseJf in an unexpected situation or being confronted with unanticipated questionshe finds it difficu]t to come up with the right answer and in order to save his face he becomesverbose,sidetracksand eventuallyswitchesto othertopics.

3.2. Motivational component. Subject's general level of activity is noticeably elevated. Primary motivational factors include ambition, vanity, superiority, extreme competitiveness and dominance. We may assume that Saakashvi1i's low self-esteem and compJex of inferiority,both formGdearly in the childhoodbut suppressedat present, have determinedhis stTOngurge for power. These dominant internal factors have transformed through hyper compensatorymechanism of defence into partialand at times complete loss of sense of reality, adequatebehaviouralresponseand capacityto perceivecontextualreality. His overwhelming egocentric desire for se1f-affirmationand strong conviction in personal superiorityput him into a position when his politicalcareer becomes only an instrument in his questto gain socia1rccognition that he has been denied for so long. He is so overwhelmed with this interna]passion for proving himself at all times that he is not capable to accept the civic valuesof the society that once rejecte-dhim. We may only expect that this win lead him into moreconflictswithtilissocietyin the future.It is importantto recognizethat in his pursuitfor powerhe may easily loose the sense of danger and natural fear of consequences of his own decisionsand this makes him capable of provokingserious conflicts, including political and military.

3.3. Emotional component Emotionalexcitationlevelis above average.His personality tends to present stab1esigns of hyperactivity, elevated 1evelsof emotional status, excessive selfesteem and extremely high ex-pectations.He is very active, vigorous and resourceful in achievinghis persona}goals.At thesametime,beingextremelyself-centred,he can be easily heart, tends to hold a grudge and be very emotionalabout it, even to the point of seeking revenge. His exterior emotional manifestations are expressive, intense and at time theatrical. He easily develops internal tension and becomes defensive, negative and jealous towards people, who herecOgni7..easSsurt-'assinghim in something.

4. Diagnosis Expansive type of paranoid dysfunction (according to ICD-IO) combined with narcissist type of hysteroid personal1ty.

Paranoid aspect is translated into excessive intellectual and emotional rigidity, tendency to "getting stuck" and form fixations on certain ideas and concepts. In case of Saakashvili this may have been caused by extremely high emotional status of his past experiences carrying a specialsignificancefor him. Saakashvili's personality is characterized by typical for paranoid types excessive self-esteem, hypertrophied sense of pride combined with excessive sensitivity towards failure and negative social response. He attaches special importance to everything that is related to his own personalityand his personal interests.At the same time anything existing outside this "personal circle" becomes exc1uded fTom the domain of his active attention. Saakashvi1i presents persistent tendency to put himself in opposition with the rest of the society and perceive the worldaround him as a hostile environment.As an obvious responsehe expresses this perception in a form of extreme vigilance and distrust towards others. He is incapable to act based on idealistic motives and rejects this ability in others. He is prone to suspect others of being unfair, insolent:, and envious, with intentions to humiliate, insult, entrap and dishonour him. Above described personality disorders could be observed in Saakashvili since very early in rus adolescence and throughout his adult life. Saakashvili's tendency to create super ideas is especially typical for paranoid dysfunctions. Super ideas totally enslave the entire personality and completely determine its behavioural patterns. One of such super ideas thatkeep Saakashviliobsessedat the moment is his pursuit for powerand self-promotion-.,

A distinctive feature of Saakashvili as of an expansive paranoid type is his vigour, dynamism, at times even restlessness and disregard for rest andfatigue. Saakashvili'snarcissism combined with hysteroid traits determines his pathological ambition, aITogance,sense of superiority and exuberantly high opinion about himself. He is irrefutably convinced in his own righteousnessand personal importance,is intolerant towards any fonn of criticism and tends to exaggerate his personal accomplishments.His ability to work effectively goesalongsidewith desirefor public attentionand admiration. His decision to choose politics as a profession was a very natural choice for him, since he wouldn't have got himself involved in anyotherfieldthathadn'thadpromisedhima speedygratificationin a fonn affame andpublic recognition.As most of narcissists he lacks empathy, is indifferenttowards other people's needs and feelingsand "perceivesthe rest of humanityas facelessapplaudingcrowd".

5.Recommendations Taking into consideration the combination of paranoid dysfunction with hysteroid symptomsthat dd'im: Saakashviiias a person,we offer the following recommendations with the purpose of creating an atmosphereof personaltrust and opennesswhich may open a window of opportunityfor loweringhis self-controland predisposehim to act in an openand sinceremanner-

It is advisable that the counterpart (interlocutor) should demonstrate an obviously positive intention in a foml of expressing sincere interest in Saakashvili's personaJityand demonstratingappreciationand "proper"recognition. Contrast approach: initial phase should include a demonstration of interest in everything concerning Saakashvili's personality, his merits, praise his real and nonexistent accompJishments and then introduce a comment putting this statement under a shroud of doubt. We expect that under the circumstances Saakashvili may try to substantiate his "reputation" and talk more than it was initially intended. . Tt is possible to motivate Saakashvili t.o repeat his discourse about a situation of certain importance and demonstrate a degree of scepticism. Under this sort of pressure. hysteroid types terydto exaggeratethe fictionalcomponent and add new details in order to make it al1 look more credible. Often these additional details are contradictory and thus add new semantic shades to the whole narration about the same account.

This may open an additional ground to add questions, single out contradictions and request clarifications. It is very probable that Saakashvilihas low tolerance towards infonnation deprivation, anticipation, inactivity and loss of interest towards himself. Being forced to operate in such a context he may initiate a communicationprocess, may develop a desire to "speak himself out" and attract attention all for the singlepurpose of maintaining the status of the focal point of the public interest. Anyone potentially capable to offer him such an opportunitymay become awelcomepartnerfor SaakashviIi. Being the type of a personalitythat exists with the conviction that "he knows best" and is ready for competitionat any time, he tends to reject any action that he perceives as contradictory to his publicly expressed views about a particular situation. In order to motivatehim to act in 8 preferredway he should be convinced that in this particular situation he is in charge of setting goals and findingways to accomplishthem.

5.1. Be aware of: Under no circumstance use imperative tone or give him a reason to believe that he is being humiliated or disrespected and even more so if it is done in public. In case that he is stuck in controversies it is advisable to anow him to find his way out in order to save his face and even, if it is needed, offer him a suitable and honourable rout of escape. At the same tjrne~it is advisable not to give in all the time. His personality type respects power and any indisputable authority generates a sense of respect in him and desire to be part of this force and use it for his own benefit. 4 -- - - --

Tintin and the broken metaphor

Dog days

Jun 22nd 2006
From The Economist print edition

Tintin and the Secret of Literature By Tom McCarthy Granta; 211 pages; £14.99 Buy it at Amazon.co.uk

THE best parodies are so good that the reader is never quite sure if the author really is joking or not. This is certainly the case in Tom McCarthy's delicious new book, which unleashes the arsenal of post-modern literary criticism on Tintin, the comic-strip boy hero created by Georges Remi, a Belgian, under the pseudonym Hergé.

The book blends genuine detective-work with the most absurd non-sequiturs and red herrings of literary criticism. It is startling (if true) to learn that the seemingly racist “Tintin in the Congo” is popular in Africa; and intriguing to speculate whether the glamorous illegitimacy of Hergé's own family history is echoed in the family crest of Tintin's friend, Captain Haddock. Mr McCarthy argues that it signifies that Haddock's ancestor Sir Francis was a royal bastard.

Such detours into reasonableness serve only to lure the reader into the realms of lunacy: the Castafiore Emerald, the author argues with sweeping confidence, is not just the oft-misplaced bauble belonging to a forceful but absent-minded opera singer: it is her clitoris. Switch on the “sexual sub-filter”, he explains, and the jewel's real nature is clear. “She sits on it. It is hard to find, and easy to lose again among the moundy grass...it gives her pleasure and encourages her to give men more pleasure.” Poor Captain Haddock's plaster-covered leg, meanwhile, is “a sign of both castration and an erection”.

There is plenty more such drivel, with other details of plot, scene and character being the subject of a farrago of bogus inference, forced taxonomy and lame puns. It is all bolstered with a galaxy of references from the self-indulgent worlds of literary criticism, psychoanalysis and the Situationists of the 1960s. Too few names go undropped, the prime spot going to Roland Barthes.

The book is sprinkled with enough pretentious jargon, factual error and illogicality to infuriate and baffle the unwary. But the result is a satire of which Hergé, himself the creator of a cast of immortal parodies, would indeed have been proud.

Charles Haughey

Jun 22nd 2006
From The Economist print edition

Charles Haughey, four times taoiseach of Ireland, died on June 13th, aged 80

Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland!

CHARLES HAUGHEY got a good send-off, with a state funeral and all the trimmings, verbal and decorative. Bertie Ahern, Ireland's current leader, said that history's judgment “will be favourable”. Foes and critics alike praised Mr Haughey's common touch, his panache, his brains and his energy.

Charles Haughey was a technicolour politician in a monochrome landscape. He burst onto the Irish political scene at a time when it featured dull men distinguished only by their austerity. Elected to the Dail in 1957, the flamboyant Mr Haughey quickly became the foremost member of a group tagged the “men in mohair suits” for their smart clothes and brash ways.

Although an Anglophobe by birth and conviction, he cultivated the most elaborate tastes and mannerisms of the Anglo-Irish gentry. He had mansions, estates and a private island. He liked antique furniture, and fine art, horses, clothes and wines.

He wanted Ireland to swagger too. He had embassies renovated, and encouraged diplomats to splurge on entertaining. He liked high culture, and basking in the reflected glory of the literary and artistic elite. One of his most memorable innovations was freeing creative types from income tax. He gave free travel for pensioners, a fair deal for widows, and tax breaks to the bloodstock industry.

History may well judge that he was the most gifted Irish politician of his generation. But it is harder to argue that he put those talents to good use. Ireland was a benighted place when his political career began, and a bright one when he died. But that was largely despite his influence, not thanks to it. To that extent, Mr Haughey represented the worst side of his country's post-war history.

Few charges against him stuck, though. Many had long wondered how he supported a lavish lifestyle on a politician's salary. But the Irish media, cowed by the country's ferocious libel laws, investigated half-heartedly. Only in 1999 did a corruption tribunal identify $10m-plus of the lavish gifts he had received from businessmen, and the way his bank simply cancelled a large chunk of his overdraft (Mr Haughey had warned them “I can be a very troublesome adversary”).

The revelations were tantalisingly partial: pleading ill-health, Mr Haughey shunned the inquiry. He brushed off the allegations, arguing either that “finances were peripheral” or claiming a precedent: had not Winston Churchill been financed by business admirers too?

Perhaps, but only when out of power, and Churchill did not plunder the Tory coffers; Mr Haughey used those of his Fianna Fail party as his private piggy-bank. He was a flagrant tax-evader: when the authorities finally caught up with him, he had to sell his estate to pay them. Even his greatest fans would not call him fastidious. It was best to call him simply “Boss”. There was cronyism for chums and thuggish treatment of the rest. Unfriendly journalists' phones were bugged. His justice minister even considered having dissident members of his parliamentary party arrested. Days before his death he warned a British journalist who was getting too nosey: “My arms reach far, and people have been found floating down the Thames.”

A marriage into an Irish political dynasty was the springboard for his later career. His own roots were military: his family fought against the British to win Irish independence. The mutual loathing was lifelong. In 1945 the young Mr Haughey, then a humble commerce student in Dublin, led a crowd that burned the British flag to mark VE-Day. As finance minister until 1970, he was twice tried (and acquitted) of running guns to the IRA.

Confounding those who thought that scandal had ended his political career, he returned to his party's front bench in 1975. When it took power in 1977, he became health minister, striking an ingenious compromise—“an Irish solution to an Irish problem”—on the issue of birth control: contraceptives could be available on prescription, to married couples only.

He became head of a short-lived minority government in late 1979, when the economy was floundering because of high taxes. He preached austerity, yet practised prodigality, doling out favours and privileges with flair and precision. An election in 1981 put him briefly in opposition; he returned to office briefly the next year for a few more months of profligate populism and misrule.

Frayed mohair

In opposition, as evidence of his heavy-handed ways came to light, Mr Haughey's party split. But amid growing frustration with Ireland's economic stagnation, he scraped back into power in 1987 for a third minority term of office. This one, and a coalition government that followed, lasted for five years and, at first, proved remarkably successful, chiefly thanks to a decision by the Fine Gael opposition to support all moves towards fiscal reform. That allowed the fierce spending and tax cuts that began to transform Ireland from a banana republic into a “Celtic Tiger”.

But Mr Haughey had little time to enjoy the fruits of this rare period of goodish government. Old scandals resurfaced and new ones broke. He left politics for good in 1992, his reputation increasingly tattered, and with a lot worse to come.

America and central Europe

Stamped by history

Jun 22nd 2006 | TALLINN
From The Economist print edition

Post-communist countries like America. Shame they can't travel there

IT WAS to America that the captive nations of central and eastern Europe once looked for succour. And when they gained freedom, it was America that pushed to make them safe, by bringing them in to NATO. Those memories are still strong. George Bush's visit to Hungary this week, marking the 50th anniversary of the failed anti-Soviet uprising there, would have met similar warmth in any of the eight ex-communist members of the European Union. In parts of “old Europe”, by contrast, the welcome would have been cool or outright hostile.

Most of Europe's new democracies still believe that, in a tight spot, only America can guarantee their security. That is particularly true for those edgy about Russia: Poland and the Baltic states. They were thrilled to hear Mr Bush's vice-president, Dick Cheney, denounce Russia's energy imperialism in Vilnius last month.

But it is not just Russia. Hungary, for example, keeps an uneasy eye on next-door Serbia, home to an unhappy Hungarian minority. If extremists took power in Serbia, says George Schöpflin, a Hungarian member of the European Parliament, only America could protect Hungary.

The post-communist countries are useful American allies. They supported the war in Iraq both diplomatically, and (see table) with troops on the ground. The numbers, Poland aside, may look small. But for the countries involved, they are large. Addressing Congress earlier this month, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Latvia's president, said that her country's contribution to operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the western Balkans was “proportionately one of the largest in the world”.

America tends to underestimate the political cost of this. One post-communist minister recalls trying vainly to convince his American counterparts that staying in Iraq was rather unpopular at home. American military aid to the new democracies has been stingy. And the cost and hassle of America's visa policies grate harshly. “Estonians don't understand why their sons are dying in Iraq for democracy and freedom, and yet their families can't get visas for the United States,” says Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a former foreign minister.

So far, only Slovenia's 1.9m people have visa-free travel to America. Poland and the Czech Republic have lobbied hard; so did Mrs Vike-Freiberga on her recent trip. But there is little sign of change. In most post-communist countries, each visa application costs a non-refundable $100—a week's wages. In Romania, even the appointment costs $11, for seven minutes of telephone time.

That makes it hard for pro-American politicians to thrive. Mikulas Dzurinda, the outgoing Slovak prime minister, was an ardent Atlanticist. He was well-received during visits to Washington, but brought little home to show for it. The victors in last weekend's elections were anti-American leftist and nationalist parties.

Who's my friend?

Such wobbles barely trouble American policy-makers. East European governments of all stripes usually end up trying to get on well with America. The Hungarian government that welcomed Mr Bush is a coalition of ex-communists and liberals, but it has been a solid ally in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Poland, under the presidency of ex-communist Aleksander Kwasniewski, helped America, notably in places such as Ukraine. The country's current conservative rulers, though explicitly pro-American, are shackled by their incompetence in foreign policy.

Atlanticism is a harder and riskier sell than it used to be. The public increasingly thinks Iraq was bungled. Many politicians would like to say to America: “If you want us to be your allies in places such as Iraq, then do things better,” says Kadri Liik, a Tallinn-based foreign-policy analyst. Polish opinion has swung sharply against a clumsily presented new American anti-missile radar base.

The furore over rendition has been damaging too. Although all the governments concerned—in Poland and elsewhere—deny that they have provided secret bases for torturing, or transporting, terrorists, solid suspicions remain.

The hope now is that America will open large bases of a more conventional kind, with the attendant jobs and contracts. In April America leased three bases in Bulgaria, which are expected to bring several thousand troops to build logistics for larger forces heading east and south.

In Romania, the port of Constanta has been used for NATO exercises and is likely to become an American base by year-end. President Traian Basescu has energetically pushed the idea of using his country to open the Black Sea region to American and European influence.

So long as the European Union's own foreign policy looks muddled and weak, the ex-captive nations are likely to look mostly to America for security. And loyal friends in useful places are welcome, even if they are small, weak and tiresomely keen on actually visiting their big ally.

Lessons from the Cold War about reforming Islam

Lessons from the Cold War about reforming Islam



Two of the best-known Muslims in Europe met for the first time last week. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an apostate: three bodyguards protect her from the radical Islamists who want to kill her. Tariq Ramadan is a pious, in some ways rather conservative, Muslim who has no bodyguards yet.

But I wouldn't be surprised if he gets some soon. He wants his co-religionists to be active and peaceful citizens of modern Europe. Some see him as the leader of a reformation that would lead to a nice, cuddly Euro-Islam. Radicals loathe him for that; many secularists still think he is creepy and sinister.
Tariq Ramadan is a pious, in some ways rather conservative, Muslim who has no bodyguards yet. But I wouldn't be surprised if he gets some soon. He wants his co-religionists to be active and peaceful citizens of modern Europe. Some see him as the leader of a reformation that would lead to a nice, cuddly Euro-Islam. Radicals loathe him for that; many secularists still think he is creepy and sinister.
Hirsi Ali (a Somali-born refugee) and Ramadan (a Swiss-born Egyptian aristocrat) debated at a conference in Sweden organised by the wealthy and iconoclastic Ax:son Johnson Foundation. It was gripping stuff (though I'm biased, as I was chairing it). Hirsi Ali said Ramadan was duplicitous. He responded by calling her, in effect, a publicity hound, more interested in impressing western audiences than changing Muslim thinking.
Both were impressive: Ramadan is formidably articulate, almost demagogic. But behind his charm, he's prickly and humourless. He didn't like it when Hirsi Ali (who has a wicked sense of humour) started teasing him.
The conference participants' sympathies divided pretty evenly. But I was struck by a historical parallel. I've always been suspicious of prominent, vulnerable reformers since I made the terrible mistake, briefly, of being a fan of Mikhail Gorbachev. The danger is that you get besotted with a particular personality and end up sacrificing the people who actually share your views in order to protect someone who agrees with you only a little bit.
I see Ramadan as a kind of Gorbachev figure: he's eloquent, sympathetic and exposed. It's tempting to help him: we wanted Gorbachev to make the Soviet empire safe and we would like Ramadan to do the same for Islam. But Hirsi Ali is more like Andrei Sakharov. She has suffered physically because of her beliefs. She believes passionately in democracy, free speech and the rule of law, with no ifs and buts.
So I find it worrying that Hirsi Ali is leaving Europe for America for safety and freedom - rather as dissidents left the Soviet Union. I would have been delighted if Ramadan had, for example, begun his remarks by deploring the attacks on her, endorsing her right to say what she likes and offering to attend the launch of her next book or film. He didn't: he speaks out strongly for freedom and the liberal order in principle - but seems much less eager to do it directly to a potential victim of Islamist extremism sitting just next to him.
Another echo came from the question of Koranic authority. Hirsi Ali says that until Muslims explicitly move away from the idea that the Koran is the literal and revealed truth, Islam will not be compatible with liberal democracy. Ramadan tries to blur the issue, saying that the Koran must be read "in context" (though he doesn't, quite, say whether that means that wife-beating is always wrong, or only sometimes).
That recalled the Congress of People's Deputies in December 1989. Sakharov took the podium and bluntly told Gorbachev that Article Six of the Soviet constitution, which guaranteed the Communist Party's monopoly of power, had to go. Gorbachev silenced him harshly, saying: "Let's not put pressure on each other by manipulating public opinion." Sakharov died a few days later.
But he was right: truthful words beat blurry ones, even if those who defend powerful old thinking find them uncomfortable.

Edward Lucas is central and eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist.

Hirsi Ali vs Ramadan debate

Muslim futures

Jun 20th 2006
From The Economist Global Agenda

Two of Europe’s leading Muslims conduct a fiercely polite debate on the place of Islam in Europe

AP

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FEW questions are more important to Europe’s future than the integration of the continent’s 20m-odd Muslims. Non-Muslim politicians and officials tend to debate the “how” of integration. Muslims tend to debate the “whether”.

Two of the protagonists in the latter argument met for the first time last week, in the tranquil confines of a conference in rural Sweden organised by the conservative Ax:son Johnson Foundation. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somali-born and until recently a Dutch citizen, describes herself as a “secular Muslim”. But Islamists see her as an apostate, so she travels with three bodyguards to protect her from assassins.

She was debating with Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born Muslim polemicist and scholar at St Antony’s College, Oxford. He has no bodyguards yet. But he may need some soon. His public meetings attract large numbers of enthusiastic followers, who see him as the champion of a pious but modern-minded Islam. But they are also on occasion disrupted by fundamentalists who see him as little better than Ms Hirsi Ali.

There were none of those at the Swedish conference. But there were plenty of representatives of another camp equally opposed to Mr Ramadan: hawkish Islam-watchers. One is Ms Hirsi Ali herself. Another is Pierre Lellouche, a French Gaullist deputy, who termed Mr Ramadan an “agent of influence”, playing the same role for Islam as crypto-communists did for the Soviet Union during the cold war. Mr Ramadan took up his post at Oxford only after he was turned down for an American visa.

Mr Ramadan’s favourite line is to denounce western media and opinion-formers for a simplistic and exaggerated view of Islam. Muslims who have lived on the European continent for centuries, he says, are already well-integrated and are eager to integrate more. Religious belief is no barrier to good citizenship, and it is unreasonable to expect Muslim representatives to have to condemn terrorism on each and every public appearance.

Whereas Mr Ramadan comes across as prickly and humourless, Ms Hirsi Ali plays up her glamorous feminine side. “Do you mind if I call you Tariq?” she coos, placing a friendly finger on Mr Ramadan’s tweed-clad arm. Having established a psychological advantage over a slightly flushed Mr Ramadan, she calls him handsome but duplicitous. It might be nice to portray Islam as it could be, but the problem is the faith as it is, she argues. Most Muslims believe that the Koran is the literal and absolute word of God, not open to interpretation. Few Muslims in reality, she says, follow Mr Ramadan’s view that every part of the Koran must be seen in its historic context. Islam is not a recipe for good government, she says, noting that all but a handful of Muslim countries are either failed states or tyrannies.

Mr Ramadan says his rival is, in effect, a publicity hound, more interested in impressing western audiences than changing Muslim thinking. “Are you working to change mentality, or to please western audiences?” he asks, upsetting an audience that sees Ms Hirsi Ali as a near-martyr.

An ardent campaigner for the rights of Muslim women, Ms Hirsi Ali started her political career as a Dutch social-democrat, and then moved to the free-market and right-wing liberal party, the VVD. She was deprived of her Dutch citizenship last month, amid claims that she had obtained asylum under false pretences (she admits that she invented some details in order to enter Holland, but denies that she ever concealed this during her political career).

She is now moving to Washington, DC, to take up a post at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank. “I asked them if they were worried about problems that I might create for them, and they said ‘no, we like controversy’”, she recalls with an appreciative giggle.

The populist choice

Jun 19th 2006
From The Economist Global Agenda

Victory for a left-leaning opposition party in Slovakia is a blow for one of the best-regarded reforming governments in the post-communist world

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SPECTACULAR success followed by tragic failure. That might seem the verdict of the weekend’s general election in Slovakia, where one of the best-regarded reforming governments in the post-communist world was booted out of office amid big votes for left-wing and populist parties.

Both parts of the judgment need qualification. Slovakia’s coalition government under Mikulas Dzurinda had indeed done well in stabilising the economy, attracting foreign investment, cutting taxes and boosting growth. But it had not managed to reform public services convincingly, or to convince voters that the benefits of prosperity were going to the poor as well as to the rich.

And the election outcome is not as bad as it looks. It is true that the left-wing populist Smer (Direction) party of Robert Fico was the winner, doubling its share of the vote to win 50 seats in the 150-member parliament. And it is true that Smer’s programme is both opaque and ominous. The party is against Slovakia’s successful flat tax, and favours more government intervention in the economy.

But there are encouraging bits of the result too. Mr Dzurinda’s freemarket conservative party did better than expected, polling 18.4%. That will give it 31 seats in the parliament. Its allies did well too. A party representing the country’s large Hungarian minority gained 20 mandates, and a centrist Christian-Democrat outfit won 14. Unfortunately for Mr Dzurinda, two reform-minded small parties failed to pass the 5% threshold necessary to get into parliament. Had they done so, his party could have squeaked back into government.

A combined 65 deputies is not enough to recreate the previous coalition. But Mr Fico has to find allies too. The obvious, but unlikely, choice for him is the 20 hardline right-wing deputies of the Slovak National Party: its leader, Jan Slota, once said that the country’s Roma “problem” could be solved with a “big whip and a small yard”. On other issues its programme is vague. The one thing it is committed not to do is share power with the Hungarian party; the feeling is mutual.

The other potential partner from the previous opposition is the party of Vladimir Meciar, another populist who, as the country’s authoritarian leader until 1998, presided over a disastrous period of isolation and corruption. Mr Meciar’s party did worse than expected, getting 15 mandates.

Mr Meciar is a shadow of his former self, and his party has evolved a lot from its sinister, thuggish past. His party is, just, a potential partner. But including the nationalist Mr Slota would risk international opprobrium. Liberal-minded outsiders are already worried about the outspoken social conservative government in Poland, and would be quick to condemn Mr Fico for bringing a racist-tinged party into government.

The most likely outcome, therefore, is that at least one party from the outgoing coalition joins Mr Fico in a new one. The Hungarian party has already said it is willing to talk—but insists that the flat tax, among other things, must stay. Weeks of negotiation and bickering may lie ahead, and the new government will certainly be less reformist than the outgoing one. But Slovakia’s many foreign investors are not panicking yet.

The Baltics and NATO

Small world

Jun 15th 2006 | TALLINN
From The Economist print edition

Doubts about Baltic membership of NATO have subsided

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TOO small, too risky, and too unprepared. That was how NATO saw the Baltics in the 1990s. Their armed forces were an ill-equipped, untrained and sometimes disreputable lot. Bad old habits lingered from the Soviet era (bullying, alcoholism) and bad new ones had been picked up (mutiny, corruption). So why, many asked, should NATO extend its defence guarantee to such troublesome and useless allies?

Yet two years after Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined the alliance, things look rather different. Russia's huffing and puffing over the Baltics joining NATO has proved empty. NATO's practical commitment is cheap and minimal: just four foreign fighter aircraft, based in Lithuania. In return, NATO has gained a few things. Lithuania has useful special forces; Western spies speak highly of their Estonian colleagues. Estonia and Latvia have modern radars that snoop deep into Russia and Belarus. “You can see things from here that you can't see from Norway,” says Sven Mikser, a former Estonian defence minister.

Another plus is tough soldiers and supportive politicians—nowadays a rarity in Europe. “The quality is much higher than we have at home,” says one Western adviser. “They have ordinary soldiers with degrees, who speak three languages.” Boots with brains come in handy for the Balkans, and farther afield: scores of Baltic soldiers have served in Iraq, and hundreds in Afghanistan. They have “liberal rules of engagement, coupled with tough self-control,” says Kadri Liik, director of Estonia's International Centre for Defence Studies.

The Balts are also well placed to advise other countries how to turn rough-and-ready, ramshackle armies into something more professional. At the Baltic Defence College in Estonia, officers from Ukraine and Georgia study alongside locals. It is admittedly small stuff compared with Poland, the biggest, strongest and most useful new NATO member. The Balts still need to treat their soldiers better, and to increase defence spending (though so do bigger and richer members from western Europe).

The biggest lesson of bringing the Balts in is that it resolves security problems that might otherwise fester. “If they weren't in NATO, there would now be a huge tussle for influence here between the West and resurgent Russia,” says a veteran observer. “Because the Balts are in, it's not really an issue.”

Maps

Placing names

Jun 15th 2006
From The Economist print edition

From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame By Mark Monmonier Chicago University Press; 215 pages; $25 and £16 Buy it at Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk

IN AN ideal world, each place would have one name which would be the same in every language. Yet politics, history and language rule out such simplicity. Sometimes the difference is minor (Londres, Londra, Londyn, Londen, Lontoo, Londynas and Londinium are all recognisable forms for the British capital). But place names can be outright baffling: who but a Latvian would know that a signpost to Igaunija points to neighbouring Estonia?

Such variants are called exonyms by geographers. Among the many eyebrow-raising facts in this excellent book is that the United Nations has an official committee of geographers to discourage their use. Such tidy-mindedness has proved difficult to enforce over the past three decades. Talking in English about the Schwarzwald rather than the Black Forest would sound pretentious. For untranslatable names, transliteration and transcription (yes, there is a difference) between languages and alphabets inevitably creates unauthorised variants. How on earth do you spell Warsaw if your language lacks the letter “w”?

And that is just the start of it. The real problems start when politics comes into play. One of the few things that poor countries can do to get the world's attention is to re-label themselves. East Timor recently became Timor-Leste; Upper Volta is now Burkina Faso; Zaire was Congo and is now Congo again (confusingly, so is its neighbour); Burma is Myanmar (at least for the ruling junta; the opposition prefers the old name). Name changes often try to shed relics of colonialism, real or perceived (so Mumbai for Bombay, Beijing for Peking).

Mostly, that just creates a lucrative line in new maps and atlases. But sometimes it also causes huge controversy. In theory, Macedonia, independent since 1991, is still struggling to persuade the world that it is entitled to that name. To placate next-door Greece, which fears separatism by the Slavs in its own province of Macedonia, it languishes under the clumsy “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, or FYROM. Such nomenclature is shorthand for political affiliation: if you speak of “Judea and Samaria” you are a Likudnik; if you call the same patch the “occupied territories” you are not.

The author is an able populariser of academic geography, and an expert guide to the bureaucratic, legal and political hierarchies that determine how places acquire, change and lose their names. His eye-catching title reflects the big argument about names in his home country, America. Two strong tides, one of prudery and the other of political correctness, are eroding a verbal landscape created by centuries of cartography and local usage. Now that “nigger” (which he calls the N-word) has become taboo in polite society, what happens to Niggerhead Point?

The charm of the offensive

The author notes in passing that this cape on Lake Ontario was thus named because it was a point on the laudable underground railroad that helped thousands of escaped slaves to freedom in Canada. That interesting historical association survives in the first name change, to Negrohead Point (which remains on federal maps). But to call it merely Graves Point (as New York state maps do) seems a pity.

“Nigger” and “Jap” are now banned on American maps, though a Dago Gulch survives in western Montana. More puzzling to the non-American is the onslaught on the use of “Squaw”, which according to some activists (though not philologists) is not an innocent word for a Native American woman, but a derogatory term for her vagina. So Squaw Peak is now set to be renamed after Lori Piestewa, the first Native American woman in the American army to be killed in combat.

Names with risqué connotations, be they deliberate or coincidental, fare a little better. Gayside in Newfoundland became Baytona in 1985, apparently in response to local homophobia. And Dingle Hole in New York was listed as a problem name, because dirty-minded officialdom smelt a resemblance to a gay slang word, “dingleberries”. Attempts to rename the village of Dildo, Newfoundland, have foundered on strong local opposition. Whorehouse Meadow in Oregon was renamed Naughty Girl Meadow in the 1960s, but has recovered its old appellation.

The author is clearly blessed with a good sense of humour, which, sadly, he partially suppresses, presumably in deference to the stiff-necked culture of American officialdom and academe. Another, odder, weakness is the illustrations: the maps in the book are cheap, monochrome reproductions, and there is no attempt to show what Bloody Dick Creek and Molly's Nipple look like in real life.

But the bigger point is well made. Maps are about power: the rich, powerful and victorious determine place-names, just as they write history. The final defeat for losers is when they are wiped off the map.

A map and a coffee

A map that tells a story with a happy ending

By Edward Lucas

There is a book in Kaunas, Lithuania's fascinating second city, that I wish could talk.

It's an atlas, published in Germany in 1922, and it is open at the map of Europe. But it is Europe in boundaries that are barely recognisable today, partly showing a world that is lost and partly one that never existed.
The mapmakers have guessed valiantly at the borders of an independent Ukraine. There is heavy red stippling over the tiny statelet of Soviet Belarus - though tantalisingly, there is no legend to show what the cartographers thought was happening there.
There is an independent Crimea, reflecting the brief moment of statehood enjoyed by the peninsula's Tatars before the Red Army crushed the country and sent their leadership into exile.
Further afield, Turkey stretches on into Iraq but does not include Constantinople (as the map calls today's Istanbul). Greece holds Smyrna (today's Izmir).
All three Caucasian republics are shown as independent, with Armenia stretching a long way south, to Ezerum.
It would be nice to talk to the mapmaker about how he made his decisions. Did he try to make the map more up-to-date in those hectic post-war years, only to be frustrated by a skinflint publisher who didn't want to pay for yet more new lithographic plates?
Or was he trying to show what he thought was the likely outcome? I can imagine him saying to himself: "Hmmm, the Soviet Union won't last long - I'll keep all these countries on the map."
But I'd like even more to ask the book about its owners. One was a Lithuanian whose illegible pencil signature - it starts with P - is on the title page. Did he buy it new, I wonder, to celebrate his country's return to the world map?
Perhaps he was an official, or government minister, in one of the republic's early governments, one of those solemn moustachioed men whose grainy photos are usually accompanied with a note showing they died in the Gulag.
Or perhaps he bought it cheaply second-hand, when that map was out of date. I wonder if he looked at the countries already swallowed by Soviet rule and feared that the Balts would be next. Or he may have hoped for it: left-wing intellectuals in the Baltic states, as elsewhere, were fooled by the promise of a workers' paradise.
At some point, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact line, which secretly divided Europe between Hitler and Stalin, has been pencilled in, rather clumsily.
I'd love to know who did that. Was it in secret, in occupied Lithuania, when the atlas was safely away from prying eyes, maybe buried in a chest in the garden with a pre-war flag and a guerrilla fighter's rifle? Or maybe it was drawn in 1989, when Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians joined hands in a giant human chain to commemorate the pact's 50th anniversary, kick-starting their struggle to recover independence.
But whatever the book would say about the past, I think it would be glad about the present. It is not imprisoned in a glass box in a dusty museum, but in the town's best café, the Toscana, for every customer to leaf through.
The place sparkles with life; it is owned by a returned émigré (no worries here about the brain drain); the smiling staff are students from the excellent independent Vytautas the Great university.
And the coffee beans are freshly roasted on the spot: in other words, it is just like anywhere in Europe, but a bit nicer. The atlas's previous owners could have dreamt of nothing better.

Edward Lucas is central and eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist

letters about Poland survey

Debating Poland

SIR – The cautiously optimistic outlook for the Polish economy presented in your survey on Poland is debatable (May 13th). To ensure long-term growth, structural reform is called for. Alas, the current government, distrustful of markets, is steeped in dirigisme and unlikely to take on vested interests (trade unions) that thwart reformist efforts. Instead of liberalising the economy, it plans, for instance, to ban shops from opening on Sundays, which is bound to result in an increase in already high unemployment. The administration's electoral slogan, “cheap state”, is just a paper pledge as it is currently expanding: new ministries, replete with cars and secretaries, have been created for coalition partners.

Piotr Zientara

Gdynia, Poland

SIR – I disagree with your characterisation of the Kaczynski brothers as weird but benign. Their appetite for power has prevented a coalition with Civic Platform, which would have given Poland a government with a strong mandate and the necessary competencies to implement meaningful and overdue economic reforms. The Kaczynski brothers missed an historic opportunity and have harmed Poland.

Marcin Telko

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

SIR – While it may be true that the worst bits of Poland are “egregiously bad”, it certainly does not apply to public transport, at least not in Warsaw. The example you gave of the bus from the airport to the city centre is misleading; in fact, most airport buses are modern and relatively clean (although I can't argue with “pickpocket-infested”). If they are slow it is because traffic in Warsaw can be a disaster, making public transport all the more appealing. It is easier for me to get from A to B in Warsaw than in my native San Francisco and much cheaper, even after accounting for the difference in spending power. If you need an example of the worst bits, you'd do better to look at pollution, corruption of all sorts, and the fact that no one will give you change for a 100 zloty bill.

Alex Zarganis

Warsaw

The future of Europe

Down with Westphalia

Jun 8th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union By Jan Zielonka Oxford University Press; 304 pages; $74 and £45 Buy it at Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk

SCEPTICS and enthusiasts for the European Union are united in one thing: they do not like muddle. The Europhobes want to boil the union down to a free-trade zone. The Europhiles want it to turn into a federal state. But Jan Zielonka, an Oxford-based political scientist, thinks this is a false choice. His new book suggests that Europe should adopt a “neo-medieval” way of looking at itself. It should have soft borders rather than hard ones, multiple overlapping structures rather than neat tidy ones.

That would have seemed very familiar to the continent's inhabitants in the centuries before democracy, capitalism and nation-states. Mr Zielonka believes that modern market economies too can co-exist and co-operate in a neo-medieval framework. Some will have the same currency, some may share military alliances, others will co-operate in law enforcement, but there will be no one single model, because there cannot be.

Mr Zielonka was born in Poland, and his polemical book is shaped by the idea that the eastward enlargement of the EU is not only unstoppable (not just Turkey but Ukraine too), but has changed forever the ordered world of the old EU. The new union is too big and too inchoate to act like a state, now or ever. Instead of “fortress Europe”, he argues, there will be “maze Europe”.

Muddle and incoherence are a hard sell. Jacques Delors, the brainy, spiky French president of the European Commission from 1985 to 1995, rudely referred to EU as an “unidentified political object”. Mr Zielonka may be right in his attack on the wishful thinking of federalist commentators who long to discern state-like features in the EU's evolution.

His shorthand for such thinking is “Westphalian”. The treaty signed in that German province in 1648 broke the Holy Roman Empire—which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, but the kind of fuzzy political entity that Mr Zielonka likes. In its place, the treaty created a Europe of nation-states, which survived for the next three centuries.

Mr Zielonka thinks that the Westphalian model is out of date and impractical. He has a point. But it is hard to see his ingenious neo-medieval model working smoothly. Fuzzy, overlapping political authorities are easy prey for powerful lobbies, especially protectionist ones. The EU's most Westphalian features are also its most vital ones: the commissioners who try to keep the internal market operating freely, and who try to unscramble cartels and allow cross-border mergers. That hints at a missing ingredient. Mr Zielonka's model would work more smoothly if there were an outside guarantor of free trade and competition, especially if perceived to have divine authority. A medieval empire with a free-market papacy? Perhaps Brussels is worth a mass.

The Czech election

Victory, of a sort

Jun 8th 2006 | PRAGUE
From The Economist print edition

Czech conservatives win the election, but not power

IT WAS the best result ever for a Czech political party. Yet the 35.4% they took in the election last weekend was still not enough to give the free-market, Eurosceptic Civic Democrats more than a sniff of power. For, after a bitter campaign, the outcome was, in effect, a tie. The Civic Democrats and their allies (the Christian Democrats and the Greens) took 100 of the 200 seats in the lower house of parliament. But between them the Social Democrats, led by the outgoing prime minister, Jiri Paroubek, and the Communists also took 100.

Reuters

We're off to count the votes

The Communists' nostalgic view of one-party rule makes them political pariahs. But there is no obvious coalition that can be formed among the other parties. One idea is a “grand coalition” of Social and Civic Democrats. But both main leaders rule this out.

Mr Paroubek, whose party polled 32.3%, is fuming. He says his defeat was a “putsch” by the Civic Democrats and their allies in the security and intelligence services. On May 29th Jan Kubice, a top crime-fighter, told a parliamentary committee that mafia influence over the government threatened the state's “security, economic and financial stability”. He accused Mr Paroubek and two colleagues of obstructing an investigation into a contract killing.

Mr Paroubek denied this, and said later that the report had also wrongly accused him of child molestation. He wants a government of non-party experts. But the Civic Democrats' leader, Mirek Topolanek, is still hoping to cobble together a majority, perhaps by winning over some Social Democrats, or persuading the party not to oppose him outright. One deputy claimed this week that he had been offered a 5m koruna ($230,000) bribe to switch sides.

The new parliament will probably meet later this month, after which Mr Topolanek has 30 days to win a confidence vote. As it happens, President Vaclav Klaus is a Civic Democrat and arch-Eurosceptic, but he also dislikes Mr Topolanek. If three putative governments fail to win a confidence vote, Mr Klaus will dissolve parliament again.

Thus at least three months of bickering and instability are likely. That may jolt confidence in the Czech economy, which has been growing strongly. With the flat tax, privatisation and lean government promised by Mr Topolanek's party, the economy could do better still. But radical reform now looks unlikely. The only comfort for Czechs is that all other central European countries have wobbly governments too—and yet they are muddling along quite nicely.

Lithuania's government

Politics exam

Jun 8th 2006 | VILNIUS
From The Economist print edition

It is in a political mess, but Lithuania now has brighter prospects

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IT HELPED to bring down the Soviet Union by declaring independence in 1990. But since that moment of glory, Lithuania has been mostly a story of scandal and missed opportunity. That may be why as many as 450,000 people—a tenth of the population—have left to work abroad. The country scraped into the European Union in 2004, despite severe doubts in Brussels. Foreign investment and growth have lagged behind the other Baltics. Reform has been haphazard.

Now, however, come two signs that things are improving. First, the country's biggest industrial asset, the Mazeikiai oil refinery, has been sold to a solid owner, PKN Orlen of Poland. This ends a tawdry ten-year saga of botched deals, huge costs to the taxpayer, uncertainty and political wrangling. Second, public tolerance of corruption seems to be lessening, and the law-enforcement authorities are showing impressive new vigour in prosecuting it. That is the lesson from the other event of last week: the collapse of Lithuania's left-leaning coalition government.

What happened was that the Labour party, a populist outfit led by a Russian-born businessman, Viktor Uspaskich, split and left the government. Mr Uspaskich himself disappeared to Russia. This followed leaks that prosecutors were investigating several lurid claims, notably that the party was taking kickbacks from European Union grants, that it had breached campaign-finance limits in the 2004 election and that it had taken money from Russia. Mr Uspaskich says he is not responsible for book-keeping, and that the attacks on his party are purely political.

The big puzzle is the timing of this affair. Rumours about Mr Uspaskich's connections have swirled for years. But nobody in authority seemed to have the inclination (or power) to investigate. The same was true of other political scandals, including one involving a prominent mayor, whose lawyers have managed to stymie attempts to scrutinise his business dealings in court. The exception was the impeachment in 2004 of the then president, Rolandas Paksas. This was a scalp for Lithuania's spooks, a patriotic and russophobic lot. Their chief, Mecys Laurinkus, told parliament that the president was a threat to national security. But with Mr Paksas removed, the business of politics returned to grubby normality.

Some think that Mr Uspaskich overreached himself. “The Lithuanian elite tolerates its own corruption, but not that of outsiders,” says one politics-watcher. The real division in Lithuanian politics is not ideological, but between the well-educated ex-nomenklatura types who run the established parties, and populist outsiders such as Mr Paksas and Mr Uspaskich. Another theory posits a link to the sale of the Mazeikiai refinery. The disarray within the government parties made it easier to get the sale through parliament last week. It was certainly a pleasingly clean end to a decidedly murky story.

But the most optimistic explanation is that Lithuania is changing for the better. One more pointer is a scandal about leaked exam papers. As in most post-communist countries, cheating in schools and universities is habitual. But when it became known that questions in the Lithuanian-language paper for this year's school-leaving exam were on sale in advance, there was an outcry. The head of the central examinations office says he will resign; pupils are trying to sue the government; the paper will now be set anew.

Perhaps a political-science paper for adults would be a good idea. Lithuania's politicians and officials might not pass—but they would probably do better now than at any time in the past 15 years.

A cold grey summer creeps into Belarus

By Edward Lucas

"Don't spend too much time thinking about the Baltic states" warned Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel-prize winning Polish writer, "or you will go mad." At the time, he was right. The fate of the three occupied countries seemed so intolerably gloomy that it was tempting to ignore it.

Worrying about Belarus seems similarly fruitless now. Since the rather disappointing election result in March, in which President Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected with 83% of the vote, the KGB is grinding the remaining fragments of opposition under its jackboots. This weekend I received a text message from the phone of Olga Karatch, a friend of mine from the eastern Belarusian town of Vitsebsk. She's a philologist, who is also the only independent member of the city council. She was elected thanks to her 'pavement politics': taking up her voters' everyday grievances with officialdom.
The message said that she and four other members of her organisation had been arrested. That's just the latest in a series of moves against the opposition, major and minor. The de facto leader, Alexander Milinkevic, was jailed briefly. His campaign director, Siarhej Lyashkevich, has been sentenced to five months. The authorities have also tried to close the Belarus Helsinki Committee. One of my last messages from Olga was that a fellow dissident (how odd it seems to be using this word again) called Zhanna Popova had been subjected to forcible psychiatric treatment.
It's hard to keep track of what is happening. One Estonian friend of mine involved in helping the opposition says that "e-mails are not answered, mobile phones are switched off - we don't know who is free and who isn't".
Meanwhile the outside world has been busy - sort of. The EU has frozen some bank accounts, and America has imposed a travel ban. I doubt that either move bothers Lukashenko and the goons and thugs around him. They are much more worried by Russia's threat to raise gas prices fourfold. The big boring point about Belarus remains the same: it can't go on like this, but it is hard to see quite how it is going to change.
Many people used to think that about Communism in the days of the Cold War. This time 20 years ago, I was conducting a depressing radio interview with Joanna Onyszkiewicz, whose husband Janusz (now an MEP) was a leading spokesman for what was then the still banned Polish trade union Solidarity. He had just been arrested. That was sad. But the really depressing bit was my BBC editor's reaction. "Just another boring dissident-in-trouble story," she said.
But fights between good and evil are not really boring. They are tiring, which is different. It would have been all too easy during the cold war to give in and accept the evil empire's grip on eastern Europe as permanent. "Peaceful co-existence" sounded so much easier.
Luckily, it wasn't just a moral issue: Soviet imperialism was a direct threat to our own prosperity and freedom. So defending Václav Havel, Andrei Sakharov and other heroes of the dissident movement was tied, albeit loosely, to our own self-interest. There was tiredness and timidity on our side, but outweighed by fear and greed (as well as idealism and bravery).
But Belarus poses no threat to us. On the contrary, being nice to Russia, Belarus's patron, is very profitable business. Which is why I fear that Olga and her brave friends face a long walk to freedom. When it ends with victory, as it will, I think we will feel pretty embarrassed about how little we helped.

Edward Lucas is central and eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist

© Copyright 2006 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.

Poland and the Vatican

Popeland

Jun 1st 2006 | WARSAW
From The Economist print edition

A papal visit pleased many Poles, but not everybody

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GERMAN visitors tend to get a chilly welcome in Poland, particularly under this prickly conservative government. But on the surface, the visit by the Bavarian-born Pope Benedict XVI last week could hardly have been more harmonious. More than 2m believers turned out to greet the pontiff—both in big cities and famous shrines, and in the small town of Wadowice, the birthplace of the first Polish pope, his much-mourned predecessor, John Paul II.

Reuters

Hard to get through

The new pope's halting Polish makes it hard for him to reach the faithful in Europe's most Catholic country. But he could not wholly avoid the skein of hard historical and political issues facing the church there. One concerns priests who collaborated with the communist secret police, both in Poland, and, it seems, in the Vatican too. That dents the church's image as a bastion of anti-communist resistance. Benedict XVI urged the clergy not to sit in judgment on brethren who had misbehaved in “different times and different circumstances”.

The pope also made a delicate but clear intervention in the church's deepest division. Poland's more liberal-minded clerics, like the late John Paul II, advocate ecumenism and an open-minded attitude to science and the outside world. But another wing uses the paranoid rhetoric of ultra-conservatism.

Benedict followed in his predecessor's footsteps, taking part in an ecumenical meeting with Poland's small non-Catholic churches. He also told a meeting of Catholic clergy that “the faithful expect only one thing from priests: that they be specialists in promoting the encounter between man and God.” Priests were not asked to be experts in “economics, construction or politics”. That was a warning to politicised priests around Radio Maryja, a reactionary station much patronised by the current government but under pressure from church hierarchs.

Some felt that Benedict XVI's address in Auschwitz, in which he called the Nazis as “a ring of criminals [who] rose to power by false promises of future greatness” was inadequate. The pope was a brief and involuntary member of the Hitler Youth and a conscript in the Wehrmacht. But for many Poles, whose historical relations with Jews are barely less troubled than with Germans (though for quite different reasons), he epitomised a longed-for reconciliation.