ashdown book review

Intervention and peacekeeping

Paddy's passions

Jun 28th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Swords and Ploughshares: Bringing Peace to the 21st Century By Paddy Ashdown Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 352 pages; £20 Buy it at Amazon.co.uk

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FEW people are better qualified to write about muscular international intervention than muscular Paddy Ashdown. A former soldier, diplomat and party leader (who last week turned down Gordon Brown's offer of a cabinet seat), Lord Ashdown ruled Bosnia and its 3.9m people from 2002 to 2006 on behalf of the world.

He took over a mess. Western military intervention had forced all parties to the negotiating table. Arm-twisting at Dayton had produced a deal that stopped the fighting. But Bosnia itself was barely functioning. It had post-communism's typical ills (corruption, incompetence, organised crime and over-mighty spooks) plus the vicious ethnic distrust and physical ruin caused by the war and the baroque bureaucracy imposed by the peace deal.

Lord Ashdown did a good job. He shored up his shaky position by corralling all the international outfits into a council that met weekly to work out a joint position. He used his powers as proconsul to overrule local tyrants, nitwits and crooks. The economy grew, corruption fell, freedoms flourished and some national institutions took shape. Bosnia is still a mess, but a less bad one. With luck, it may join the European Union eventually.

So his book on the ethics and practice of war-ending, peacekeeping, nation-building and international do-goodery has plenty to recommend it. Amid a continuing bloody disaster in Iraq and a looming one in Afghanistan, it is easy to forget that Western intervention elsewhere has been less disastrous. In some bits of ex-Yugoslavia it was not only right (if belated) but, broadly, successful.

Warmongers and peacemakers should read at least the pithy summaries at the end of each of Lord Ashdown's chapters before they start on their next adventure. Don't separate military strategy from plans for the aftermath. Conflicts don't end when the fighting finishes. The “golden hours” after a military victory are crucial. Keep order—by martial law if necessary—otherwise nothing will work. Then get the economy going. Accept that bad people will hold powerful positions for some time. Elections should come once everything is working. Held too early, they spell disaster.

Many readers, however, may find the book frustrating. Lord Ashdown doles out his first-hand experiences in Bosnia grudgingly; presumably he is saving the best stories for another book. His practical advice is mixed with doses of preachiness. The brisk tones of the former special-forces captain sit oddly with woolly clichés, perhaps picked up during his two decades in Britain's third party, the Liberal Democrats. Tiresome spelling errors undermine his authoritative tone: the ex-Nazi who became president of Germany was Kurt Kiesinger, not Keisinger; Iran's president's name is not Ahemdinijad.

But the main lesson is a valuable one, well delivered. Outside intervention is morally justifiable; it can end conflicts and rebuild countries. So far it has been done pretty poorly, sometimes outrageously badly as in Iraq. That disappoints Lord Ashdown. But it does not dismay him.

Sweden, Finland, Russia and NATO

Sweden and Finland

New boots for NATO?
Jun 28th 2007 | AVESTA, SWEDEN
From The Economist print edition


But it may have to wait for a new American president

FEW new members would be more welcome in NATO than Sweden and Finland. Their military hardware is compatible, and in Sweden's case ultra-modern. They are in the right place. And the timing would be most welcome: a clear rebuff to Russia's assertive, divide-and-rule, approach to Europe.


Both countries remained neutral during the cold war. But Finns and Swedes were outraged by the Russian-stoked riots in Estonia in April, and by the blockade of Estonia's embassy in Moscow (the Swedish ambassador's car was also attacked). Swedes fret about a planned Russian-German gas pipeline on the Baltic seabed, which may be bad for the environment and will be defended, says Russia, by an enlarged Baltic Sea fleet. Since the cold war, both Finland and Sweden have slimmed down their defences.

Sweden's right-of-centre government is privately sympathetic to closer links with NATO. Its foreign minister, Carl Bildt, has banned the word “neutral”—once the central dogma of Swedish foreign policy. Sweden has begun closer co-operation on airspace surveillance and intelligence with Norway, which is in NATO. In the past, foreign military ties were discreet and centred on Finland. Sweden has also helped the Baltic states, NATO members since 2004, with know-how and equipment. Mr Bildt has stepped up his criticism of Russia's drift away from democracy, and its behaviour in eastern Europe.

Finland's armed forces are smaller, worse-equipped and over-stretched; its border with Russia is long and will be more exposed when it gives up landmines, a move reluctantly planned for 2016. Mines are “Finland's nukes”, says Tomas Ries, the Finnish-born head of a Stockholm think-tank. Yet Finnish political leaders have been quiet. The president, Tarja Halonen, is soft on Russia and chilly towards NATO (she dislikes George Bush). She outraged patriotic Finns by describing Estonia (a close ethnic cousin) and Russia as friends of equal importance. The government is privately more hawkish, but does not want to confront Ms Halonen. Still, the European Union's divided stance on Russia, says Risto Penttila, who runs a lobby group, has put NATO membership “top of the security-policy agenda”.

Many Finns are reluctant to join NATO. Four chilly decades and a lost war, they argue, show that hard-headed engagement with Russia, not foreign alliances, guarantees safety. “The Swedes are hysterical,” says a Helsinki-based Russia-watcher. “We were not so happy about Russia in the 1990s, and we are not so worried now.” The Swedes retort that they are prudent, not worried. And they are far from certain to join NATO. Russia may brag about rearmament, but no real military threat is in sight. If the proposed pipeline followed a different route, Swedish concerns would abate. Sweden would probably join the alliance only if Russia turns even nastier—or if Finland joins first.

A more sympathetic American president could just make that happen. Even the NATO-phobic Ms Halonen might soften if a President Hillary Clinton asked her nicely. And polls suggest that, if the political leadership recommended joining NATO, the public would support it.

article from Estonia's Diplomaatia journal

Lessons from the crisis

Estonia’s team was unfit, badly trained, and badly captained. Its tactics were poor and it showed little skill. The opponents were much stronger—but made even more mistakes. That cost it so many penalties that in the end Estonia won.
Celebrating a lucky escape is one thing. An orgy of mutual congratulation is another. What Estonia should be doing is drawing lessons from the crisis, and making sure that it never makes the same mistake again.
It is already high time to prepare for the next “match” (ie crisis created by Russia). It may involve political prisoners (Russian provocateurs who have got themselves arrested). Or it may be Estonian “extremists” (wittingly or unwittingly doing the Kremlin’s bidding).
In any case, the first defence is good government. Every internal procedure must squeaky-clean, transparent and efficient, to the highest European standards (or better). The executive branch of government should stay scrupulously away from decisions that must be made by the judiciary. Any information from the security services should be treated with great care, and not used for narrow party advantage.


The contrast between the bullying, abusive, crooked habits across the border must be as sharp as possible, not only to highlight Estonia’s case in world eyes, but also to bring as many local Russians as possible on side. Any attempt to portray a row with the Kremlin as being ipso facto a row with “Non-Estonians” is lethal to Estonia’s national security. A troubling aspect of the recent crisis has been comments, in the media and elsewhere, that “this is what Russians are really like: looters and hooligans, just like in 1945”. Just as Estonians are infuriated when the Kremlin propaganda machine generalises that “Estonians” are “fascists”, they should remember how alienating it is for local Russians to be told that “they” are “looters”. Nothing could suit the Kremlin more than divisions in Estonian society. Nothing will frustrate their plans more than a united front, based on common values rather than ethnicity.
How far the government has followed these principles in the recent events it is hard for an outsider to judge. But what is clear is that Estonia’s friends and allies were not properly briefed in the run up to the crisis, or during it. As a (supposed) authority on Estonia, I faced dozens of phone calls from diplomats, other journalists and politicians wanting to know “Why is Estonia doing this now? Why is it so urgent?” Those from countries that fought against Hitler all through the war are instantly troubled by anything that can be interpreted as hostility to the allied cause, or sympathy for the Axis. Estonia has gone a long way in persuading the outside world that there is more than one way of looking at the Second World War. But that success is not complete, and it should never be taken for granted. Like the brass on a ship, Estonia’s stance needs constant polishing, otherwise it corrodes.
It is clear that the once-excellent Foreign Ministry has neither been doing much polishing recently, nor was it up to the task of countering the Russian propaganda offensive. Ten years ago, things were very different. Estonian diplomats, both at home and abroad, were formidably effective, persuasive and hard-working. Many of them have gone to work elsewhere. The competent ones who remain are outnumbered by political hacks and nonentities. The politicians who have played such deplorable personal games with the foreign ministry in recent years may not have realised at the time what damage they were doing to Estonia’s ability to defend itself.
So for the next crisis it is necessary to start training. Every Estonian ambassador needs to be ready to offer op-ed pieces to the important newspapers, to phone up radio and televisions stations and correct mistakes and offer commentary. These can be centrally produced, and tailored to each country’s needs. But do the embassies and the ministry have the people with the linguistic and journalistic skills required? Estonia’s PR effort has become fatally reactive. It needs to be active.
It is also necessary to have much more detailed and lively material available. The traditional model of a website with links to neatly produced press releases looks out-of-date. The “new new media” means using blogs, using sites such as Youtube and Flickr, and Myspace, taking part in chatrooms. These techniques are not hard—and Estonia’s enemies have used them to great effect: just look on Youtube for videos tagged “eSStonia”.
Estonia also needs a high-powered unit to counter disinformation within minutes. Russia got away far too easily with the lie that the Bronze Soldier had been cut into pieces.
Estonia has assets: the diaspora in some countries is younger and more vigorous than it was during the independence struggle. But it is usually not in contact with Estonian government structures. These are the footsoldiers of the information war: able to write letters to newspapers, call up radio phone-ins, put posts on blogs, and even turn up to demonstrations.
Next, Estonia must not sound arrogant. One of the least pleasant aspects of the last crisis was the tone of voice that some Estonian politicians, editors and officials adopted. “This is our problem: support us, but don’t interfere”. That is the approach taken so disastrously by Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland. They have endlessly demanded European “solidarity” with Poland on each and every issue. But they have shown no willingness to understand the point of view of their friends and allies. It would be dreadful if that Polish virus were to infect public life in Estonia.
Clearly, on some issues no compromise is possible. But we are not talking about zero-options on citizenship, or keeping the Paldiski submarine base. Estonia has to show that it respects and trusts its allies, that it asks for advice and is willing to accept it. Estonia’s geeks, who so splendidly defended the country against cyber-attack, proved much better at international diplomacy than the government did. They have won new friends and admiration at the highest levels for their relaxed, competent and open approach to their foreign counterparts.
Estonia also needs to revive its eastern policy. One of the saddest aspects of the recent crisis was watching Estonia’s friends in Russia being shredded on talk shows on radio and television. Valerya Novodvorskaya on NTV, for example, was passionate and persuasive. But she lacked the facts needed to counter the lies of the other side. It isn’t possible to win on the Russian media front: the odds are too great. But at least it is possible to signal to those who observe the Russian-language media space that Estonia is putting up a good fight.
Nobody knows when the next match will be. But Russia will most likely have learned from its mistakes in the last one. Will Estonia have done the same?

The Balts as west berlin

Europe.view

Facing a cold wind

Jun 28th 2007
From Economist.com

Russia looms large in the Baltic states

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WEST BERLIN, where your columnist lived during the cold war, was small, indefensible, symbolically vital and rather badly run. As Europe slides again into chilly division, West Berlin’s current equivalent may be the Baltic states. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are small: even their combined population of 8m would make them one of NATO’s bantamweight members. Though they shelter in theory under the alliance’s nuclear umbrella, in practice NATO offers little more than moral support.

The mood is anxious. Officials say that the Kremlin has quietly beefed up the Russian troops in Pskov, just across the border. Recent war games there apparently included practising the reconquest of the Baltic states. Lately, frequent and peremptory requests for airspace clearances for official Kremlin flights have underlined the three small countries’ vulnerability. “If we say yes every time it is a precedent; if we say no it is an incident”, says a Latvian official, worriedly. A small force of airplanes lent by NATO allies tries to patrol the skies, and there is an excellent radar system. But no air defences exist to deter intruders.

Any Russian knout-rattling, real or imagined, is more a psychological threat than a physical one. The aim is to sap the Balts’ self-confidence, perhaps weakening them on other fronts.

The hottest of these is energy. The Balts, dependent on Russia for their gas and subject to lengthy and frequent blockades of oil deliveries, want to build a new nuclear power station jointly with Poland. So far, a year’s haggling has produced little result. The argument is mainly a cultural one based perhaps on different religious traditions. Catholic Poland and Lithuania think texts are secondary to belief: they want firm emotional commitment to the project before focusing on the details. Protestant Estonia and Latvia want the details written down clearly before they can believe.

Russia would like to be involved too. “I hope there will be a public tender. Russian companies would put in a very competitive bid”, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, told a Latvian delegation during a recent visit. Such overtures highlight the Balts’ greatest weakness: their open, liberal economies. If even Britain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands (to name but a few countries in “old Europe”) are unable to keep Russian capital out of their economic citadels, how can the much poorer and weaker Balts be expected to withstand the colossal temptations of doing business with the enemy?

That’s a particular worry in Latvia, where business tycoons loom large in politics. Their greatest weakness—money—is also Russia’s greatest weapon. That worries the other Balts, who suspect Latvia is going squishy.

AFP

Power in numbers

Latvian leaders see it differently: their Baltic neighbours are too prickly and don’t understand Russians properly. Mutual benefit is entirely possible. “Our line is ‘don’t tease, don’t appease’”, says a wily senior official. A much delayed border treaty is due to be ratified in the Russian parliament. Latvian diplomats hope breathlessly that a high-level Russian delegation may visit Riga for the formal exchange of documents.

Baltic disunity helps the Kremlin. Since 1990 its policy—consciously or unconsciously—has been to play one Balt against another. One country is flattered, a second is frozen and the third is ignored. At the moment, Estonia is in the deep freeze, while Latvia is basking in Kremlin approval. When Estonia was facing a blast of Russian disapproval in May, some top Latvians seemed hesitant in making statements to support their northern neighbour (though practical help and public sympathy were both strong and welcomed gratefully).

West Berlin survived thanks to its own and its allies’ willpower and unity—pretty much what the Baltic states need now.

help wanted

I keep coming across this prophetic-sounding quote on the internet, sometimes in rather kooky places. I would love to have a proper source for it. Does anyone reading this have access to a good library of Russian political texts?

"War ...is inevitable. Today, of course, we are not strong enough to attack. Our time will come in 20 to 30 years. To win, we shall need the element of surprise. The bourgeoisie will have to be put to sleep. So we shall begin by launching the most spectacular peace movement on record. There will be electrifying overtures and unheard-of concessions. The capitalist countries , stupid and decadent, will rejoice to cooperate in their own destruction. They will leap at another chance to be friends. As soon as their guard is down, we shall smash them with our clenched fist." Dmitri Manuilski , Lenin School of Political Warfare

Many thanks

bot roast

Cyber-crime

A good bot roast
Jun 21st 2007
From The Economist print edition


Lawmen get to grips with audacious computer-rustlers

MOST people would hate it if criminals impersonated them in order to commit crimes. But that is just what happens when the emerging gang of wrongdoers called “bot-herders” hijack other people's computers, stitch them together in a “botnet” and use them to send spam, steal data or disrupt the internet.

Public opinion is untroubled, or sees them as a mere irritant: an obscure, geeky sort of prankster. But law-enforcement officials in many countries view them as a ballooning threat. America's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) calls botnets a danger to national security, the national information infrastructure and the economy. Botnet attacks last month on Estonia, during a row with Russia over a Soviet-era war memorial, attracted close attention from NATO, the Pentagon and other government agencies.

Now the FBI has announced the first successes in what it calls “Operation Bot Roast”.

This investigation, the largest to date, has led to indictments against three men accused of using up to 1m hijacked computers, many of them outside America, for criminal purposes. If convicted, they face long prison terms.

As the criminal-justice system grinds into action against cyber-criminals, civil lawsuits are beginning too. An American pharmaceutical company, Abbott Laboratories, is suing a French group of AIDS campaigners, Act Up-Paris, for allegedly crashing its website in April. The activists complain that Abbott is overcharging people in poor countries for its drugs.

The FBI hopes that the latest operation will not just frighten bot-herders, but also encourage computer-owners to show more public-spiritedness. Shawn Henry, a senior FBI official, thinks that owning a computer should be more like driving a car. “You have to take tests. It's a lot of responsibility being behind the wheel of a 3,000lb piece of machinery.”

But that is not the way the internet works. Most owners of infected computers neither know nor care that their machines may be damaging an unknown person in an unknown way. Initially the FBI said it wanted to track down infected computers in the botnets it had identified and warn their owners. But that is technically difficult, and hugely time-consuming.

Then it advised people worried about their computers' health to call the company that provides their internet service. But the economics of that look flawed. Danny McPherson of Arbor, an internet-security company, points out that most internet providers make only a couple of dollars of profit a month per customer. Having a human being answer a customer's call costs an average of $25. Unsurprisingly, most internet providers strongly prefer their customers not to call, or offer advice only via a premium-rate line.

That reflects a deeper problem: though cyber-hygiene is a public good, it is unclear who should pay for it, or who can be sued for careless behaviour (or worse) that leads to the pollution of the internet. Individual conscientiousness has its limits. Given the hundreds of thousands of new threats recorded each year, a really solid anti-virus protection should update every few minutes, notes Mr McPherson. But that's not practical. Most such software is more lucrative than effective. It works against less than half the extant threats, a level he calls “pathetic”. It can be compared to a car seatbelt—a precaution, but no substitute for safe driving.

A partial answer to botnets lies in better defences and detection. New software tends to be less vulnerable than old versions (though nothing prevents people running old, cheap and dangerous browsers and e-mail programs if they choose). It is becoming easier to identify botnets and to spot the clever and scary ones quickly. As botnets evolve from simple vandalism to sophisticated criminality, people take them more seriously. “If your machine is owned by an outsider it can be used at night to attack someone else. But it can also be used to steal your personal information,” says Martin Lindner of Carnegie Mellon University, who works with the American government on internet security.

A second difficulty is that cyber-crime does not respect national borders. The recent FBI investigation targeted American bot-herders with mainly American victims. But in plenty of countries, running a botnet is either not illegal at all, or can be done with impunity. The American administration may quibble about multilateral law enforcement on some issues. But its cyber-sheriffs want an international posse, as soon as possible.

Leon Aron book review

Europe.view

An experiment in democracy
Jun 21st 2007
From Economist.com


Finally, a book with real insight into Russia


A LOT of nonsense is said about Russia, and particularly about the West’s relationship with it. Among the fatuous questions is “Who lost Russia?” (as if a careless Western politician could lose it as easily as a set of keys). Equally fatuous is the idea that the answer is to “Forget Russia” (as if the largest country in the world were a poorly chosen girlfriend).

Leon Aron is an émigré whose sharp understanding of his homeland is matched by an appreciation of the mistakes that outsiders, particularly his fellow Americans, make in interpreting it. In a new book, “Russia’s Revolution”, he compares Russia’s first sustained experiment in democracy and modern capitalism to “the movement of a long and disorderly caravan on a vast swampy plain: stopping, stumbling…drowning in muck, yet stubbornly creaking forward”. Following closely behind are the Russia-watchers, who ignore the distance travelled, any comparison with other travellers, and the road ahead. “Their eyes seem forever to be on the dirt covering the wheels, the ruts in the road, and the ugly swamp creatures feasting on the piles of refuse in the wagons’ wake.”



That is harsh, but largely fair. The asinine “Who lost Russia?” argument hangs on the misconception that Russia in 1989 (or 1986 or 1996 or whenever) was ripe for reform, and that only the policies and their sequencing were wrong. If only privatisation had preceded price liberalisation, or if savings had been indexed, or if reform could have been more gradual—the wishful thinkers’ list of “what ifs” is as endless as it is vacuous. The truth is that with any conceivable combination of policies, the 1990s in Russia would have been horrible for most Russians, because of the appalling starting point.

Mr Aron, who emigrated in 1978, portrays the utter failure and despair of the late Soviet Union accurately. An admiring biographer of Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s president from 1991-99, he reckons the 1990s were mostly a triumph. The planned economy was replaced by a functioning if messy capitalist one; the Communist revanche evaporated; a middle class grew quickly. That compares well with the record of Mikhail Gorbachev, leader from 1985-91, who admirably let the Berlin Wall come down, but also allowed his uniformed thugs to slaughter unarmed demonstrators in Lithuania and Georgia.

Some may find this assessment too Panglossian. But Mr Aron makes some irrefutable points in favour of the changes of the 1990s. “The nation that for ages told itself that it is lazy and unlucky and incapable of getting anything done right has become, among many 25- to 45-year-olds, a country of perfectionist workaholics.”

On a lighter note, he points out the colossal improvement in Russian food since the days of greasy gristle, shortages and squalor that marked Soviet gastronomy. He might have also highlighted improvements in transport by road, rail and air—where progress, incidentally, has accelerated since the Yeltsin years.

Unsurprisingly, Mr Aron deplores the direction Russia has taken under Vladimir Putin. He laments lawlessness (especially the arbitrary force of the executive), the failure to renew Soviet-era power infrastructure and the resulting risk of energy shortages.

He argues that Russia has neither the means nor the will to be a global superpower. It may complain, but it accepts the rules of the global game on issues such as terrorism and proliferation (old cold-war hawks may raise an eyebrow here). But his main point is that by centralising Russia and removing constitutional checks and balances, the Kremlin has made the system highly unstable. It lacks the military, political, economic and bureaucratic elements necessary to make Soviet-style authoritarian rule work properly. That—he says tantalisingly—may risk the unravelling of the Russian state itself.

Dr Who?

Eastern Europe's politicians

Doctor Who?

Jun 21st 2007
From The Economist print edition

Few of Europe's ex-communist countries have strong leaders

OPTIMISTS hope that Valdis Zatlers, an orthopaedic surgeon, will grow into his new job as Latvia's president. But even his doughtiest supporters doubt that he will fill the exquisite shoes of his predecessor, Vaire Vike-Freiberga, a steely-minded émigré polyglot who ushered her small Baltic country into both the European Union and NATO.

Dr Zatlers was at least good at something: he admits collecting thousands of dollars in tips from grateful patients, on which he is now hurrying to pay tax. But he has no experience of statecraft or even of public life. His sole asset is the backing of Latvia's political chieftains, who foisted him on the country in a secret backroom deal. That may be unfortunate for Latvia. But the sadder aspect of the story is that the doctor fits so neatly into the region's increasingly dull political landscape.

Post-communist leaders were once big, internationally known figures. Lech Walesa of Poland and the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel remain world famous. Poland's Aleksander Kwasniewski was widely admired abroad for his diplomatic skills. Reformist politicians such as Estonia's Mart Laar, Russia's Yegor Gaidar and Slovakia's Mikulas Dzurinda wowed the policy wonks with their zealous embrace of flat taxes and free-marketry.

Now things are different. Only two leaders really stand out: the presidents of Russia and Estonia. Russia's Vladimir Putin has many critics, but when he speaks, people listen. Estonia's president, the Swedish-born and American-educated Toomas Hendrik Ilves, now speaks up for all the Kremlin's former European satellites. The brainy Mr Ilves is the only senior politician in the region with real experience of Brussels (he was once a member of the European Parliament) and Washington, DC. He has the ear of George Bush: both are keen farmers (although on rather different scales), and both like the same make of Stihl brush-cutter.

Elsewhere, foreign statesmen find few weighty senior people to engage with. Ukraine's politicians are enmeshed in seemingly endless and exasperating clan warfare. Romania's president, Traian Basescu, is an ardent Atlanticist and European, but is bogged down in a spat with his country's old-guard government. Poland's ruling twins are refreshingly honest, but prickly and provincial. Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic enjoys talking but not listening. Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia presides over rapid growth and reform, but even friends find that he is better when taken in small doses.

A lot more typical are such political leaders as Slovakia's prime minister, Robert Fico, or Hungary's Ferenc Gyurcsany: wily political operators with good business ties and a populist touch. They show little interest in restarting reforms or in foreign policy. Most other leaders in the region are either past it or a bit dull.

Yet central and eastern Europe desperately needs strong government to catch up with the continent's older democracies. Unreformed public services gobble money and produce poor outcomes. The demographic decline in prospect, especially in the poorest countries, is scary; emigration is now making it worse.

The Kremlin's habitual divide-and-rule tactics also tend to work best on weak, opportunist leaders. That may prove to be a problem in Latvia, where the country's business barons are unnervingly keen to show they can work with the Russians.

When western Europe was led by burnt-out leaders such as Jacques Chirac, Silvio Berlusconi and Gerhard Schröder, the contrast was less striking. But the arrival of Angela Merkel in Germany, Nicolas Sarkozy in France and (next week) Gordon Brown in Britain casts a harsh light on the steppe to the east. It would be nice if new impressive politicians were climbing the ladder there. Sadly, the antics of the current lot seem not to inspire energetic newcomers, but to deter them.

Detective Renko and the mystery of the missing credibility

Menace in the Metro
By EDWARD LUCAS
June 15, 2007; Page W6 Wall St Journal

So a vision of Stalin haunts the Moscow subway late at night? For anyone with a sense of history, he is there all the time. The cavernous marble-clad halls and endless tunnels of that extraordinary engineering project were the workplace -- and deathplace -- of countless forced laborers, the human fuel of the Stalinist command economy.

But the vision of Stalin that Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor's office, is assigned to investigate is not an echo of the past but a present-day stunt that promises a sinister future. Martin Cruz Smith's "Stalin's Ghost" is the sixth outing for the somber, reflective Renko; his first, in "Gorky Park" (1981), was a rare appearance in Western Cold War fiction of a "real" Soviet Russian. Mr. Smith still manages to mix a convincingly humdrum backdrop of gritty daily life in Moscow with a lively -- perhaps too lively -- plot. Renko, his personal and professional lives troubled and tangled, is up against Russia's most up-to-date demons: Kremlin-sponsored extremists in cahoots with foreign consultants and brutalized veterans of the Chechen wars.


The author clearly prizes authenticity. His command of physical detail is fastidious: Anyone who has not examined the corpses in a Russian morgue, suffered brain damage or excavated a battlefield (all in fairly quick succession) will finish this book with a good idea of what to expect. More important, Mr. Smith also expertly captures Russia's repellent contrasts between wealth and poverty, humanity and hatred.

The characters are a bit less realistic but richly drawn. Renko's horrible Soviet-era childhood, when he was tortured by his father, is mirrored by the patricidal feelings of his half-adopted son, Zhenya, a young, troubled chess genius who lives on the streets. Stalin, the most perverse father figure imaginable, looms over the whole story -- and the whole country.

The terse, witty dialogue is a treat, though it may jar readers who know Russia. The people there usually address each other by first name and patronymic -- so President Vladimir Putin, son of another Vladimir, would be called "Vladimir Vladimirovich." Close friends use diminutive versions of their first names (Mr. Putin is "Volodya" or "Vova"). Admittedly, both forms of address can look a bit odd in English. Neither appears in the book. Instead the characters, sounding quite Anglo-Saxon, 8frequently call each other by their surnames.

Late-Night Sightings

Other weaknesses are more serious. Russian policemen and prosecutors do not, as a rule, pay much attention to practical jokes -- and that is what the subway ghost appearances too obviously are. A ragbag of passengers reporting late-night sightings of Stalin would be more likely to attract a curt rebuke than a dogged investigation. This improbability undermines the elaborate plot, which is further weakened by rather too frequent lucky escapes and convenient coincidences.
DETAILS

[Details]
SSTALIN'S GHOST
By Martin Cruz Smith
(Simon & Schuster, 333 pages, $26.95)

The most puzzling question, though, is whether someone as honest, determined and loving as Renko could ever have started work in a place as corrupt and brutal as the Moscow prosecutor's office, much less survive there for years. The story begins, on an entirely credible note, with a woman who wants the agents of law and order to murder her errant husband. Thereafter corruption and political pressure are central themes in "Stalin's Ghost," but somehow they never ultimately define -- as they ought to -- Renko's everyday life at the office. The Russian prosecution service, perhaps the least reformed sector of the country's whole criminal-justice system, is itself a Stalinist ghost, a fact that goes unremarked by the author.

A gruesome scene in which the excavations for a new basement coffee shop in the supreme-court building uncovers a mass grave -- victims of instant Stalinist justice -- is all too horribly believable, as is its hurried coverup. Renko, passing by chance, is told by a pompous police colonel: "I can assure everyone that there will be an investigation of the dead to see whether criminal charges will be brought." Renko puts his arm around the officer's shoulders and says: "Congratulations. That's the best joke I have heard all day."

Brainy, Diligent

Why Renko is not fired or even murdered for scoffing at the coverup of the mass grave -- or for subverting his office's other sleazy doings -- is barely less puzzling than why a brainy, diligent, English-speaking workaholic does not look for work elsewhere. Modern Russia offers plenty of jobs for such people: Some such paths in life even allow you to preserve an honest reputation. Renko's lingering professional pride (in what, Russian justice?) and vague distaste for carrying a briefcase hardly seem reason enough for him to keep going at his ill-paid and dangerous work.

The only plausible answer is that fate -- or rather Mr. Smith -- keeps giving him fascinating cases and lucky breaks. Saving your country from fascism, winning back your beloved girlfriend from your maniac adversary and rescuing a tormented waif -- not bad going for a few weeks' work.

But it's not quite enough. For Mr. Smith to join the first rank in his field, he needs to create characters, like John le Carré's George Smiley, so convincing that the reader can imagine them leading their lives independent of the author's guiding hand. Though Arkady Renko's grit, guts and laconic humor are certainly appealing, they do not outweigh the basic flaws in the story of his life and work. Setting his detective novels in Russia has served Mr. Smith well. But the exotic backdrop constrains credibility just a little too much.

Mr. Lucas is the Central and Eastern Europe correspondent of the Economist.

The Lives of Others (review)

Europe.view

Past and present

Jun 14th 2007
From Economist.com

A film illuminates communism’s horrors and aftermath

IF YOU ever lived in the grim communist prison camp that called itself the German Democratic Republic, or have friends or family who did, it is easy to flinch at “The Lives of Others”, a film that portrays the vile bullies and murderers of the Stasi secret police in a stylised and melodramatic way.

The plot verges on the preposterous. A brutal Stasi officer is so moved by his victims’ loving tenderness and cultivated habits that he switches sides. That is about as plausible (and tasteful) as a film about Auschwitz in which a camp guard falls in love with an inmate: theoretically possible, but a jarring note of sentimentality in a story that should break hearts, not warm them.

But leave that and other flourishes of artistic licence (or carelessness) on one side. Films are not made to suit the sensibilities only of those soured or sensitised by first-hand experience. “The Lives of Others” does not claim to be a documentary, but a work of fiction. If the price of spreading the truth is to paint in bright colours with bold outlines, that is probably worth paying. Those whose curiosity is stimulated will find plenty of factual material elsewhere.

Overall, the film is a magnificent reminder to those, particularly in the West, who doubt the real horror of the communist secret-police state. Most people under 40 remember no Soviet leader before Mikhail Gorbachev; the gulag is something in history books. For these, and the warm-hearted and soft-headed people of all ages who think that communism probably wasn’t all that bad, the film may be the first time they have experienced even a frisson of what it was really like. (When your columnist saw the film, it was preceded by an advertisement for Stolichnaya vodka. Among the totalitarian kitsch it featured was an image of the mass murderer Lenin, whom the ad described as a “visionary”.)

For a start, the film shows the people who ran communist countries in their true colours. Far from building socialism with the bricks of altruism and the mortar of discipline, they were disgusting hypocrites: greedy, brutal and lecherous. A poisonous mixture of deceit and fear fuelled the system. Even for the brave, it was dreadfully difficult to stay clean. The film shows all that well.

BUENA VISTA

Reflecting on the past

The biggest lesson, though, is not about the beastliness of the past, but Germany’s success in dealing with it. The film ends with the Stasi broken and contemptible; its files are open, its officers nowhere near public life. For all the other failures in eastern Germany, this at least has been a triumph. Compare that with its counterparts elsewhere. Unreformed intelligence services still rule the roost in Bulgaria and Romania; scandals surround their doings in the Czech Republic, Latvia and Lithuania. In Russia, they run the country.

In its approach to communist-era spies and their bosses, most of eastern Europe resembles Germany in the 1950s and early 1960s. Economic growth is terrific. Never mind about the morality and background of those running the country. Denazification is over and done with.

Such complacency about the past lasts only until young people start asking questions. Just as the youth movements of 1968 challenged both the authoritarian bureaucratic ways of governments in Germany and France and the festering shame of wartime collaboration, a new generation of east European youngsters may finish the job that their parents botched in 1989. “What exactly did Dad do under communism?” is a highly subversive question. It needs to be asked, widely and often. If “The Lives of Others” doesn’t spark that discussion in former communist countries, sooner or later something else will.

Prague security conference whinge

Europe.view

A Czechered meeting

Jun 7th 2007
From Economist.com

A conference in Prague gives food for thought

ASSEMBLING a bunch of the world’s most famous dissidents in Prague to discuss security and democracy with top politicians and think-tankers should have been a sure-fire success. Among the heroes of the anti-communist resistance gathered in the Cernin Palace this week was Natan Sharansky, who as Anatoly Shcharansky founded the “Refusenik” movement of Soviet Jews. A few seats away sat the equally formidable Lyudmila Alekseyeva, founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group, now a doughty Putin-basher. Swapping prison reminiscences with them from the home team were Vaclav Havel, a former president, and Jan Urban, a former Charter 77 activist.

Lesser-known in eastern Europe, but no less impressive, were figures such as Mudawi Ibrahim Adam from Sudan and Bassem Eid from Palestine. From the non-dissident side, Sir Richard Dearlove, former chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, gave a tantalisingly brief presentation on how to promote democracy (briefly: rule of law first, then elections). Toomas Ilves, Estonia’s president, demanded democracy without adjectives, especially of Russia’s “sovereign” and “managed” variety. Kanan Makiya, an American expert on Iraq, tried to explain why things had gone wrong there (briefly: too many years of sanctions before the invasion).

Yet just as in Czech cuisine delicious ingredients and splendid ambience combine all too often in an ill-presented, tepid and flavourless result, the conference was disappointing.

One reason was poor organisation. The Czernin Palace—home to the Czech foreign ministry—has splendid atmospherics, both tragic and triumphant. The much-lamented Jan Masaryk fell to his death from a top-floor window after the communist putsch in 1948. The much-unlamented bullies’ charter of the Warsaw Pact wound up in 1990 in the same hall where the conference took place.

But the acoustics were abominable. Only those lucky enough to sit in VIP rows at the front could hear the insights from the podium. The organisers had failed to realise that the best bit of a conference of this kind is the hobnobbing during the coffee breaks, not sitting quietly while listening to people read prepared statements. The panels were too big, the speeches too long, the timekeeping poor.

Even worse were the oppressive security measures. After George Bush, America’s president, gave a speech, the participants were corralled inside the hall for an hour. There was nothing to eat or drink; no access even to lavatories. If the Czech hosts and their Israeli partners had offered champagne and canapés, nobody would have wanted to leave—the company was excellent. But nobody likes being locked up.

AP

Sharansky gets antsy

Even Sasha Vondra, a former political prisoner and dissident who is now a deputy prime minister of the Czech Republic, was unable to persuade the American secret servicemen to let him leave. Staunch Atlanticists grew tetchy. “I did not expect that I would be incarcerated by a foreign power in a government building in my own country,” Mr Urban said. Later, Mr Sharansky’s attempts to leave the building were stymied in order to allow masked sharpshooters to move their equipment from the rooftops. “Got your exit stamp?” his aide asked dryly as the doors were finally unlocked.

Such gripes are emblematic of more serious problems. First, ex-dissidents are not good at running things—countries or conferences. The story of eastern Europe since 1989 is of incompetent heroes losing out to wily spooks and crooks. Second, American moral power is not what it was. As Gary Kasparov, a chess champion and critic of the Kremlin, noted testily, Mr Bush’s talk of freedom gets tiresome when it is not backed up with anything practical. Third, talking about spreading democracy sounds fanciful. Even safeguarding the gains of the past 15 years from an assertive and authoritarian Russia is looking increasingly difficult.

G8 from Economist website

The G8 summit

Putin takes aim

Jun 5th 2007
From Economist.com

A row about Russian missiles hangs over the G8 summit

AFP

GERMANY'S swish resort of Heiligendamm might escape addition to the Kremlin’s list of new nuclear targets in Europe, given President Vladimir Putin’s visit there. But that will provide little reassurance for the seven leaders of the world’s big, rich and long-standing democracies that make up the rest of the G8. They, and Mr Putin, will meet at the seaside setting on Wednesday June 6th before the summit begins officially the next day.

The Kremlin’s spin doctors are trying hard to play down remarks made by Mr Putin about aiming his country’s missiles at Europe. They claim that he was giving a hypothetical answer to a hypothetical question about America's planned missile-defence installations in Eastern Europe. But the damage to Russia’s image as a friendly country has been done. Russian officers and officials have grumbled before about America’s sometimes cavalier attitude to strategic security. This time the combative words came from the top. Even at the height of their row over Iraq, it is impossible to imagine that France would have targeted its nuclear weapons on Britain or America, let alone the other way around. Just as democracies do not make war on each other, they do not point nuclear warheads in each other’s direction.

Germany will hope to salvage something from the summit’s original agenda of aid for Africa and climate change. Difficult though those issues are, they pale by comparison with the difficulty of dealing with a newly assertive Russia.

So far, the western response has been to describe Mr Putin’s remarks as unhelpful rather than outrageous. As so often with tough talk from Russia, outside governments try to dismiss it as aimed for internal consumption, and thus not to be taken seriously. But treating Russia as an unruly adolescent to be part-soothed, part-ignored, works badly.

One reason is that Russia’s assertiveness has not been matched by a clear expression of what its government actually wants. The commonest refrain from the Kremlin is the desire to be noticed and taken seriously. Paradoxically, the more that Russia shows itself to be a sham democracy and bullying neighbour, the less willing other countries are to treat it with much respect.

At this week’s summit, Mr Putin may notice the absence of the man who was previously his staunchest defender: Jacques Chirac, France’s former president. His successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, is keen to break with the cosy and sometimes mysterious habits of French policy towards Russia. He promises a “frank” exchange with Mr Putin. Mr Sarkozy’s family fled communist Hungary. Like Germany’s Angela Merkel, who grew up in the Soviet-run part of Germany, he finds Mr Putin’s nostalgia for the Soviet Union repellent.

Yet dislike of Russia’s current path does not create unity. Both France and Germany are unenthusiastic about America’s planned missile-defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. President George Bush continues to protest that these are aimed at Iranian nuclear weapons, not at Russia. But with the exception perhaps of Britain's Tony Blair, a lame-duck ally who will shortly leave office, he will find little support from his western counterparts. The American leader may save the hard talking on nuclear issues for later: he has invited Mr Putin to the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, early next month.

And for all Mr Bush’s warnings about Russia’s departure from democracy and good neighbourliness, America still needs Mr Putin’s help, chiefly on curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions but also on the future of Kosovo, which it wants to bring to the UN Security Council soon.

So after so much unpleasantness in past weeks, it may be in all countries’ interests to patch things up as much as possible. Mr Putin in particular likes to portray himself both as a strong defender of Russia’s interests and as a welcome guest at the world’s top table. Fostering the latter image will require at least a temporary change of tone, if not of approach. Most G8 summits produce a welter of carefully honed platitudes, in which differences are finessed and blurred as much as possible. This one is likely to be no exception.

another Daily Mail rant

Murder, lies and the spectre of a new Cold War

By Edward Lucas

There was an old dictum of Cold War propaganda operations that instructed agents to: "Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter-allegations."

Such a hostile approach to international relations seems almost comical in our more enlightened age. But now it appears those same aggressive tactics have been dusted off for use by a new generation of Kremlin goons.

How else can we explain the bizarre press conference held yesterday by Andrei Lugovoi, the man whom British authorities have formally named as the man they believe murdered Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London by contaminating his tea with a radioactive isotope?

Bizarre claim: Suspect Andrei Lugovoi says he has been set up

Lugovoi now asserts that he has been set up by the British security services, that Litvinenko was in the pay of MI6, and that they had tried to recruit him, too, to help discredit Putin and his cronies.

All very intriguing. And all fabrication.

The truth is that from the start of the saga surrounding Litvinenko's death, Russia has done nothing to help clear up the many mysteries in the affair, and everything to stonewall, distract and mislead both investigators and the outside world.

Let us remember that the Kremlin's immediate response to Litvinenko's death was to blame Boris Berezovsky, the London-based billionaire tycoon.

The argument was as simple as it was preposterous: Mr Litvinenko's demise had made Russia look bad. Mr Berezovsky is an enemy of Russia. Hence, Mr Berezovsky must be behind the murder.

Yet astonishingly, some in the West were initially prepared to believe there might be something in that far-flung theory.

Mr Berezovsky is certainly viewed as a troublesome guest in Britain - he owes his right to stay here to a murky deal in which he brokered the release of two British citizens kidnapped in Chechnya.

His increasingly vocal criticism of Mr Putin's regime, including demands for it to be overthrown "by force", is an unpleasant reminder of the way in which Russia's internal power struggles now spill over into Britain. But no serious evidence connected him to Mr Litvinenko's death.

By contrast, huge unanswered questions surround the mysterious Andrei Lugovoi and his

friends, who had left a trail of polonium across half of western Europe before their ill-fated tea-party with Mr Litvinenko in London on November 1 last year. And those unresolved questions were becoming a thorn in the Kremlin's side.

Specifically, they risked undoing the work of the Russian authorities and big Russian companies who have splurged millions of pounds on PR companies to schmooze politicians, journalists and officials to dispel notions that Russia is effectively a fascist gangster state, run by ex-KGB thugs and riddled with crime and corruption.

They were aided and abetted by greedy foreign bankers and brokers, who are determined that nothing should derail the spectacular gas-fired gravy train that trundles between Moscow, Frankfurt, London, and New York, dribbling fees and profits as it goes.

Never mind about the crime and extortion, they murmur. Look at the money. Give Russia a bit of time. What's one murder here or there?

Yet the oily charms of the Kremlin chorus could not silence the clamour created by Litvinenko's assassination.

Even those who found the victim's past murky could not ignore the fact a British citizen was murdered in broad daylight on the streets of London, and that the lives of at least 17 wholly innocent residents of the city were endangered by the astonishingly casual and callous conduct of the poisoners.

And when Mr Lugovoi was formally charged by the Crown Prosecution Service, the Kremlin responded by refusing the request for his extradition, and has now embarked on a shameless and cynical counter-attack.

Whether or not Mr Lugovoi was involved in the squalid saga under their direct control from the start, he is certainly working to their instructions now, spewing out ever more bluster and confusion.

Contrary to Lugovoi's wild claims, all the evidence suggests that MI6 was never even interested in Mr Litvinenko as a source of information. He had to organise his own escape from Moscow in 2001, using a clumsily forged passport.

That does not suggest that any Western intelligence service was behind his departure. Had they been so, he would have been "exfiltrated" with great professionalism and secrecy.

Similarly, when he arrived at Heathrow airport, no British officials were waiting for him: indeed, he found it hard to get into the country at all. Even after that, the British authorities showed little interest: had they done so, he would have joined Oleg Gordievsky, Vasily Mitrokhin, Vladimir Rezun, Vladimir Kuzichkin and other top defectors from the Kremlin's intelligence services, expensively provided with closely guarded new identities, jobs, housing and pensions courtesy of the British taxpayer.

In fact, Mr Litvinenko lived publicly and rather poorly in North London, dependent on a small stipend from Mr Berezovsky and occasional consulting work.

It is marginally more possible that MI6 would have been interested in Mr Lugovoi himself, as he alleged yesterday. It is impossible to prove or disprove.

But it beggars belief that they would have discussed Mr Litvinenko with him, as he now claims. Secret services are notoriously grudging with information even inside the organisation, and certainly do not chat freely with their newly recruited sources.

It is possible in theory that the British authorities might have belatedly decided to use Mr Litvinenko for some reason. But again, it is hardly likely. The whole thing would strain the credulity even of the most jaded consumer of spy fiction.

So why does the Kremlin think these lies are worth peddling?

Many people around the world believe that the British intelligence services are both supremely devious and supremely ruthless; it will be all too easy to convince the paranoid and gullible that it was the agents of the hated, duplicitous British state that murdered Mr Litvinenko, rather than anyone connected with the muchmaligned Vladimir Putin, whose only crime is to stand up against the Anglo-American drive for world domination.

In short, the most likely explanation of Mr Lugovoi's bizarre allegations are that the Kremlin dezinformatsiya machine has just moved up another gear.

It certainly fits a pattern: the Kremlin has returned to the authoritarian and xenophobic habits of the past in a way that the West is still pitifully unwilling to confront.

Russia's rulers care nothing for solving the Litvinenko case. Instead, they have decided to cynically exploit the tragedy.

The big question for the West is whether this combination of deceit and ruthlessness is merely the temporary revival of Soviet-era habits, or whether it presages the terrifying descent into a new Cold War.