Therapeutic historiography, (Europe view 173)

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


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

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


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


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


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


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


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

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

Europe view nr 172

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


Eastern Europe-friendly boycotts are difficult to pull off

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

Europe View nr 171: Ashton to Ukraine

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


The EU could make a real difference in Ukraine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Europe View 170--Prickly Poles

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


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Better say nothing
Feb 4th 2010
From Economist.com


The minefield of writing about Poland

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

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

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

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

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

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

Europe View nr 168 -- Europe's borderlands

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


The borderlands of Europe should not be left behind

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Europe view no 164

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A supermarket in Estonia
Dec 23rd 2009
From Economist.com


The best sort of eastward expansion

FOOD in Europe’s ex-communist countries has an undeservedly bad reputation: stodgy peasant fare ruined by the culinary commissars of the planned economy. Your columnist has long disagreed, but proof is needed. So, on a recent visit to a supermarket in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, he set out to construct a winter picnic entirely from local ingredients.

The basis was easy: black bread, pungent and tasty. It makes loaves from the west and south of Europe seem bland and boring. So into the shopping basket went four or five different varieties, with different features: seeds, rye, crunchy and chewy by turns. Alamy



Aisle be there



The mainstay of the picnic was pricey at €15 ($22), but succulent—a smoked salami from Lithuania. Accompanying it in the shopping basket were a gourmet smoked cheese from Estonia, a tin of smoked sprats (Latvia), Polish pickled mushrooms, plus Czech horseradish and Hungarian hot peppers. Who says eastern Europe is a vitamin-free zone? For dessert, Polish “chocolate plums” from the Solidarność confectionery works are a fine offering. So were crispy, crunchy gingerbread biscuits (Estonian) and a packet of dried apple rings (Polish).

The shopper wanting alcoholic drinks is spoiled for choice. Estonia is the country that pioneered the vodka box—a five-litre freezer-filler much favoured by Finnish tourists dodging their own country’s punitive duties on alcohol. Your columnist is partial to Żubrówka, which should have a stem of bison grass in every bottle and gives the whiff of a summer meadow even in the depths of winter. Poland is the main source, though you can also find it in Belarus and Ukraine.

But drinking vodka at a picnic is not to everyone’s taste. Wine works better. Your columnist always tries to use his budget to punish protectionism and support freedom-lovers, which can lead to some conflict with wine snobs. The supermarket had a range of cut-price offerings from the Balkans, including Macedonia and Moldova. But the intelligent consumer should encourage those who are trying to move upmarket, as opposed to those competing at the bottom end. Pricey bottles from Ukraine and Russia were on offer too, but only sweet wines: a big headache in every bottle, at least in your columnist’s experience.

A good range of Georgian wine was more tempting: the basket was soon laden by a promising-looking upmarket Saperavi, for the equivalent of €12. But Georgian wine can be a bit inconsistent. For safety, a few beers never go amiss, especially if a sauna is in the offing. Estonia’s Saku and Le Coq are both good lagers, but the final choice was a brace of real Czech Budweiser (so much better than the fizzy, insipid American version) and some Polish Żywiec.

For a post-prandial snifter, Armenian brandy was a strong contender. But throwing caution to the winds, your columnist plumped for a bottle of Estonian dessert wine. Grapes do grow even in northerly Estonia, and wine-growers have been known to make something drinkable from them. But this bottle was from the Põltsamaa winery, which uses apples and berries.

Soft drinks are more distinctive. Western-style juices and fizzy drinks are ubiquitous, but more interesting local concoctions are on the shelves too. A carton of Ukrainian birch sap was irresistible, along with one of the greatest treats in the northern part of eastern Europe: sea-buckthornberry juice. This is bright orange, more like a puree than a juice, and has an incomparable astringent and invigorating kick.

The taste requires some acquiring; your columnist drinks it neat, but it also makes a useful ingredient for other cocktails—mixed with birch sap, for example. The toast at the picnic was to free trade in food: who needs protectionism when you have stuff that consumers really want?

Europe view no 165

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Steamy scenes
Dec 30th 2009
From Economist.com


Bracing northern habits reach south-west London

YOUR columnist has recently moved house. Although his new garden is small, it does have enough room for a small hut, painted black and concealed by a trellis. It is a rarity in this part of the world. Most visitors assume it is a garden shed. Others know better. For Latvians, it is a “pirts”; for Lithuanians, a “pirtis”. Russian guests are thrilled by the prospect of a “banya”. Finns and Estonians are already stripping their clothes off as soon as they hear the word—the same in both languages—“sauna”. [actually, it's "saun" in Estonian--EL]


Such visitors are tactful about its shortcomings. The real thing should be home-built and fuelled by hand-chopped logs gathered from a nearby forest. It also should be near a river or lake for the cooling-off sessions. None of that is possible in Chelsea.

But even your columnist’s electric version (it costs around £1,500 or $2,000 for the smallest, two-seater outdoor model; an indoor version is a bit cheaper) does the trick. As sweat pours from your pores, worries trickle away too. It is hard to be tense when you feel that you are melting. Inside the sauna you can talk (if you must), read (if you can) or—best of all—just think. You can listen to the “singing stones” (sounding like an Arvo Pärt symphony as they exhale steam). You can beat yourself or a friend with a whisk, made from a birch, oak or lime branch (it improves the circulation).

In between, you drink, nibble and take cold baths (or use the garden hose for an impromptu shower). In the morning, it prepares you for work; in the evening, it gets you ready for bed. The endorphins linger, delightfully, for hours afterwards.

Such treats are lost on visitors from the benighted lands with no sauna culture. English guests view the “saw-na” (as they call it: the real pronunciation is closer to “sow-na”) with great suspicion. They stare unhappily at the kit: the wooden bucket and ladle, the strange mushroom-like hats, the linen loincloths, the small bottles of birch-bark oil, dark brown and pungent. The canister of salty sauna honey (for rubbing on the skin) and the birch-branch whisks (shrink-wrapped, imported from Estonia and stored in the freezer) arouse horror. They look with trepidation at the temperature gauge, which reaches 120°C (248°F).

They are deeply uneasy about nudity, even among close friends. They would like to try it, one day, maybe, perhaps, but with the temperature right down, in strict privacy and certainly with a swimsuit on. They worry about what the neighbours may think.

To be fair, sauna etiquette varies hugely between countries. In Russia, mixed-sex banyas are rare and have a somewhat sleazy connotation. In other north European countries such as Germany, Estonia and Finland, nobody finds nudity a big deal. In some cultures, chucking water on the hot rocks is mandatory: in others it is close to hooliganism. Attitudes to children vary sharply too: your columnist’s sons, veterans of the magnificent Sandunovskaya baths in Moscow (our favourite hangout during the family's years there) were forcibly ejected from a hotel sauna in Britain on the grounds that it was “too dangerous” for the under-16s.

It is easy to get into arguments about the history, technique and merits of saunas. Is a “smoke sauna” (where the logs are burnt in a chimney-less hut, giving plenty of atmosphere but also rather a lot of soot) the ultimate experience or a primitive aberration? As with vodka, strong views on the whys and wherefores abound. But unlike vodka, saunas usually resolve arguments rather than worsening them. Try one in 2010.

europe view: three cheers for Primakov

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The neighbour from hell

Dec 10th 2009
From Economist.com


Cack-handed Russian tactics are boosting NATO in eastern Europe

IN THE 1990s, when enlarging NATO to take in the ex-communist countries still seemed perilous and impractical, help came from an unexpected source. Yevgeny Primakov (pictured), a steely old Soviet spook who became first head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, then foreign minister and even, briefly, prime minister, liked to say that it would be “impermissible” for the alliance to admit ex-communist states.

His remarks, and others in similar vein by leading Russian politicians, proved counterproductive. The more the Kremlin huffed and puffed about ex-captive nations deciding their own future, the harder it became to dismiss those countries’ fears: if your neighbour terms it “impermissible” for you to install a burglar alarm, people will start taking your security worries seriously. Some wags even suggested that a “Primakov prize” be established to mark the boost he had given to the cause.



Now the same tactics are at work again. As readers of this column may know, the black hole in NATO’s security guarantee is that it has no formal contingency plans to defend its weakest members: the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. If Russia is NATO’s friend—so the thinking went in the early years of this decade—no such plans are necessary. America has its own military plans: chiefly putting powerful naval forces in the North Atlantic to, if necessary, sink Russian warships and shoot down planes menacing the Baltic states. But NATO is paralysed by the fear, felt strongly in countries such as France and Germany, that any real military planning will be intolerably and destructively provocative towards Russia.

Faced with that constellation of forces, a sensible Russian response might be to adopt softly-softly tactics. Make it clear that the war in Georgia was a one-off (and a response to provocation). Give the Baltics and the Poles no reason to worry. Keep on using economic ties to make friends and influence people. The pressure for NATO to take a firmer stand will soon fizzle out.

Instead, Russia is adopting the opposite course. It habitually violates Baltic airspace. It maintains a vocal propaganda offensive (such as a report being launched in Brussels this week by a Russian-backed think-tank, which criticises Baltic language and citizenship laws). This autumn, it scandalised NATO opinion by running two big military exercises, without foreign observers, based on highly threatening scenarios (culminating in a Strategic Rocket Forces drill in which Russia “nuked” Poland). The exercises demonstrated weakness and incompetence, as well as force of numbers and nasty thinking. But they made life hard for peacemongers and strengthened the arguments of NATO hawks and the twitchy eastern Europeans.

Russia’s latest political move adds insult to injury. It has formally proposed a new security treaty to NATO, which would specifically prohibit the alliance from making military plans or positioning forces in a way that Russia does not like. This is the latest iteration of what is commonly known as the “Medvedev Plan”—the idea of creating a new, realpolitik-based, security architecture for Europe which would weaken NATO, bypass the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and sideline America.

Apart from the ever-enthusiastic Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, there seems little enthusiasm for any version of this plan in Europe. It might have had a better chance when the Bush administration was testing Atlanticist loyalties to destruction, and when Gerhard Schröder was running Germany and Jacques Chirac was president of France. Now it looks like a non-starter.

It is just what Polish, Czech and Baltic politicians need to bolster their arguments. But it is hard to see how this sort of thing helps Russia.

Ashton mk 2

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Why the past matters
Dec 3rd 2009
From Economist.com


A defence of last week's column about Europe's new foreign minister
LAST week’s column on Lady Ashton’s appointment as the European Union’s high representative for foreign policy attracted a flurry of comments. Many were negative and some of them furious.

The criticism falls into two categories. Some readers see nothing wrong with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (for which the then Ms Ashton worked in the late 1970s and early 1980s). They see it as a noble (or at least well-intentioned) organisation, which attempts to rid the world of nuclear weapons—a cause, one might add, also backed by Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. The fact that the Soviet Union supported some of CND’s goals is neither here nor there: ideas are not responsible for the people who believe in them. From this point of view, Lady Ashton has nothing to apologise for. To term past association with CND as in any way as culpable as having had some indirect ties to the apartheid regime in South Africa is a grotesque smear. That cause was basically evil whereas the “peace movement” was basically good.

A second group of readers believe that the past is simply irrelevant. CND may or may not have been a Soviet front. But at the time it was a cause which in its broad aims enjoyed support from many people and most of Britain’s Labour Party (including Tony Blair). Suggesting that Lady Ashton deserves particular opprobrium is mean-minded and unfair, and is probably part of a hidden agenda to discredit her in order to (insert favourite conspiracy theory here).

The smoke from straw men being incinerated risks clouding the debate. The column explicitly conceded that many people supported CND for rational and genuine motives. CND affiliation is quite unlike a past in, say, the pro-Soviet wing of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Some may find it uncomfortable when a moral giant like Vladimir Bukovsky says that western peace movements were financed and orchestrated by the Soviet Union, but he is a serious person and his allegation deserves a hearing. However, the column explicitly did not say that Lady Ashton had done anything wrong, or that she was a communist fellow-traveller.



The column did note the oddity that west Europeans tend to be a bit amnesiac about the horrors of communism and the culpability of people in the west who defended it (which at the time included at least some members of CND and the Labour Party). But they have lively memories and finely tuned moral reflexes when dealing with some other issues, especially ones that are safely long ago (such as slavery or colonialism) or involve enemies of unquestionable evil such as Nazi or apartheid regimes. That is a comfortable position, but not universally accepted or immune from criticism.

It was not west Europeans who were herded into cattle trucks to die of cold and hunger in Siberia. It was not west Europeans who had to choose between denouncing a colleague or seeing their own children denied education. It was not west Europeans who had to live in the stifling humiliating, backwardness and stagnation of the late communist era. It was not west Europeans who got shot if they tried to flee their own country.

Lady Ashton’s supporters may well feel that dragging up an innocent and unrelated episode in her past career is hurtful and unfair. But from many east Europeans’ point of view, the peace movement risked prolonging communist rule by weakening the west’s pressure on the evil empire. As the EU’s foreign-affairs chief, she has to represent them too. Simply denouncing as bigots those who mind about this issue will aggravate the concern, not dispel it.

Ashton mk 1

Europe.view

Better red than dead?
Nov 26th 2009
From Economist.com


The peacenik past of the EU's new foreign minister deserves scrutiny


Holding her past to account

IMAGINE a British Conservative politician—call her Catriona Aston—coming from obscurity to gain one of the top posts in the European Union, just as Lady (Catherine) Ashton (pictured) has emerged from the Labour ranks to be the EU’s new foreign minister. Imagine that on closer scrutiny it turns out that in the early 1980s the fictional Ms Aston worked for a cold-war think-tank called something like the “African Freedom Foundation”, which campaigned against the spread of communism in Africa. Imagine that on closer examination it turns out that this outfit enjoyed strong behind-the-scenes support from the then apartheid government in South Africa. Among its supporters and officials are unrepentant defenders of the fascist regimes in Spain and Portugal and even those who said that Nazism had been a lesser evil than communism.

It is easy to imagine what would happen. The hapless Ms Aston would be publicly disgraced and would have to resign forthwith. How could an EU representative credibly deal with the developing countries when she in the past had been a defender of a racist colonial regime? Nuance, context and balance would go out of the window. Nobody would ask if all causes supported by the former South African regime were equally evil, or if communism had maybe cost more African lives than apartheid.

Against that hypothetical background, the lack of fuss about the real life Catherine Ashton’s involvement with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the 1980s looks puzzling. Ms Ashton (as she was then) was a paid organiser for CND in the late 1970s and its treasurer from 1980-82.

It is worth remembering that CND was (and is) a legal organisation. It encompassed a wide range of views. Some supporters simply wanted Britain to get rid of its outdated and expensive “independent” nuclear deterrent. Others thought that the Reagan administration’s decision to put medium-range cruise and Pershing nuclear missiles in Europe was mistaken. Some idealists believed that a strong peace movement in Western Europe would inspire those behind the Iron Curtain to demand disarmament from their rulers too. Some were outright pacifists; others argued that nuclear weapons were so dangerous that “better red than dead” was the only rational approach.

Yet the fact remains that the Kremlin found CND and other “peace movements” useful ways of undermining the unity of NATO, weakening the West’s defence posture and stoking anti-Americanism. The ex-dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, an expert in Soviet penetration of the West, says: “the worldwide disarmament campaign in the early 1980s was covertly orchestrated from Moscow. To a substantial extent it was also funded by the Soviet bloc”.

As CND’s treasurer, Ms Ashton argued publicly for the organisation to produce audited accounts, to counter allegations of covert Soviet support. That does not convince Mr Bukovsky. CND funding, and who knew what when, may merit further investigation.

The real scandal, though, is the West’s continuing amnesia about the cold war. Given the Soviet Union’s history of mass murder, subversion, and deceit, it is astonishing that even tangential association with Soviet-backed causes in the past does not arouse the moral outrage now that is still so readily evoked by connections with the (undisputedly revolting) regime in South Africa. Most CND veterans see their peacenik days, at worst, as romantic youthful idealism. Warm-hearted but soft-headed, maybe: but better than being cold-hearted and hard-headed.

That is a shameful cop-out. Imagine a 1980s Europe where CND had triumphed, with left-wing governments in Britain and Germany scrapping NATO, surrendering to Kremlin pressure and propping up the evil empire. Her opponents complain that Lady Ashton is ineffective. As a CND organiser, that may have been a blessing.

europe view 148 what putin should have said

Europe.view

Mentioning the war
Sep 3rd 2009
From Economist.com


What Vladimir Putin should have said in Gdansk
Honoured Guests, Dear Excellencies:

My German counterpart Willy Brandt launched his country’s reconciliation with Poland by bending his knee at the Warsaw ghetto memorial in 1970. My aim today is less ambitious, but I would like to begin by stating unequivocally that my government regards the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, especially its secret protocols, as a crime, and a direct contributor to the Nazi attack on Poland that we are marking today.


Those were dark and shameful years for many countries. Out of deference to my British friends I will not mention the Munich agreement, and out of politeness to my hosts I will not cite the Polish land grab of Cieszyn that followed it. But many wrongs do not make a right. As a Russian leader it is my responsibility to ensure that my country acknowledges both the bright and black spots in our history. Our pride at the sacrifice and heroism showed by the Russian people—and by many others in the Soviet Union—in defeating Hitler does not mean that we cannot mourn the victims and crimes of Stalinism both at home and abroad.

I represent the Russian Federation; I cannot take direct responsibility for the actions of another country. So I cannot apologise for the Soviet Union’s shameful and unprovoked attack on Poland on September 17th. I can certainly condemn it, and I do so now. I similarly condemn the illegal annexation of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, just as I rejoice in their renewed statehood after 1991.



I should like to make special mention of the Katyn massacre. I deplore attempts in Russia to revive the Soviet-era lie that this was the work of the Nazis, or to claim that other tragic events somehow justify the atrocity. I am ordering with immediate effect the declassification of all files relating to this event, and look forward to the speedy judicial rehabilitation of the victims.

I would also like to clarify my much-quoted remark about the collapse of the Soviet Union being the geopolitical catastrophe of the past century. Like many Soviet citizens, I found the end of the life we had known to be shockingly disruptive and painful. The human, and particularly demographic, consequences of the stress and upheaval that it caused are with us to this day. But let me be clear on two things. The collapse of communism was a liberation for the Russian people, just as it was for the other—and I stress other—captive nations of the Soviet empire. Secondly, my government has no desire to recreate the Soviet empire. Any talk of a sphere of privileged interests must not be misunderstood: the privilege of close ties is a mutual one, based on mutual respect, not on old imperial sentiments.

We will never see history quite the same. Russian hearts will always freeze at the sight of veterans parading in SS uniforms in Latvia, Estonia or Ukraine, however much we may with our heads try to understand the impossible choices that led people to wear them. We may never quite see Hitler and Stalin as two sides of the same coin, as some of you do. But I hope we can at least agree to disagree in a spirit of mutual respect. I urge my compatriots, in public office, in the media and elsewhere, to join me in this endeavour.

Europe view 147--history again

EUROPE

Europe.view

Sticks and stones
Aug 27th 2009
From Economist.com


Russia needs to play nice
NAUGHTY and tiresome children like insults (both overt and needling) as well as implausible and elaborate excuses. “He wouldn’t give it to me and it was mine anyway and also I was going to give it back so I hit him”.

As your columnist’s children grow up, the need to untangle their tantrums, feuds and nonsense is becoming pleasingly rare. Sadly, the same can’t be said for some grownups.


Start with the needling. As Paul A. Goble, a foreign-affairs analyst, noted this week, Russia’s president Dmitri Medvedev has pointedly used the preposition “na” [on], favoured during Soviet times, rather than the more recent “v” [in] when referring to Ukraine. That is the sort of thing that children do: habitually mispronounce someone’s name in order to irritate them.

Mr Medvedev’s prepositional condescension came during a scathing personal attack on the Ukrainian president in which he said Russia would not be sending another ambassador to Kiev (or Kyiv, as Ukrainians prefer it spelled). At a childish level, this is badmouthing a classmate and refusing to acknowledge his birthday.

The 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on August 23rd provided more opportunities for what until recently would have been seen as extraordinary behaviour. The same day, a film called “The Secrets of Confidential Files”, broadcast on Russia’s Vesti national television channel (meaning it had official endorsement), said that the pact was a necessary response to Poland’s signing of a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1934. That is like a child explaining a playground scrap on the lines of “Bill was friends with Phil so when Phil beat Bill up I joined in too.” Except that in this case the result was not a black eye and scraped knee, but the deaths of many millions of people.



This is not just nonsense, but revoltingly insensitive. It is rather as if German official media were casually blaming Jews for the Holocaust. And it is not a one-off. An article on the Russian defence ministry’s website in June claimed that Poland’s unreasonable behaviour towards Nazi Germany had justified Hitler’s attack.

These and other insults come as Poland is awaiting a visit by Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, to a ceremony in Gdansk on September 1st, marking the anniversary of the Nazi attack. Poland hopes that Mr Putin will at least express mild regret about the Soviet aggression against Poland on September 17th 1939. At events in Prague on the anniversary of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion, and in Budapest on the anniversary of the crushing of the 1956 uprising, Mr Putin managed that, soothing his hosts while not engaging in what many Russians would see as unseemly breast-beating.

Poland hopes that the visit will bring some practical movement on what are tactfully known as “difficult issues” (diplo-speak, in this case, for mass murder). The biggest of these is the Katyn massacre. Paying compensation to the relatives of the 20,000 Polish officers and prisoners of war murdered in cold blood in 1940 is probably too much to ask. But it might be possible to reach agreement on, say, a joint documentation centre.

Even a chance of that modest prize comes at a high price. In order not to jeopardise Mr Putin’s visit, Poland has to swallow hard when its history is traduced.

As last week’s column pointed out, no country can look back on its history without shame, and modern Russia does not need to feel perpetually burdened by the crimes of the Soviet Union. But neither must it revel in them. Knowing how to end an argument by saying “sorry” nicely is a sign of a well brought-up child (and of a decent human being).

Europe view 146, Criminalising history

EUROPE

Europe.view

No comparison

Aug 21st 2009
From Economist.com

Criminalising historical investigation is wrong

HOW far does context determine blame and praise? That is a question facing anyone who wants to pass a judgment or make an observation on Hitler, Stalin or the weather. Taken to one extreme, when every attribute is seen in complete isolation, morals and reason disappear. Hitler was nice to animals. Stalin loved children. Churchill drank too much. John F Kennedy was a philanderer. It is a cool day in summer, so global warming is a nonsense.

At the other extreme, when everything is connected, judgment becomes impossible for fear of leaving out some important comparison. Why complain about Stalin when you could write about Mao? What about the 19th century colonial empires? They killed millions more than the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Who are you as a British/American /German/Chinese/Russian commentator to say anything about Russia/Germany/China/America/Britain? That may be a good debating tactic, but it leads to mental paralysis: when everything matters, nothing matters.

The stormy response to a recent column about an OSCE resolution equating Stalin and Hitler highlights the issue. One line of attack goes like this: the article “forgot” to mention the crimes of the British. It is certainly true that Britain has much to be ashamed of before, during and after the second world war. The Munich agreement with Hitler to eviscerate Czechoslovakia is one (which the article mentioned); the deportation of Cossacks and other anti-Soviet forces to certain death after the war in Operation Keelhaul is another. A third was decades of denial that the Katyn massacre was the work of the Soviets, not the Nazis (that subject occasionally surfaces in this column too).

But the article was not trying to argue Soviet history is more (or less) wicked than Britain’s. Any such comparisons are fraught with difficulty, not least over how you measure wickedness. It does not come in convenient units (evils, giga-evils, tera-evils) that can be neatly added up to produce a balance sheet of murder and mayhem.

What can be said, quite clearly, is that Britain, like almost all other countries that claim to be civilised, does not criminalise investigation into its history. If you are an Australian who wants to research the genocidal treatment of Tasmanians, or an American who wants to write about the bombing of German civilians, you may even get a scholarship. Unlike in Russia, you certainly don’t risk a jail sentence. The resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe is chiefly admirable because it challenges the Kremlin’s attempt to put this area of inquiry off limits.

The OSCE resolution is open to legitimate challenge. John Laughland, a British historian at the pro-Kremlin Institute for Democracy and Co-operation in Paris, argued on the Russia Today channel that politicians make bad historians. Nobody comes out well from the run-up to the second world war. Poland, he noted, helped dismember Czechoslovakia, seizing the town of Cieszyn/Tĕšin. Hitler’s plan to attack Poland predates the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, so that deal, shameful though it was, did not provide the definitive go-ahead for the invasion. Mr Laughland also argues that Nazism’s central features were war and racial persecution, whereas Soviet communism was neither racist nor (under Stalin) expansionist.

These are indeed good subjects for historians. But it does not mean that politicians should ignore them. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is not a uniquely iniquitous event. Even Mr Putin (shown here speaking on the issue at a press conference on May 10th 2005) seems a bit hazy about the details. So the 70th anniversary of the Stalin-Hitler deal is a good time to raise it in discussion—particularly in countries where doing so runs no risk of prosecution.

Europe view 145, Georgia one year on

EUROPE

Europe.view

The fog of war
Aug 13th 2009
From Economist.com


Unravelling the Ossetia conflict, one year later
ONE year after the Georgian war, its outcome is as debatable as the cause. Depending on where you stand, the war can be seen as the sinister culmination of a systematic provocation by a neo-imperialist Russia or as a murderously aggressive gambit by a Caucasian strongman wrongheadedly backed by the West.

The truth is somewhere in between. Russia did systematically provoke Georgia in the months leading up to the war. Its military counter-attack was disproportionate. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that President Mikheil Saakashvili’s inner circle was badly penetrated by Russia, that decision-making processes were chaotic and amateurish, and that the move to retake the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali (pictured), played into his enemy’s hands.

EPA

Whose fault was it?




With a detailed chronology of who did and decided what in the days and hours leading up to the war still (oddly) unavailable, an accurate assessment of the causes of war is still impossible.

Depending on where you stand, what happened next is similarly foggy. One variant is that Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, intervened with panache and elan to prevent catastrophe, brokering a ceasefire deal in a way that only a big European country could have done. From another viewpoint, Mr Sarkozy was a meddling egomaniac whose amateurism and self-importance gravely impeded the EU’s ability to intervene. People familiar with ceasefires in the Yugoslav wars certainly thought the documents he brought away from the talks with Vladimir Putin (and his sidekick-boss Dmitri Medvedev) were remarkably vague.

From another point of view, the EU and NATO reaped the harvest of their neglect of Georgia in previous months. The agreed sanctions after the fighting stopped were feeble. Suspending the NATO-Russia council, or the putative Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and Russia, was not even turning a cold shoulder (more a soggy one) to the Kremlin. The outside world showed it would sacrifice principle for profit. It just requires a decent interval.

Lenin’s famous dictum “Kto kovo” (“who did what to whom”) is the best way of clearing the fog. Georgia is weakened, but not destroyed. Its economy has not collapsed. Political pluralism survives. War-weariness has not brought a pro-Moscow regime to power. Even Mr Saakashvili’s erstwhile friends are heartily fed-up with his presidency, but Georgian politics is still commendably open and contestable.

That cannot be said of Russia. The war has made apparent to outsiders some of the worst features of Russian politics. The Kremlin propaganda machine has used it to stoke xenophobia: Saakashvili is a monster, it says, so the West is monstrously cynical in backing him. Yet Russia has not pursued military aggression elsewhere. Fears for the future of Crimea and the Baltic states, vivid a year ago, now seem overblown. The military adventure in Georgia was bad, but it was a one-off. If it will be repeated anywhere, it will be once more in Georgia. And confident predictions of that, earlier this year, have come to nothing.

One reason for that is that the West has not abandoned Georgia. For all the frustration with the administration’s autocratic tendencies, and despite all the pressing priorities elsewhere, the core commitment to Georgia is intact. America’s “reset” of relations with Russia did not uninstall the program “Georgia 1.0”. Partly because of the principle of defending sovereignty, partly out of enthusiasm for Georgia’s political and economic achievements, and partly because of energy politics (remember the pipelines), America and Europe are staying engaged.

Not that anybody has worked out what to do. Not giving up is a good start, but only that.

Europe view 144 summer reading

EUROPE

Europe.view

Summer reading

Aug 6th 2009
From Economist.com

Investigations, analyses and a rediscovered novel

NOTHING happens in eastern Europe during August, save the odd war, coup or financial collapse, so people interested in the region have a whole month to catch up on good books, old and new. This summer brings a crop that should keep even a speed reader busy. “Revolution 1989”, by Victor Sebestyen, offers a digestible and colourful history of that miraculous year. Andrew Roberts’s “The Storm of War”, is a rare example of a British writer giving the second world war's eastern front proper prominence. “Londongrad: From Russia with Cash,” (pictured below) by Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley, is a racy and alarming investigation of the effect of Russian money on Britain.

At the more specialist end of the spectrum, Tom Gallagher’s new book about Romania and the EU—subtitled “How the weak vanquished the strong”—gives a bleak and gripping account of how wily ex-communist bureaucrats bamboozled the outside world and swindled their own people. Those who read his previous book, the excellent “Theft of a Nation”, will know what to expect. Espionage aficionados will enjoy the densely written but convincing “Spies” by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, which tells the (true) story of KGB activities in North America.

Your columnist flirted with some ambitious ideas such as rereading Czeslaw Milosz in Polish, or finishing the Miklos Banffy trilogy about aristocratic life in pre-communist Transylvania. What he actually ended up packing was a newly republished (by Faber & Faber) edition of William Palmer’s neglected 1990 classic, “The Good Republic”. Good contemporary fiction about the region is rare (Tibor Fischer’s “Under the Frog” is an exception). Corny spy thrillers, littered with topographical howlers, unlikely plots and plonking sex scenes, are the standard fare.

Mr Palmer’s book set a standard for an east European historical novel that has yet to be matched—an especially impressive feat for an outsider.

It is mainly set during the Soviet takeover of the Baltics in 1939-40, so this year’s anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact makes it highly topical. Even more vivid than the deportations and executions are the descriptions of the swift decay of statehood and legality: the policeman trampled by pro-Soviet demonstrators, civil servants struggling to uphold the constitution, the sinister placemen issuing instructions, the president a prisoner in his palace. Then comes the Soviet retreat and the Nazi occupation—a sinister non-liberation, bringing a terrible fate to the Jewish population, and a moral abyss for those who directly or indirectly abet it.

All this comes as flashbacks, seen through the eyes of the young Jacob Balthus. At the start of the book he is a Baltic émigré in London, who has spent decades running the pointless and, by the 1980s, almost defunct “Congress of Exiles”. He returns at the invitation of the nascent pro-democracy movement in his homeland, where his father was a senior civil servant in the days of interwar independence.

The fractious and futile-seeming life of east European émigré organisations is well drawn, as is the trembling excitement of the late 1980s when once-forbidden contacts were first permitted and then flourished. But even better is the description of the (composite) pre-war Baltic country in which the young Balthus grows up, so solid from his point of view, so terrifyingly fragile for his wise, well-informed father.

Remarkably, Mr Palmer did not visit the Baltic states before writing the book; his research mainly consisted of reading transcripts of evidence given to congressional hearings by senior Baltic figures who had escaped to the West. It is a tribute to his novelist’s skills that anyone reading the book has the feeling of complete authenticity in both history and geography. Readers are left longing for a sequel.

Moldova pre-election (Europe View)

Wooing wrong
Jul 30th 2009
From Economist.com


The tough sell of soft power
FOREIGNERS visiting Moldova have plenty of people to talk to. Poverty and geopolitical woes mean that the country attracts an above-average bunch of outsiders. But local voices are even more impressive. One of them is Natalia Morar, a feisty 25-year-old investigative journalist. Finding Ms Morar at home in Moldova used to be rather difficult—she worked as an investigative reporter for New Times, an independent magazine based in Moscow. But in late 2007 she published an article called “The black cash of the Kremlin” about the way in which rake-offs from business were used to finance Russian politics. For that she was expelled from Russia (and even marrying a Russian colleague has been not enough to get her back into that country).

Now Ms Morar is in trouble in Moldova too. She was charged with sedition after the protests in April against election-rigging. Since then she has been unable to leave the country. That makes it easy to meet Ms Morar to discuss both authoritarian crony capitalism in Russia and its more diluted but still unpleasant local equivalent.

It is harder to meet another luminary of Chisinau life: Alex Grigorievs. A Latvian-born veteran of that country’s independence struggle, he runs the National Democratic Institute, an American-funded think-tank that has been trying to help Moldova’s fractious politicians to work together better—“coalition-building”, in NGO speak. That has gone down poorly with the authorities: Mr Grigorievs has been hounded out of the country and is now based in Odessa, in neighbouring Ukraine.

Other countries that are supposedly getting closer to the European Union have similar stories. In Belarus, the authorities are hassling an independent protestant church, New Life, (which just happens to be popular with the country’s downtrodden Roma minority). In Azerbaijan, two hapless bloggers have been jailed for producing an amusing and harmless video sketch in which a donkey holds a news conference in front of a respectful audience of journalists (any resemblance to the country’s politicians and their relationship with the pliant local media is entirely coincidental). And in Georgia Vasili Sulkhanishvili, the director of a London-based asset-management company, has been arrested and placed in solitary confinement until he pays $1m to settle a dispute about back taxes (there are doubtless two sides to the issue, but the story so far supports those who believe that the bad old ways of doing business in Georgia are not yet extinct).

An alarming aspect of all this is that western protests have been so minimal. The American embassy in Moldova, for example, has not exactly championed Mr Grigorievs’ case. Nor has anyone much been sticking up for Ms Morar. An official invitation to Brussels, Berlin or London, say, would signal opposition to the way she has been treated. It is the same story in Azerbaijan (where the West worries about pipelines, not bloggers) and in Belarus, where the regime’s relations with Moscow are pleasingly icy.

The assumption seems to be that by overlooking abuses of power, the West can persuade the rulers of the countries in Russia’s shadow to loosen their ties with the Kremlin. If so, that is a disastrous mistake. Geopolitical armwrestling favours the more ruthless partner: Europe will never beat the Kremlin there. The long-term hope for expanding the EU eastwards lies in its soft power: the idea that political freedom, the rule of law and an open economy work, whereas protectionism and cronyism do not. If the West doesn’t believe that, and promote it, why should anyone else?

Europe View 125 The West's Transdniestria

Europe.view

Leave no stone turned
Apr 9th 2009
From Economist.com


Microstates flourish because big countries need them

RICH and powerful people in Russia and Ukraine clearly find the “Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic”—more commonly known as Transdniestria—a useful entity. If they didn’t, they would close it down. That is something that the European Union, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and others like to point out in a finger-wagging kind of way. The puppet states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are the same. A flick of the switch would turn off the power. A turn of the tap would stop the gas. A telephone call would close the border. And the regimes would fall soon afterwards.

It would be nice to think that dodgy microstates are strictly a post-Soviet phenomenon. In the law-governed space east of the pre-war Soviet frontier, all countries, surely, are real. Their financial systems are transparent. They abide by their international obligations. Their political systems are accountable.


Yet look closely at the three European countries still listed as “non-compliant” (in other words, tax havens) by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and some striking features emerge. Andorra, Liechtenstein and Monaco have a combined population of about 130,000—rather more than South Ossetia, but far less than Abkhazia or Transdniestria. Liechtenstein’s Prince is the last secular feudal ruler in Europe, with the right to veto legislation he doesn’t like. The Vatican, of course, is not a democracy at all (but as it is not a financial centre either, it escapes any criticism on that front).



Clearly, if countries such as France and Germany offered simpler and user-friendlier tax and legal regimes, some of the microstates’ advantages would diminish. But the real point is the symbiotic relationship between the microstates and the big countries. Liechtenstein depends entirely on Switzerland and Austria, Andorra on Spain and France, and Monaco on France alone. None of the three tiddlers would survive for a minute without the cooperation of their neighbours.

It is encouraging that the authorities in all three microstates now profess great eagerness to sort out their remaining misunderstandings with the OECD and get their countries off that organisation’s bad books. But it is troubling that it has taken a decade to bring them this far. Part of the reason may be that Switzerland and Austria themselves are not wildly enthusiastic about tax compliance. But what explains the curious benefits enjoyed by Monaco, which enjoys its charmed life thanks only to the cooperation of France?

Casting an eye further afield, it is also interesting that Britain’s offshore islands (Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man, as well as the Caribbean crown dependencies such as the British Virgin Islands) have managed to develop as financial centres so easily, despite the losses to the exchequer in London. Suspicious minds might wonder if these places are so useful to British business that no government wants to go to the trouble of closing the loopholes they provide.

On tax transparency at least, the tide now seems to be turning against countries that are, in some respects, western versions of Transdniestria. On the equally important question of ownership, it is far from clear that real change is afoot. It is still possible to use a web of companies in these places to deter nosey outsiders wanting to know who owns what. Such anonymous entities may soon be forced to pay more tax, but it will not be any clearer who owns them. That scandal erodes the moral authority of the West in demanding that corrupt elites in places such as Russia and Ukraine bring their offshore entities into the light of day.

Europe view 124--time to boycott France?

Europe.view

Plus rien de français?
Mar 26th 2009
From Economist.com


Skoda, blancmange and the price of principle

FRENCH politicians seem to see no benefit from economic integration with eastern Europe. The industry minister wants to “repatriate” jobs from Slovenia. President Nicolas Sarkozy says it is unacceptable that French manufacturers make cars for the French market in the Czech Republic.

That may just be rhetorical pandering to the protectionist views of the French public. But it is still offensive to the east Europeans, and could prompt a severe response—such as a boycott of French-made products.

Since 1989, the ex-communist countries have played by western rules. They have stabilised, privatised, liberalised, and opened up—the kind of wrenching economic reform that is the stuff of nightmares for the cosseted workers of old Europe. True, the easterners could have gone further (especially in reforming public finances, state bureaucracy and education). With pitifully little debate, they had to swallow a colossal (and largely French-drafted) European rulebook, with an array of stupid and unpleasant rules and penalties for breaking them, on everything from sugar prices to school kitchens.



While countries such as Britain sit neurotically on the sidelines, the new members yearn to gain admission to EU clubs such as Schengen (visas), Prüm (policing) and of course the euro zone.

That was in these countries’ own interest. Paying a price to be in the clubs that matter was better than staying outside. Yet the easterners’ feel their enthusiasm and cooperativeness have met little gratitude in the west. Their occasional bouts of chippiness and clumsiness are blown out of all proportion. The failure of Romania and Bulgaria to meet anti-corruption targets has tainted the whole region’s image. The Atlanticist loyalties of the new members have been mocked and distrusted.

France was in the forefront of such criticism, and also led the resistance in “old Europe” to the extension of the single market to labour and services. The new member states are still second-class citizens of Europe when it comes to working abroad or exporting their brainpower.

Now France is close to a head-on clash with the fundamental principles of the single market in goods. The next stage could be preferential treatment of domestic producers in government tenders. After that, it is easy to see a slide towards real protectionism in Europe. With the economic glue that holds the EU together weakening, the political links will fray too. In a race to the bottom, the biggest and richest countries will do best (or least badly). The poorer and smaller ones will be left humiliated, impoverished and resentful.

It would be rash to rely on the competition directorate and EU law to stop this dangerous drift. Much better would be to apply a sharp dose of economic pressure. Stroppy French workers may not realise it, but the ex-communist countries are one of their country’s biggest export markets. Renault, for example, sells more than 1m vehicles in eastern Europe. In 2008, France exported €21 billion ($28.5 billion) to the new member states of the EU (compared with €23 billion to the United States).

Boycotting all “French” goods would be a blunt instrument. Many French-badged cars are actually made in places like Poland. And many French-made products are not easily substitutable (Lithuanian šampanas has its charms, but even its die-hard fans don’t quite consider it an alternative to champagne).

But a slogan on the lines of “Aux armes, citoyens de la nouvelle Europe! Plus rien de Français!” would deliver a timely message. Georgian wine, Hungarian foie gras, Polish salami, Skoda cars, Italian fashion and skiing in Slovakia are all alternatives to the French-made offerings. Even—if you want to be really insulting—British cuisine.

europe view column

Europe.view

Put the beam before the mote
Mar 12th 2009
From Economist.com


Eastern Europe should not be tempted by paranoia

WAS it all a conspiracy? It is not the first time in east European history that the question has been asked. Wicked western manipulators were a staple of communist-era propaganda. Before that, anti-Semitic politicians used to blame Jews (and Freemasons) for manipulating the destiny of other countries. In the 19th century, the German, Austro-Hungarian, Czarist and Ottoman empires kept almost the whole region from the Baltic to the Black seas divided up between the great outside powers.

Now the conspiracy theory is back again. Somebody was spreading rumours. Somebody with foreknowledge or malevolent intent was shorting currencies, stocks and bonds. Someone was using sinister-sounding financial instruments such as credit-default-swaps so that whatever happened, they would profit from a panic. These somebodies could be anywhere, but they are certainly foreign.

Or maybe it is all a plot by Germans to push the Austrian banks into bankruptcy so that they can buy them up cheaply. Or maybe it is a means for “old Europe” to destroy the competitive threat from the unloved “new Europe”. Or a French-German plan to create a core Europe round the euro zone, excluding the troublesome countries farther east. Or it is all some super-clever plot by the ex-KGB regime in Russia, details to be announced later. All that is missing is hook-nosed men in ringlets drinking the blood of Christian children.

The truth is more prosaic. Financial markets are usually wrong, often hugely so. When greed trumps fear they are over-enthusiastic, believing all kinds of positive nonsense and pouring money into dodgy companies and countries. Then the tide turns and they overreact, dumping perfectly good assets in an attempt to get their books in order.

Anyone tempted by the idea that outside conspiracy is to blame for eastern Europe’s woes should first reflect on the past. Was it an outside conspiracy that led supposedly sane Western institutions to lend tens of billions of dollars to Russian companies notable for their weak corporate governance and cash-splattered business models? Was it a western conspiracy that made supposedly sane people buy homes in derelict rural slums in Bulgaria in the belief that it was the new Dordogne? Was it a Western conspiracy that equated the reforms that were promised in the run up to European Union membership with actually making government transparent and efficient?

The right word for this is not “conspiracy”. Something like “groupthink” or the “madness of crowds” would be a better term. In any market movement, there will always be people who profit by betting against the herd. The wise investors who bailed out of the Russian short-term treasury bill market in early August 1998 made a packet. Those who stayed in lost a fortune. They left for the airport, in one case vowing that they would rather “eat nuclear waste” than invest in Russia again.

Conversely, savvy investors who bought at the bottom of the market in late 1998 have done well. A few years later nuclear waste was back on the menu, as investors praised the stability and prosperity of Vladimir Putin’s regime and guzzled anything in sight. Anyone who said that the good times came from rising oil prices rather than real reform was drowned out in a chorus of hurrahs. Again, some people sold their Russian assets in time. No conspiracy there, just foresight, or luck.

As so often with market downturns, the pain and unfairness now seem intolerable. It may perhaps be some consolation that the gloomiest and most ignorant outsiders are those most likely to lose out.

CEE and America

Europe.view

Thorns in the east
Jan 8th 2009
From Economist.com


Pipelines, missiles and maybe something worse

GAZA, rather than gas, is likely to be top of the new American administration’s to-do list. If the ex-communist world gets any early attention, it will be in search of Russian help over Iran and in the Middle East, rather than the pressing business of Europe’s energy and military security. If Barack Obama’s top foreign-policy officials pay even a nanosecond of attention to eastern Europe in the first few months of their time in office, it will be to bemoan locals’ inability to deal with their own problems.



Imagine the difference a single-minded and effective push on Nabucco a few years back would have made. If that pipeline, bringing Caspian and Central Asian gas to Europe via Turkey, was seriously underway—perhaps fed by a trans-Caspian gas pipeline, perhaps just with Azeri gas—then the effects of the current Russian-Ukrainian energy spat would have been to accelerate an existing project to early completion, rather than to highlight the shambles.

Now the Kremlin is well-placed to tell the European Union that if it wants to avoid headaches with transit through Ukraine in future, then it had better hurry up and help Russia build its pet pipelines, North Stream and South Stream. These projects, in the Baltic and Black seas respectively, do get round the corrupt and fractious gas transit industry in Ukraine. But they create another problem: strengthening Russia’s ability to play divide-and-rule with European customers. It is hard to see the American administration sparing much time to worry about that.

A renewed push on arms control, conversely, still looks possible. Whereas the Bush administration seemed to regard dominance in strategic nuclear weapons as an end in itself, the signs are that Mr Obama’s advisers see it differently. Russia is already twitchy enough about its decaying nuclear arsenal, and about its failure to make its new submarine-launched missiles work properly. The urgent need now is for talks on a new third START treaty on big nukes, coupled with measures to get Russia back into the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty (in which it has suspended its membership) and to preserve the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) treaty. In addition, the new administration is unlikely to share its predecessor’s allergic reaction to any talks about an international legal order in space.

All that may go some way to defusing feelings of paranoia and neglect in the Kremlin. The most dangerous situation for the west is one where Russia feels vulnerable to an American first strike (because of nuclear or space-weapon superiority). Russia’s creaky command and control means that a move to “launch on warning” hugely raises the risk of a false alarm turning into a nuclear war.

That does not mean that America should make big symbolic gestures such as cancelling its planned missile-defence bases in the Czech Republic and Poland. Doing that would be a huge snub to its most loyal allies, and stoke fears of American disengagement from Europe. In truth, the new rockets and radar don’t work yet, and the Democratic congress is unlikely to vote money for them in a hurry. That gives plenty of wiggle room over timing, during which America can see if there is any way of getting Russia to share its concerns about rogue-states’ missiles.

The trickiest task will be dealing with an internal political crisis in Russia that leads the Kremlin to seek a distraction abroad, such as undermining the sovereignty of a neighbouring country—Ukraine, Georgia or perhaps even a Baltic state. That is not likely to catch attention in Washington until it happens.