praising Poland and Ukraine

Europe.view

Wreath by wreath

Sep 10th 2009
From Economist.com

How east Europe can step over history's long shadow

TWO of the five most-commented-on articles on The Economist’s website last week were about east European history. One concerned the icy relations between Slovakia and Hungary. The other was about Russia’s failure (in some eyes) to apologise properly for the Soviet past.

In each case the tone of the comments was often strikingly unpleasant, with sweeping accusations of anti-Semitism, genocide, imperialism, treachery and mendacity. It would be easy for outsiders to conclude that the ex-communist countries are prisoners of their past, tediously fighting the same old battles with the same old stereotypes.

All the more reason, therefore, to highlight the happy state of Polish-Ukrainian relations, which is especially remarkable given the two countries’ miserable common history.

AP

Make grins, not war

Take just a few events from (nearly) living memory. In interwar Poland, Ukrainians suffered savage repression; seen from another viewpoint, they behaved disloyally and ungratefully towards their country. During the war, the Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army murdered some 60,000 Poles in Volhynia. Were they vicious Nazi stooges or fighters for their country’s stolen independence?

In 1945 Polish anti-communist soldiers shot hundreds of Ukrainians in the village of Pawlokoma. That was either an understandable retaliatory action for previous anti-Polish atrocities in the region, or a brutal and unprovoked massacre. In 1947 the country’s new Communist rulers deported 200,000 Ukrainian-speakers from south-eastern Poland. That could be seen as Bolshevik barbarity, or evidence of Polish ethnic nationalism. The town known as Lwow in interwar Poland is now in Ukraine. Some think that is where it should be, others think it tragically stranded. And so on.

These are true controversies, about which even the best historians disagree. Evidence for what exactly happened and why is scanty and needs careful weighing. Just as it would be lazy and wrong simply to apportion equal blame to both sides, it would also be wrong to paint the history as a one-dimensional story of vicious Ukrainian attacks on Poles (or vice versa). The Wikipedia discussion pages for these events give a good flavour of the passions aroused and the scope of the disagreements.

What is commendable, though, is the way in which politicians have behaved. For 20 years Polish and Ukrainian leaders have worked hard to accentuate their countries’ shared history and common tragedy, rather than stoke disagreements for political ends. In 2006, for example, presidents Lech Kaczynski and Viktor Yushchenko (pictured above) jointly unveiled a memorial in Pawlokoma. Previously, the Ukrainian authorities had supported the restoration of a war memorial in what is now Lviv, for Polish soldiers who died in the 1918-1920 war. This week Mr Yushchenko visited Poland, laying yet more wreaths jointly with his host.

That is not just good business for florists. It could be a template for other countries seeking to step over the shadow of history. Neither Poland nor Ukraine tries to rub each other’s nose in its wrongdoing, nor does either insist on seeing their own soldiers as untainted heroes. Neither side expects the other to see history exactly its own way. Much more important is to focus on the common factors: the conflicts between Poles and Ukrainians were made immeasurably worse by the activities of outside powers, Nazis and communists alike. Disagreements remain, but are eased by practical cooperation. The planned Polish-Ukrainian-Baltic military brigade is a good example of this. Only 65 years ago, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Poles were killing each other.

A joint Polish-Belarusian-Russian peacekeeping force serving in some troubled and faraway corner of the world may seem unimaginable now. But it is not impossible. Poland and Ukraine have shown readiness to overcome some of their most painful historical traumas. Can Russia do the same?

Europe.view no 124

Fit as a Finn
Mar 19th 2009


What the rest of Europe can learn from the Nordic countries

IMAGINE some mythical countries called Badland, Eastland, Rohan, Northland, Southland and Midland. At the end of the 1990s, say, oil is found off the shores of Midland. A number of ethnic Northlanders live in the area of the oil find, and hence Northland claims the right to the oil. This leads to a conflict between Midland and Northland.

The conflict simmers for a few years, and escalates when Northland attacks Midland, conquering large swathes of land and sea, among them those containing the oil. Outsiders intervene and a United Nations force called UNMIMA (United Nations’ Mission in Midland) is created. UNMIMA successfully brokers a cease fire deal, and Northland withdraws. But the vacuum is filled by an irregular military force.

The UN Security Council then requests that NATO lead a multinational peacekeepng force to the conflict area.

That is the scenario for Cold Response, the annual military exercises in Norway that are running until March 25th of this year. Around 7,000 soldiers from 14 countries are participating. Some are part of the NATO-led peacekeeping force. Others will be part of the forces of other countries, such as defeated, resentful Midland and the irregulars from Northland.



Clearly, this scenario is not a template for a real conflict, unlike in cold-war days. Then NATO’s military exercises in Germany were broadly based on one central scenario: a huge Soviet conventional attack, and a desperate attempt to hold it back long enough for reinforcement from America to arrive. Nobody worried about Austrian nationalists seizing bits of northern Italy, or a reopening of the Schleswig-Holstein question.

The Cold Response scenario is clearly hypothetical. It has elements of last summer’s Georgian war, but with a Baltic flavour. Leave out the oil (and call it a fight over a port or a pipeline) and allow for Midland to be more like neutral Moldova than NATO-member Latvia.

In real life, if Russia was Northland (or supporting it) it is hard to see how the UN Security Council would be able to mandate any kind of intervention. Cynics might also wonder how enthusiastically Germany would support a NATO mission to quash an insurrection connected with Russia.

Cold Response is interesting not as futurology, but for what it reveals about Nordic defence planning now. Norway, a NATO member, is hosting an exercise in which non-aligned Sweden and neutral Finland are participating in force. It is the clearest sign so far of the burgeoning defence-and-security cooperation between the three countries. Denmark and France also have battalion-strength contingents.

The exercise comes on the heels of the much-delayed report by Thorvald Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian foreign minister. Published in February, it recommended much closer defence cooperation between the five Nordic countries in the Arctic region. It contained no fireworks, concentrating instead on search-and-rescue, and other uncontentious issues. It did not mention Russia as a threat. Countries such as Finland are keen to portray Nordic cooperation as cost-saving exercise, rather than anything more strategic.

Nonetheless, the Cold Response exercises in Norway send some interesting signals, not only to the counterpart countries in the region of the notional “Midland”. It also highlights the distance NATO still has to travel in contingency planning and exercises aimed at bolstering the alliance’s territorial defence, rather than just fighting wars in distant places.

Cold Response is just an exercise. But it is exercises that keep people fit. The Nordics are looking trim, while much of Europe is still flabby.

Norway's security

The High North 

The Arctic contest heats up

Oct 9th 2008 | OSLO 
From The Economist print edition

What is Russia up to in the seas above Europe?

COLD, empty and rich in fish and minerals, the seas of the “High North” are a tempting prize for a big, confident country. Even before the startling news of Vladimir Putin’s offer of a €4 billion ($5.4 billion) emergency loan to Iceland (see article), Russia had been beefing up its presence in a part of the world where the NATO presence is fitful. Although American submarines still ply the northern seas, other NATO vessels are rarely seen. America bruised Icelandic feelings when it pulled out of its Keflavik air base in 2006.

The Kremlin, by contrast, commands a cash pile of over $500 billion and, despite sagging markets in Moscow, is well-placed to assist a country facing bankruptcy. Iceland’s prime minister, Geir Haarde, said that apart from some support from Nordic states, he had received little response to his appeals for help from Western countries. “When our old friends didn’t help us, we had to find new friends,” he declared. What Russia might want in exchange is unclear. But it is unlikely to be nothing.

That highlights worries elsewhere, particularly in Norway, where fighter jets scramble on average once a week to intercept Russian warplanes buzzing close to their country. The Kremlin’s aircraft and ships do not quite break international law. But they commit what a senior official terms “breaches of etiquette”. These have included naval manoeuvres in the midst of Norway’s oil and gas platforms in the North Sea, involving aggressive air sorties that grounded all offshore helicopter flights; that was inconvenient, expensive and dangerous. Also troubling was a mock bombing run against Norway’s northern command centre at Bodo, and at least three other, so far unpublicised, incidents.

Russian planes and ships may be old, but training and upkeep have improved and some of the weapons they carry are increasingly modern, such as a new long-range cruise missile. Some think Russian submarines in the north have been experimenting with the Shkval, a super-fast torpedo that gives Western navies the jitters. “Russia is establishing a new reality in a strategically empty space,” says Jon Bingen, a defence analyst in Oslo.

Legal fuzziness increases Russia’s room for manoeuvre. The “grey zone” off the northern tip of Norway (see map) is claimed by both countries. Another dispute is around the island of Spitsbergen, on which Russia has had mining rights since 1920. Norway says it owns the continental shelf around it. Others, chiefly Russia, don’t agree. Russia is prospecting for minerals beneath the seabed there. Norway objects to that, and to Russian trawlers’ sometimes cavalier behaviour; their on-board electronics can be unusual, too.

Norway is the only old European NATO member bordering Russia. Its military planners are disappointed by their allies’ tepid response to Russian provocation—for instance when a rogue Russian trawler briefly kidnapped Norwegian fishing inspectors in 2005. At stake are not just fish, hydrocarbons and minerals: melting ice means that the Arctic, once largely a dead end, may become a strategic route to East Asia.

How to deal with Russia after its war with Georgia in August has become a key issue for NATO, whose defence ministers met in Budapest on October 9th. America wants the alliance to drop its taboo on making contingency plans to defend members that feel threatened by Russia, such as Estonia. Norway plays down the threat of real conflict. “Unlike some ex-communist countries, we are not hysterical,” an official insists. Indeed, neighbourly relations on border controls and sea safety have survived Russia’s freeze on military contacts with NATO. A Norwegian firm is weighing whether to help exploit the Shtokman offshore gasfield, a showcase investment project for the Kremlin. But even the most sanguine Norwegian officials admit that the “trajectory” in Russia is worrying.

Norway is quietly boosting defence co-operation with Sweden and Finland. And it hopes to “NATO-ise” a big land, sea and air military exercise next spring, named Response. Just what that is responding to is left tactfully unclear.