Estonia and defence spending

Why does Estonia spend so much more on defence than Latvia and Lithuania? And is it a good idea? Cynics say that Estonia can't be credible in defence if the other Baltic two have in effect given up. Estonia should stop bothering with even vestigial territorial defence and concentrate solely on international obligations. I think that would be a big mistake. Defence spending is about credibility, both in military and political terms. Trying to meet the 2% of GDP target shows the Estonian people that the state is serious about defence (and therefore serious about other things. It also signals that to the outside world. Here Kurt Volker, the former US Ambassador to NATO, praises Estonian defence thinking. And in this speech
he gives some general thoughts about the Atlantic alliance.

contingency plans for the Baltics (!)

Europe.view

Border controls

Jan 14th 2010​
​From Economist.com

Thanks to Poland, the alliance will defend the Baltics

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IN A crunch, would NATO stand by its weakest members—the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? After five years of dithering , the answer now seems to be yes, with a decision in principle by the alliance to develop formal contingency plans to defend them.

The shift comes after hard-fought negotiations, in which, at American insistence, Germany and other countries dropped their opposition.

This is a big change. Since the three Baltic states joined NATO in 2004, defence planners have tried to sidestep the question of what their membership means in practice. If Russia is a friendly NATO partner, not an adversary, then defence plans for the new member states from the ex-communist part of Europe should not be necessary. Indeed, until late 2008 NATO’s threat assessment—the basis for its military planning—explicitly discounted any threat from Russia. That seemed to send a dangerous signal that north-eastern Europe was a security soft spot, open to mischief-making and meddling from outside.

The main push came from Poland, a big American ally in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the first to gain contingency plans—initially only against a putative (and implausible) attack from Belarus, a country barely a quarter of its size. When the war in Georgia highlighted NATO’s wobbliness on Russia, Poland accelerated its push for a bilateral security relationship with America, including the stationing of Patriot anti-missile rockets on Polish soil in return for hosting a missile-defence base.

Meanwhile military officials in NATO began low-key but wide-ranging efforts, called “prudent planning”. Under the authority of the American supreme allied commander in Europe, these did not require the formal consent of NATO’s governing body, the North Atlantic Council, where they risked being blocked by countries such as Germany.

Speaking in Prague in April 2009, President Barack Obama publicly demanded that NATO develop plans for all of its members, which put the Baltic case squarely on the alliance’s agenda. But in the months that followed, inattention and disorganisation in his administration brought no visible follow-up. Instead, snubs and missteps, particularly on the missile defence plans, deepened gloom about how seriously America took the safety concerns of its allies in Europe’s ex-communist east. An open letter by security bigwigs from Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states and other countries publicly bemoaned the decline in transatlantic relations.

A muted NATO response to extensive Russian military exercises on the Baltic and Polish borders last autumn sharpened the worries further. Many feared that NATO’s intense focus on Afghanistan was leading it to neglect its core mission, of territorial defence of its members. That risked undermining the alliance’s credibility.

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Now that seems to have changed. Formal approval is still pending and the countries concerned have been urged to keep it under wraps. But sources close to the talks say the deal is done: the Baltic states will get their plans, probably approved by NATO’s military side rather than its political wing. They will be presented as an annex to existing plans regarding Poland, but with an added regional dimension. That leaves room for Sweden and Finland (not members of the alliance but increasingly close to it) to take a role in the planning too. A big bilateral American exercise already planned for the Baltic this summer is likely to widen to include other countries.

Assuming the plans prove specific and credible, politicians in the Baltic states should now have plenty of time to address their countries’ far more pressing economic, political and social problems.

europe view: three cheers for Primakov

Europe.view

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.

Disquiet on the eastern front

America, NATO and eastern Europe


Nov 26th 2009 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition


Can a distracted America remain a bulwark for eastern Europe?

DAMAGE control is never as good as damage prevention. Despite repeated reassurances, the countries of eastern Europe are worried about security. Their biggest concern is NATO, where officials are meant to be drafting contingency plans to defend Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Barack Obama pushed this idea at the NATO summit in April. A recent big Russian military exercise, which officials say culminated in a dummy nuclear attack on Poland, highlights the region’s vulnerability.

Yet little is happening. NATO officials blame a “lack of consensus”. Western European countries, notably Germany and Italy, are against anything that is not first discussed with Russia. A likely outcome is a generic plan, to be presented privately to the Baltic three in December, that will not deal with specific threats.

Nobody really expects a military conflict. But if NATO even hints that it is no longer in the business of guaranteeing the defence of all its members, it may encourage Kremlin mischief-making over such issues as minority rights or transit to Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. Eastern Europeans are also cross about the European Union’s recent carve-up of top jobs. Germany and France showed that they decide the EU’s foreign policy, and that easterners do not count, says one minister in the region.

The Americans admit to botching the announcement in September of a new missile-defence plan—upgraded, not cancelled, they now insist. Vice-President Joe Biden has visited America’s main central European allies, as well as Ukraine and Georgia, to dispel feelings of neglect. A formidable American warship toured the Baltic during the Russian exercises. Six senior generals have visited Latvia alone in the past 12 months; bilateral military exercises are planned next year. The administration has offered Poland exercises with Patriot missile batteries armed with live warheads, whereas previously it had offered only dummy drills.

Few people anywhere mourn the departure of George Bush and the strains he placed on America’s allies. But his team of hard-bitten officials who dealt with eastern Europe is still missed. The idealistic Mr Obama has brought a different lexicon to foreign policy: realpolitik is in, talk of common values is out. Some find this a refreshing change from the hectoring of the Bush administration. But eastern Europeans are distressed to hear so much talk of “partners” (bracketing countries as different as China and Poland) and so little of “allies”.

A further worry is the effect on NATO of the war in Afghanistan. The more that NATO’s success there is defined as crucial to the alliance’s credibility, the more eastern members fear the consequences if it fails. Proportionately, eastern European NATO members have helped most in Afghanistan. The American-backed security pledge at the heart of NATO matters most to them too. Western Europeans who privately see NATO as an anachronism are unbothered by American disengagement.



Admittedly, the Obama administration is preoccupied with domestic issues and with other pressing matters abroad. Europe as a whole, not just the eastern Europeans, cannot expect constant nannying. But even in Washington concern is mounting as well. “Why is the most popular man on the planet, leading the world’s strongest country, unable to get relations with America’s closest allies right?” fumes one (apolitical) former official.

Many explanations can be offered. Inexperience is one. European and American observers talk of disorganisation in the administration’s National Security Council. One European official speaks of a “black hole” there. Some note a tribal desire among Obamaites to be different from the Bushies: if they favoured eastern Europe, the new policy must be chillier. Others blame a habit of preferring a friendly atmosphere to tough decisions. “It is not irredeemable. But they have to redeem it,” says Kurt Volker, another former official.

Part of the problem is that the EU and NATO are so frustrating to deal with. The fault lies on both sides—but some of it reflects bad staff work that has made Mr Obama’s summits with the EU and NATO both boring and useless. Even where interests chime, progress is slow. A year after the EU first mooted its “eastern partnership” to boost western ties with six ex-Soviet countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine), talks on American involvement are only just starting. A stronger Europe policy in Washington might make easterners less twitchy about America’s dealings with Russia.

Such worries have led Poland to push for a stronger bilateral security commitment from America. That is ambitious, but also risky. If it fails, it could heighten the sense of abandonment. If it succeeds, it could create a two-tier NATO in the east: a few countries with a direct relationship with America, and a vulnerable rump without. A senior Pole denies this is a danger, noting that Polish military plans already include defence of Lithuania. The stronger Poland is, the more it can protect its neighbours. “They are our West Berlin,” he says. Hardly a comforting thought.

Ashton mk 2

Europe.view

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.

NATO and Russia

War games
Oct 29th 2009 | RIGA AND TALLINN
From The Economist print edition


Jitters in eastern Europe over Russia’s military manoeuvres

SCAREMONGERING is where defence-planning and politics overlap. Big military exercises in western Russia and Belarus, which finished earlier this month, were based on the following improbable scenario: ethnic Poles in western Belarus rise up and “terrorists” from Lithuania attack the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. More than 10,000 troops from Russia and Belarus countered them, reinforcing Kaliningrad from the sea and sending special forces behind the enemy lines. Three NATO–like brigades, one visiting, one Estonian and one Latvian, then invaded western Russia, where they were successfully rebuffed by the elite Pskov-based 76th air assault division, reinforced by a motorised rifle brigade.

Military exercises need a notional enemy and, from Russia’s point of view, NATO is the obvious choice. Because the alliance has expanded to Russia’s borders, taking in a dozen ex-communist members over strenuous protests from the Kremlin, it is all the more desirable to send a strong signal. What is more, Western countries have been urging (and helping) Russia’s military forces to become more professional. That requires practice drills.

The main aim of the Russian exercises may indeed have been to measure progress on military reform, particularly the creation of more Western-style autonomous brigades. And, plainly, Russia is neither willing nor able to fight a real war with NATO. Yet the war-games look alarming to neighbours. They recall that the war in Georgia in August 2008 followed many years of exercises, and they point out that NATO has no formal contingency plans to defend its vulnerable Baltic members. Nor has the alliance held land drills on the territory of any of its new members. Indeed, until two years ago NATO’s threat assessments explicitly discounted the idea of conflict with Russia.

Russia faces many security problems within its borders, and its armed forces are still rusty. It is hard to see why preparing for an implausible armed attack from the West should be a priority; these days America and its allies have little time to rehearse big-war manoeuvres because their soldiers are too busy fighting, or training to fight, insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Similarly, the idea of Lithuanian-based “terrorists” invading Russia is risible.



Western military analysts have noted Russia’s use of destroyers and landing craft from the Black Sea and Northern Fleets to back up its feeble Baltic-based naval forces. They also noted the deployment of Russia’s most advanced S-400 air defence system in Belarus and a parallel drill conducted by the Strategic Rocket Forces, the guardians of the Kremlin’s nuclear arsenal. “The scope of the exercises, the weaponry used, the troops involved and the scenarios rehearsed all indicate unequivocally that Russia is actually rehearsing a full-scale conventional strategic military operation against a conventional opponent,” says a report by Kaarel Kaas, an analyst at an Estonian security think-tank, the International Centre for Defence Studies.

Dividing the exercise into a northern war-game (called Ladoga) and a southern one (Zapad-09) brought each below the 13,000-troop threshold at which Russia is obliged to invite outside observers. Some neighbouring countries were not able to monitor the manoeuvres (Lithuania, with a handful of observers in Belarus, was an exception). That does not build confidence.

From what outsiders can gather, the performance of Russian forces was patchy. A joint Belarusian-Russian headquarters worked poorly. Drones—a big feature of Western armies—seem to have been used mainly for show. Moving large numbers of troops and equipment around, a weakness during Russia’s war in Georgia, took too long.

Polish, Baltic and other officials will meet in Warsaw shortly to discuss the significance of the exercises. NATO will assess them next month. America certainly took careful notes: the USS Cole, a guided-missile destroyer, visited Estonia. NATO warplanes mounted a modest air exercise. A planned exercise in the Baltic states next year is likely to be beefed up, perhaps with the involvement of part of NATO’s new mobile Response Force.

Russia’s armed forces may be ramshackle, but many European members of NATO are in poor shape too. The alliance’s ability to defend the Baltic states depends almost wholly on American involvement. NATO hawks complain that members such as Germany and Italy are blocking attempts to draw up formal contingency plans for all its members—something that President Barack Obama has demanded. The doves retort that NATO’s Article 5, which says that an attack on one member is an attack on the whole alliance, is deterrent enough; new members who question its worth are hurting their own cause.

Yet easterners are raising their voices in talks about NATO’s new “strategic concept”, a document to define its purpose that will be adopted next year. With NATO focused mostly on the fighting in Afghanistan, they want a clear statement that old-fashioned collective defence of NATO territory is still a priority. Only that, they say, will convince their voters that, with Russia flexing its muscles nearby, sending troops to Afghanistan is worth it.

Fakt article

This is the English version. The Polish version (behind a pay barrier) is available here

Once is chance. Twice is bad luck. Three times is enemy action. That is the easy conclusion to draw about America’s treatment of what was until recently its strongest and most important European ally.

The first snub came over Radek Sikorski’s candidacy for the secretary-general’s post at NATO. His chances were slim, but he still deserved respectful treatment from America. Not a bit of it: Mr Sikorski struggled even to get a meeting at the National Security Council
Then came the commemorations on September 1st-a black day in Polish history and worthy of high-level attendance by Poland’s friends (Britain’s foreign secretary David Miliband turned up, and politely sat in a back row listening to other people make speeches). The initial American choice to lead the delegation bordered on the insulting: William Perry, who as defence secretary under Clinton opposed Poland’s NATO application. Only belatedly did the administration send Jim Jones, the national security adviser. By then the damage was done.

The third snub was the worst. Militarily and technologically, the decision to scrap George Bush’s ambitious, costly and unpopular missile defence plans makes sense. It would have been easy to reassure Poland and the Czech Republic that America was still taking their security seriously. Beefing up NATO’s planning, holding some military manoeuvres (to match Russia’s sinister Zapad-09), making it clear that the Patriots would be real ones-all would have showed America’s commitment to Poland. Instead, there was a hurried, almost amateurish announcement, with late night phone calls and a low-level delegation scurrying between Warsaw and Prague. And all of it on one of the blackest days in Polish history.

Actually, it is not enemy action-just carelessness and ignorance. I have tried explaining to American officials that September 17th is the Polish equivalent of Pearl Harbour. They sometimes seem only dimly aware of what I am talking about. For the youngsters at the White House and State Department, this is ancient history. At the top, there is the same feeling of detachment. Mr Obama is the first president of the United States with no sentimental or family ties to Europe. It would be quite unfair to say that for Mr Obama, Europe stands for slavery. It just doesn’t stand for much.

In particular, on the foreign-policy to-do list, eastern Europe’s security jostles for attention with other far more pressing problems (Afghanistan, Middle East, climate change, North Korea, Iran-and of course Russia). Until something goes badly wrong, it won’t be a priority.

The worst thing is that Russia knows this. America doesn’t need to sell out eastern Europe. Neglect will do fine. In theory, NATO’s security guarantee still holds. But without real contingency planning and regular manoeuvres, this is pleasant fiction, not hard fact. Once it becomes clear that Washington’s attention is elsewhere, Russia and its west European friends (Germany chiefly, but also Italy, Austria and others) can do their dirty deals, especially in energy, unchecked.. Without a powerful outsider to act as a counterweight, Europe’s power-politics are always vulnerable to a Russian-German deal. It has happened before and now, with America weak and distracted, it can happen again.

Obama, Missile-Defence and Europe

Missile defence in Europe

Pie in the sky

Sep 17th 2009
From Economist.com

America calls off plans for missile defence in Europe, pleasing peaceniks but worrying hawks

AP

MAYBE some jam tomorrow, but none today. That is the American message to its most stalwart allies in the ex-communist world as Barack Obama’s administration shelves plans to deploy ten interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic.

The timing of the announcement is poor, coming on September 17th, the anniversary of the Soviet attack on Poland in 1939. In a country highly tuned to symbolic snubs, it matters that nobody in Washington seemed to know or care about that.

The news was broken clumsily too: the Czech prime minister was woken by a brief phone call from Mr Obama the night before the decision was made public. Poland is at least gaining some promise of a beefed up American contribution to its security. The Czech Republic receives nothing, for now, in exchange for its loyalty to a controversial scheme that was supposedly a symbol of America’s commitment to the region. Atlanticist politicians in Prague feel humiliated by that.

From a practical point of view, the American change of plan is understandable. The technology of the planned scheme was unproven, and the Iranian threat it was supposed to counter only nascent. “A scheme that doesn’t work, against a threat that doesn’t exist, in countries that don’t want it” was how Zbigniew Brzezinski, the hawkish former national security adviser to the Carter administration, has described it. As with the decision to deploy cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe in the 1980s, something that was meant to strengthen the Atlantic alliance ended up putting it under strain. Czech and Polish public opinion was increasingly sceptical, or outright hostile to the bases. Other countries worried that pro-American hawks in ex-communist countries were risking an unnecessary confrontation with Russia.

America’s new plan is different. Mr Obama described it as a “stronger, smarter, swifter” defence of American forces in Europe and of American allies. Reinforcing existing defences against possible long-range Iranian missiles is seen as a problem for the future, given that America now says the Iranians are working more on short- and medium-range missiles than on long-range ones. For now, the extra deployments will be less capable sea-based Aegis missiles which could shoot down any medium-range Iranian missiles aimed at Europe. After 2015, with further development, the scheme could involve land-based versions of the SM3 missile that would, the Pentagon says, ultimately cover all of Europe by 2018.

That would probably start off in bases closer to Iran but it might include central Europe too. “We will look forward to working with Poland about how they might fit into that,” says a senior State Department official. If a future Czech government wanted to take part, it would also receive a sympathetic hearing.

The administration has tried to sweeten the pill by reiterating a promise to place a battery of Patriot short-range missiles to defend Warsaw. Poles expect that these will be American-financed, part of NATO’s commitment to the country’s defence, and fully integrated with Poland’s own air-defence system. American officials are more cagey, saying only that there is still plenty to discuss.

Russia has welcomed the decision to shelve the existing scheme. It is unlikely to be pleased about any replacements based anywhere in the former Soviet empire, which the president, Dmitry Medvedev, has described as a sphere of Russian “privileged interests”. If America can obtain Russian help in squeezing Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes, and if Russia also backs down on its threatened deployment of missiles in the Kaliningrad region, which borders Poland, it would be easy for the administration to walk away even further away from missile defence.

Although Poles may bemoan the timing, America's calendar may be shaped by the forthcoming UN General Assembly. Russia and China have been reluctant to agree to further sanctions or other pressure on Iran. Mr Obama may hope that by demonstrating a willingness to engage Russia in Europe he might have a better chance of co-operation in the Middle East.

But the big task for America now is to reassure the Poles and other twitchy ex-communist countries such as the Baltic states, that it remains committed to their defence. It stresses that plenty of high-level structures exist to discuss these worries and that NATO is actively rethinking its plans for defence in the east. The question is what will really be on offer in these discussions. The east European countries, squeezed between an increasingly close Russian-German friendship, look anxiously towards America to safeguard their interests. But is America looking at them?

US-CEE woes

America and eastern Europe

End of an affair?

Sep 10th 2009
From The Economist print edition

The Atlantic alliance is waning in Europe’s east

Illustration by Peter Schrank

AFTER two decades of sometimes fervent Atlanticism in the ex-communist world, disillusionment (some would call it realism) is growing. At its height the bond between eastern Europe and America was based, like the best marriages, on a mixture of emotion and mutual support. The romance dates from the cold war: when western Europe was sometimes squishy in dealing with the Soviet empire, America was robust. When the Iron Curtain fell, ex-dissidents and retired cold warriors found they had plenty in common. America pushed for the expansion of NATO, guaranteeing the east Europeans’ security. In return, ex-communist countries loyally supported America, particularly in providing troops for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That relationship is now looking more wobbly. A new poll (see chart) by the German Marshall Fund, a think-tank, shows that western Europe is now much more pro-American and pro-NATO than the ex-communist east. Until last year, the eastern countries swallowed their misgivings about George Bush, while the west of the continent writhed in distaste at what many saw as his administration’s incompetence and heavy-handedness.

The ascent of Barack Obama has boosted America’s image in most countries, but only modestly in places like Poland and Romania. Among policymakers in the east, the dismay is tangible. In July, 22 senior figures from the region, including Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, wrote a public letter bemoaning the decline in transatlantic ties.

One reason is that the Obama administration is rethinking a planned missile-defence system, which would have placed ten interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic, in order to guard against Iranian missile attacks on America and much of Europe. That infuriated Russia, which saw the bases as a blatant push into its front yard. Changing the scheme—probably using seaborne interceptors—risks looking like a climb-down to suit Russian interests.

Poland is also worried that a promised battery of Patriot air-defence missiles, originally to protect the interceptors, may now be only a temporary loan of dummy rockets for training purposes—“just a sales exercise”, says an official in Warsaw, crossly. America says it never intended to station real rockets there permanently.

The administration also botched its participation in Poland’s 70th anniversary commemoration of the start of the second world war on September 1st. Other countries, including Russia and Germany, sent top people. America, initially, offered only a retired Clinton-era official. William Perry, who was a notable sceptic about NATO expansion. After squawks of dismay, Jim Jones, the national security adviser, went too. But Poles sensed a snub.

Another sore point concerns leaks from America suggesting that Poland, Romania and Lithuania hosted secret bases for the “rendition” and interrogation of terror suspects. All three strongly deny this, but in at least some voters’ eyes, the American alliance is now tainted with connivance in kidnap and torture, followed by cover-ups. The next time American spooks want some secret help, they may find their allies less handy, an official notes.

NATO’s credibility is under scrutiny too. New members say that their voters will not support out-of-area expeditions—the alliance’s big focus just now—unless it is properly defending the home front against any threat from Russia. It does not help that Russia and its ally, Belarus, have just started a large joint military exercise, ostentatiously named “Zapad” (West).

At a big NATO advisory conference in Brussels in July, east Europeans were aghast to hear one prominent German academic describe Article V, the alliance’s cornerstone collective-security guarantee, as a “fiction”. In the event of a Russian threat, say to the Baltic states or Poland, would NATO act or merely consult? A worried easterner describes the alliance as “like an 18th-century Polish parliament, hostage to its most irresponsible member”.

NATO is trying to soothe those fears. A committee that writes the threat assessment has rejigged its view on Russia. Contingency planning, once taboo, is taking shape. The Obama administration has been more vigorous on this front than its predecessor. But what Poland wants, especially if the missile-defence base is cancelled, is practical preparations, such as regular manoeuvres, and fuel and ammunition stockpiles.

Part of the problem is the much-publicised attempt by the Obama administration to “reset” relations with Russia. Few in eastern Europe object to that in principle. But many worry about how it will work in practice. Will Russia demand greater sway in the region in return for help, say, in squeezing Iran? The State Department has tried hard to reassure America’s allies. But the official at the National Security Council directly responsible for Europe, Liz Sherwood-Randall, used to work for Mr Perry and shared his views on NATO expansion. East European officials flinch when her name is mentioned.

Admittedly, America has many other bigger problems than its relations with eastern Europe. Self-importance and public whingeing do not win arguments in Washington. The east Europeans may have been naive in their dealings with America in the Bush years. But for all that, even people inside the Obama administration agree that it could do better.

CEE and America

America and eastern Europe

Not captivating now
Jul 9th 2009
From The Economist print edition


Eastern Europe watches nervously as America improves relations with Russia
WHEN he returns home, a routine task in President Barack Obama’s in-box will be to proclaim the third week of July “Captive Nations Week”. Established by Congress in 1959 to show American solidarity with countries trapped inside the Soviet empire, it amounts nowadays to little more than a press release and a couple of parties. But it echoes a decades-old American commitment to the region’s freedom and security, sealed by NATO’s expansion to include 12 ex-communist countries.

That has created both loyalty and expectations. Eastern Europe sent troops uncomplainingly to Iraq. Several countries have soldiers in Afghanistan: indeed, some smaller ones have suffered remarkably high casualties there, largely unacknowledged by their bigger allies. And Poland and the Czech Republic agreed to host a new missile-defence system to counter a possible threat from Iran. This irks the Kremlin, which claims to fear American encroachment in its own backyard.

The east Europeans find Mr Obama an easier ally than his predecessor, George Bush. They are broadly pleased with his trip to Moscow. Unlike Mr Bush, who looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and got “a sense of his soul”, Mr Obama was not gulled into giving Russian leaders cloying praise. He brushed off attempts to trade influence in eastern Europe for help on issues such as Iran.

But on eastern Europe’s own future, the new administration’s touch is less sure. It is giving out mixed signals on the missile-defence deal signed by its predecessor. Polish and Czech leaders who argued in favour of the scheme feel exposed. One says, disapprovingly, that America’s wobbles are “unimperial”. Even tacit linkage between delaying or scrapping the scheme and pleasing Russia will heighten those worries.

Talks on a plan to put a battery of Patriot air-defence missiles in Poland are bogged down in arguments over cost, whether they will be armed and the legal and tax status of the Americans who come with them. Promises of help to modernise the Polish armed forces (“we provide the boys, you provide the boots” as a Polish official once put it) have proved frustratingly empty.

The region’s biggest fear is the health and credibility of NATO. The new members want the alliance to work on proper military planning, explicitly taking Russia into account as a potential threat as well as a partner. That has been taboo since the early 1990s and is opposed by some west European countries with close business ties to Russia. But such issues are low down the White House’s to-do list. “Obama doesn’t have a Europe policy. But neither does Europe,” says an east European leader wryly.

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.

Hermann Simm

[I am totally tied up with libel litigation right now so apologies for the paucity of material on the site]

Espionage at NATO

Spy scandal in Estonia
Feb 26th 2009 | TALLINN
From The Economist print edition


A senior spy for Russia in NATO is convicted


WHY he did it is still unclear. But the “how” is leaking out. Hermann Simm, a former Estonian official who was one of Russia’s highest-placed spies in NATO, pleaded guilty to treason on Wednesday February 25th and was jailed for 12½ years. The Estonian authorities have released some details of a case that has had the spook world buzzing for the past year.

Russia’s foreign-intelligence service, the SVR, recruited Mr Simm on his holiday in Tunisia in 1995. He was a prime catch. He had finished a stint as a top policeman, and was starting a new security job at the defence ministry. The approach was made by Valery Zentsov, once a KGB officer in Soviet-occupied Estonia. Mr Simm was neither blackmailed nor, at first, bribed; he just wanted his Soviet-era rank of colonel back. At a third meeting he was put on the payroll, receiving just over $100,000 in all.

Mr Simm betrayed every secret that crossed his desk. There were plenty: as the man in charge of Estonia’s national security system, he organised the flow of all classified military documents in the country and abroad. Once Estonia joined NATO in 2004, he acted as the Kremlin’s eyes and ears on the alliance too (although his poor English, say some, may have limited his usefulness). He also tried but failed to get hold of secrets from Estonia’s security and intelligence services, which are separate from the defence ministry.

In 2002, say Estonian officials, Mr Zentsov was replaced by another Russian handler. Sergei Yakovlev worked for the SVR’s elite S-directorate, which runs “illegals”: spies who acquire a genuine identity in a foreign country. Mr Yakovlev, a near-native speaker of Portuguese, appears to have acquired Portuguese citizenship illegally, gaining a passport in the name of Antonio de Jesus Amurett Graf. Travelling as a business consultant, he met Mr Simm every three months or so, in at least 15 countries in the EU and elsewhere.

The plan came unstuck because of poor spycraft. According to spycatchers elsewhere, Mr “Graf” tried to recruit a senior official in another country, who reported the incident to his own counter-intelligence service. Under scrutiny, the Portuguese was seen meeting Mr Simm. That set alarm bells clanging across NATO. The difficulty was to observe Mr Simm closely enough to build a criminal case without sparking his suspicion. Estonia’s security service is getting many plaudits for this, which culminated in his arrest last September. In a separate prosecution, Mr Simm was ordered to pay 20m Estonian kroons ($1.7m) for the cost of new security systems. The SVR did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Mr Simm is not the only Russian spy at high level in NATO. Several other countries are apparently following up five leads arising out of Mr “Graf’s” activities. The results are unlikely to become public. The way in which Estonia put Mr Simm openly on trial is striking. In other countries, those caught spying for Russia tend to be eased out discreetly rather than being brought to justice in the painful light of day.

missile defence

Missile defence

Cool heads
Jan 29th 2009
From The Economist print edition


America is holding back its planned missile shield in eastern Europe

BELIEVE the hype, and America’s planned missile-defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic risked starting a new cold war. The Russians, claiming that they were intolerably provocative, even threatened to station new short-range missiles in Kaliningrad and to target their existing nuclear warheads at Europe. Many west European countries thought the whole affair epitomised both the Bush administration’s clumsy foreign policy and the destructive paranoia of the ex-communist countries in Europe’s east.

Now things are looking different. Barack Obama criticised the waste of money on “unproven” missile-defence technology during his presidential campaign. At the forthcoming Munich security conference, the Americans are expected to announce a review of the whole scheme. That could take a long time. For their part, the Russians said semi-officially this week that they would halt the planned deployment of the short-range missiles to Kaliningrad (although they are also pressing Belarus to accept new rocket bases).



On the surface, all of this sounds like good news. America hopes that Russia will come to see the missile shield as a joint project against Iran. Poland has removed a sticking-point by saying privately that it is willing to accept “intrusive” Russian monitoring of the base when it is built. Previously it had been twitchy about Russian snooping.

The new administration’s willingness to talk about arms control helps as well. The main treaty dealing with long-range nuclear weapons, Start-1, expires in December. The Bush administration seemed not to care, which stoked the Russians’ feeling that they were being ignored. With a decaying arsenal of nuclear warheads, and a shrinking number of ways of launching them, the Kremlin has a bigger interest in talking about cuts.

So if Russia wants a deal on missile defence, one may be possible. But what if it doesn’t? American officials think the Kremlin’s complaints about the scheme reflected a wish to pick a fight over Western influence in eastern Europe. Contrary to popular myth, the previous administration tried hard (albeit unsuccessfully) to present missile defences as a matter of common interest. Nobody on the Russian side could explain how a handful of interceptor rockets in Poland would hamper a nuclear superpower that can launch weapons from anywhere on the planet.

America is now committed to boosting Poland’s defences. The paradox is that Russia complained loudly about something that did not matter, but by doing so it has got America to do something that does: beef up its security relationship with Poland. This will include more training and equipment (including such sought-after kit as armoured Humvees) as well as high-tech air-defence systems for Warsaw. Even if missile defences are delayed, officials say, these promises will be kept. A big theme for the Obama administration is treating its allies better.

Sikorski for NATO

Europe.view

What Santa can bring Eastern Europe
Dec 27th 2008
From Economist.com


Radek Sikorski for NATO chief


THE reindeer are harnessed, the sledge laden. So what will Santa Claus bring the ex-communist countries for Christmas? Desirable presents are easy to think of. A respite from the economic downturn. A less chauvinist attitude from Russia. A more considerate approach from Germany. Attention from the new American administration. But these belong in the same charming but unrealistic category as a child’s wish-list on which “no school”, “a fairy carriage” and “machine gun” are scrawled in crayon.

Rather more likely—and genuinely desirable—would be the appointment of someone from the once-captive nations to a top international job. Since the collapse of communism, the record on this has been dismal. Russia chaired the G-8 (though most of the countries attending the St Petersburg summit did so while wincing at their host’s behaviour). Slovenia held the European Union’s presidency competently (though close inspection revealed a tight French embrace of the EU’s nominal leadership).

But in terms of the big appointments, such as running the EU Commission and NATO or even the lesser posts such as leading the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development or anything at the United Nations, it is hard to find anyone from eastern Europe who has held anything remotely resembling a top job. The message is: be grateful for your EU commissioners; now shut up.



The new member-states of NATO and the EU feel they have been rather poorly treated in the past year or so. Germany snubbed them at the Bucharest NATO summit. The EU told them they were silly to care about Georgia, imposed a single flimsy sanction on Russia and then was unable to maintain even that.

Much of the responsibility for this lies with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. He has also flirted with the Kremlin’s new scheme for European security. This involves kicking the Americans out, sidelining NATO, and allowing Russia and the big EU countries to stitch things up between them.

In private briefings, French and other west European officials are already undermining the upcoming Czech EU presidency, sneering and jeering at the idea that the dumpling-munching peasants of Bohemia can match the grandeur of France. They also grossly overstate the importance (more accurately: nuisance value) of the abrasive Czech president, Vaclav Klaus. All EU states are equal, Mr Sarkozy concedes. But the bigger ones have “more responsibilities” (and are less equal, George Orwell might have concluded, than others).

Next year, if the Lisbon treaty is ratified, the following jobs will come open: presidents of the EU Commission (an existing post) and the EU Council (a new one), plus EU foreign minister, NATO secretary-general and president of the European parliament. As things stand, the east Europeans will get only the last of these—which is by far the least important.

That is not just unfair. It’s risky. It will alienate the east Europeans and make their political elites feel mutinous. East European countries have plenty of ways to slow down EU decision-making. So far, they have for the most part been at pains to show that they are good Europeans. That cannot be taken for granted.

Here is a possible way out: the NATO top job should go to a heavyweight Atlanticist politician, with expertise in defence policy, from a new member state. That produces a shortlist of roughly two: Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister (and former defence minister) or Sasha Vondra, the Czech deputy prime minister. Poland’s status as a defence heavyweight makes Mr Sikorski’s case the stronger. Let’s hope Santa sees it that way too.

What next for NATO

Europe.view

What about NATO?

Dec 11th 2008
From Economist.com


How the alliance should move forward

Get article background

BETWEEN the new American administration getting going and the NATO summit in Strasbourg in April lie a few short perilous months. The story since the war in Georgia has been that NATO proved reluctant to identify Russia as a military threat, but under the authority of the supreme allied commander, a brainy American called General John Craddock, is engaged in “prudent planning”, which allows for quite a lot without requiring the authority of the North Atlantic Council.

The worry for Poles, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians is that pushing too hard for formal contingency-planning might be vetoed by the Russia-friendly countries in NATO. That would be a disaster. So far the situation is not bad, but neither is it stable. Faced with a revisionist, and perhaps increasingly desperate regime in Russia, NATO’s credibility could do with a boost.


Now the new American administration must decide how much it wants to try to calm Russia (something that will please Germany and other key European allies), and how much it wants to publicly bolster the security of the twitchy, strongly Atlanticist countries in Europe’s east. These are valued allies in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan—small in numbers, but strong in symbolism.

The problem won’t be lubricated by money. Some countries may be able to boast that defence spending as a share of GDP is going up. But that will be because GDP is going down, not because more money is going for bullets and battleships.

On top of all that comes the question of a new NATO secretary-general.

The best way forward would have the following elements. First would be a series of new arms-control initiatives to show the Kremlin that America takes Russia seriously. That could include talks on START 3 (covering strategic nuclear weapons, where Russia’s arsenal is already embarrassingly weak); on anti-ballistic missile systems; on the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty (holed by a Russian suspension) and on weapons in space.

A second element would be to drop explicit talk of membership for Georgia and Ukraine (agreed in principle already) and concentrate on building up boring but important capabilities such as policing arms sales, storage of ammunition and training, planning, and managing reservists (the last being a glaring failure in Georgia’s case). As those reforms take root, the chance that other NATO countries find the prospective new members more credible will grow.

A third element would be to ensure that NATO’s original mission—territorial defence of its existing members—is in no doubt. That requires the capability to send forces on expeditions; whether these are to Darfur, Somalia, Estonia or northern Norway is a secondary question. If the question of formally categorising Russia as a threat is too politically ticklish, then it can be left. The main thing is to make sure that the right forces, properly trained and equipped, are available if needed.

So far, NATO has done all right on “force planning” (which is making lists of things that are in theory available) and less well on “force generation” (which is actually providing them in practice). It is striking that it took even America 72 hours just to find the planes to bring back 3,000 troops from Iraq to Georgia in August.

A final element would be to endorse, quietly, the burgeoning Swedish-Finnish-Norwegian defence partnership in the Baltic sea and “high North”. That needs outsiders to pitch in, such as Poland and Denmark. To be fully effective, NATO needs to be realistic about what it can’t do, as well as what it can.

Missile defence

A damp squib
Nov 20th 2008
From The Economist print edition


American missile-defence plans falter in eastern Europe

IRAN’S new medium-range missile, the Sajil, which was test-fired on November 12th, marks something of a technological breakthrough. It is fast and has a claimed range of 2,000km (1,250 miles). It might reach Moscow or southern Italy, say. Yet both Russia and Italy are opposed to American plans to place ten interceptor rockets in Poland and an anti-missile radar in the Czech Republic. The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has criticised the plan because it “provoked” Russia. The Kremlin has threatened to put short-range Iskander missiles in its Kaliningrad exclave (or possibly in Belarus, a close ally) if the missile-defence deployment goes ahead.

Raising the temperature even higher, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president who (until the end of December) also presides over the European Union, said on November 14th that the American plan “does nothing to bring security and complicates things”. That infuriated his Polish and Czech counterparts, who noted that France signed up to a decision at the NATO summit in April in support of missile defence. They also questioned what business a French president had pronouncing on other countries’ security ties with America. Mr Sarkozy issued a partial retraction, saying merely that nobody should put new missiles in Europe pending talks with Russia about new security arrangements for the entire continent.



The incoming administration of Barack Obama seems unenthusiastic about missile defence as well. The president-elect says that he will support the programme “if it works”. That marks a big shift from the Bush administration’s policy, which is to deploy and develop in a “spiral” (meaning that bits would be deployed as and when they are ready).

All this leaves the Poles and Czechs who pushed for missile defence (against unenthusiastic public opinion) somewhat exposed. The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, a strong supporter of the plan, claimed that Mr Obama had told him that missile defences would go ahead. But the Obama team issued a denial, leaving Mr Kaczynski, not for the first time, looking out of his depth. Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, who clinched the original deal with America, flew to Washington this week to sound out potential Obama administration appointees in more detail.

Poland is interested not only in the tacit American security guarantee that a missile-defence base implies (important if NATO’s value to Poland frays because of German ties with Russia). It also won promises of American help with Polish military modernisation and of a battery of advanced air-defence missiles to protect Warsaw. If the Obama administration freezes missile defence (quite easy, given congressional hostility to the programme), other parts of the deal will be in doubt.

That is more galling since public support in Poland for missile defences has risen from 27% at the start of August to 41% after the Georgian war, when Condoleezza Rice, America’s secretary of state, came to sign the deal and toast it in Georgian wine. Some Poles feel, crossly, that Mr Sarkozy is speaking for Russia, not for them.

The World in 2009

My contribution here...

North stars
Edward Lucas, VISBY
From The World in 2009 print edition


Introducing the Nordic Atlantic Treaty Organisation

Designed to keep the Germans down, the Russians out and the Americans in, NATO will celebrate its 60th birthday in 2009 in a sorry state. Its campaign in Afghanistan is not going well. Its members are at odds about how to deal with Russia. But look north and the European security picture will be brightening.

Sweden and Norway, once prickly friends, are striking up a new defence relationship.

This might look odd: Sweden is non-NATO and a member of the European Union; Norway is a keen member of NATO, but has stayed out of the EU. But now those differences are being set aside. Co-operation on airspace monitoring, combined military procurement, joint training and co-ordinated intelligence work will all be bearing fruit in 2009.

Panting to catch up is Finland, neutral in theory but in practice also spooked by an increasingly assertive Russia. That's clever psychology by the Norwegians and Swedes: Finland would resist if it felt pressured to join in. But it hates being left out of anything its Nordic neighbours get up to. For the core three, 2009 will bring calls for higher defence spending and new efforts to extend Nordic security co-operation to other countries.

The two pressing tasks for the new Nordic security partnership (don’t call it an alliance, or you will get a very chilly Scandinavian scowl) are to work out how to help the Baltic states, and to make plans for what they call the “high north”, the energy-rich area that lies between Europe and the North Pole. The Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) have been full members of NATO since 2004. But the alliance has made no plans to defend them, not wanting to break the taboo on counting Russia as any kind of threat. That will change in 2009, as NATO’s bureaucracy in Brussels works out the practicalities.

But no NATO efforts to defend the Baltics in a crisis make sense without help from Finland and Sweden. As EU members, they will offer political support. And Sweden’s airspace would offer the best way to bring reinforcements if needed. The Baltics will be keen to join in the new Nordic nexus, starting with airspace monitoring.

America is watching the Nordic efforts with increasing interest, as is Canada, once a peace-monger but now deeply alarmed by Russian adventurism in the Arctic. Add Britain for good measure, beef it up a bit, and this could turn into a handy new outfit to deal with the hot­test spots of what some people are calling the new cold war. All it needs is a snappy name. What about the Nordic Atlantic Treaty Organisation?

Obama and eastern Europe

Looking west, hopefully

Nov 13th 2008 | WASHINGTON, DC

Eastern Europe awaits a new American president nervously but in hope

DETAINING the next president of the United States for three hours in what an eyewitness called a “malodorous” small room at an airport in the provincial Russian city of Perm looks, in retrospect, to have been a pretty bad idea. No matter that the Kremlin muttered an apology for delaying Barack Obama, along with his mentor on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, in August 2005. The hold-up was blamed on a muddle over paperwork—although some Russia-watchers suspected it was a calculated Kremlin snub to the Republican Mr Lugar.

Mr Obama now plays down the episode, but his first-hand experience of the Russian bureaucracy’s capacity for at best capricious incompetence and at worst vindictiveness could yet prove telling. His team of hundreds of foreign-policy experts ranges from those who see the Bush administration’s policy as dangerously confrontational to those who think it too soft. Michael McFaul, a Stanford academic who has become a caustic critic of the Kremlin, is an influential Obama adviser. But it remains to be seen how many people Mr Obama will pick from his own team, and how many from the Hillary Clinton camp of experienced Russia hands.



The Democratic Party is in general rather less hawkish than many of Mr Obama’s senior advisers. Yet the prosaic truth is that, whoever secures the top jobs in the new administration, American policy towards eastern Europe is likely to be shaped mainly by events and bureaucratic drift, not personalities. Barring a new crisis (such as another war in Georgia), eastern Europe is unlikely to get anything like as much attention as the economy. Even more conveniently, the main decisions can easily be fudged or postponed.

Thus the Bush administration is still trying to push for Ukraine to be given a clear path towards future NATO membership. It reiterated this at a recent high-level NATO-Ukraine meeting in Estonia. But if Mr Obama wants to cash in his popularity in Europe, he is more likely to do so by asking European countries to send more troops to Afghanistan, not to swallow their objections to NATO membership for two increasingly unconvincing candidates: a chaotically divided Ukraine and an erratic, indefensible Georgia.

An Obama administration may concentrate on the nitty-gritty of military reform in the Ukraine rather than grand promises of NATO membership. That would be welcome in Russia. So too might be Mr Obama’s rather more doveish line on nuclear weapons. But another sore point with the Kremlin is America’s plans for missile defences, and especially for the siting of ten interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic. These—if they work—might stop or deter an Iranian missile attack on America or Europe. But public opinion in the Czech Republic and Poland remains unenthusiastic. And Russia has now threatened a bunch of countermeasures, including putting nuclear-capable missiles in the Kaliningrad exclave and targeting the missile-defence installations with its own nuclear arsenal.

Mr Obama, like many Democrats, sounds sceptical on missile defence. With no money allocated to the programme by Congress, it will be easy to keep the plans alive on paper, but to do little to promote them in practice. And if talks with Russia about nuclear weapons do go ahead, a deal on missile defence might be thrown in. Czechs and Poles may feel a touch queasy as these issues are discussed over their heads; but there is little they can do about it in practice.

Nor is it likely that an Obama administration will fight hard for greater European independence from Russia’s monopoly of east-west gas pipelines. The Bush administration promoted Nabucco, a pipeline that would bring Caspian and Central Asian gas to Europe via Turkey. But a shambolic and inattentive European policy on pipelines and energy dependence in recent years has left policymakers in Washington feeling that they are wasting their time. If the Europeans cannot look after their own interests, why should America?

Daily Telegraph rant today

Russia, Georgia and the EU: Victory for the Kremlin?

Britain's shameful U-turn on Russia is alarming many in Eastern Europe, says Edward Lucas

So it is business as usual with Russia. And what a bad business it is. Britain's decision to allow France to lead the European Union back into normal relations with Vladimir Putin's ex-KGB regime in Russia is one of the most startling volte-faces in our country's recent diplomatic history. It has left our allies in Eastern Europe – Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – aghast at our duplicity. "Our last European hope just ----ed us. We should have known. For we are but a small faraway country about which they know nothing," a senior official in the region wrote in a despairing email after The Daily Telegraph broke the news on Friday.

European unity after the war in Georgia was never terribly impressive – a mild public rebuke and the suspension of talks on a new "partnership and co-operation agreement" until Russia met the conditions of the loosely worded truce brokered by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Russia has met some of those conditions – but not all. EU monitors are still unable to inspect the war zone properly. If they could, they would see evidence of ethnic cleansing in the two separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. They would also see that Russia has increased its military presence. The message to the Kremlin is clear: you can invade a neighbouring country, threaten Europe's energy supplies, and the EU will do nothing serious about it.

The reason is simple: Gordon Brown cares little about foreign affairs, but likes the idea of stitching up deals on the reform of international finance with his new friend Mr Sarkozy. France, which is running the EU until the end of the year, wants a triumph to present to the European summit in Nice this month. Showing that it has repaired relations with Russia is part of that. It will please all the pro-Russian countries in the EU. Russia's energetic cultivation of contacts in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and France has built up a bridgehead of influence. Those in Whitehall who watch with alarm and disgust as parts of our establishment cosy up to rich and powerful Russians have been outmanoeuvred. The idea that the start of talks is balanced by a new, careful scrutiny of EU-Russian relations should fool nobody. This is surrender.

It must be especially humiliating for David Miliband, whose condemnation of Russia's actions, in a speech in the Ukrainian capital Kiev on August 27, inspired hopes from the Baltic to the Black Sea that Britain was now a champion of the ex-communist countries' freedom and security. He excoriated Russia's "unilateral attempt to redraw the map", calling it "the moment when countries are required to set out where they stand". This week's decision casts those words in a bitter light.

It is also part of a wider and gloomier picture. Even before the war in Georgia in August, Russia was bullying its neighbours, stitching up Europe's energy market and turning money into power across the continent. In the old Cold War, the Kremlin was shackled by communism. Now it has been turbo-charged by capitalism, through the boom in oil and gas prices that has brought it 
$1.3 trillion in extra revenues since 2000. That enables it to exercise influence not only on us, but among us, too. It has built up assets, commercial and human, in positions of power across Europe. German industry makes tens of billions of euros in the Russian market; Russia is Germany's main energy supplier. The former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder chairs the consortium building a Russian-German gas pipeline (conceived, in secret, while he was still running Germany).

Even though the EU is far stronger than Russia on paper, three times bigger in population terms, and more than 10 times larger as an economy, it seems unable to stand up to the Kremlin. The financial crisis has hit Russia hard – but it has hit us harder. A few years ago, threatening to freeze dodgy Russian companies out of the developed world's capital markets would have been a real threat. Now, if they find London, New York, and Frankfurt unwelcoming, they can turn to the exchanges in Dubai, Mumbai and Shanghai.

Nor does Russia greatly care if it is excluded from clubs such as the Council of Europe or the G8, or if talks on joining the World Trade Organisation or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development are frozen. Such "punishments" may even reinforce the message of the ex-KGB regime to the Russian people: that their country is surrounded by malevolent hypocrites. The Kremlin's message to Europe is cold and confident: you need us more than we need you. President Dmitri Medvedev is proving as tough and tricky as his predecessor, Vladimir Putin. His new security plan is to end the Atlantic alliance, pushing America out of Europe and creating a new security regime in which the continent's biggest countries – chiefly Germany and Russia – will boss everyone else about.

It is not too late to fight back. Nato has already changed its approach. Belatedly, the alliance's top-secret military planning bureaucracy is working out how it could defend the Baltic states and Poland. Nato warplanes last week held air exercises over Estonia, while senior American commanders are paying frequent visits to the Baltic states.

That is encouraging, but it is not enough. There are other matters that need addressing urgently – including Russian spying. This has reached unprecedented levels, and is probably more dangerous and destructive to Western interests than during the old Cold War. A co-ordinated, wholesale expulsion of Russian intelligence officers and their hangers-on from, say, London, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen and Warsaw would send a powerful message to the Kremlin.

The key to the West's future security is the security of the Baltic states. Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians have thrown in their lot with us and we must not let them down. Consider this scenario. Imagine that Estonian extremists start intimidating local Russians (who amount to around a third of the Estonian population). Russia can easily stoke this covertly, while demanding publicly that Estonia crack down. Then imagine that Russian activists (again, backed, discreetly, by Moscow) set up "self-defence units" which start patrols, and set up checkpoints. When the Estonian authorities try to stop this, the Kremlin complains; Russian military "volunteers" start mustering across the border, proclaiming their intention to defend compatriots from "fascism". The Russian media report this with wild enthusiasm; the Russian authorities say they cannot indefinitely restrain the spontaneous patriotic sentiments of their citizens.

Suppose Estonia requests support under Article IV of the Nato charter. At this point, Russia's cultivation of assets in the West pays off. Germany, Italy and other big European countries tell Estonia to sort out its problems with Russia bilaterally. The result is a worse split in the Alliance even worse than the one over Iraq. Faced with the West's weakness, the Kremlin ups the odds. Estonia tries to restore order; Russia terms that an intolerable provocation and demands a change of government, immediate changes in the language and citizenship laws, and the establishment of what it calls a "Swiss solution": cantons in which Russians will be allowed "to run their own affairs". To back this up, Russian forces start military manoeuvres.

So what does Estonia do then? America may offer moral support, but is it going to risk a Third World War with Russia to protect Estonia? Such a course of events is not inevitable, or even likely. But it is not as preposterous as it should be. Too many of the ingredients are in place and the Kremlin is perfectly capable of cooking them into a dangerous dish. The big question for Estonia and its friends is what can be done to make sure that never happens.

The answer is not to give up on Nato but to complement it with a regional grouping. The existing Nordic ties between Sweden, Norway and Finland, boosted by support from Poland and Denmark, would put this scenario back where it belongs: in the world of geopolitical thrillers. Add in British, Canadian and American involvement and you would have a formidable counterweight to Russian mischief-making in both the Baltic and the Arctic – the likely hotspots of the new Cold War.

Edward Lucas is author of 'The New Cold War: How the Kremlin menaces both Russia and the West' (Bloomsbury). An updated edition is published thismonth.