OSCE condemns Molotov-Ribbentrop

Europe.view

Partners in crime
Jul 9th 2009
From Economist.com


Despite Russia's protests, Stalin was no less villainous than Hitler
IT IS depressing that it even needed to be discussed. On July 3rd in Vilnius the parliamentary assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the continent’s main outfit, passed a resolution equating Stalin and Hitler. It called for August 23rd to become an official day of remembrance for the millions who were repressed, murdered, deported, robbed and raped as a result of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. That deal, and the secret protocols that went with it, were a death sentence for the countries from the Baltic to the Black sea. The poisonous after-effects linger until today.


The resolution should have met with particularly thunderous applause from the Russian side. After all, Russians by most measures suffered particularly badly under Stalin. Following Lenin’s terrible legacy, he systematised the persecution of the country’s brightest and best. Anyone reading the classic memoirs of Stalinism, such as “Kolyma tales” by Varlam Shalamov, or Nadezhda Mandelstam’s “Hope against hope”, or a modern history such as Anne Applebaum’s “Gulag”, is suffused with the horror of those years. It is hard to imagine anyone quibbling over their condemnation.

Some do counter that Stalin was, despite his excessive toughness, a great figure in Russian and Soviet history. (Modern Russian history textbooks make the same case.) But that ignores Stalin’s disastrous record as a political and military leader. His paranoia decapitated the Red Army leadership: the best generals were murdered or jailed. Also, Stalin ignored the plentiful warnings of Hitler’s planned surprise attack in June 1941. That nearly proved disastrous.

By some counts Stalin should be seen as no less villainous than Hitler. He bears much of the blame for the war. It was the Soviet alliance with Hitler that gave the Nazi leader the confidence to attack Poland. Only Hitler’s blunders prevented the Nazis from winning the war in the East—and quite likely the whole show. It is also worth remembering that Stalinism was so repellent that it drove many Russians to fight on the Nazi side—including in the SS.

Plenty of other countries have much to be ashamed of in their wartime history. Britain’s bullying of Czechoslovakia to accept dismemberment at Nazi hands in 1938 is one good example; French collaboration with the occupation another. These are shameful, but they are not taboos.

By contrast, the OSCE resolution prompted outrage from Russia. Indeed, under the new law criminalising the “falsification of history”, anyone who voted for it, discussed it or publicised it in Russia would risk a jail sentence of up to five years. Communism’s economic failure and political repression have made it hard for anyone to claim that the Soviet Union was the epitome of a new civilisation. The victory over Nazi Germany provides some moral weight, but does not excuse Stalinism. The heroism of the Soviet soldiers who repelled the Nazi invaders has been used both to sanitise the past and to distract attention from the sleaze and incompetence of Russia’s current rulers.

The debate will not change the world: the parliamentary assembly is just a talking shop on the sidelines of the 56-member OSCE. Its resolutions are not legally binding. But the news is welcome nonetheless. Russian propagandists love using historical slogans but hate discussions of historical facts. The debate in Vilnius makes it a bit harder to maintain that stance.

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 92

Europe.view

Vague but sinister
Jul 31st 2008
From Economist.com


Russia’s new foreign policy concept


AS LAUNCHES go, it was more an ominous fizzle than a big bang. At a briefing in Brussels on July 28th, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, answered most questions about the Kremlin’s plans for European security with a mixture of “don’t know” and “wait and see”. But the outlines are clear—and not particularly comforting.

The idea, first put forward by President Dmitri Medvedev, is to have a big international conference in Moscow, perhaps with India and China involved, to agree a legally binding treaty that will set up a European security organisation focussed on hot issues such as migration and terrorism. Its reach will stretch from “Vladivostok to Vancouver”.

But Europe already has an outfit with that mandate: the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Set up in the happy heyday of east-west cooperation, the OSCE is a talking shop with some do-gooding bits attached. Its members include America and Canada as well as every country in “Europe” (including five ex-Soviet republics normally counted as Central Asian). Its activities range from promoting media freedom to arms control. And Russia, lately, has been increasingly critical of the OSCE, particularly its election-monitoring arm.

That is because, put bluntly, Russia now thinks it got a bad deal when the old cold war ended. The OSCE promotes an interfering “western” agenda of human rights and open elections. The associated treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, signed in 1990, allows America to do too much and Russia too little in Europe. NATO and the EU run riot—for example in bombing Serbia and recognising Kosovo—unconstrained by international law.

The first, unstated, aim of the new Russian plan, based on what Mr Medvedev calls “21st-century realities”, seems to be to weaken, supplant, or outright replace the OSCE. Russia has already put the OSCE’s election-monitoring outfit under intense political and budget pressure (and blocked its observers’ visas in both recent Russian elections). Conveniently, Kazakhstan, a Russian ally, will be running the OSCE (into the ground, some think) in 2010.

Another element in the Kremlin plan is to get the outside world to take seriously Russian-led outfits such as the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Russian-Belarusian Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States. These bodies are so obscure and bureaucratic that they make the even the lame-duck OSCE seem important. The West has shunned official contact with them, seeing them as mere vehicles for Russia’s post-Soviet grandstanding. The Russian plan would give them similar ranking to the EU and NATO.

A third element may be to promote the “Finlandisation” of Europe, by diminishing American influence (but probably not removing it: Russia likes having some Americans around in Europe in case the Germans start getting uppity).

Now Western countries, divided and distracted as never before, just as Russia is newly rich and confident, must decide what to do. Ignoring the plan would look rude and hypocritical: after years of stroppy whinging, Russia has at least come up with a positive idea.

The main response should be that security is not just about powerful countries and blocks striking legalistic deals; it is also about values. That was the breakthrough that launched the OSCE’s predecessor in 1973 in Helsinki, when the Soviet bloc traded acceptance of its borders for recognition that human rights crossed them. If Russia now chokes on the notion of a Europe-wide commitment to political freedom, the rule of law and the rights of small countries to determine their future, that is troubling. But it is says more about what’s wrong with Russia than about anything else.

make benefit glorious OSCE not Kazakhstan

Europe.view

Security versus democracy

Jul 26th 2007
From Economist.com

Kazakhstan is at the centre of an ugly trade

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IF YOU believe in realpolitik, it is a no-brainer. Kazakhstan should chair the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 2009. If you believe in the principles of democracy on which the OSCE was founded, the question of Kazakhstan is a no-brainer too: an undemocratic country should not chair one of the continent’s main democracy-promoting organisation.

This is no mere wrangle about protocol. The debate over Kazakhstan and the OSCE raises a fundamental question about Europe’s willingness to trade democracy for security.

The OSCE was founded on that bargain—but the other way round. The then Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, meeting in Helsinki in 1975, traded security, in the form of Western assent to the division of Europe, for freedom: the Kremlin’s formal commitment to support human rights across the continent. That helped destroy totalitarianism, because it gave dissidents behind the iron curtain a legal basis to challenge their communist rulers.

Now Russia and its allies want to cripple the OSCE until it turns into a mere talking-shop. They have systematically tried to strangle its election-monitoring outfit, the Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR—pronounced, aptly enough, “oh dear”). The Kremlin also detests the OSCE’s openness to independent non-governmental organisations. The OSCE is one of the few places where outfits such as the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (banned in Russia but now registered in Finland) can get a public hearing before an official audience.

The chairmanship of the 56-member OSCE changes every year. Spain holds the chair now; Finland is next. Kazakhstan desperately desires the job in 2009. Giving Kazakhstan what it wants, argue supporters such as Germany, would help reach out to the most important and promising country in central Asia. It would integrate Kazakhstan into the heart of Europe’s security structures—and maybe gain Kazakh support for a gas pipeline direct from central Asia to Europe, bypassing Russia.

AFP

For make benefit glorious nation

Perhaps. But it is hard to portray this as a move to counter Russian influence in central Asia, given that the Kremlin also strongly supports the Kazakh bid. Russia wants to set a precedent that a non-democratic country can hold the chair. This year Kazakhstan, so why not Belarus in 2010?

Britain and America are still holding out against the plan. Kazakhstan’s human-rights record is dire. It has never held an internationally validated election. Nursultan Nazarbayev (pictured), the president for 17 years already, has just claimed the post for life. Leaders in Washington and London fear that Kazakhstan may mute the OSCE’s effectiveness if, say, an election is rigged, a demonstration violently crushed or a journalist killed somewhere in Russia or another part of the former Soviet Union in 2009; judging from current affairs, such events are all too likely.

Certainly the evidence so far is that stretching democratic principles to accommodate undemocratic countries does not spread freedom, but merely dents those principles. Admitting Russia to the Council of Europe, another talking-shop with a grand human-rights mandate, now looks premature to say the least. The same applies to the G8, supposedly a grouping of big advanced democracies. Official harassment of pro-democracy protesters made Russia’s G8 summit in St Petersburg last year a shameful farce.

One solution would be to say that Kazakhstan can be chair in 2011—but only if it first meets some elementary democratic criteria. But it may be too late for such a deal. Anything short of the chairmanship in 2009 will be seen as a severe snub.

The sad truth is that an organisation like the OSCE can function only if its members mostly agree on most principles. That was the case through the 1990s. It no longer holds now. Rather than make shameful compromises in the name of security, it would be better to concentrate on the best long-term bet: promoting freedom.