Europe: No Longer a Commonwealth

In 2008 the historian, Mark Mazower, gave a lecture at Columbia University on Greek Ideals and the World Order in the Twentieth Century, charting the thinking of the Oxford Classicist and foreign office minister Alfred Zimmern.

Zimmern was forced to confront the reality of the international political order in the wake of the Boer War, when the British Empire showed the first alarming signs of disintegration and the mercantilist ‘scramble for Africa’ was widely derided. His response was to turn to the concept of the commonwealth as pioneered by Ancient Athens – to allow for the supra-national body with teeth promoted by Woodrow Wilson or the world government of HG Wells’ imagination would be to paper over the cracks of ethnic differences – only by adopting the spirit of commonwealth would nations be able to put the First World War behind them.

Just as intellectuals in the twentieth century had to face the unfortunate truth that the Germans, pioneers through Kant of intellectual ethics and romanticism in place of inhuman liberal enlightenment, had produced Hitler, Europe now faces a crisis of identity with Greece on the edge of not merely exiting the Euro but the EU.

The past three years, during which Greece has occupied ever greater amounts of time and effort, have been a disaster. Germany, thrust into a steering role which it has consciously shunned for the past fifty years, has become a symbol of priggishness to Greeks as ill-disciplined and tactless officials sought to sell austerity by hinting that those who could not pay their way were lazy, tax-dodging and ultimately feckless. Some Greeks, in turn, derided German leaders as Nazis. Governments in Greece and Italy collapsed after losing the confidence of Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy and a referendum in Greece on a bailout package was cancelled, giving an untrue impression of a democratic deficit (though Ireland is holding a referendum soon on a new fiscal treaty).

Greece may or may not now exit the Euro. Privatisation at a time of global deleveraging has failed to produce the hoped-for results, attempts to cut spending have made little headway and what political will existed behind pursuing austerity appears to be fast evaporating. Nonetheless, it would be foolish to pretend that the results will not be horrible. Greece’s major banks will collapse as depositors withdraw their remaining savings (banks were already 30% more under-resourced before €700m were withdrawn on Monday); the new currency will plummet, making debts formally unmanageable and default will follow.

Unlike Russia and Argentina, which were able to rely on an upsurge in the global climate and raw material stocks after defaults in the 1990s, Greece has few prospects for growth. To cut Greece out of the EU entirely, including access to the single market and cohesion policy expenditure would be to invite disaster. EU leaders should not underestimate the capacity of Europe to return to the place it was when the Coal and Steel Community was merely germinating in the mind of Jean Monnet. Abandoned, Greece is highly likely to drift towards extremism.

It is worth noting that the PIIGS which are the supposed cause of the crisis are not merely Mediterranean countries (with the exception of Ireland) as the casually racist insinuation has it. Rather, with the exception of Italy, they all became EU Members in the 1970s and 1980s and immediately set about pursuing growth by any means necessary. In 2004 the accession of ten former Soviet states benefitting from much lower labour costs and tax rates as part of the shock therapy liberalisation of their economies saw a flood of investment East, which the PIIGS could counteract only through access to credit – the same credit which in the case of Ireland and Portugal now exceeds 120% GDP. This comparative advantage and the redirection of EU Commission investment has sown mistrust, which will need to be repaired.

Britain’s financial markets are condemned for allowing the shorting of the Euro, Germany for failing to allow the auctioning of Eurobonds and France for either keeling over in the face of German pressure or for electing a dangerous left-wing loony, depending on the perception of the viewer. Europe is no longer attractive to its neighbours, who have been forced either to wait too long, partly because they see the EU as merely meddling in their internal politics without understanding the reasons why things are as they are. In Belarus, the dictatorship may be the antithesis of the people. In Ukraine, apathy is more widespread. Finally there is Hungary, partly disowned as an economic problem (since it lies outside of the EU) and partly offloaded onto the IMF, but with the EU specifying the political criteria of aid.

The idea of an elected European President is absurd. Presidents with few executive powers are common enough in Europe, but even a directly elected figure would struggle to represent such diverse interests and cultures. He would be either embarrassingly weak or disastrously strong. What is needed is rather for European leaders to work together with a sense of urgency and solidarity, before the resentments created by the Eurozone crisis are allowed to stiffen. Europe will have to reinvent itself. Unfortunately, there are no classicists in government and few Greeks working on that.

Dealing with Putin

The results of the Russian Presidential Election had barely begun when a victory party in honour of Vladimir Putin began in Moscow. Those who had predicted that the margin would be relatively comfortable – around 59% on current results – were proved correct. Omens were seen in the reshuffling of Vladislav Surkov out of the Kremlin; Surkov, it was believed, had argued that Putin needed to limit the extent of his support to something like 53% to be seen as credible amongst those wavering on whether to join the protest movement.

Accusations of vote-rigging have already been levelled. In some areas, such as Dagestan or Chechneya, which will grant Putin Saddam Hussein-like levels of support, evidence is hardly needed. The West will feel the need to query the results, but in the absence of internal pressure on the Kremlin (i.e. one of the major candidates calling for a re-run, supported by large public demonstrations), that will blow over.

Nonetheless, the West will have to make some big calls over the next couple of years, which will undoubtedly impact on its relationship with Putin. Here are some of them:

1. Does the US proceed to repeal the Jackson Vanik agreement? The arguments against repeal and for a specific exemption are well made here, yet it is hard to see how the amendment can apply to today’s Russia, or to two countries in the World Trade Organisation.
2. How does the WTO relationship pan out? Russia’s accession to the WTO theoretically makes it more difficult for Russia to adopt preferential trade agreements with favourite partners, or to block imports from neighbours like Ukraine or Georgia, but the Kremlin will undoubtedly lean on the US and EU to prevent this.
3. Does the EU push through the liberalisation of the European gas trade? This article highlights the problems that Gazprom’s fixed term contracts are causing EU members. Might this be a moment when the EU finds a common position on Russia?
4. The autumn of 2012 is likely to see Britain open an inquest into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, opening a barely healed sore. The Kremlin refuses to extradite the suspects, so how far does Britain go? Sanctions are plausible, but are likely to be restricted to travel visas for certain officials to begin with. If that doesn’t solve anything (and it probably won’t), where do you go from there?
5. Does the EU press ahead with a or the US expand its Magnitsky List of sanctions?
6. Do the EU and/or US ratchet up the pressure on Russia over Iran and Syria? Russia is unlikely to want to ditch its allies, while the West is becoming increasingly anxious in both cases. Will Vladimir Putin take diplomatic urgency as an affront or an expample of Western ‘colonialism’ as he has recently accused Britain of pursuing?
7. Does the EU start to bring sanctions on Ukraine if the 2012 elections are described as undemocratic? Putin has not treated Viktor Yanukovych as an important strategic ally, but neither will he want to see the West weakening a country that many in Russia see as essentially Russian and/or a bulwark against the advance of NATO and the EU.
8. How does the US manage the Reset? The geopolitical pressures that existed in George W. Bush’s time no longer exist, while both Russia and the US appear to have benefitted from the Reset between Obama and Medvedev. The Reset could easily survive, if limited to arms control, but as a principle, bilateralism is difficult with Putin. Wilfully threatening at his worst and dependent on anti-Americanism to sustain his electoral machine, the advantages that Medvedev sought from Washington will not benefit Putin, who will instead have to face the goading of John McCain and potentially a Republican Senate.

Vaclav Havel

It was extraordinary the degree to which everything ultimately revolved around this one man. In almost all the Forum’s major decisions and statements he was the final arbiter, the one person who could somehow balance the very different tendencies and interests in the movement. In this sense, as in Solidarity, many decisions were not made democratically. Yet a less authoritarian personality than Havel it would be hard to imagine.

Timothy Garton Ash

Having learned all those lessons, we should all fight together against arrogant words and keep a weather eye out for any insidious germs of arrogance in words that are seemingly humble.

Obviously this is not just a linguistic task. Responsibility for and toward words is a task which is intrinsically ethical.

Vaclav Havel

The revolutions that broke out across Central and Eastern Europe in the winter of 1989 and afterwards were similar in style and unique in content. Everywhere, economic decline, the absence of Soviet military force and popular protest caused governments to panic and the true face of communism to be seen, discussed and disavowed.

Yet each nation brought its own characteristics and created its own figureheads. Germany’s revolution was determined by the flood of migrants through the Berlin Wall and Helmut Kohl’s call for reunification, Hungary’s by the assistance of Austria’s embassy – two practically dissolved marriages back on track, however briefly. Poland was wrenched away from the USSR by a trade union movement and two months of round table negotiations, led by the garrulous shop steward Lech Walesa. Ukraine came into being surprisingly, practically at the whim of corrupt Leonid Kuchma and the new, chaotic Romania was sired by the mob that dragged Ceausescu from his palace and executed him.

Czechoslovakia rode an idiosyncratic wave. The last of the major revolutions of 1989, it was also the most intellectually charged. The last major moment of optimist, the Prague Spring, had taken place in 1968, when much of the world was convulsed by protest movements and existentialism was at its height. In 1977 the arrest of the psychedelic rock band Plastic People of the Universe were arrested led to the artist’s manifesto Charter 77 and in 1989 it was the students again, who in protesting against the regime were given the first bloody nose but continued to go out onto the streets and march.

For Vaclav Havel to emerge as the nucleus of this movement still took a leap of imagination, as Nelson Mandela’s centrality to the end of apartheid was surprising after his many years of imprisonment. Havel had a little of Mandela’s personal charisma, had authored not only Charter 77 but other essays that drew attention to the regime’s true nature and had been to jail twice for his beliefs. Yet only the Czechoslovakians would look to so peculiar a man to coordinate their negotiations with the regime and become their first post-communist president.

Havel’s contribution to 1989 survives in his literature, which will be amply discussed in the wake of his death. His later political career is more complex, but equally interesting in many ways. Havel himself would admit that he was hardly a political man by nature, and by an large he left domestic policy to his long-time Premier, Vaclav Klaus, whose keen Thatcherism he nonetheless disagreed with.

There was always a difficulty in telling whether Havel was an especially serious or playful President. He would lecture audiences on the meaning of truth and openly voice self-doubt. Yet his writer’s eye and sense of spectacle were also a part of the new Czech Republic. The guards wore new uniforms, designed by the costumes man from the film Amadeus. Most amusingly, when Havel had a set of mysteriously locked doors in the Prague castle busted open, they found a full communications suite, which he used mischievously to send a New Year’s Greeting to Gorbachev in Moscow.

External relations were Havel’s specialty, which he mastered in his own unique way. It is now easy to see the extension of NATO and the enlargement of the EU as a natural result of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, but Havel played his part in both, winning over a cautious Bill Clinton (with the help of a Lou Reed concert), and in coalition with the heads of Poland, Hungary and Slovakia (the Visegrád group), successfully pounding on the doors of Europe. His celebrity made introductions easy, but he was a shrewd and influential player in European history. Oh, and he convinced Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to pay for new chandeliers on Castle Hill.

Much of the eulogising that has accompanied the news of Vaclav Havel’s death would have embarrassed the playwright dissident, just as the constant acclaim of high office embarrassed him on a frequent basis. Just a few months after becoming the President of Czechoslovakia, as it then was, Havel told an audience that “The lower I am, the more proper my place seems; and the higher I am the stronger my suspicion is that there has been some mistake.” To the surprise of many, Havel made good on his promise to go back to the theatre and writing after leaving office.

Havel may have stood for a romantic notion of Europe, as some have insinuated. He certainly sought to promote democracy and freedom as a necessary part of the human condition, in thought and deed. Thanks to Havel and at his invitation, Radio Free Europe moved East, to Wenceslas Square. If he was criticised late in his second term for siding with George W. Bush over Iraq, he might have pointed out that non-alignment was a luxury that his part of Europe did not have. His closeness to the Euro-Atlantic alliance, as well as his celebrity, ensured that security in Europe remained a pressing concern, and not merely a token element of complacent speeches.

An artist who exceeds his welcome can be reviled more than an artist who was never popular in the first place. Vaclav Havel never became a figure of contempt like Yeltsin, was never trounced in an election like Walesa or Gorbachev, and for all the worthy eulogies, was and is genuinely missed in Europe.

Reports from the Warsaw Summit

The immediate aftermath of the second Eastern Partnership summit brought several different conclusions. The joint statement itself was a bland and uninspiring read. In true EU style, it read as though it was deliberately drafted so that you couldn’t get a story out of it if you rearranged all of the words in a completely different order. The view of the Swedish foreign minister, one of the most hawkish participants when it comes to human rights and the Eastern Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) sounded similarly unconvincing;

Overall, the assessment the day after is that the Eastern Partnership Summit in Warsaw was a success. Reinforced our commitment to region.—
Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) October 01, 2011

Others, less compromised, were also less inhibited. EurActive, a news website, described the summit as a diplomatic fiasco, inspired partly by the Polish opposition Law and Justice Party’s attacks on its government, currently conducting the EU Presidency.

The fiasco was two-fold. Firstly, no major announcement was made that could revitalise process that looks increasingly stalled in the wake of criticism of the Ukrainian government’s attitude to human rights and the rule of law. Secondly, an attempt to turn the boycott of the Belarussian government over criticism of their own human rights abuses to the organisers advantage failed to grab the imagination of the five countries that did turn up to negotiate enhanced relationships with the EU.

Few had very high hopes for the summit. Angela Merkel was one of two heads of government in attendance (including Donald Tusk of Poland who had little choice – in 2009, Merkel was the only premier to turn up and Germany undoes much of its good work in this regard by its close relations and bilateral energy dealings with Russia). However, Nick Clegg announced himself with a strongly-worded speech and this was to be a priority for the ambitious Polish EU Presidency.

Several problems with the ENP present themselves. The first is that the countries applying for what they ultimately hope will be an accession process are constrained by forces Europe hardly feels. Ukraine’s trial of Yulia Tymoshenko, which so exercises Western politicians (rightly) cannot be dropped while the Ukrainian government seek to renegotiate with Russia the basis of the gas deal for which she is being prosecuted. Many have similar experiences of corruption, subsidies that need to be reformed and uncomfortable domestic politics that are not as soluble as the EU would like to think.

The ENP is probably also underfunded; although the summit announced that the European Partnership would have a budget of €1.9bn, the €22m contribution towards building civil society and democratic movements has to be spread six ways. There is no politician in Europe today of sufficient clout or great internal need to subvert due process as has been done in so many cases in the past (Britain’s rebate, German Reunification, the Euro and the Schengen Treaty all spring to mind). Nonetheless, the importance of a westerly partner of strength and access to markets matters to the borderlands between Europe and Russia.

The major problem with the ENP is that it seeks to advance on a confessional basis. The Accession of 2004 followed economic ‘shock therapy’ and Serbia has moved rapidly along the road since the arrest of Ratklo Mladic earlier this year.

The Warsaw Summit attempted to make Belarus the sacrificial lamb by attempting to coerce the five attending parties to sign a declaration ostracising the Lukashenko regime. Admirable as this hard approach to Europe’s last dictator is, the governments of Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia objected on the basis that this was somewhat irrelevant to the task at hand and amounted to bullying. On the former count, they had a point, though there is no doubt that they would have helped their cause by putting aside any concerns on the latter.

Calls in the wake of the summit for a more bilateral process (as opposed to trying to fit six very differently shaped countries into an inflexible process) have some merit – but they also fail to acknowledge that these negotiations are labour intensive at a time when the EU has to agree a new budget, an entirely new mechanism for dealing with sovereign debt crises and the potential admission of eight new members at a time of enlargement fatigue.

Those who say that baby steps toward visa liberalisation will advance the Eastern Partnership are not entirely wrong, but they are misguided if they think that these countries are ripe to be harvested. EU enlargement is entering its most difficult phase and much will depend on direction that Russia takes when Putin returns to office. This part of the world is not recovering from the financial crisis in a steady fashion and human rights are imperilled. That is why Poland has staked so much on these negotiations when it usually takes a hard line on human rights in the East.

Much like the response to the Eurozone crisis, the Warsaw Summit is not exactly a step backwards. On the other hand, the EU does not appear to be keeping pace. With Tymoshenko expected to be given a sentence of seven years next week, it is difficult to see the momentum continuing.

So Long, Blairwell

Memories of the Blair Administration; Tony’s Ten Years, by Adam Boulton

For a very brief two years, Tony Blair was almost forgotten in Britain. Gordon Brown’s premiership was the dominant political story and Blair was away from the daily accountability to the media that British politics make unavoidable. Suddenly, Blair’s bid for the EU Presidency and the apparent fatality of Labour’s fourth term have put Blair in the spotlight. The Sky News anchor, Adam Boulton, hasn’t taken his eye off the story, so that his account, though it certainly isn’t the first, and surely won’t be the last, is timely.

Boulton structures his narrative around the ‘Blairwell tour’ – the Prime Minister’s attempt to highlight his own achievements through a departure schedule of speeches, meetings and summits. Unlike most of the public, Boulton was relatively admiring of the Blair’s victory lap. They had been on a long journey together, as the comely title suggests, and Blair had dominated the political scene in a way that did not just play to his strengths as Thatcher had, but had constantly disorientated the opposition.

Moreoever, as Boulton clearly feels, the exit was classic Blair. In a typical display of imperviousness, the Prime Minister shrugged off the constraints that he had placed on himself, and in turn had been enforced on him by backbench rebellions. Further, he did so in a way that genuinely cemented a policy agenda; securing a deal on the EU budget to unfreeze France’s Common Agricultural Policy; keeping troops in Iraq to complement the US surge, and ensuring that Public Finance Initiatives (PFIs) and Academies continued to revolutionise the delivery of public health and education.

The story was, and still is, unfinished. Blair is a Statesman without a State, behind him so many wasted years and the wish he had gone further, and in front of him nothing certain – two well-intentioned foundations, a fragile international role and a reputation that is still to be secured. Boulton gives the impression that Blair is closer to where his instincts are, but pet projects are no substitute for achievement for a man who has held executive office.

A History Yet To Be Written

Boulton is hardly one-sided, but the EU Presidency affair has shown the limits of Blair’s powers. There are a whole host of questions still to be asked of Blair’s career, most of which Boulton serves to highlight, rather than answer.

First, what was the ultimate effect of Blair’s announcement that he would not seek a fourth term? Clearly, it put the third term constantly on edge, and much as commentators have tried to resolve the issue, it has never quite been answered.

Secondly, there is a question over Blair’s style. Peter Hennessy is perhaps the foremost historian of British government today, but he has never studied beyond the wasted energies of the first term. Two things stand out from Boulton’s account. Blair was the most presidential of Prime Ministers. He disliked the legislature and sidelined the Cabinet, though he always kept it well-stocked in ‘Big Beasts’. But given the sheer amount of law that made it onto the statute book, was it really the case that New Labour governed poorly?

The answer may lie in Blair’s upper middle-class penchant for self-abasement, so brilliantly captured by the ‘Yo Blair!’ episode. What is no longer remembered is the more important part of the conversation – where Blair offered to sacrifice his credibility in the Middle East to give Condoleeza Rice the opportunity to make a deal. Blair sacrificed an awful lot in his ten years, and failed to cover his core base. Some commentators say Blair killed triangulation, others interpret his whole career in that fashion. Certainly, the last word has yet to be written about the ‘Third Way’.

Another question that seems particularly resonant today is the degree to which New Labour’s naivety impeded its efforts to govern, at least for the first term. Preparation for government has become increasingly crucial as ambitions and bureaucracy grows. New Labour were underprepared when they came to power, and promised more tangible objects than any government before. The result was a plausibility gap.

The other New Labour preoccupation was the media. Boulton is understandably keen to defend his side and in any case, he believes that it was Alistair Campbell’s one-man-war on the press that so discredited Blair.

Memories of the Blair Administration is unsurprisingly journalistic in style. That need not be an insult. As Timothy Garton Ash has observed, journalists and academics like to use each others professions as insults, but interesting facts need to be taken to their full conclusion. There is a lot of history still to be written about the Blair Administration, something that the Iraq War Inquiry is doing as we speak.

Man on Wire

David Miliband has had a mixed few years, and specifically, a mixed few weeks.  A few weeks ago he made a speech to the Labour conference (the graveyard slot) that most media described as unhinged, and that I heard one Labour member describe as brilliant.  This week he could be lauded as Europe’s saviour, or he could reverse the West’s recently improving but schizophrenic relationship with Russia.

Of all the decisions Gordon Brown has made in his short premiership, two stand out as almost uniquely successful.  Bringing Mandelson back into the Cabinet was one.  Elevating David Miliband to the foreign office was another. 

Miliband was the strongest candidate when Brown faced the prospect of a stalking horse after Blair’s departure.  When Brown’s premiership was on the rocks, it was to Miliband that first plotters, and then James Purnell turned to, as the last great hope.  Miliband betrayed both (persuaded by Mandelson to remain in the Cabinet), and as a result saved the government and condemned himself to be passed over for the Labour leadership.

But Miliband’s inertia within the Labour Party are only a part of the story of his decline.  As significant has been his confinement in the foreign office.  It is a position – perhaps the only one – that does not offer a weapon with which to consolidate support to use against Brown.  Instead, it offers one of the most difficult conundrums in British policy – one that can’t be solved by money, that offers no easy choices and no photo ops; how does Britain deal with Russia?

Miliband is an intellectual, not a conviction politician, which shows itself more in his Russian policy than in anything else.  This week, when Miliband should be making his pitch to be the EU High Representative of Foreign Affairs (the best way to restore his credibility in the Labour Party and ride out possible opposition), he has to walk the high-rope that is a diplomatic visit to Moscow.

Going, Miliband was optimistic.  On his Foreign Office blog he wrote,

“We don’t always see eye to eye with Russia, but we share the same global challenges and it is important that we work on them together.  And as we are both permanent members of the UN Security Council and members of the G8 and G20, there is a wide range of questions where, by working together, we really can make a difference.”

The implication is that Britain is giving up the passive resistance that has been the hallmark of Anglo-Russian relations.  Over the past three years, the Litvenenko affair, the British Council controversy and the Georgian war have been unprofitable.  It quickly became clear that Russia would not compromise, and that Europe did not have the unanimity to respond.

In recent weeks, Russian has shown some receptiveness to the American State Department’s re-setting initiative.  In return for the USA withdrawing its missile defence system, Russia made a vague statement on imposing sanctions on Iran.

I can only assume that Miliband’s visit is part of these developments.  However, it has hardly gone to plan.  The Litvenenko affair has been allowed to resurface, putting Miliband in an impossible bind. 

To be contrary, and go against the mood (very current, unsecure, but potentially powerful), or stand up for individual cases and abstract principles?  Either way, the issues are unavoidable.  Extending NATO or the EU to Russia’s borders could raise the chances of war (probably with Ukraine).  Too much emphasis on business means sacrificing the Russian civil society Miliband said he was keen to hear from to the dictates of the Kremlin.

Wittingly or not, Miliband’s visit has raised two uncomfortable debates at a time when they could least be afforded.  On the one hand, Labour faces a choice between a realist (dealing with the Russian government as is) or ethical (actively seeking to influence the internal balance) foreign policy.  Secondly, he raises the question of Europe’s approach.  Are European interests best served by trying to close the door on Russia, or by engaging with her?

The latter is the most immediate concern (the former is age-old, and still unresolved).  The Lisbon Treaty was designed to streamline European decision-making and maximise Europe’s collective influence.  The argument that Miliband seems likely to provoke could yet be good for Europe, but it is more likely to create divisions than to resolve them.  Britain will be seen as an awkward partner, or European countries simply will not be able to agree.

As for Miliband’s EU prospects?  They will not be helped, although Russia is not the most significant issue at stake.  Whether a diplomat can be an intellectual and still be effective is a serious question that was raised by Bill Clinton’s presidency.  Miliband may answer it.

The Blair Ultimatum

All the words needlessly spilt over this week’s controversy have turned up very few interesting arguments – either for or against – the prospect of Tony Blair becoming the first EU president.  In fact, most have been very bad, and the obsession with a British perspective has only obstructed intelligent debate.  It doesn’t much matter that Blair is from Britain, even though we are at times out of step with some European initiatives, and even though the next British government may be even more Eurosceptic.  Neither should politics be so important.  I’ve heard it said that pressure for a centre-right candidate is behind Merkel’s reluctance.  But what is Blair, if not a Christian democrat? Frankly, both his ideology and his contacts are secondary to his profile and his abilities.

There are two things working against Blair.   One is an almost visceral dislike of him, more as a person than as a professional.  Take this ridiculous article from Jeff Randall;

‘Mr Blair is a fake, a charlatan, a shameless twister. He is not “a pretty straight sort of guy”. Who else would play down his faith lest it be seen as a vote-loser?’

Most accuse Blair of free-loading, or jumping on the EU gravy train, as Randall puts it.  This argument is patently absurd.  If Blair were to take a role in the EU he would inevitably sacrifice a far more significant portion of his current income than he could possibly gain directly from the job, as perhaps the one decent article on the subject has made clear.  For a start, there’s the £2m annual salary from JP Morgan.  Then there’s the speaking engagements and consultancies.  Money has nothing to do with it.

Personal attacks are not rare in politics, but the only worthwhile ones concentrate on a candidate’s suitability for the role.  No one opposed to a Blair presidency has yet faced up to the question of how effective he would actually be.  Some views, admittedly, are based on his actions in office, but almost exclusively examples have little or no relation to the job that he would actually be doing.

This leads me nicely to the second argument against Blair, that he would be divisive.  It is ridiculous that Iraq is still so contentious, especially amongst European socialists, six and a half years after the event.  Blair’s pro-European endeavours – common defence, the social chapter, pro-active engagement – have all been forgotten.  And in a sense, joint military engagement has now been so decisively removed from the agenda that it should be easier to ignore the elephant in the room than it actually appears.

Blair is a natural diplomat.  His engagement with the gritty details in Palestine will only have added to his natural charm.  He managed the transition in British diplomacy from Clinton to Bush effortlessly, so the argument that his appointment might send a hostile signal to Obama is nonsensical.

The trouble is that Iraq exposed how disunited Europe really was, and the concern is that too vigorous a president might do so again.  The question then, is really about the kind of president Europe wants.  There has been some discussion about the two possible ways this could turn out. 

The bureaucrat would chair summits and make sure that the EU was well-administered.  There is no denying that Blair would be unsuitable for this role, and yet the right-wing critics, who seem the most vociferous in this country at least, would be ill-served by this model.  It would almost certainly mean more European government, and the status-quo, including the Common Agricultural Policy.

Blair is suited to the second model.  The virtue of his candidacy is that he could be a diplomat, without being diplomatic.  He would effectively represent the EU outside of its borders, but would also offer initiative.  Critics of his government have often said that there were too many initiatives, but it is a style that would suit the needs of the EU, where balancing interests is a pre-eminent concern.  Inevitably, it would involve banging heads together, but Blair has the right instincts on climate change, aid, and dare I say it, the Middle East to make Europe a big player.

Very few people inside the EU have yet gone on the record about Blair’s chances.  The latest is that Sarkozy and Merkel, who were very keen, are now holding back their support.  Momentum is important in decisions like these, but there is no explicit campaign, so the wider concerns have their place too.  These might still sway the decision-makers.

Still, I find it peculiar that, as the BBC is reporting, a three-man panel is in place to decide.  Bigger names will surely have a proportionate say, but the doubts of one of that panel, the Austrian Chancellor Werner Fayman, put Blair at a disadvantage.

Belatedly and exceptionally, some reasonable articles about Blair from The Economist’s David Rennie;

Blair – a moderate

The politics and the disappointment

The Sphinx’s Gaze

The New Cold War; How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West, by Edward Lucas (2008)

Dead, but not forgotten

A friend of mine once ended an essay thus; ‘China is scary.’  Mr Lucas is an Economist journalist, so slightly more hardened to scary governments, but he is also scared.  There is a difference between China and Russia.  The former’s ascent is based on a projection of responsibility – since its economic domination is theoretically inevitable, the Chinese will do nothing to wreck it.  Russia’s world view, on the other hand, is a direct challenge to Western values, backed by a clan of KGB/FSB officials brought to power in the 2000 coup which has almost entirely reversed The Gorbachev Factor, as described so well by Archie Brown.   

Mr Lucas’ book is timely, and as much so today as when it was published.  Last year Russia went to war with Georgia over two separatist regions (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), which it claims are part of the Russian state by right.  This summer the threatening noises have been directed at Ukraine.  To be accused of feeding Georgian militias is not quite as serious as having territory threatened with annexation or ‘liberation,’ but it could barely be closer.  

Behind the doors of the Kremlin immense power is exerted by an ideology Mr Lucas refers to as ‘Sovereign Democracy.’  Taking its inspiration from the disastrous history of the 1990s, sovereign democracy replaces Marxist-Leninism as the justification for extreme centralisation (sovereignty, in place of democracy effectively) with a selective view of history, patriotism and a corrupt deal with the Orthodox Church.  The historical issue is more important than one might think, since Western countries are often ambivalent, if not self-debasing about their own.  In Russia, only ‘positive’ history is taught in schools.  Stalin is revered.  The Nazi-Soviet pact, regrettable though it might be, says Putin, is the legal basis for Russia’s intimidation and envisaged annexation of the Baltic states.

The Russian position is based on a state monopoly on oil and in particular, gas distribution.  Subsidised fuel, though wasted to an astonishing degree has been responsible for the rise in living standards in Russia itself (the proportion of those in poverty has declined from 1/3 of the population to 1/6).  With the Kremlin’s political position therefore secure, it has begun to exert itself in foreign policy.  Gas (the investment in and export of) is both the incentive for the West to be complicit in Russia’s current political state, and the weapon it most often uses to sanction its opponents – especially the former USSR states.

The threat Russia poses is so persuasive because its leaders are so confident and yet, they have no real reason to be.  After 2020, Gazprom will struggle to supply the Russian market, let alone the West.  Russia’s protests about the American plans to build missile defence systems are ludicrous.  Not only are the missiles reactive to Iran, they couldn’t stop a serious-minded Russian attack if there were ten times the number (10).  Most importantly in the long run, Russia is in demographic decline as a result of its ludicrously high death rate.  And yet, Russia has Europe and America on the back foot.  That is what makes the prospect of a risk-taking Kremlin so worrying.

The only person who comes out of The New Cold War with any nobility is Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor.  Perhaps because of her East German background, she alone has refused to do bilateral deals with Russia.  This responsible approach earns her laurels from Mr Lucas, especially in light of her odious predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder.  Indeed, Germany’s current attitude is all the more laudable because it has so long been grateful for the ease with which reunification was allowed.  Nonetheless, the West has shown enough gratitude, and must now begin to look at Russia for what it really is.  

Mr Lucas rather lets himself down by launching into talk of principles in his conclusion.  However, there is a practical response available.  Mr Lucas concludes that the EU must unite around a common security policy, make common cause with those countries on Russia’s borders who are increasingly threatened by the behemoth.  One of the more controversial suggestions Mr Lucas makes is to abandon the UN as a forum for dealing with Russia because the veto system will make stalling inevitable and protracted.  Then again, liberal internationalism is a two-way deal and Russia is dangerously obsessed with doing business on its own terms.

Change within Russia, signs of which were once eagerly sought at the beginning of this recession, looks unlikely.  Putin’s government, fronted by Dmitri Medvedev is popular and increasingly bold.  Pretences are being dropped – the war with Georgia, but also Russia’s discontinuation of the WTO talks being two good indicators. Russia is unpredictable, the more so from a viewpoint as rational as Mr Lucas’.  The business of Russia is still business, but the stability of the nation (and therefore the security of Putin’s party) is also a prime determinant of policy.  Essentially, unless Europe can bring down an iron curtain of sorts, further East than the last, of course, we are at the mercy of the siloviki.  Now, that is scary.

War is still much revered

This excerpt was quoted in Mr Lucas’ book, and backs up his conclusions pretty well.

Russia is a Spinx.  Rejoicing, grieving,

And drenched in black blood,

It gazes, gazes, gazes at you,

With hatred and with love!

Aleksandr Blok, The Scythians