Nosemonkey's EUtopia

October 28, 2008
by Nosemonkey
6 Comments

Mandelson and EU openness

Yes, I’ve gone quiet again of late. Sorry. Illness and work have conspired to make me feel like poo.

Still, an interesting tidbit from the whole “did Peter Mandelson get up to anything dodgy with Russian oligarchs?” thing that’s been knocking around for the last week or so, from the invaluable Unspeak:

So as to head off any suggestion of impropriety, the Telegraph has been asking the EU for the records of all Mandelson’s meetings with Deripaska while the former was trade commissioner. The EU’s response is not exactly helpful…

It all comes down to the definition of what is a “document” according to EU regulation 1049/2001. Exciting, eh? Nonetheless, it’s well worth reading the whole thing. This kind of obfuscation and obstructionism isn’t unique to the EU, of course – but by god, Brussels doesn’t do these things by half…

(This sort of thing, you’ll be unsurprised to learn, is the reason that the EU receives so little press coverage – working out precisely what its rules and regulations are is one of the most tedious things imaginable, and even if you do happen to have a journalist or blogger determined enough to manage to track it down before the news cycle has moved on, you’re then stuck with all kinds of petty squabbles over terminology. It’s fairly surprising that any EU news ever gets out, in fact…)

In any case, this all follows rather neatly from recent responses from GrahnLaw, Julien Frisch and Re: Europa to a Statewatch paper suggesting methods to achieve “greater openness, transparency and democracy in the EU” (WARNING – PDF). Worth a look – because I doubt there’s an EU-watcher out there who wouldn’t wish for more of all three.

My plea to the European Union thoughout my five and a half years of trying to blog about it remains the same as it ever was: Please, please stop being so boring and incomprehensible. Pretty please?

October 23, 2008
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

90th anniversary of the end of WWI

It’s looming – and from today it’s apparently officially acceptable to wear a poppy.

No longer are the Remembrance Sunday parades packed out with survivors of the Somme, even veterans from the Second World War are getting rarer by the day, and the curmudgeon in all of us feels like asking if anyone remembers why they bothered seeing the state of the world today.

But none of that matters. And no, it doesn’t matter if you opposed the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan either. Donate. Though none of us can ever understand, we must remember.

Poppy field

October 20, 2008
by Nosemonkey
11 Comments

The constitutional position of European Commissioners

Today sees Britain’s new European Commissioner, Baroness Ashton, appear before the European Parliament. You never know – something interesting might crop up. Her answers to the usual written questions can be found here. Not much to get excited about, though the anti-EU crowd will no doubt leap on her first justification for her appointment:

“As Leader of the House of Lords, I steered the Lisbon Treaty through that House.”

Perhaps more interesting is a different constitutional issue – that of whether life peer Ashton can be fully independent in her new role – as raised by Jon Worth. Be warned, this one may go on a bit, and I doubt there’ll be many definite answers…

Two swords It is, in short, the age-old problem of whether it’s possible to serve two masters – a dispute that’s been ongoing ever since medieval times when increasingly powerful monarchs began to object to the authority of the Papacy, first properly expressed by Pope Gelasius back in 494 in what has come to be known as two swords theory. How can one swear an oath of allegiance to both Pope and monarch? What happens when they come into dispute? This was the very problem – well, part of a larger, more complex problem – that caused England’s break from Rome back in the reign of Henry VIII, the bitter Investiture Controversy during the time of Pope Gregory VII, and countless other spats down the years.

Currently, European Commissioners have to take an oath (PDF) that includes the following:

“I do solemnly undertake: to be completely independent in the performance of my duties, in the general interest of the Communities; in the performance of these duties, neither to seek nor to take instructions from any government or from any other body”

Is this compatible with Ashton’s oath of allegiance to the Queen, sworn on taking up her seat in the House of Lords? Ashton seems to think it’s not a problem:

“For the term of my mandate as Commissioner I have taken leave of absence from the Lords. This means in practice that, although I retain my title, I would not attend the House of Lords, nor take part in votes, give speeches there, or draw any allowances during the period of my mandate.”

All well and good – as according to the Code of Conduct for European Commissioners (PDF), “Commissioners may hold honorary, unpaid posts in political, cultural, artistic or charitable foundations”. But it doesn’t quite answer the question. Can you hold allegiance to the Queen while being “completely independent”?

As life peers who become MEPs have to give up their peerages (something Ashton claims she is unable to do), surely the same should apply to Commissioners – not least because they are explicitly supposed to be acting for the good of the whole of the EU, not just their respective countries. It’s an ongoing problem for British politicians, almost all of whom – if they end up sent to the Commission – will have taken not just the oath of allegiance, but the far more explicit oath sworn by members of the Privy Council (PDF):

“You will to your uttermost bear Faith and Allegiance to the Queen’s Majesty; and will assist and defend all civil and temporal Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities, granted to Her Majesty and annexed to the Crown by Acts of Parliament, or otherwise, against all Foreign Princes, Persons, Prelates, States, or Potentates.”

It’s hard not to see this as incompatible with the Commissioners’ oath to be independent and act “in the interest of the communities” – so little wonder UKIP’s Nigel Farrage raised the point on Peter Mandelson’s appointment to the Commission four years ago.

The question of where a European Commissioner’s loyalties lie is a vital one – especially with the ongoing moves to reduce their number, so that not all member states will have a Commissioner of their own nationality. Is Ashton’s first allegiance to the Queen, or to the European Union? It’s not hard to see how anti-EU types could start to ask how can she defend Her Majesty’s “temporal Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities” while working for an organisation that pushes for a pooling of national powers. But turn that around – how can pro-EU types not ask how someone who’s taken an oath to defend national powers can work for the good of the Union? It’s not like it would be hard to pass a quick statutory instrument to absolve British Commissioners from their previous oaths for the duration of their terms. So why haven’t we?

Is the Privy Council oath meaningless? And if so, why does that organisation remain part of the governance of Britain? Or is the oath the Commissioners take meaningless? And if so what does this say about the role of the Commission? Where do Commissioners’ loyalties lie – with the EU, or with their home nations? Because if it’s the latter, the Commission is incapable of fulfilling its allotted task.

October 16, 2008
by Nosemonkey
6 Comments

EU democracy from an unlikely source

And from the most unlikely of sources – Britain’s leading terrestrial commercial television channel ITV. The self-same ITV that’s been kicking up a fuss over it’s obligation to provide “public service” programmes for the last year or more.

So, following Euronews, EUX.TV and the European Parliament’s own EuroparlTV, we now get a version aimed exclusively at the UK, aiming to promote knowledge and understanding of the EU and MEPs in the run-up to next year’s European Parliament elections: ITV Local’s MyEurope.

It may suffer from the perennial problem of these sorts of attempts to make the EU accessible (namely misguided efforts to target younger audiences via “trendy” music and over-excitable presenters), the promised Video profiles of MEPs are currently missing (at least for London), and their links section fails to mention this place or Fistful under EU blogs while finding time for the long-defunct Voice of Europe and a blog I’ve never heard of with barely any EU coverage, but still – who’d have thought it? A UK-focussed initiative to increase knowledge of EU affairs and encourage participation in EU democracy launched by a commercial organisation that’s previously shown barely a smidgeon of interest in Brussels. Whatever next?

Note to ITV – if you want a hand sorting out some of the niggles and expanding some of the written content, get in touch. I offer competitive rates and I’m fairly certain that a certain Mr Worth may be able to help you and all…

Still, MyEurope – a good initiative. MEPs have long been some of the least well-known of all public servants in the UK, an it’s long overdue that they were made a bit more accessible. Hopefully this should help.

October 14, 2008
by Nosemonkey
6 Comments

Italian racism – not just against Roma

After the worrying moves against Italy’s Roma population back in the summer, it seems that racial tensions are on the rise Italy-wide. After all, if the state’s going to sanction the persecution of one ethnic minority, why not start having a crack at the rest? In times of growing economic hardship (and it’s not like Italy’s economy’s been doing too well in the last few years anyway), finding scapegoats is always popular. And so:

In recent weeks, a Ghanaian man, Emmanuel Bonsu Foster, 22, was injured in Parma in a scuffle with the police; a Chinese man, Tong Hongsheng, 36, was beaten by a group of boys in a rough neighborhood in Rome; and a Somali woman, Amina Sheikh Said, 51, said she was strip-searched and interrogated for hours at Ciampino Airport in Rome. Last month, six African immigrants were gunned down in Castel Volturno, a stronghold of the Neapolitan Mafia…

Last week, Parliament debated whether Italy was facing what newspaper headlines referred to as a “racism emergency.”

Now that the governments of Europe seem to have decided to act in tandem to stem the credit crisis (joined around the world by countries from Japan to Brazil), the economic nationalism of the 1930s that did so much to exacerbate the Great Depression seems not even to be an option this time around. Could this in turn prevent a rise in the less savoury, more personal forms of localist resentment that caused so much trouble 70 years ago? Or is Italy, just as it became the first fascist country back in the 1920s, leading the way once again? If the current economic crisis doesn’t sort itself out soon, will such attacks against “foreigners” become more common throughout Europe? It’s not like there’s not already a sizable fear and resentment of foreigners knocking around…*

* See, for example, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights‘ Annual Report for 2007 (PDF), noting a general upward trend in racist attacks EU-wide. Some of this is certainly due to increased awareness and greater levels of reporting and recording over the last decade or so, but still.

October 8, 2008
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

The Great Depression: A reminder amid the ever-increasing hyperbole

“about a quarter of the entire population, some 30 million Americans, were without any income at all. Two million vagrants… roamed the country looking for work. Twenty per cent of the nation’s school children were under-weight; in the poorest communities… over 90 per cent were affected… Bread lines stretched under choking grain elevators. Malnutrition and associated diseases like rickets and pellagra were commonplace… there were cases of starvation.

“Half Chicago’s working population… were idle… In Detroit… two thirds of the population were either out of work or on short time… In Kentucky miners ate wild greens, violet tops, forget-me-nots and ‘such weeds as cows eat’. In Pennsylvania they devoured roots and dandelions… Others consumed leftovers from restaurants, as recommended by Secretary of War Patrick Hurley. In Kansas farmers burned wheat to keep warm… In Washington lumberjacks started forest fires to earn money fighting them. In Arkansas families lived in caves… Nearly 30 states established systems of barter and in Washington State stores issued and accepted wooden currency…

“In Trieste women kept alive by eating pigeons which their children killed with stones. Peasants in Lucania lived almost exclusively on bread…

“Tax payers revolted in Burgundy, Normandy and Languedoc… Students clashed with gendarmes on the left Bank. In Chartres farmers and peasants, some carrying pitchforks, attacked the Prefect and engaged in running battles with the police…

“In Lancashire… so many mills went out of business that the smut wore off buildings: to the amazement of its inhabitants, Blackburn began to look clean. Former mill-owners were reduced to picking up cigarette ends in the street.”

From Piers Brendon’s The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s

October 6, 2008
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

The credit crunch and the EU

It’s fairly apparent that even the experts haven’t had the first clue what they were doing over the last few years (“yeah, let’s lend money to someone who’s got no hope of paying us back – that’s a good idea!”), and the last few weeks have only gone to show that all predictions of where this is all going have so far been wrong. As such, my opinion about where the current financial situation is heading is probably just as valid as the CEO of some FTSE-listed financial institution or some economic genius sitting in a plush office in Wall Street or Whitehall.

The thing is, though, that unlike these finance types who have to bluff through, I know when I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m not arrogant enough to think that my musings on the current economic outlook are likely to impact on the markets (unlike those of similarly ill-informed journalists in the mainstream press whose guesswork scribblings can have severe real-world consequences), but still. If you can’t say anything sensible, it’s best not to say anything at all.

Nonetheless, with Germany following Ireland in (apparently) guaranteeing all bank savings, creating in turn the potential for a vast influx of deposits to German banks by Europeans desperate to protect their savings (who are well aware that the German government’s more likely to be able to keep the promise than the Irish), and with various EU member states getting a little bit miffed with both Germany and Ireland because of this, one prediction can be made: by the time the economy recovers, there will be ever more pressure for serious EU reform.

This whole episode is already going to prove that a single currency simply isn’t enough, that the levels of integration that the EU has so far achieved are simply not enough, that when it comes to the (credit) crunch, we all still look out for number one first, and sod the rest of the continent. Some may even take it as a sign that the old hope that the EU can provide prosperity and insulate from hardship was a false one. It’s all far too early to say.

In a comment left today on an old post Peter makes similar points which are worth a look, also pointing to this halfway decent article from today’s Guardian, providing a useful continent-wide overview and going on to suggest similar possible outcomes.

The only thing that is certain is that no one knows where this is heading. Until we do, I’m going to try and refrain from adding to the reams of inaccurate guesswork. Hence the quietness here of late. Perhaps it’s time for a bit more history and culture again?

Update: More thoughts along the same lines from the BBC.

October 3, 2008
by Nosemonkey
4 Comments

Meet Britain’s new European Commissioner

Baroness Ashton. Ever heard of her? No? There’s a surprise. Her only qualification for the job seems to be that her full title is Baroness Ashton of Upholland – perhaps dear old Gordon assumed this meant she has something to do with the Netherlands?

Peter Mandelson may have been a discredited tit when he was appointed, but at least he was high-profile and quite blatantly had the ear of the Prime Minister. This dear peer? She may have been made Leader of the House of Lords last year, but she’s barely registered an impact on the public consciousness. She is, however, a staunch Labour loyalist, and the wife of similarly staunch Labour man, semi-influential journalist Peter Kellner, a co-founder of polling organisation YouGov.

Track record on Europe? Well, here are all her speeches mentioning the European Union in the last seven years. No doubt they’ll bear double-checking. From a brief skim through, all that’s stood out for me are the standard parrot phrases of a loyalist who’s memorised the talking points. Which seems to be precisely what Brown wants in Brussels – a bit of a no-mark who can make the right noises, but who hasn’t got much of a brain of their own.

Being harsh? Maybe. After all, one of her old jobs has technically had an EU element to it (along with several others, including the rather odd pairing of the National Archives and the Tribunals Service). But she was only in that post for a year, and the rest of her work history is decidedly of the parochial standard.

But it would, let’s face it, be entirely in keeping with Brown’s track record on UK-EU relations to chuck someone irrelevant and with little knowledge of the EU out to Brussels. He’s barely paid the EU a blind bit of notice since coming to power, and had precious little time for our EU cousins while Chancellor. Indeed, it’s largely down to Brown and his famous “five economic tests” that Blair wasn’t able to use Labour’s remarkable series of majorities over the last ten years to combat the rising euroscepticism of the British people. Those tests shot any pro-EU Labour drive in the foot before it even started through the simple question “So, Mr Blair, if the EU’s so great how come your Chancellor won’t let us join the single currency?”

Gordon Brown has, in other words, finally demonstrated his utter lack of interest in the EU. Hell, even Maggie Thatcher was more constructively engaged with Brussels than Gordon – and we’re in the middle of just the sort of trans-national economic crisis that the EU was in part set up to help counter. You’d be forgiven for imagining that Brown’s forgotten the EU’s existed – especially when it’s a big story that he’s going to deign an important EU crisis summit with his presence.

But hey – Ashton’s a woman! That’s, like, progressive and stuff! And it’s all the rage to appoint women no one’s ever heard of with little in the way of an appropriate CV to important political positions these days, it seems. Go Gordy! You’re with it, man!

I never thought I’d say it, but come back ex-Commissioner Peter Mandelson – all is forgiven. (Sorry, that should now be Lord Mandelson – yet another insanely stupid move on Brown’s part, albeit for entirely domestic reasons. I mean, bringing back someone who’s twice been forced to quit the Cabinet in disgrace and is hated by pretty much the entire country? And entirely unelected to boot? Seriously, Gordon? Do you WANT to lose the next election?)

Just when you thought a government couldn’t get any worse…

Update: Pertinent points from Jon Worth:

Mandelson was playing an important role in WTO negotiations, and Ashton will not be able to replicate Mandelson’s network of contacts, even if she has the opportunity to do so. For I can imagine that the French government is already on the phone to Barroso making sure someone else gets the Trade portfolio and Ashton gets allocated Multilingualism or something similar.

Agreed entirely. Meant to mention that. You can’t possibly have an unknown in as important a portfolio as Trade, no matter how big the member state. Brown’s just downsized Britain’s influence in Europe even further. Nice one, Gordon.

September 24, 2008
by Nosemonkey
9 Comments

In support of the freedom of speech of someone with whom I almost completely disagree

Of course, this is no doubt a lot more complicated than it appears at first glance, but nonetheless the apparent attempts to shut down UKIP press spokesman Gawain Towler’s long-running England Expects blog are to be heartily condemned. As the man himself says, it is his job – as the spokesman of a party that exists to attack and ridicule the EU – to, erm, attack and ridicule the EU.

He hasn’t (that I can recall) incited violence or hatred. He hasn’t (that I can recall) threatened anyone. He hasn’t (that I can recall) even leaked any particularly sensitive information (after all, how sensitive could it really be to find its way into the hands of UKIP’s press office?) So why try to shut him down? It’s hard not to see this as being some jobsbody official’s ill-considered plan to silence a source of irritation.

This is by no means a Hans-Martin Tillack, Marta Andreasen. But it does play into the hands of the EU’s critics in just the same way. If someone criticises you and your response is not to engage them in debate but to try to silence them, it is you, not they, who ends up looking bad.

Democracy is about discussion. It may be inconvenient to have to discuss things with parties like UKIP, but if they have been elected then you have no choice. This is what democracy is all about. (And yes, I have argued the same thing about fascists – more than once. UKIP may be many things, but they’re not fascists.)

The only way the EU is going to be able to build the kind of cross-continental demos that it needs is through fostering discussion and debate – and moves like this will do precisely the opposite.

September 22, 2008
by Nosemonkey
6 Comments

My faith in politics is restored

Absolutely hilarious (via):

“Of 40 people questioned, none could put names to photographs of all 23 Cabinet ministers. Only one managed to recognise more than half of them… A total of seven ministers – nearly a third of the Cabinet – went unrecognised by all surveyed… during a major economic crisis the Chancellor of the Exchequer was no more recognisable than Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary, who has been dead for three years.

“David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who faced rumours of a leadership challenge this summer, was recognised 13 times, but no fewer than three people thought he was Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats. “

I wonder what the success rate would be for photos of European Commissioners? I’d be amazed if anyone from pretty much any EU state got more than two or three right. Let’s find out – here they are. With no cheating by looking at the filenames or checking the Commission page, how many can you honestly put a name to? How many could you put a job to?

Who he? Who she? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he? Who he?

Go on, try to put a name to a face: Joaquín Almunia, José Manuel Barroso, Jacques Barrot, Joe Borg, Stavros Dimas, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Mariann Fischer Boel, Ján Figel, Dalia Grybauskaite, Danuta Hübner, Siim Kallas, Neelie Kroes, László Kovács, Meglena Kuneva, Markos Kyprianou, Peter Mandelson, Charlie McCreevy, Louis Michel, Leonard Orban, Andris Piebalgs, Janez Poto?nik, Viviane Reding, Olli Rehn, Vladimír Špidla, Antonio Tajani, Günter Verheugen, Margot Wallström

Despite readers of this blog being likely to be rather more knowledgable about EU affairs, I’d be surprised if many of you – if you’re honest – would be able to get more than ten right. For the rest of the population? Hell, I’d be pretty surprised if you end up with more than one in ten who’d be able to recognise Barroso…

Is this why EU debates tend to seem focussed more on the policies than the personalities? Has the EU managed to create politics without politicians?

September 17, 2008
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

EuroparlTV

It’s about time, but the European Parliament just got that little bit more accessible to us members of the great unwashed with today’s launch of EuroparlTV. With subtitles and voiceovers in 23 languages, initial impressions are good, though I can’t pretend to have played with it enough to have worked out the bugs as of yet.

It’s produced by the same company that are responsible for Sky TV’s braindead quiz Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old?, so they should know how simple these things need to be – nothing too fancy, nothing too complicated. Time will tell if their back-end is up to scratch, and whether the search function is intelligent enough to serve up the videos and information we need, but still – good effort (and props to blogging London Labour MEP Mary Honeyball for campaigning for something like this to come about

The reported annual budget of nine million euros is no doubt enough to get the anti-EU crowd up in arms, but considering the logistics of the thing and the general tendency towards massively inflated costs for governmental IT projects (the recent UK parliament redesign apparently setting us taxpayers back more than £3 million, and 10 Downing Street’s recent move to same free blogging software that runs this site setting us back £100k), that’s peanuts. And, though we’ll have to wait and see what the spin is and just how much unfiltered video will find its way online, though this may well be pro-EU propaganda (again, it’s too early to say for certain) it also can’t be denied that greater accessibility to information about the EU is good for all sides, pro or anti.

Sorry for the extended absence, by the way. Busy. Switzerland was aces, though, even if the weather was a little British:

Saint Saphorin, Switzerland

September 13, 2008
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

Off to Switzerland for the weekend

Expect little in the way of anything from me until Tuesday.

(If anyone’s interested, I’ll be staying in the canton of Vaud on the northern shore of Lake Geneva/Leman, to attend a wedding in the rather pretty-looking village of Saint Saphorin. I plan to spend much of the next few days very drunk indeed on the apparently rather pleasing local wine.)

September 12, 2008
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

The rise of new world order rhetoric and the current identity crisis

Two articles well worth a gander, both trying to work out the “new post-Cold War world order” that increasing numbers are identifying in the wake of the Georgia crisis, and slowly trying to define.

First up, from The Economist, this week’s Charlemagne:

Never has the European Union enjoyed such diplomatic prominence… Seen from Brussels, the Georgian crisis has exposed a tectonic shift in the global balance of power. It is not just that Russia is back. The crisis has also confirmed Europe’s sense of an America in relative decline…

A previous generation of EU leaders, such as Jacques Chirac or Gerhard Schröder, dreamt of a multipolar world, in which several powers would wield clout. Now something like it may have arrived. Yet today’s European leaders are not crowing. Talk to ministers and officials in private, and they admit that the new world order is making them anxious.

Next, a similar take from a more Russian perspective over at Eurozine:

The general mood in Moscow these days is that “Russia is up, America is down, and Europe is out. Russia, previously a Pluto in the Western solar system, has spun out of its orbit, powered by the determination to find its own system.”

…mutual suspicion, misperception, frustration, and paranoia are starting to determine the dynamics of the relationship between Russia and the European Union… In the eyes of the West, Russia has turned from a partner-in-the-making into an adversary-in-the-making. The mixture of mercantilism and messianism that is at the core of the Kremlin’s new foreign policy frightens Europe.

We’re in the midst of a new wave of historical revisionism, another period of reassessment of the shifts in world power following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is nothing new – Fukuyama’s The End of History was published way back in 1992, and has been repeatedly attacked pretty much from the day it appeared for its claims that Western liberal democracy had triumphed. What does appear to be a new trend, however, is the emphasis on the role the EU may play in this new analysis – largely because its potential is seen as so great, yet its current impact on world events perceived as so minimal.

The one thing that does seem agreed upon is that the hesitancy of the EU is one of its defining characteristics. While Russia and America are reverting to Cold War rhetoric and tit for tat retaliation (“You invade Georgia? We’ll invest vast amounts of money there.” ; “You site missile defence systems in eastern Europe? We’ll point nukes at you.” etc.), the EU is sitting back and prevaricating. Cunning strategy, or just the inevitable consequence of the EU’s ongoing inability to work out its path following the failure of Nice, the constitution and Lisbon?

The US, Russia and the EU are all passing through identity crises – the US finding it’s neither as loved nor as powerful as it once thought, Russia shaking off the embarrassment of defeat through a resurgent sense of national pride, the EU going round and round in circles through indecision and a lack of clear purpose. How they will resolve these, we will have to wait and see. One thing that does seem clear, however, is that our current decade will be written about and analysed for decades to come – the new century bringing not just the US shift of The War Against Terror but also the emergence of Putin in Russia and EU stagnation following the failure of the Treaty of Nice back in 2001, all three developments whose long-term impact has yet to be resolved, yet which could well be immense. We are living in interesting times.

September 11, 2008
by Nosemonkey
Comments Off on US response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia

US response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia

This will bear close analysis, even with the imminent change of regime in Washington. Running, as it does, to nearly 6,000 words, I don’t have the time just now, but will hopefully return to this on the morrow. For now, read for yourselves the statement made by the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (apparently from the 9th, though it has only just gone online):

Russia’s intensified pressure and provocations against Georgia – combined with a serious Georgian miscalculation – have resulted not only in armed conflict, but in an ongoing Russian attempt to dismember that country.

The causes of this conflict – particularly the dispute between Georgia and its breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – are complex, and all sides made mistakes and miscalculations. But key facts are clear: Russia sent its army across an internationally recognized boundary, to attempt to change by force the borders of a country with a democratically-elected government and, if possible, overthrow that government – not to relieve humanitarian pressures on Russian citizens, as it claimed.

This is the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union that Moscow has sent its military across an international frontier in such circumstances, and this is Moscow’s first attempt to change the borders that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union. This is a troubling and dangerous act.

Today I will seek to explain how we got here, how we’re responding, and the implications for our relationship with Russia.

Needless to say, any shift in American attitudes towards Moscow will have some significant implications for Europe. What those will be we shall have to wait and see over the coming months – November’s election is getting increasingly crucial for Europe. I’d been intending to avoid commenting on US politics, but perhaps it’s time to look in more detail at what we might expect from McCain and Obama when it comes to Europe – as it seems that their attitudes towards Russia are going to be crucial.