Blogoir

Craig Murray and I have a fleeting moment of agreement, rather like ships sailing in opposite directions who pass and exchange friendly waves.

He commented on my earlier piece about Libya and MI6, responding to another reader:

Your second point rests on the premiss that if government ministers approved something, then it was legal. That is simply not true. A previous government may have done something, and may even have briefed their successors about it. if it were illegal, nothing in that means it should not subsequently be the subject of criminal investigation. Theoretically, the current government has no role in either encouraging or stopping the criminal investigation - it is quite rightly a matter for the police and CPS.

However, a new development arises. Two Libyans are launching civil actions in the English courts against my old colleague and good friend Sir Mark Allen, over the circumstances under which they were subject to 'rendition' to Tripoli and subsequent abuse by the Gaddafi regime. The Guardian:

Saadi was detained in Hong Kong in 2004 and then forced on to a plane to Tripoli with his wife and four children in an operation that MI6 allegedly mounted in co-operation with Koussa, who was Gaddafi's intelligence chief at the time. Saadi says he suffered years of torture.

Belhaj was detained in Bangkok along with his pregnant wife after an MI6 tipoff and was allegedly tortured by American agents for several days before being flown to Tripoli, where he says he was tortured and detained for several years. His wife was detained for several months.

The issue here is not any claim that MI6/HMG engaged in torture. Rather it is that MI6/HMG are said to have been 'complicit' in torture in Libya of certain Libyans by certain other Libyans. Which raises the question: what does complicity mean?

Back in March 2010 in an earlier exchange with Craig I looked at precisely this question. Craig and other maximalists insist that even to possess information which is suspected as having come from torture amounts to 'complicity'. That position, as the House of Lords found in 2005, is incorrect as a matter of law (and common sense):

Very (very) broadly speaking, I conclude from this judgment that the the top legal body in the UK drew at least three important conclusions:

• That it may be acceptable for the state's executive authorities to receive/acquire and use information which they know or think may have been derived from torture, if they believe that there is a clear public interest in doing so (eg saving lives)
• But it is not acceptable for the judicial authorities (courts and tribunals) to hear and use such evidence in reaching conclusions directly affecting the rights of individuals
• If seemingly well-founded allegations are made that evidence has been or may have been produced by torture, the court/tribunal has to consider most carefully how to deal with that evidence, but is not bound to conduct an exhaustive investigation of the origin of the evidence to reach a final view as that would just not be possible

These conclusions do not apply directly to the current emerging case, namely where HMG allegedly took action leading to Libyans being returned to Libya where they say they ended up being mistreated.

The problem here is that any secret 'rendition' by us or even a contribution to secret rendition by others is likely to have been endorsed by Ministers, either specifically or as a general rule. So to single out one civil servant for litigation is mischievous if not malevolent.

Second, the whole case turns on the idea that 'complicity' can be stretched far beyond any immediate link to maltreatment. Any abuse or torture was not committed by HMG or its officials. Is it really fair to make us legally responsible for horrors committed by others far away?

Even if you think that it is reasonable to do so on the moral level, you need to draw a line somewhere and say that the actions alleged were too 'remote' to amount to complicity. Under what principle should the line be drawn in specific cases? What balancing factors should be taken into account?

What if our attempts to bring under control Gaddafi's WMD have hit the rocks and it looks like we need to make some 'minor' concessions to Gaddafi's entourage to get things restarted? How do we even begin to weigh up the possibility of abuse of two individuals with the possible dangers to millions if the WMD are not secured asap? 

This leads us back to the core policy dilemma, namely how to deal with wicked regimes? Thus:

Above all, if you engage with dirty people, how to avoid some of their dirt ending up on you? The promise of Engagement is that it offers the hope of slowly but surely changing things for the better; the danger is that while you are doing that, the key leaders of the regime in fact get far richer and learn how to be oppressive in new, cleverer ways.

So in the Libya case. The stupid/wicked/naive Brits trained the Libyan security forces! Of course we did: if you want to set in motion a process of reform and enlightenment in such regressive institutions, what else to do?

Think about what this means in practice. If the Libyan secret police are known torturers, you will be training them while their torturing ways continue. Even if the total amount of Libyan torture declines sharply as a direct result of Libyans cleaning up their act during the wider normalisation process, your trainers in one way or the other will be helping a torturing regime be more efficient.

Yet without outside democratic engagement (and the high-level civilisational rewards which rightly flow to the regime for behaving in a less extreme way) the chances of reducing Libyan torture at all (and thereby opening some small new space for opposition trends) are hugely reduced...

This nasty, bleak, lonely policy and moral frontier was where Mark Allen and his colleagues were operating. If the way is opened to sue them for outcomes which were far from ideal if not awful, who is going to be ready to do this sort of fundamentally important work?

The issue here is simple. Not what the 'right' choice is when you are dealing with a regime like Gaddafi's. There isn't one.

Rather it is 'who decides?'.

We seem to be ending up in the absurd position that sanctimonious lawyers and unelected judges far from the operational and policy realities of such questions are seen as more 'responsible' than elected politicians and civil servants who are elected to do our dirty work while operating to arguably the highest standards of public probity in human history.

Yes, judges have the benefit of detachment. And yes, Ministers and officials can get so wrapped up in what they are doing that serious errors get made. But this is one where the best people to judge are voters, not lawyers.

Long time no write. Somewhere between Writer's Block and despair at the surging stupidity seen in all directions. Plus nursing my aching ankle and visiting Liechtenstein on a new ADRg Ambassadors training expedition.

The roleplays in Liechtenstein included a couple of exercises where chairing a meeting was part of the skill. The great thing about delivering training is that you think - perhaps for the first time ever - about why you do what you do, and what works (or not).

Thus chairing a meeting.

The smart way to get results is to define the issues in a positive, light-touch style right at the start, thereby (in effect) ruling various options in, but also implicitly ruling some out. If this is done well, the chair can shape the way the participants themselves look at what is happening.

A good way to start is to say in a very few words what the meeting needs to achieve - and why that achievement matters (obliquely flattering the others present). Then you try to sum up in literally a few words what the key issues are:

Can we agree up front that we need to sort out three things today?

First, Money - how much are we all prepared to put in to the new projects?

Second, Balance - how to divide the available resources between the different priorities. The tricky problem here is the fact that it is much easier to get anything done in country X, but the needs in country Y are much greater.

And third, Leadership. Who will be the figurehead of the project as a whole, and who will have the lead operational responsibility?

Some of the participants may want to add another element (say Urgency, or Security, or Other Partners). Fine. The advantage of the chair spelling out in such simple terms the core questions is that it makes it easier for others to frame/articulate their own concerns in a similarly direct way.

Another skill of a good chair is 'pocketing progress'. If someone makes a concession, go out of the way to say that that move is welcome/helpful. Having done that, be careful about seeking clarification on points of detail: that may give the person concerned the opportunity to backtrack.

Don't ignore 'good listening' skills. Copious notes should not be taken by the chair. The chair should be adept at 'reframing' what a participant has said, again subtly steering the conversation in a helpful and constructive/consensual direction and recalling the key words used at the start:

I think what I'm hearing from you is a willingness to be flexible on Money in return for a greater share in the Leadership. Is that a fair summary? 

Also reflect back their 'intensity'. If someone is getting agitated, a good chair should not sit back and smirk but rather show by body language and tone of voice that that person's opinions are being heard:

It's clear that you're very unhappy with how we are tackling Balance. Has anyone any suggestions for how those concerns might be met?

The plan, in other words, is to build a momentum of general goodwill and cooperation, then - having got everyone in some sort of positive frame of mind - start to nail down more controversial details.

All much easier said than done. See eg the skills needed to chair an EU Summit meeting on a new Eurozone Treaty when things get really difficult.

 

As you all know, I happen to be a fan of what the Blair government and MI6 did to help bring Gaddafi back towards what passes for the mainstream of civilisation in that part of the world, by helping negotiate the end of his elaborate MWD programmes in return for 'normalisation'.

But did MI6 go beyond some sort of unspoken and perhaps not obvious line by getting a bit too close to the Gaddafi regime thereafter? To the point of helping hand over to Libya some regime opponents, either suspecting that they might be mistreated back in Tripoli, or not bothering to think about that too much?

I have no idea. But a new wearying police investigation begins.

Something about all this is not quite right. Above all, I find it hard to imagine a pretty far-reaching step like that being taken without some sort of explicit political clearance. So when are the police going to start rummaging through the papers submitted to T Blair, J Straw and other Labour politicians leading or close to the policy at the time? 

Here at Commentator are my vivid thoughts on the way The Rules drive out common sense discretion in public services in general, and at Leeds Crown Court in particular:

Stop right there, Mr Ambassador! What would happen if the Embassy in Warsaw went out of its way at a senior level to help this one hapless citizen? That would set a precedent for the whole network -- word would get around that one person in Poland had had a lot of active support from the Embassy and the Ambassador personally, and everyone else would expect the same! Worse, it could even be a breach of their Human Rights if they did not get it!

... So there it is. After years if not decades of Citizen's Charters and all sorts of official Mission Statements, Objectives, Targets and goodness knows what other noisily proclaimed expensive initiatives intended to make public servants helpful and responsive to the public, this forlorn group of public servants were bent on driving a few taxpayers and citizens out into a howling rainstorm for no reason other than the fact that The Rules appeared to require it.

The point?

The standardisation of public service needed to deliver what, as far as possible, counts as equality of treatment for all can be achieved only by deliberately excluding competition and any serious incentives to improve services.

Those people at any level of public service finding a clear case for common sense and discretion which somehow goes against The Rules risk getting into trouble (or think they do).

And in such an uncompetitive, neurotic context The Rules breed like crazy, as we see in English education where the state's instructions to schools now run into hundreds of pages and have catastrophic results.

Outcomes deteriorate. Dumbed down stupidity and officiousness result. Confidence in the state erodes. 

But as the Leeds episode shows, the public can fight back. When confronted with an obviously insane decision, politely insist that those concerned use their discretion or demand to see where The Rules say that no such discretion exists.

The officials concerned are visibly rattled by the thought that maybe, just maybe, The Rules in fact allow them to think.

Civil servants! If you have any examples of this working against good practice, just send them in. Key thing: do you think your hierarchy will support you if you do the smart thing, even if it goes against established procedure?

 

Here is my latest article at DIPLOMAT magazine on the ever-fascinating question of diplomatic and wider media technique in a confusing new world:

Once upon a time diplomats were rarely seen or heard in public. To do their vital work of privately communicating messages between national leaders they needed to be discreet, anonymous, detached, aloof, rarefied. In a word, invisible.

When I joined the Foreign Office in 1979 the rules on such things were clear and strict. UK-based diplomats would never appear in the British media: that was what Ministers were expected (and wanted) to do. Overseas it was slightly different. British diplomats had some discretion to respond to foreign media requests for interviews and statements, but when in doubt, they should check with the FCO News Department in London. No Foreign Minister wanted to have their breakfast ruined by opening the newspaper to find a sensational report of something unexpected or unwelcome proclaimed by an FCO official overseas.

Back then these limitations on diplomatic media appearances made sense: the media themselves were restricted. In Britain and elsewhere there were a tiny number of TV stations and relatively few newspapers. Official foreign policy pronouncements could – and should – be rationed accordingly to keep everything at a suitable level of sobriety.

This all changed. Along came new technology, CNN, the internet, Twitter and Facebook, a proliferation of TV channels available across the planet at any time of day or night, digital radio, blogging. A Tower of Babel. A tsunami of noisy words, comment, pseudo-analysis and even, now and again, some facts. The media are increasingly no longer something separate or ‘above’ the general public. The media are the general public.

Or the general public are the media...

With added free media presentation tips for getting messages out in this hubbub:

One basic lesson came through loud and clear when I trained new FCO diplomats. In a mock interview, one had to act the role of a British spokesman, the other an American spokesman. The young man tasked to pretend to be American was nervous. Yet when we played back the video, he was far more effective. In his nervousness he had said very little, but what he had said came across on the screen as conveying toughness and determination. By contrast his colleague who played the British spokesman had been relaxed and cheerful. Much too relaxed and cheerful: he came across as friendly but frivolous.

My heartfelt advice to any diplomat facing a TV or radio interview? Have only one or two (maximum three) points to get across. Sound positive and firm! Don’t feel obliged to answer the question: simply use the question as the springboard for conveying your core points, then stop.

Above all, keep it simple. The more you say – and above all the more you try to be clever – the more you open yourself up to a devastating jibe from the interviewer. Oh, and when the interview ends remember that the cameras may still be filming you until you’ve left the studio…

One of the things I do on training courses aimed at telling people how to Write with Impact is to cite Shrek. Issues and Shrek are like onions. They have layers.

No piece of writing can address all the layers of any problem. The trick is to show awareness of other layers but focus on one or two of them to help the reader make sense of it all.

Likewise it is a good idea to take a single issue and use it to illustrate a wider point. Or to take a seemingly obscure but nonetheless interesting question and force it to the top of people's attention.

All these devices help achieve the basic rule of good (and therefore impactful) writing: if you want it to be read, make it readable.

One of the best examples from my own career came in early 2004, not long after I arrived in Warsaw from Belgrade. Poland was set to join the European Union. Colossal numbers of Poles were likely to start moving to and fro between Poland and the UK - we had decided to open our Labour market unconditionally, much to the utter disbelief of the Polish leadership.

Once those Poles started moving with the aim of getting richer faster, what would they get up to? I thought it worth analysing one possible source of income - illicit cigarettes.

Hence a telegram I sent to London warning them in very simple language that the UK's multi-billion pound problems with the informal cigarette market was about to get a whole lot worse overnight.

I did this by spelling out in the simplest possible terms the economics for the average Pole of informal cigarette-selling, even within legal limits.

This telegram wittily called Smoking Ants - Coming Our Way? caused a minor sensation in the Cabinet Office. Officials scrambled round to change the rules to limit the numbers of cigarettes which people from the new EU member states could bring into the UK duty-free.

And, thanks to the miracles of Freedom of Information, I am pleased to share this telegram with you today. The FCO cheekily cut out a line or two on the grounds that UK relations with Poland might be adversely affected(!). But otherwise it's just as I drafted it. A nice example (if I say so myself) of drawing senior attention to an unexpected new problem by delivering work written in a bold way which no-one can avoid reading.

Diplomatic Folly Note: look out for the amusing reference to 'Trilateral' at the end. That was a footling attempt by Tony Blair to set up an inner UK/France/Germany driving force within the EU, which collapsed in no time at all in the face of the obvious objections (not least those emanating from one S Berlusconi).

Thus:

SUBJECT: EU ENLARGEMENT: SMOKING ANTS, COMING OUR WAY?

 

SUMMARY

 

1. Incentives for Poles to make a reasonable living in the UK's dodgy cigarette business. Policy contradictions.

 

DETAIL

2. As a non-smoking connoisseur of Balkan tobacco activities I recently met the local BAT team to talk about regional cigarette smuggling. Some striking conclusions.

 

The Big Picture

 

3. BAT have studied tens of thousands of discarded cigarette packets. They conclude that some 70 billion cigarettes are sold legally in Poland every year, with a further 20 billion smoked "illegally" (ie sold outside the official excise structure and smuggled into Poland).

 

4. A good proportion of this illegal trade is conducted by an army of "ants", individuals who carry small quantities of cigarettes into Poland from points East. But up to 50% of the illegal cigarette business is well organised, involving hundreds of truckloads of cigarettes each containing up to 10 million "sticks". [redacted]

 

5. The emergence of this lucrative illegal trade can be traced readily back to 2000, when Poland pushed up excise duties. Until then almost all the 90 billion cigarettes smoked in Poland each

year were passing through normal procedures. Smuggling soared with these new higher duties.

 

6. Sharp price/tax/excise differentials as between Russia, Poland and Western Europe are set to continue. Currently a pack of cigarettes which costs 50 cents in Russia sells for 1.30 dollars in Poland and up to 8 dollars in the UK. These ratios will change somewhat in the coming years as Poland raises the effective price of a pack towards EU levels, thereby giving serious new local incentives to regional smugglers (one good truckload can generate a profit of 1.5 million dollars). BAT expect some 50 billion cigarettes per year to be smuggled from Russia to Western Europe; this generates a 5 billion dollar profit - more than double BAT's own global annual pre-tax profit. Implications for UK of EU Accession

 

7. BAT point out that as things stand every Polish citizen is allowed to bring legally into the UK 200 cigarettes a trip. But after accession this figure jumps to 3200 cigarettes per trip. A pack of Dunhill can be bought in Poland for about £1 and be sold in a UK pub for up to £3.00. Each Pole entering the UK can hope to make a quick profit on the cigarettes of £250 per trip, not to mention extra money by importing a few bottles of cheap vodka. With a return coach fare of £50 and monthly unemployment benefit here of about £80, it is not difficult for a poor Pole to work out what to do. Better to get involved with UK officialdom by filling in UK benefit forms, or make easy money sitting on a bus?

 

COMMENT

 

8. The scale of the illicit cigarette business caused by price/tax differentials as between the UK and continental Europe is obvious and well known. It is part of a global compound interest drama: as rich countries get richer, the absolute wealth we generate gives ever-growing and vast incentives for honest people and gangsters alike to "play the margins". The cigarette price effects of EU enlargement is more of the same, albeit a great deal more of the same. But the upstream consequences of this illegality for the region are considerable.

 

9. Our Policy contains Contradictions. HMCE/HMT are looking at reducing the amounts of cigarettes which accession nationals can bring into the UK. Meanwhile we and our EU partners laboriously try to "train border guards and customs officials" on the EU's Eastern Borders. But only a couple of truckloads of cigarettes inject more resources into corrupting these official structures than we are injecting into reforming them. The corrupted structures then can be exploited not only by cigarette smugglers but also by human traffickers, global drug dealers and even terrorists - serious security questions here.

 

10. The cost of all this is not on a scale to destabilise the whole of Polish society as has happened in Serbia, to the point of the assassination of the Prime Minister. But it is a serious and systemic obstacle to reform. Scope for a new, hard look (Trilateral or in another smaller group first?) at what else might be done on the strategic level?

 

 

 

To pass the time and take my mind off my bright blue foot, I have done a couple of quickies for the Telegraph Blog site where there has been a lot of energetic stuff about the EU Summit and all that.

Thus yesterday:

We awoke this morning to various commentators and Twitteristas bewailing the fact that British intransigence has left the UK “isolated". This ridiculous assertion needs to be knocked on the head, once and for all.

If “isolated" means staying well clear of the clumsy and ultimately undemocratic eurozone project, that’s a damn good place to be. The measures needed to prop up the eurozone involve intrusive inspection of national financial affairs by Brussels and other changes (such as harmonising tax rates) which necessarily amount to surrendering national sovereignty to EU HQ. Without the protocol he demanded, David Cameron could not have stood up in the House of Commons and honourably told the British people that the UK would be spared that.

In fact, even with that protocol there would have been in serious risk of eurozone “mission creep" in legal terms had the Lisbon Trinity route been used. Not that that risk has gone away even with the proposed new treaty outside the existing Treaty structure, but it is arguably for now rather more manageable.

Now what?

The proposed new arrangements for the eurozone would have been good had they been introduced right from the start. It is not clear how far if at all they will satisfy the planet’s markets and investors now. The crisis is set to drag on.

More generally, the whole European integration ambition looks like a nervous tightrope walker wobbling more and more severely with each new step. The contortions needed to stay balanced are impressive but grotesque.

And today:

As the sheer scale of the new requirements expected in the new treaty become clear – intrusive Brussels inspection of national budgets, balanced budget constitutional provisions and so on – bits will start to fall off the bandwagon. Different local factions will demand some or other political price for conceding their support to these radical changes. Public opinion will be aroused, with demands for referenda here or there. And so on.

The best thing about writing for a national newspaper's website is the giddy delirium of the many comments one attracts, for and against. Many people seem unable to understand what one writes, or miss the self-indulgent witty touches completely, or assume that because I am an ex-Ambassador I a priori am a pompous Sir Humphrey type living on a vast pension blah blah blah.

Therefore you get stuff like this:

Charles Crawford - a breath of fresh air. I bet you don't get many invitations to opine on the BBC!

For the first time, I actually have to agree with much of Mr Crawford has to say. Perhaps he could offer his expertise of the break up of the former Soviet Union during his time in the FCO, for the government for Britain's withdrawal from the EUSSR?

Magisterial and wise as one would expect from a 'Sir Humphrey' enjoying his astronomically high pension at our expense...It's rather majestic when the British Establishment makes a 'fleet turn'; all those wonderful old ships of the line coming round. The trouble is that they need an awful lot of sea room and they already got much too close to a lee shore.

Whatever leads Crawford to the conclusion that an 'amicable separation' is on the books? Why wouldn't our former partners just screw us to the floor as much as they are able? What is the USP that would stop them, if they ever climb out of the mire where they are?

Thank you Charles for your explanation, especially posting the speech by Howe.  Incredible how the same old arguments are being trotted out by the same old europhiles ignoring the twenty year interim where *nothing* turned out as predicted.  And all the guff about influence--what influence?  Although we have wasted a lot of treasure on the european experiment and the most worrisome aspect of our economic outlook is our closeness to the european economic (disaster) zone.

Dave has done more u-turns than a boy racer, so will have no problem with one on this matter.
Has to be said, Chas is a definite Rolls Royce blogger. Maybe he could get a job as Foreign Secretary, if he was quickly ennobled.

Walked the dogs earlier - a bit cold but a nice day for it. Notably, no-one from Antwerp, Lower-Saxony, Tuscany or Valencia stopped me for a chat.Looks like the isolation has started to bite

You, sir, sound like a traitor and should be treated as such. I am thinking naked, tar, feathers, high street parade, but maybe this would infringe one or two paragraphs in the EU human rights chapter, or whatever. You display all the characteristics of an aparatchik who forgot that you are/were a servant of the people and in your generous loftiness are throwing some crumbles of your superior intellect to the benighted masses.  

That last one hits it bang on the nose.

Anyway, my second one linked to this excellent Economist piece offering a detailed account of what the UK Prime Minister wanted and why he did not get it. Well worth a read if you want to look at some hard-core analysis and not a lot of heated knowledge-free opinion.

What does it all boil down to?

Not enough, if the main aim is to stop the Eurozone failing horribly as the planet's investors think we've all gone mad and draw their money out of the system.

But maybe just enough (for now) if you want to get re-elected as President of France?

Do global investors see this blood-stained arena as a sensible place to park their hard-earned money? No.

While the self-absorbed British commentariat divides into Europhile/Europhobe factions like Bertie Wooster's aunt mastodons bellowing at each other across a primaeval swamp, the real story is that the Summit did not do anything serious to tackle the eurozone's acute credibility problem.

Why did it not do more? Because top European opinion is completely divided on existential questions to do with the moral hazard involved in different eurozone rescue plans. And because step-by-step Europe's leaders have set up structures of such intricacy and complexity that it is next to impossible to identify what needs to be fixed, and then muster the practical agreement to do the fixing.

Back in 1961 the FCO set up a new group of clever diplomats known as the Planning Staff. They were tasked to think up new policy thoughts which might not be welcome, or easy to handle. And earlier this week the FCO hosted a birthday party to mark 50 years of the department's work. A host of distinguished names appeared - a high proportion of the people who have reached the very top of British diplomacy in recent decades worked there in one capacity or another. My own role as a Planner was from 1985-87 when I was official FCO Speechwriter for Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe. That period - from the early Gorbachev period through until the early 1990s and the end of European communism - was perhaps a Golden Age of sorts. All sorts of post-WW2 certainties started to crumble and then collapse - new thinking about almost every foreign policy issue was not only desirable, but vital and urgent. Robert Cooper (now a top official at the European External Action Service leading efforts to 'mediate' between Serbia and Kosovo) ran the Planners as the Berlin Wall came down. He reminded the throng at the reception about those heady days, not least the famous Planners' joke prediction sent to No 10 as a 1989 pre-Christmas joke that Romanian leader Ceaucescu would be toppled and executed. Which then happened, in days. He also recalled the stern opposition from Mrs Thatcher to German reunification, swept away by the tide of events. Our current Ambassador at NATO, Mariot Leslie, was at the reception. Her famous 1987 paper predicting German reunification had been derided by everyone, including me. Didn't she get it? There was no way communist Russia led by Gorby would fold and let East Germany go. Yet that too happened. Mariot reminded me of the speech I wrote for Geoffrey Howe to deliver in communist Hungary in 1987, in which i let my hair down and drafted a powerful text praising free markets and liberty. For once the FCO top brass had all been away and not nibbled out the juicy bits. It was delivered more or less as drafted, and made a huge positive impact - Mariot had been talking recently to a Hungarian who had been there. A most enjoyable occasion. Perhaps the emerging convulsions in the Eurozone will force our current Planners to think the unthinkable? One bizarre note was struck by one distinguished ex-Planner, whose remarks included out of nowhere a swipe at the US Tea Party movement, which he characterised as "like 15th century peasants". This footling observation alas prompted a patronising titter from some people who still think it's clever to make remarks like that about Americans. And it missed in an unPlannerly way one of the main points of our times, namely that the Laws of Compound Interest are forcing to the fore popular discontent in the USA against the stunning mismanagement by Washington of US finances and soaraway official debt. Did I mention the Eurozone? As any smart Planner kno, peasants may or may not be revolting. But sometimes they are on the right side of history.

Here in powerful fluent form is Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, speaking today in Berlin about Europe and the Eurozone.

If anyone can find a better peacetime speech by any Polish Foreign Minister or any Polish politician ever, let it be produced!

Not that it is perfect. Too many rather impenetrable statistics at various point. Some sentences are too long or involved.

He even - horror - takes a populist swipe at the UK (bear in mind the German audience and his own credentials as an Oxford graduate), after saying something important about 'subsidiarity'. Note how he abruptly switches to talking to the UK in the second person, as if we were in the room. Fine technique:

The more power and legitimacy we give to federal institutions, the more secure

member states should feel that certain prerogatives, everything to do with national

identity, culture, religion, lifestyle, public morals, and rates of income, corporate and

VAT taxes, should forever remain in the purview of states. Our unity can survive

different working hours or different family law in different countries.

Which brings me to the issue of whether an important member, Britain, can support reform. You have given the Union its common language. The Single Market was largely your brilliant idea. A British commissioner runs our diplomacy. You could lead Europe on defence. You are an indispensable link across the Atlantic.

On the other hand, Eurozone’s collapse would hugely harm your economy. Also, your total sovereign, corporate and household debt exceeds 400% of GDP. Are you sure markets will always favour you? We would prefer you in, but if you can’t join, please allow us to forge ahead. And please start explaining to your people that European decisions are not Brussels’ diktats but results of agreements in which you freely participate.

Fine, forge 'ahead' as you see fit. But pay for it yourselves. Don't expect too much British money if you overdo it. And don't try taxing us by the back door.

Nor is it easy to see from an admittedly befogged UK point of view how giving a turbo-boost to more powers at the European level as Sikorski suggests is in any meaningful way compatible with democracy as hitherto understood. More power to ... the European Parliament? No thanks. (Remember that one? Follow the link to see a German TV station doing a very early job to magnificent effect...)

Above all, isn't a wholesale reorganisation of  EU powers lunging in a Far More Europe way as Sikorski suggests completely unrealistic? How to negotiate a new treaty structure of such far-reaching new measures without the whole business getting bogged down in referenda and hopeless controversy? It's not by chance we have what we have. And German voters would have to be mad to allow other Europeans effectively to decide how much German money is transferred out of Germany for wider redistributive purposes.

Nonetheless, if you want to hear the message for More Europe delivered by a European foreign minister in a way calculated to impress an audience from another large member state, this is what it looks like.

This one passage - directed directly at Germany - is really good by any standard. Energetic and thoughtful, but also refeshingly blunt. An authentic contemporary rhetorical masterclass in delivering a tough message ("Listen, you helped get us all into this mess..!") to a foreign audience in their own country with style and grace.

Oh, but note too the hard-nosed Polish caveat tucked away at the end:

What does Poland ask of Germany?

We ask, first of all, that Germany admits that she is the biggest beneficiary of the current arrangements and therefore that she has the biggest obligation to make them sustainable.

Second, as you know best, you are not an innocent victim of others’ profligacy. You, who should have known better, have also broken the Growth and Stability Pact and your banks also recklessly bought risky bonds.

Third, because investors have been selling the bonds of exposed countries and flying to safety, your borrowing costs have been lower than they would have been in normal times.

Fourth, if your neighbours’ economies stall or implode, you greatly suffer, too.

Fifth, that despite your understandable aversion to inflation, you appreciate that the danger of collapse is now a much bigger threat.

Sixth, that because of your size and your history you have a special responsibility to preserve peace and democracy on the continent. Jurgen Habermas has wisely said that "If the European project fails, then there is the question of how long it will take to reach the status quo again. Remember the German Revolution of 1848: When it failed, it took us 100 years to regain the same level of democracy as before."

What, as Poland’s foreign minister, do I regard as the biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland today, on 28th November 2011? It’s not terrorism, it’s not the Taliban, and it’s certainly not German tanks. It’s not even Russian missiles which President Medvedev has just threatened to deploy on the EU’s border.

The biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland would be the collapse of the Euro zone. And I demand of Germany that, for your own sake and for ours, you help it survive and prosper. You know full well that nobody else can do it.

I will probably be first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity.

You have become Europe’s indispensable nation. You may not fail to lead. Not dominate, but to lead in reform. Provided you include us in decision-making, Poland will support you.

I like various Sikorskiesque personal style-touches, such as this feline one:

The Euro zone crisis is a more dramatic manifestation of the European malaise because

its founders created a system in which each of its members has the capacity to bring it

down, with appalling costs to themselves and the entire neighborhood.

 

The break up would be a crisis of apocalyptic proportions beyond our financial system.

Once the logic of ‘each man for himself’ takes hold, can we really trust everyone to act

communitarian and resist the temptation to settle scores in other areas, such as trade?

 

Would you really bet the house on the proposition that if the Euro zone breaks up, the

single market, the cornerstone of the European Union, will definitely survive? After all,

messy divorces are more frequent than amicable ones. I have heard of a case in

California in which a couple spent $100,000 disputing custody of the family cat.

And he ends on a note which somehow captures Radek Sikorski's own swashbuckling approach to life:

Peoples in our neighborhood – both East and South – look to us for inspiration.

If we get our act together we can become a proper superpower. In an equal partnership with the United States, we can preserve the power, prosperity and leadership of the West.

But we are standing on the edge of a precipice. This is the scariest moment of my ministerial life but therefore also the most sublime. Future generations will judge us by what we do, or fail to do

Sublime! And sublime because it's scary!? What's he doing standing tall in the howling gale, right on the edge of that precipice, ignoring all the Health and Safety signs put up by Brussels?

What a word to describe being a European foreign minister at a time like this.

Bravo.

This appears to be a well-sourced Telegraph piece revealing that the FCO has instructed Embassies to start making contingency plans for a Eurozone crash.

If so, it's startling.

Startling!

Partly because our much-diminished Embassies across the EU - cheerily cut back by Labour and this Coalition government alike to redeploy diplomats to the 'emerging markets' - just won't be able to handle the tens of thousands of consular cases which could come their way.

Can someone working at an EU mission quickly drop me a private line (via the site-link above) to tell me what exactly a contingency plan to deal with thousands of people whose credit-cards have stopped working would look like?

But startling also because the FCO is not warning the British public through its formal Travel Advice to start making similar precautions.

Here is the current FCO Travel Advice for France, which 19,000,000(!) British nationals visit each year. It focuses on the eternal issue of the day in Europe - French food:

• Sea France has suspended all of its cross-channel ferry services. Call Sea France on +44 (0) 845 458 0666 for further information and allow extra time for your journey
• Following an outbreak of botulism, the French Health authorities have issued a warning not to consume any pastes or spreads produced by a French company called La Ruche. The pastes are branded as Les Délices de Marie Claire, Terre de Mistral and Les Secrets d’Anais

Here's the FCO's lugubriously out-of-date ungrammatical Travel Advice for Italy:

·         There is a general transport strike planned in Italy on 17 November. All means of public transport is expected to be affected.  If you are flying to/from Italy contact your airline before you travel. See Safety and Security - Local Travel - Major pre-planned strikes.

Germany has another grammatically challenged entry, but at least has some references to money. Maybe the advice should be to carry lots of counterfeit Euros - soon likely to be worth more than the real ones?!

• Like other large European countries there is a high threat from terrorism in Germany. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers. See Safety and Security - Terrorism.
• We are aware of British nationals who have been arrested for possessing counterfeit currency.  We advise against changing currency anywhere other than banks or legitimate Bureaux de Change.

Hmm. Not much in all this on how a few million Brits across Europe might get back to our island fortress if the Eurozone folds overnight and the cash-machines stop working and fuel for cars, planes and cross-channel ferries runs out.

There is a real problem here - any such official warning would trigger panic and make the Eurozone's horrible problems even worse. 

Yet the Telegraph piece archly quotes a "senior Minister" to the effect that a Eurozone collapse is now 'just a matter of time'. Perhaps this IS the consular warning. To lucky Telegraph readers at least.

 

 

 

Former FCO Minister Denis MacShane MP has written a small but energetic book praising Kosovo's independence: Why Kosovo Still Matters (sic).

Here it is, a perfect Christmas stocking-filler, the more perfect if bought via this link so that I get a few groats from Amazon: 

The main interest of the book for you folk lies in the more or less contemporaneous Ministerial diary extracts from Denis as he visited various Balkan capitals and attended international gatherings where Kosovo/Serbia was being discussed.

There is a walk-on role by Keith Vaz MP, briefly the Minister responsible for Balkan policy, whose modest knowledge of the subject was exposed back in 2001 when he and I had to give evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee:

We find it deeply regrettable that Mr Vaz, the FCO minister responsible for south-east Europe, has not visited the area ... His evidence session with us did not reveal a detailed grasp of the policy issues which the area faces. As the Minister told us, and we know ourselves, the situation in the Balkans is "very complex and very difficult"...

It has to be said that the Committee had a point.

Mr Vaz's eloquent but somewhat insubstantial replies to their many questions were a truly fine example of talking a lot and saying  ... nothing.

In Denis' book too Keith Vaz blandly reveals his insightful approach. During a session of briefing by FCO officials on the complexity of the Kosovo problem, he asks:

"Can somebody just draw me a little map and show me where Kosovo is?"

The main interest of the book for me is ... me. I appear wittily or not at various points, but this line caught my special eye:

"... Charles Crawford, one of the most whizzing catherine wheels of a politically astute ambassador that we have"

*blushes prettily*

The book also records accurately enough one amazing moment in April 2002 when then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw chaired a discussion about Balkan policy.

Paddy Ashdown (then High Representative in Bosnia) had nobbled PM Tony Blair to argue against drawing down UK forces too far in Bosnia while maintaining a sizeable UK military presence in Kosovo. The Foreign Secretary asked officials where we all thought the main UK military effort should now focus:

Charles Crawford, the sharp but rather cocky Ambassador in Belgrade, says that we should stay in Bosnia and that Kosovo should be persuaded to stay in a loose federation with Serbia and Montenegro.

The arguments about where UK troops made most impact on the ground and where the main threat to the region's security lay went round and round the table. Finally, as he describes in the book, Denis proposed a vote. And before anyone could question his sanity he quickly had torn up a piece of paper and handed round slips for voting: B for Bosnia, K for Kosovo.

We voted. The votes were counted by Denis. 10 - 5 for focusing on Kosovo. I voted for a heavier UK military presence in Kosovo (of course), even though the book suggests that the opposite was my view.

Denis' case therefore won the argument:

Thus, British foreign policy is made

Hmm. The exception, not the rule, I think.

Otherwise the text is a gay romp through the politics of the Balkans over a thousand years and the latest decades of convulsion, with no opportunity spared to extol the Kosovans and cast Serbs in general and most UK Conservatives in particular in a bad light.

In other words, a typical MacShanian production. Top quality insider gossip, lively, sometimes irreverent, impossibly light, blithely tendentious. And with handy insights. I especially liked the way he linked the events in 1980s' Yugoslavia to the Solidarity pressures in Poland - important to recall that there was a wider European anti-communist context to the issue.

It's also noteworthy that he does not (now) dismiss out of hand the idea of some sort of small territory swaps as part of an historic deal between Belgrade and Pristina, an idea whose time may yet come.

The main problem with the book, apart from myriad other problems, is that it does far too little justice (in fact none at all) to the significant arguments of the Russians and others about the inadmissibility of border changes in Europe "without the consent of all concerned" as per the Helsinki Accords.

Because, Minister, foreign policy is all about balancing realities against principles and rules.

And for all the merits of the Kosovans' claims against Belgrade, is it really such a good outcome for the UK and the world - and even for Kosovo - that international opinion has ended up so divided in a way which shows that deeper Western policy on this subject has spectacularly failed to be convincing (ie Russia, China, India, Brazil, S Africa and many other non-Western big hitters firmly not recognising Kosovo independence on principle)?

Anyway, did I say buy it via the Amazon link above? Go on. You know you want to.

But better not if you're a Serb.

The first meeting of the Foreign Secretary's new Locarno Group ("senior FCO alumni, selected for their breadth of experience and expertise") took place today. The aim, part of an energetic and even impressive series of moves led by William Hague to transform the FCO's performance at many new levels, is not unambitious:

The Group's work will contribute to the Foreign Secretary’s wider efforts to strengthen the long term capability and international effectiveness of the FCO as an institution at the heart of government, and improve our country’s capacity to pursue effective foreign policy for the years and decades to come.

Here is the list of participants and background material (and a taste of their most senior former posts, as added by me):

• Sir Michael Arthur           (India, Berlin)
• Sir Daniel Bethlehem      (Legal Adviser)
• Charles Crawford            (me)
• Sir William Ehrman         (China)
• Dame Glynne Evans       (Chile, Portugal)
• Anne Grant                    (S Africa)
• Sir Jeremy Greenstock    (UN New York)
• Sir John Holmes             (No 10, Paris)
• Matthew Kirk                  (Helsinki)
• Kate Smith                     (Tehran)
• Sir Stephen Wall             (No 10, EU Brussels)

All of us are now doing different things of varying levels of power, influence, seniority and amusement. We are serving in this advisory role on an unpaid pro bono basis.

We have agreed that the proceedings of this Group are to be confidential. It remains to be seen how it develops - enough food for thought to get unmanageable intellectual indigestion.

Suffice to say that the exchanges were damn interesting. And that the fact of the exhaust-pipe falling off my car this morning as I drove along was not that ill an omen.

Clunk.

 

Six days since I wrote anything here. The longest gap since the Crawfblog began back in early 2008?

I have been running around, not least to Brussels where my training presentation on Political Reporting to startled European diplomats went down well. I banged on self-indulgently about my life and times writing telegrams back to the FCO (including my highly praised telegram on the morning after Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic was assassinated), urging the following general rules:

• if you want it to be read, make it readable
• some things are important - but don't matter
• no stupid words!
• don't be boring

These strictures and accompanying illustrative slides of inter alios Mr Incredible, Clint Eastwood and Spider-Man's Aunt May caught their attention.

Part of the problem with political reporting is getting right the balance between what HQ wants to know and what it needs to know. Usually HQ is several months behind where any given overseas problem 'is' - standard briefs get word-processed and stale, drawing on expired assumptions.

So just as it is right to try to keep HQ up to date, Embassies also need to remember that HQ usually won't be that interested in anything which significantly changes the 'narrative' unless it is dramatic enough to catch the headlines in the HQ country.

Likewise you can say what you like in an urgent telegram, but the dominant thought about any given overseas development back at HQ will be whatever the media are saying that morning about it. Ministers pay more attention to the newspapers read in the car on the way to the office than to diplomatic cables, since any questions they will be asked during the day will draw on that media reporting, even if it is wrong or stupid...

Any public body with the words 'European' in the name has horrible problems with 'the hierarchy'. Information rarely trickles down from on high to the working level, and people have to pull their punches in saying what they think lest the 'hierarchy' object.

One interesting issue thus arose. How should a serious middle-ranking diplomat at an EU mission deal with reporting an election in an African country where the result was largely farcical/manipulated? The problem in this case was the fact that the mission hierarchy and EU HQ and indeed many governments round the world were happy enough to hail this wretched outcome as a victory for continuity and 'stability'. A report calling into question the result as an obvious farce would not be welcomed, or even be allowed to issue.

No easy answer. I quoted my own early disagreements with the British Embassy hierarchy back in 1984 in Belgrade, when I had written the legendary MTS/non-MTS paper warning about problems within communist Yugoslavia. Even though the then Ambassador had disagreed with the paper in important respects, he was gracious enough to send it back to London under cover of a letter explaining what the disagreements were about and what his own view was. London thereby at least had the opportunity to mull intelligently over two very rival interpretations.

This elegant and democratic, clever British outcome was a source of much marvelling amongst the assembled Europeans - none of their bosses would be likely to do anything like that!

So there is no easy answer on how a young diplomat should best deal with a situation where the mission and its policy are at variance with reality, honour and common sense. Of course anyone feeling really upset can launch into the various available grievance/appeal processes, but that merely builds up a reputation as a vainglorious boat-rocker and in any case is a hopeless vehicle for changing policy analysis.

As I said to them, it ultimately comes down to how you want to live. Most of us rationalise such things away on the grounds that it just takes time to change policies, and that much of what 'policy' is ebbs and flows anyway. Sometimes it's better to avoid fighting a losing battle on one issue for the sake of making a difference in another.

If that isn't your style, resign and do something else. But remember that if you do that, the organisation you've left will have one honourable voice fewer - does that really help either?

One final thought.

When I was Ambassador in Warsaw a very senior ex-colleague bow with a global energy company swung by. I asked him what was good or bad about having left the FCO behind.

"The good thing about having left the FCO is that at last I can say what I think!"

That for me was an astounding reply. What had he been saying when he was in the FCO for all those years - what someone else thought?!

Last week I attended the annual FCO remembrance ceremony held in November each year to honour FCO diplomats and colleagues who have been killed while on duty.

I try to attend each year, as my friend and colleague Charles Morpeth was killed in a helicopter crash in Bosnia in 1997 while working for the Office of the High Representative.

The OHR/UN helicopter was making its way along through one of Bosnia's mountain areas, which can be prone to abrupt micro-climate fogs. It did not have enough height to clear a high remote hillside and crashed into it. The Ukrainian crew managed to scramble out to safety, but the OHR/UN passengers inside perished when the petrol tank exploded. Terrible. A memorial pyramid now marks the spot.

Another FCO colleague of mine from my Bosnia days, Roger Short, also worked at the OHR office then. He went on to a posting as HM Consul-General in Istanbul and died in the AQ terrorist attack on the Consulate-General building in November 2003. The offices were being refurbished and he was working from a temporary office near the front gates where the blast took place. As I recall the story, his wife Vicky would have been killed too had she not popped out from the office for some quick shopping. 

Eight of our locally engaged Turkish staff died too that day - their names are remembered on the plaque on the wall at the foot of the Grand Staircase where the ceremony takes place. A Roger Short Memorial Fund is hosted from University College at Oxford where he had studied Classics. 

I have an indirect connection with one other name on the wall, Brigadier Stephen Saunders, who was murdered by Greek Marxist terrorists on 8 June 2000. On that day a large gathering of European governments' Balkan experts including myself had gathered in Thessaloníki for a Stability Pact meeting: the sad news affected all present. His untimely death had one positive outcome, namely a huge and finally successful effort to round up the vile 17N fanatics who had carried out a number of other assassinations. Stephen's wife Heather played an important and brave personal role in mobilising Greek public opinion against them. 

The FCO ceremony last week touched all the right notes of protocol, dignity and grace. The Foreign Secretary's address is here.

There are now 18 names on the wall, ten of them from that one horrible day in Istanbul. Two more have been added since 2003, colleagues killed in Kirkuk and Basra respectively in 2006. Given the amazing range of difficult and dangerous situations facing FCO staff round the world every year, it is an impressive tribute to the FCO's organisation and cool judgement that many more names aren't there. 

As each year passes the ceremony gets no easier for the families of those who were lost. Charles Morpeth's daughter had just been born when he died - she is growing up now. As I wrote here previously:

Perhaps the hardest thing I had to do in my whole diplomatic career was to read out a tribute to Charles at a packed memorial service in Sarajevo cathedral, with his parents and wife Helen sitting in the congregation.

My message then applies to all diplomats as they set out on peacekeeping missions: ‘Any of us could have been in that helicopter. Any of us could be in the next one.’

Readers here know all about MTS and non-MTS.

It seemed a good idea to explain the idea to Telegraph Blog readers. Done here, with a nice stormy seas picture:

Hence the core diplomatic policy conundrum: over what timescale is success measured?

One of the metaphors I deployed to explain Bosnia’s problems to bemused Whitehall officials was the tall, steep sand-dune. You rush at the sand-dune and try to get to the top, but find yourself stuck. If only you had seen that strong tuft of grass over to the right before you made your dash! You could have reached that and tried to pull yourself upwards. But any movement towards it or in any other direction makes you slide backwards.

From good if over-optimistic or even naive intentions you can end up in a hopeless place, where no good move is available. This is why the eurozone problem is so difficult for our top policy-makers.

Eurozone leaders designed an ornate gondola for drifting affably round the elegant decay of Venice. They now find themselves swept by an unimaginable (or at least unimagined) current into horrible stormy seas.

The vessel is sinking! No life-jackets! The Greek can’t swim! The German is hooting that everyone tighten their belts! The Frenchman blames capitalism! The odious Brits preferred their own shabby dinghy: they watch with cynical amusement from choppy but still (they believe) manageable waters.

Basically, the eurozoners have allowed themselves to get far out of their depth. And they smugly refused to pack any safety kit.

I swung by the FCO today for a quiet adult chat about repatriating powers from the EU. What does that mean, if anything, and how might it be done or at least systematically attempted.

Many interesting points emerged. Some unexpected, to me at least. Watch this space.

Plus, a Scary Thought about FCO consular work: what would HMG do if Greece's money system crashed during peak holiday season, leaving a million Brits stranded there with cash machines not working?

The FCO mind boggles.

Here is a handy one-stop-shop for most of my articles for DIPLOMAT magazine.

It includes a link to my latest piece on Diplomatic Drafting and Wikileaks:

When I was Ambassador in Poland, the FCO published a fat volume of diplomatic despatches from the 1950s and 1960s, so I could see how my long-lost august predecessors had analysed Polish affairs. A despatch was a special British diplomatic form: not an urgent report on a new development, but an extended learned essay on a particular theme thought likely to be of interest to the FCO community. These despatches would reach the FCO via the Bag, and unless they were totally hopeless would be sent off for printing on green paper for circulating to all embassies and senior Whitehall offices.

This great tradition suffered a painful death as e-communications came in. It lingered on in the form of the valedictory despatch, a round-up essay sent by an Ambassador leaving a post or ending a career which (after I set the precedent in 1998 when I left Sarajevo) was sent electronically and not by the Bag. This was suppressed in 2006: too many valedictories contained tedious moaning about modern diplomatic life and/or political correctness which tended to get leaked, making the FCO look like a care-home for pompous male fossils...

Anyway, those Warsaw Embassy despatches from 50 years ago were cast in a style which has vanished without trace. The language was grand and unfailingly ‘heavy’ as the authors pored over absurd proclamations by Poland’s communist leaders and tried to make sense of unfeasibly large output statistics for coal or soap.

Worst, the Polish regime was analysed as if it were a legitimate normal government. Lofty detachment was not supported by lofty disdain. There was no hard questioning of the regime’s oppressive behaviour, or suggestions as to how we might help Poland get back to democracy.

For me the very pinnacle of diplomatic drafting came in the early 1990s when Sir David (now Lord) Hannay as HM Ambassador to the UN presided over a mighty torrent of two-side telegrams from New York. This work combined terse analysis of complex diplomatic negotiations on the world’s toughest problems with magisterial advice on how to make the next moves. The technical quality, intellectual breadth and operational wisdom – the sheer authority – of this bloc of work have probably never been achieved in any other foreign service; the FCO itself now struggles to get to anything like the same standard...

As for Wikileaks, the day the absurd Assange loses his latest legal battle is a good day to celebrate the true significance of those miles of US diplomatic cables dumped on the Internet:

What should we make of the fact that this unfathomably vast bloc of contemporary American diplomatic traffic has been leaked? The infamous observation of Stalin comes to mind: ‘When one man dies it is a tragedy; when thousands die, it’s statistics.’

Where to start? In 2005, I had my own ghastly leaked email moment which made some fleeting headlines round the globe (see Diplomat, November 2009). But the Wikileaks document dump exists in a category of its own.

The material is so powerful precisely because it blows away Assange’s banal anti-Americanism. Yes, it’s horribly embarrassing for Washington that all these cables have leaked. Confidences have been ruined. Sources endangered. In terms of writing style the cables often err on the dense and overlong side.

However, far from exposing the dark side of American/Western policies they show as never before the strengths and values of the Western Anglosphere diplomatic method. The documents uncover mile after mile of sensible, balanced, practical, timely and reasonable analysis and comment by American diplomats, often with amusing extra insights and personal touches...

Read the whole thing. And all the other articles too. This one is good - back from nearly 18 months ago. Looks at issues of 'sovereignty' and even mentions the Eurozone crisis:

States have sovereignty not just over their own land, but also the resources found below it and the air above it. Most people never think about the legal aspects of flying from one country to another – the misery of security checks, plastic food and volcanic ash are enough. Yet someone flying from London to Singapore travels over a number of countries in between, all of which have formally given their consent. If that consent is withdrawn, the aircraft must find another route – sovereignty in action.

But surely ‘sovereignty’ is much less important these days? Have not European Union Member States ‘surrendered sovereignty’ to a ‘higher’ authority, namely the Union itself?

EU-level institutions are unique in world history. They create legal norms binding on all the Union’s Member States, even in the face of opposition from some Member States. Thus if the UK opposes a new EU Directive purporting to reform banks and funds, it can be outvoted by other Member States which want the change. And, once outvoted, it is expected to enforce the new requirements in a dutiful way.

This arguably is not a reduction in UK sovereignty, but rather an expression of UK sovereignty. The UK has of its own free will (at least as expressed through Parliament when ratifying the Lisbon Treaty) accepted EU voting rules which allow this to happen, just as the Treaty also provides a procedure to enable a Member State to leave the Union and get back all its sovereignty once again.

Nonetheless, as the eurozone crisis gathers momentum, the existential question of sovereignty is coming back to the fore even in placid, postmodern Europe. What claims, if any, do (say) Greeks have on (say) German resources and hard work by virtue of EU ‘solidarity’? What claims do eurozone members have on (say) the UK, smugly watching the disarray from across the Channel? Tricky.

Very tricky.

We mere taxpayers suspect in our dark hearts that a formidable industry has grown up around the 'climate change' issue, with all sorts of organisations big and small depending on state handouts to survive, and so frothing up the climate issue regardless of the facts to make sure that those handouts keep on rollin'.

Today I was giving my views on the Diplomacy of Climate Change to one such NGO, pointing them in the direction of my website and such gems as this and especially this:

It of course all depends on the precise questions being asked.

Does human activity have an impact on the planet?  Of course.

Is it easy to measure that impact?  To a degree yes, but only over the relatively short term.

Does the climate change naturally anyway?  Of course. It would be impossible to imagine a world in which it didn't. It probably would be dead.

So how do we measure what changes are caused by Man, and which are occurring anyway?  Ah, now you're talking. Very difficult, the more so if you look at longer timescales.

If it turns out that human activity is affecting the planet, are the effects good or bad?  Some must be bad (eg if we eat every fish, no more fish). But again, it depends on what timescale you choose to use - what is Bad over (say) a century may turn out to be Good over a longer period. Thus the Industrial Revolution poured out nasty pollution (and still does) but it opened the way to far more economical use of natural resources now and into the future.

Is it better to act now to stop future bad outcomes?  This is the heart of it. We can't be sure what will be bad outcomes and what will be good ones. So it may well not be wise to overinvest now in vast inflexible and expensive schemes to 'prevent' climate change. Better (in my view) to spend money as we go, adapting to the effects of changes as they unfold over time.

So are you saying do nothing now?!  No. Energy-saving ideas and generally being less wasteful look to make sense. There will be a role for government in advancing those. But the main impetus must come from market forces and human ingenuity. Where else? Huge collectivist schemes are unlikely to be wise or sustainable in terms of popular support - we just do not know enough about Cause and Effect over the timescales concerned.

But what about all the scientific evidence?  Hmm. In the past thirty years 'scientists' have veered between warning of a new Ice Age to warning about Global Warming to (now) warning about Climate Change in any and all directions. Not very persuasive? 

Don't you care about future generations?  I do care about them, often. Some of them live in my house and demand pocket money. But one way to care about them is not to lumber them with huge debts and stupid policies brought about by our current ignorance and hubris. Look at it this way. Which scientific innovations or other trends/developments would you have stopped in 1909 to make things better now? And how would you have been sure that you hit the right ones then? Why should poorer people in 1909 have subsidised far richer people in 2009? Why should poor people in 2009 subsidise far richer people in 2109, or 2209?

Bottom Line?  Steady as she goes. Bet on the wisdom of people, not on the dogmatic certainty of governments. Because it is just not clear what to do for the best. And governments will make a far bigger mess if they get that wrong.   

We chatted to and fro about Climate diplomacy. I said that as Copenhagen had showed, the very complexity of the issue meant that a 'global' approach to it was doomed to fiasco. Better to get together a smallish group of industrialised carbon-generators (eg the Top 20) and try to sort out something within a much smaller circle. There would be fierce squeals from all the people and NGOs left out, but too bad - Saving the Planet was far more important than their self-esteem issues.

But even that, said I, assumed that (a) we could convincingly identify a causal relationship between human activity x and bad climate change y, and (b) identify policies that would help tackle y while not causing new problem z.

Oh, and then we'd have to work out who pays for it all.

All of which went to explain why countries like China piously insisted on bringing in the developing world to the process: by expanding the meeting they ensured that nothing would happen on Climate, which suited them for the next 50 years or so as their development hurtled on.

Meanwhile all bureaucrats could sense when top-level leaders were really focusing on an issue, or not. The policy caravan had moved on, from Climate to Arab Spring to Money. No senior attention was being given to Climate issues, regardless of the fact that more huge Climate junkets were continuing in Durban soon and on to Rio next year. PM David Cameron had already said that he's not going to Rio. Good choice - total waste of time.

I concluded that it all boiled down to a simple choice: spend massively now with money we don't have on uncertain and probably stupid measures, or be less ambitious and invest in adapting to Change rather than foolishly trying to modify it. And even that was not a choice - we'd end up adapting and hoping for the best, as there was no deliverable alternative to it.

My youthful NGO friend said that he tended to agree with the Bjorn Lomborg arguments on the whole issue. But he had to be careful what he said, lest his NGO stop getting funding!

I politely pointed out that he had said something profoundly bad and corrupt. The whole Western world was reeling from ill-advised investment decisions (mainly by profligate governments), and his organisation was hiding what it believed to be the truth to keep getting money. Horrendous. I sympathised with his current career plight, but that was no way to go. He ruefully said that he saw the point.

So, there we have it.

It's not Climate Truth that counts.

It's the requirement that we taxpayer suckers keep paying out to people who want to avoid the truth if it puts their grants at risk.

QED. 

As readers here know, the Spiegel Online site is a fine way to find thoughtful pieces on the goings-on in Europe from a German perspective.

Try these two for size.

The first is an interview with Polish Central Bank Governor Marek Belka (who served for a while as a technocrat Prime Minister while I was in Warsaw). Belka is a smart, steady operator who chooses his words well. Here he tries to present a cautious but optimistic picture of Poland's prospects for joining a reformed and disciplined Eurozone:

SPIEGEL: The phrase "Polish economy" once stood for inefficiency. How did Poland manage to be the only EU country to keep on growing its economy during the financial crisis?

Belka: We did a few things right. Our economic policy was cautious. We took integration into the EU very seriously. Many of our rules are more modern than the rules in Germany or France. We have had a debt limit enshrined in our constitution since 1997. We have low taxes and competitive labor costs. The Poles complain a lot, but we are basically optimists. Optimists spend money, while pessimists do not. The Germans believe that after the Hartz (welfare) reforms, they now have a flexible labor market. But ours is even more liberal. We have avoided financial turbulence. And there was no credit bubble.

...  The euro zone is heading for an increasingly closer political union, without which the euro can't be saved. One day Poland will join a new and different euro zone, which will have more of the characteristics of a federation than it does today. We have to be strong and healthy to avoid losing our economic sovereignty, which is now happening to a few countries that have problems.

And this is an important corrective to those of us in the richer parts of Europe squealing about 'austerity':

SPIEGEL: ... Why are the people in Eastern Europe so much more patient?

Belka: Because the people here still aren't used to prosperity. Let me give you an example from my days at the International Monetary Fund. It was at a time when the Latvians had to implement a drastic austerity program, which caused consumer spending to drop by 25 percent in a year.

I asked a Latvia negotiator how his country expected to survive this dramatic crisis. He said: What crisis? We had a crisis when the Soviets were sending us to Siberia. Here in Eastern Europe, many still remember why they were once poor, and they're not afraid of reasonable reforms that are painful in the short term.

But see also this tricky argument that failure to give Poland lots of EU money in the next Budget spending round would be a Breach of Promise:

SPIEGEL: Is it conceivable that the EU will cut back on other spending in the future because of the unimaginably expensive bailout funds? Spending such as subsidies and structural assistance, which has also helped Poland in recent years?

Belka: We're worried about that, of course. It would be a violation of the accession agreements. The deal, at the time, was this: We adjust our markets, and you help us in the process. If this were no longer the case, it would be a breach of promise.

Nice try. But no.

Then read this piece vividly describing how Germany's insistence that all countries make a 'real effort' is now creating a divided Europe:

... the price of her success in Brussels is the division of Europe. Those countries that are not part of the euro zone are now no longer part of a core Europe, and are now being asked to leave the room when the truly important issues are being debated. While the 17 euro-zone members walk at the front of the pack, the 10 non-euro-members are forced to walk behind, like stragglers and second-tier nations.

And now they have it in writing. In the closing document of last week's summit, euro-zone member states grant themselves the right to work together more closely without having to wait for the non-euro countries. The EFSF also deepens the divide. It is a facility set up by the 17 countries in the monetary union for the 17 countries in the monetary union...

The 17 euro-zone leaders decided to make the bailout fund and its director, Klaus Regling, even more important in the future. Regling will receive more power and influence, as well as more money. He will become the nucleus of a new Europe driven by fiscal policy.

The EU summits last week saw difficult exchanges between the UK and Eurozone countries about all this and a classic drafting fudge:

To calm things down on both sides, the wording that was finally included in the results of the "euro summit" was intended to avoid a split within the EU. "The governance structure for the euro area will be strengthened, while preserving the integrity of the European Union as a whole," paragraph 30 reads.

This sounds good enough, said Polish Premier Tusk, but "what does it mean in practice?"

He was not given an answer, but it will probably look like this: The British will have to think about whether they want to remain in the EU at all. There is a strong movement among the Conservatives to withdraw from the union. And most other non-euro EU members will keep their noses to the grindstone so that they can soon be part of the core club. 

As such, Germany now has the Europe it wanted. It remains to be seen whether it will be happy with the outcome

Indeed. Excellent analysis.

But with Greece now announcing a referendum and the markets realising that the latest Eurozone deal is itself not enough, all this is likely to unravel into a far more drastic situation. One in which the current limp waffle in Westminster of the UK 'repatriating some powers if a good opportunity occurs' will be swept away by events.

Most readers of this website are interested in one way or another in 'foreign affairs'.

As I have described on different occasions here, the heart of international diplomacy is the state. That idea in its modern form emerged from the Peace of Westphalia. Here are some passages from my 2009 DIPLOMAT article on this subject:

A vital date in the history of the modern world is 1648. That was when the Treaties of Osnabrück and Münster were signed. All readers of DIPLOMAT know these treaties off by heart. They together are more usually known as the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War within the Holy Roman Empire and the even more geriatric Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.

The negotiation of those two treaties invented modern grand scale diplomatic junketing. Haggling meandered on for six years. Over 100 different delegations of states, ‘imperial states’ from the Holy Roman Empire and interest groups (today known as NGOs) jostled for good outcomes, all on generous expenses.

The Two Treaties were mainly about settling Europe’s violent religious differences. But in doing so they set up new principles of sovereignty, under which the rulers of ‘nation states’ agreed to manage their relationships in a peaceful or at least civilised way. As democracy slowly came to qualify the power of those rulers, such sovereignty was seen as lying not with the national leader but rather in the ‘nation’. Which opened the way for ‘nation states’ to emerge as independent actors on the international stage.

Hence two tricky questions, still alive and well today:

·         how does a defined territory join this grand process (ie what is a ‘state’)?

·         which people join this grand process (ie what is a ‘nation’?)?

... Meanwhile Yugoslavia too had broken up. That hard question at the heart of Westphalianism – nation or state? - posed itself in acute form

Should the rest of us recognise the former internal borders of the USSR and Yugoslavia as the borders of the new countries concerned? Or should we negotiate border changes in some cases, better to reflect the principle of self-determination? Who or what should be sovereign? 

... The West looked at Slovenia (predominantly Slovene-populated, borders mainly not contested) and decided to have its cake and eat it. Slovenia handily ticked both boxes: internal borders as new international borders, and self-determination.

Which was fine for Slovenia. But not for Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro or Serbia, the other five republics in communist Yugoslavia each with different ethnic/national identity tensions. Not to mention the sizeable category of ‘Yugoslavs’ – people not identifying themselves with one or other ethnic community...

You know the rest. Calamity. War. Refugee columns.  Ethnic cleansing. War crimes. ICTY. NATO bombing. In today’s Europe! Dayton. Rambouillet. More NATO bombing. Kosovo run by the UN. Milosevic sent to ICTY and dies in prison. Kosovo declares independence in 2008, but is still not recognised by the majority either of countries or of the world’s population.

... Diplomacy. Building on what exists (ie racial, ethnic, religious tensions going back centuries) and accept that Good Fences make Good Neighbours? As we (HMG/West) did in accepting the break-up of what remained of Yugoslavia into Serbia + Kosovo + Montenegro?

Or building towards what we insist has to exist, hoping to compel people to cooperate nicely within single state frameworks which they dislike and distrust, as we (HMG/West) have done in Bosnia?

Two utterly different philosophies and policies, applied to places a few miles apart, which for eighty years were in one country.

Foolish Consistency? Or Foolish Inconsistency?

From Westphalia to West failure?

Now a new book by Norman Davies is coming out: Vanished Kingdoms. It looks at how the ebb and flow of history builds, removes and sometimes (Poland; Montenegro) restores polities.

Here at Browser is a super interview with Professor Davies, who as usual is on lively, challenging form:

People who have their eye on short-term, contemporary events and the world around us tend to forget this. I sometimes think they imagine the world politic to be a chessboard, where you play games, have a crisis, and then you put all the pieces back and have another game. Well it’s not like that. You can have a chessboard, you have players who are either pawns or kings or whatever, but the players themselves are always changing...

At the end of the Roman Empire, in the Byzantine period, the empire shrinks and shrinks until it consists of one city, Constantinople, and the Ottoman Turks can encircle it. There’s a final siege and the Turks go over the wall. The last emperor – number 156 or whatever – disappears in the fray, is killed, and that’s the end of the empire. This is, if you like, the guidebook to this story, to exactly what Rousseau is saying. No matter how powerful they may look, the time will come, as in the lives of men and women, when they die. It’s not a topic that people are eagerly looking at...

And the indigenous population of the region where Glasgow is – Strathclyde, as it’s called now – was Welsh. The chief hero of medieval Scotland was William Wallace. Wallace means Welsh. The Scots don’t tell you that. They had this theory that William Wallace’s family came from Shropshire, which is how they try to explain how a Welshman could be in what they thought of as Scotland. They didn’t know that these Welsh of the north were not intruders from Wales, they were there long before the Scots...

Part of the afterlife of the Soviet Union is, of course, in Putin’s brain. Putin is ex-KGB, an organisation founded to preserve the Soviet state which failed completely. Putin must have a terrible sense of failure. In fact, he has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of modern times. So sure, Putin, in the back of his mind, would like to reassemble if not the Soviet Union, then some sort of empire, a broader Russian-dominated grouping which would be a modern version of the Soviet Union. I don’t think he’s got a cat’s chance in hell...

And finally:

Is there a European identity strong enough to overcome the national identities of its member states? It’s touch and go. But I’m an optimist. I think there will be one hell of a crisis. I doubt if the EU will disappear, but it will be severely chastened. And it will have to put its house in order. Otherwise it will become one of the vanished kingdoms. It wouldn’t be unprecedented for that to happen.

Read the whole thing. It's crackling with wisdom and interest.

Then order the book (on Kindle too):

 

 

 

In 1969, in her seminal work On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross eloquently detailed the five stages of dying - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance. It remains one of the most important contributions to our understanding of the final phase of life and will do much to explain the otherwise baffling lack of self-awareness characterizing European elites' approach to the entire EU project...

Back in 2005 after the French and Dutch referendum debacles, William Schirano and John Hulsman wrote a doom-laden piece for the US-based The National Interest about the fact that the European Union and its ideals were, in fact, dying.

Watching the latest fevered summitry it is hard not to see Denial, Anger, Bargaining and Depression aplenty. Just quite not enough Acceptance yet?

Perhaps this is understandable. How to accept that something so vast and magnificent is failing, and perhaps giving way to uncertainty and disarray which risk lurching Europe back towards its ghastly past?

Read a version of their famous article here. It's only some 300 weeks old, but the names of the key players (Blair, Chirac, Schroder) seem to come from a prehistoric age.

Six years on things are, of course, much worse. But their core idea still makes sense:

Simply put, a one-size-fits-all approach does not conform to the modern political realities of the Continent - European countries have politically diverse opinions on all aspects of international life: free trade issues, attitudes toward NATO, relations with the United States and how to organize their own economies.

For example, the Netherlands is a strongly free-trading country, traditionally pro-NATO and proAmerican. France, by contrast, is more protectionist, more skeptical of NATO, more statist in organizing its economy and more competitive in its attitude toward America. Thus the two European renegades actually have very different political cultures  - there simply is no common "European national interest."

The EU should function as a political clubhouse - coordinating an intra-European consensus where one exists...