Big v Small

Michael Binyon deploys chess metaphors to describe Russia' s military push into Georgia:

Vladimir Putin lost several pawns on the chessboard - Kosovo, Iraq, Nato membership for the Baltic states, US renunciation of the ABM treaty, US missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. But he waited.

The trap was set in Georgia. When President Saakashvili blundered into South Ossetia, sending in an army to shell, kill and maim on a vicious scale (against US advice and his promised word), Russia was waiting ...

... Moscow can also counter Georgian PR, the last weapon left to Tbilisi. Human rights? Look at what Georgia has done in South Ossetia (and also in Abkhazia). National sovereignty? Look at the detachment of Kosovo from Serbia. False pretexts? Look at Ronald Reagan's invasion of Grenada to “rescue” US medical students. Western outrage? Look at the confused cacophony.

There are lessons everywhere. To the former Soviet republics - remember your geography. To Nato - do you still want to incorporate Caucasian vendettas into your alliance? To Tbilisi - do you want to keep a President who brought this on you? To Washington - does Russia's voice still count for nothing? Like it or not, it counts for a lot.

Let's dwell on that chess metaphor a while.

Aron Nimzowitsch was a great chess Grandmaster. One of his famous reputed chess aphorisms is "the threat is stronger than the execution".

The sense is that one can wait for some time to play a strong chess move, letting the threat that it might happen create new advantages. However, once the move is played the threat is gone and the move stands on its own merits. And, of course, the move is 'committal' - once played it can not be taken back.

In this case the Russians have been watching the Kosovo precedent and waiting to move.

One possible move was to stand firm on rejecting Kosovo independence. Another was to say that if Kosovo gets what it wants, why should not some others do the same?

The Georgian episode opens the way for Moscow to play the second move, as looks to be happening: "Georgia's territorial integrity is a dead issue".

However, Russia is a UN Security Council Permanent Member so such moves have to be wrapped in some sort of credible international law ribbon.

By parking on unbending opposition to the Kosovo precedent, Russia claimed to rule out ad hoc exceptions to a key precept of international practice in Europe in recent decades, namely that borders can not be changed without general consent.

What exactly is Russia now saying?

That if a country behaves badly enough towards minority territories, those territories can break away?

That any territory can break away if it has a strong supportive neighbour?

Or is there a new realpolitik doctrine emerging, that a new twilight zone category of small pseudo-states might emerge whose 'independence' is recognised by a core of supporters but not the international community as a whole? See also Transdnistria.

These questions have mind-boggling political and diplomatic ramifications rippling on down the decades to come. What looks like a strong move now may (or may not) come to look like a mistake.

For now Russia has all sorts of operational options in Georgia, using the presence of Russian official and unofficial forces on the ground to play for time and create (as we chess-players say) unfathomable complications.

For a famous example of such complications, see Game 14 of the World Championship match between Garry Kasparov and Vishy Anand. At the height of the battle (and the Championship struggle as a whole) with both players short of time, Kasparov on move 27 made a dramatic speculative knight sacrifice throwing the position wide open. He outplayed his opponent in the ensuing dog-fight.

Putin maybe has in mind a famous American example:

I don’t believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.

Here is Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mikhail Gorbachev piously enjoining people in the Caucasus to live together nicely:

The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia's separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. Each time successive Georgian leaders tried to impose their will by force - both in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, where the issues of autonomy are similar - it only made the situation worse...

What happened on the night of August 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against "small, defenceless Georgia" is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity...

... Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of US instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of Nato membership, emboldened Georgian leaders.

... Small nations of the Caucasus do have a history of living together. It has been demonstrated that a lasting peace is possible, that tolerance and cooperation can create conditions for normal life and development...

The international community's long-term aim could be to create a sub-regional system of security and cooperation that would make any provocation, and the very possibility of crises such as this one, impossible...

What a superb performance. These Russian communists sure have staying-power.

A couple of the more obvious points:

1)     The roots of this problem are not to be found in 1991, but rather in the preceding decades of Soviet brutalisation of Georgia which continued while said Gorbachev was still in power. Eg this example of the Gorbachev communists tackling the National Question in Georgia in 1989:

At the dawn, the Soviet special task forces attacked the demonstration with sharpened spades and poisonous gases, killing twenty-two demonstrators, mostly women and teens. Some two thousands were left sick for weeks and months, in hospitals and at home, from the toxic gases. The brutality of the Soviet forces against the peaceful demonstrators was recorded on the tape and shocked entire Soviet Union. A number of cases of ethnic hatred by the Soviet soldiers was attested. As witnesses recalled, some soldiers, while battering victims with trenching spades, were yelling "This is what you get for Stalin."

2)     Gorbachev insinuates that Georgia is to blame for the current violence, egged on by the USA. No mention of the dismal Russian record in South Ossetia over the past decade or so.

3)     Most impressively, Gorbachev calls for a "sub-regional system of security and cooperation". That is Communist for "just give us back the Soviet empire and leave us Russians alone and all will be well". The whole problem is that parts of the former Soviet Union and indeed parts of Russia itself do not want to be in Russia's 'sub-regional security system'. Why should they be, when Russia is giving them only insecurity and lumpen corruption?

Gorbachev deservedly crashed from power because he believed in replacing discredited Soviet Imperialism with a fizzy and brightly packaged new product, Soviet Imperialism Lite.

Seems he is still selling it. And that the Guardian is still buying it.

When we get all worked up (pr not) about British blunders and hypocrisy, we tend to lose sight of where they fit in to the greater scheme of things.

Pointing to others' even viler behaviour does not legitimise or make right one's own.

But it just is the case that some horrors are bigger and worse than others. And that different systems and political cultures are ... different.

Some find it easier to contemplate and launch outlandish behaviour. And safety mechanisms for stopping Bad Policies once they start kick in at different points.

So, is there anything in modern UK practice to compare to the French performance in Rwanda:

Drawing on documents recently released from the Paris archive of Mitterrand, the commission clearly describes the motive for French policy in Rwanda ... The RPF was a part of an “Anglophone plot”, involving the President of Uganda, to create an English-speaking “Tutsi-land”. Once Rwanda was “lost” to Anglophone influence, French credibility in Africa would never recover...

... The French created a secret command of the Rwandan Army through what he called a “légion présidentielle”. This was a group of elite operatives that was answerable only to Mitterrand and which drew up battle plans and military strategy, and built a psychological warfare capability with operatives trained in the manipulation of public opinion.

My own work has shown that not all French military operatives left Rwanda when the UN peacekeepers arrived in 1993. When the genocide began six months later there were senior French officers attached to key units in the Rwandan Army - the para-commando and reconnaissance battalions, and the Presidential Guard. It was French-trained soldiers from these units who, early in the morning of April 7, had orders to eliminate members of Rwanda's political opposition - and to kill anyone with a Tutsi identity card ...

The French Senate discovered how policy towards Rwanda had been made by a secretive network of military officers, politicians, diplomats, businessmen, and senior intelligence operatives. At its centre was Mitterrand ... It may be that a true reckoning of France's responsibility will never be possible.

What do other EU governments including ours do now to get to the bottom of this calamity?

Rien.

A creepy Euro-etiquette forbids us even to talk about the issue publicly in any way that counts. Especially when the French hold the EU Presidency.

The French of course insist that to open all this up is intolerable - their motives and actions were 'pure'.

Not perhaps quite the whole story?

Here is Future One. Martin Jacques gloating over 'western impotence' as evidenced by our inability to get what we wanted in Burma or Zimbabwe.

In the parallel moral universe of MJ, South Africa's President Mbeki has "scored a major diplomatic triumph" by getting the two main parties in Zimbabwe to the negotiating table.

If allowing one of the most dismally incompetent and vicious leaders in world history to ignore his defeat in an election and cling on to power is a triumph for Guardian readers, yes, well done Thabo!

Meanwhile In Burma the West could not intervene and ended up quietly channelling its assistance to cyclone-ravaged Burma via ASEAN, "the obvious and desirable course of action".

Yes, Martin, how obvious and desirable it is that thousands of people die for lack of the assistance we generously offered, helpfully to demonstrate Western impotence to Guardian readers.

Here is Future Two. Kevin Kelly talks about the next 5000 days of the World Wide Web and the profound transformations coming our way.

Set aside 20 minutes of your life to listen. And to think.

Future Two will defeat the banal emptiness of Future One.

It rolls out to the planet, including Zim and Burma in due course, the true new power of 'the West': connectivity, transparency and individual freedom.

And sure, as Asia and Africa and the Middle East take up these values 'the West' will have a lot to think about. New syntheses of power and responsibility will emerge. All very complicated.

But the problems we and our leaders face are all about managing Western success and indeed grasping  the scale of it, not managing failure.

A noteworthy sub-plot in the Kosovo situation is a plan by Serbia to ask the UN General Assembly to refer the issue to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an Advisory Opinion.

Serbia looks to be getting some handy noises of support for this manoeuvre from eg Russia and India.

And some Western voices are urging Serbia not to proceed.

See eg French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. And HM Ambassador in Belgrade Stephen Wordsworth. Wordsworth calls the Serbia initiative a mistake and a 'challenge to the EU', although he does note that not all EU member states themselves have recognised Kosovo's independence.

(Translation Note: in Serbian 'Wordsworth' comes out as 'Vordsvort', something like a distant cousin of Voldemort. But I am pretty sure they are not in fact related.)

Back at Pristina University in Kosovo, Professor Enver Hasani is not too worried by Serbia's ICJ idea:

... the goal of Serbia will not be achieved because the creation or destruction of states is a factual matter, not legal ... the initiative of Serbia could falter at the General Assembly of the UN since the odds are good for more recognition to be added to the list by then. But even if Serbia succeeds in getting the decision it wants, that decision could only have moral power and does not oblige anybody ...

These international legal tussles at the ICJ drag on interminably, but they are important symbolically and substantively.

There must be plenty of countries out there who find the Kosovo independence problem a real quandary, and who will be quite pleased if (a) nothing happens to force them to take a view one way or the other for years to come, and (b) the ICJ eventually pronounces for one side or the other (albeit on an Advisory Opinion basis) so they have the option to follow that lead in good conscience.

Plus if Serbia can get the Kosovo problem passed to the ICJ, it buys time and defuses the problem in Serbia's domestic politics for a few years.

A handy outcome for Serbia. Not so good for Kosovo?

Pressing on through Craig Murray's Murder in Samarkand, we reach Chapter 4 - Diplomacy.

Craig has to present his credentials to President Karimov to assume the full rights and responsibilities of HM Ambassador. These credentials traditionally are formal letters in flamboyantly old-fashioned courteous language language from HM The Queen to the Head of State concerned, recalling the previous Ambassador and introducing the new one.

A diplomatic curiosity. My Portuguese colleague in Belgrade was proud to display on his wall the top copy of his letter of credentials from the President of Portugal to to President Milosevic - Milosevic had fallen from power between the letter issuing and the ceremony to present it, so the Ambassador kept it!

Craig goes to the high profile ceremony armed (to his surprise - no explanation given for this surprise) with authority from the FCO to say some firm sentences on human rights. He describes well his encounter with President Karimov. 

Karimov is a Tough Egg, briefed to pretend to praise the UK on its long democratic traditions and lament the fact that Uzbekistan had fallen under Russian and not British imperial rule - a version of the usual rubbish line used by Bad Leaders to explain away the absence of basic democratic principles in their territory ("Pity poor us - struggling to catch up with you noble Brits, from so far behind!"). 

Karimov congratulates the UK on recent anti-terrorist legislation allowing suspects to be held without trial. Craig describes this as "a striking illustration of just how much encouragement New Labour's attack on civil rights in the UK gives to dictators round the globe". 

Hmm. Not sure they need any such encouragement - and in any case a fraction of the due process available to prisoners under these British laws would go a long way to improve things in somewhere like Uzbekistan.

Karimov responds to Craig's words on human rights with strong words of his own directed at Islamic militants and Russian influence - Uzbekistan had little choice but to respond in an authoritarian way. Craig admits that this speech makes an impression: "while he might be a thug, he was a complex and shrewd one with a profound grasp of detail."

Craig moves on to meet his EU colleagues.

The German Ambassador says that Uzbekistan offers only the illusion of progress. No mention here of Germany's military airbase and political support for Uzbekistan. But the Germans have offered numerous Uzbeks political asylum.

The French Ambassador warns against rocking the boat - the Americans have the major interest in Uzbekistan.

The Italian Ambassador's office is guarded by "three absolutely gorgeous young women ... white low-buttoned blouses exposing a terrific amount of cleavage, hip-hugging black short skirts with stockings and shiny black high heels".

The Italian Ambassador - with hotty support staff like that, why not? - looks like "someone playing God in an old Jimmy Stewart film"; he accuses the Americans of failing to grasp the complexity of a situation, either at the time or in retrospect.

Craig first encounters his US colleague at a lunch he hosts for a visiting IMF delegation. The US Ambassador (supported by the French Ambassador) inclines to give the Uzbekistan authorities the benefit of the doubt on their so-called economic reform programmes. Awkwardness occurs when Craig as the newcomer albeit with some experts' support argues that Uzbekistan statistics may not mean much, if anything:

The lunch established my reputation for being difficult and outspoken, while convincing me that the US were willing to bend any fact in defence of their ally, Karimov.

The next day Craig has a rather bruising private meeting with the US Ambassador, who does not welcome Craig's concerns about human rights abuses. He argues that Karimov is the best available Uzbekistan leader, grappling with real problems caused by Taliban-style militants: "Extreme Islam is itself a kind of institutionalised violence". He gives an example of one case where his personal intervention helped secure convictions of three policemen for murdering a detainee.

Craig then has something of a row with the Uzbekistan Minister for Economic Affairs, arguing over the facts (or otherwise) of Uzbekistan's reform programmes. He departs concluding (not unreasonably?) that the Minister had been talking 'complete rubbish'. 

After these first briefing rounds and being in post and in the region only some 27 days(!), Craig reaches two far-reaching policy conclusions.

That the USA had got its Central Asian policy thoroughly wrong. And that HMG in turn were wrong to follow the US line:

I knew that as Ambassador it was my duty to inform Jack Straw and Whitehall of my view. But I was also aware that it would be acutely unpopular ... saying what I wanted to say was likely to damage my career pretty severely...".

Craig then drafts a pair of telegrams advising in strong terms that HMG do not support more IMF money for Uzbekistan: Uzbekistan's performance does not merit it, whatever political deal might have been done by the Americans to secure use of Uzbek air facilities. Without real economic reform poverty would get worse, breeding more Islamic fundamentalism:

You do not encourage real reform by applauding fake reform. The poor of Uzbekistan should not become the victims of September 11.

A second telegram weighs even more heavily into the morality of US support for the Karimov regime with its totalitarian controls and use of torture:

If Karimov is on 'our' side, then this war [on terror] cannot be simply between the forces of good and evil. It must be about more complex things, like securing the long-term US military presence in Uzbekistan ... 11 September had also been the anniversary of the overthrow of the democratically elected President Allende of Chile ... we should have moved on from the disastrous policy of US-backed dictatorships.

Craig knows that he was going 'way out on a limb'. His junior colleague Christ Hurst wisely opines that this telegram was "pretty long for a resignation letter".

The telegrams issue. The text of a draft version of the first one is here. It is in fact rather better than Craig's excited description in the book suggests.

A letter appears from Craig's line manager in the FCO, Simon Butt. Craig is 'overfocused on human rights', plus discussing human rights cases on open phone lines likely to be monitored by the Uzbek security services. Craig's performance is causing concern...

So we get closer to the heart of the book.

What is happening here?

A not so senior Ambassador, after less than a month in a new post in a region he has not served in previously, pops up and tells HMG in telegrams circulated far and wide round Whitehall and the British diplomatic network that they have got things seriously Wrong.

I think Craig gets it Wrong.

First, as he must have known well, such a noisy and abrupt opening shot was going to annoy more senior people than it persuaded.

Note: Yes, I know that Craig received many positive emails for these first telegrams, including indeed one from me.

But work which is praised by people with little to lose and/or not working on the problem is not always the same as work which, even if couched in robust terms critical of the current line, is seen by key people at HQ as basically reasonable and constructive.

Second, Craig projects no sense at all of explaining how, given the awfulness of the Uzbekistan regime, he thinks we might make practical if probably painfully incremental progress in changing it, and what HMG might lose if we decide to try that path.

Third, denouncing the Americans' policy in such abusive terms while not explaining that eg our EU partner Germans too are doing their fair share of cosying up to Karimov is monochrome, even banal analysis. Plus it lacks operational credibility - if the Americans do have the main Western weight in Uzbekistan (and have just suffered 9/11) how to woo them in Washington and in Tashkent towards what we might see as a more 'balanced' policy? Is telling them that they're blundering oafs really the way most likely to get the results Craig wants?

Fourth, there seems to be nothing said about Russian ambitions - maybe in the Greater Scheme of Things it is just better that Western governments engage busily with Karimov, hoping slowly to turn that society in a more pluralist direction, than that reactionary post-Soviet instincts emanating from Moscow recover their strength.

Finally, the world does not give us a choice between Good and Bad options. Often there looks to be only a range of Pretty Bad options available, some with longer-term implications than others. Maybe using an oppressive regime in Uzbekistan to hit hard at an even worse regime in Afghanistan is, for now, the Least Bad Option, and so good hard-headed diplomatic business?

In short, Craig throws himself in a tabloidy, unprofessional, unconvincing  way at a hugely complicated international bundle of issues, asserting (in effect) that there is a simple way forward.

Not too surprising that those in the policy chain in London were irritated at Craig's implication that they too were a bunch of duffers missing all the obvious points, and that they quickly started to wonder what they were now dealing with?

Professional Judgement Rating: 2/10.  Makes numerous important points about the dire human rights situation in Uzbekistan, but shows no appreciation of how matters might be taken forward in a way likely to achieve better results on that front as well as on the many other key policy challenges HMG face in the region. Worrying tendency so early in a posting to get carried away with his own naive rhetoric, losing perspective.

The FT attempts to describe how this morass of trade rules complexity has hit the rocks (Note: deliberate mixed metaphor). See also this.

When one has worked in Diplomacy for as long as I have, one realises just how little one knows.

So on this subject I have primitive instincts/prejudices in favour of 'free trade' as opposed to eg 'fair trade'. But if asked to write a succinct and sensible two-page essay on how world trade talks work, I could not do so.

Obviously some of it is about what actually happens, and some of it is about what might happen, and how different 'safety nets' can be used in case of things going 'wrong' (NB not easily defined what that means) on a local level.

Plus a lot depends on the individual power of specific national and international lobbies, with US elections and no doubt many others round the world looming.

And predicting what any deal will mean in practice with oil and food prices in such a state of flux round the world is next to impossible

Thus from the FT:

The US created some momentum last Tuesday by proposing to reduce its allowable ceiling for farm subsidies to $15bn (€9.6bn, £7.5bn). The figure was a couple of billion dollars below Washington’s previous offer and much less than existing limits of $48bn, though – as Brazil and India promptly pointed out – about twice its current actual spending.

It appears from this that the US slashed its farm subsidy safety net in this area from a potential $48bn to a measly $15bn. Pretty generous, huh? But Brazil/India pointed out that in fact the US was spending only some $7bn, so keeping the safety net at double that was suspicious.

See also this:

The US, with covering fire from some developing world agricultural exporters such as Uruguay, insisted that India and China open their rice and cotton markets; India and China, backed by other heavy hitters such as Indonesia, said that the US was asking them to sacrifice too much.

It does not sound from this as if the USA is going to be noisily blamed for this trade round failing. China and India as fast developing economies want to have their rice cakes and eat them - they want maximum freedom to export and maximum options to protect their domestic base. Nothing surprising there, but other developing countries might think that with the success they currently are enjoying they might take a few more 'risks'.

It is all horribly complicated. Business Standard:

The battle to conclude negotiations for Doha in agriculture and market-opening for industrial products broke down due to unbridgeable differences between India and the United States over the trigger and remedy for using the Special Safeguards Mechanism (SSM) by developing countries to check sudden surges in imports of vulnerable farm products.

After 12 days of intense negotiations, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath and his US counterpart US Trade Representative Susan Schwab failed to agree on a figure for using the SSM.

India proposed that if imports cross 115 per cent over a base period, it should be allowed to impose safeguard duties that are 25 to 30 per cent over its bound duties on products taking zero cut.

Uuurgh. How far in all that are they talking about things likely to happen in real life, as opposed to mere potentially destabilising possibilities? How many special interests stand to benefit corruptly round the world from the jungle of local rules needed to make such detailed provisions work?

Finally, the human factor. These articles bring out that the personalities of individual negotiators count for a lot, as does the guile or otherwise of the person leading the process, here WTO DG Pascal Lamy. He gambled that he could close some well known large gaps, and (says the FT) lost.

What next?

All being well that the main players will go off and lick their wounds for a few months without rocking the global trade boat too much in the meantime.

Then try again.

And hope that in the meantime those who lose out from rather less globalisation (ie the very poor) don't perish on a scale and in a way which allows anyone involved in these talks to be blamed.

Craig Murray has commented on my earlier post about EU policy towards Uzbekistan:

You make the somewhat childish debating error of asserting that because I have said that US republicans do something, I am claiming that only US republicans do that thing.  I have in fact published numerous pieces, both on my blog and elsewhere, attacking Germany's policy in Uzbekistan. Not sure if this link will show, but this one entitled "Uzbekistan and German Disgrace" is just one example: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/05/uzbekistan_and.html

Well, childishly or unwisely or otherwise I was basing myself on p.37 of his book, which singles out 'conservative politicians in the USA' and 'short-sighted US Republicans' for confusing Uzbekistan leader Karimov with true democrats elsewhere in the former communist world.

Later on p.60 is a fullish description of the mighty 'K2' US airbase in Uzbekistan which is mentioned elsewhere in the book at different points. But it takes us until p.330 to discover that our benign EU partner Germans too have a significant military airbase in Uzbekistan.

And it takes us until p.378 tucked away in Note 73(!) to find out the name of "the most frequent and obsequious" Western Minister to visit Uzbekistan, namely "Joschka Fischer, the trendy Green German Foreign Minister". 

Craig likes to express his views in a blunt, provocative way. See eg his recent remarkable two-for-the-price-of-one sexist swipe on his website aimed at the Labour candidate who lost in the Glasgow East byelection:

... the graceless vituperation of the defeated New Labour candidate, the shrew-faced bitch Margaret Curran ...

It is fair to take his book about Western policy in Uzbekistan as his considered view on that subject. And that book hits far harder at US/UK perfidy than at eg German perfidy. Hence my childish simplification.

Maybe a book dwelling in greater length and in a balanced way on contradictions in EU as well as US policy towards Uzbekistan would have been more accurate, subtle - and persuasive? And for all those reasons less likely to sell?

Next. On to analyse Chapter Four of Craig's book, where he meets President Karimov and the German and US Ambassadors...

A reader reponds to my posting on the Bruges Group meeting:

Leaving aside the Grandness or otherwise of the ideas the Bruges Group battles for, what relevance do global Grand Battles of Ideas have to everyday life, and how people try to live it?

I happen to think that Ideas are the bedrock on which Policy and Civilisation are built.

And this fine article by Charles Moore sums up why:

The Tories make the arresting promise that they can do for the broken society what Mrs Thatcher did for the broken economy. It is the right idea. But behind it lies the assumption that the economic answers are nowadays known: it is just a matter of getting out the old tool-box which Labour has left in the shed.

I wonder. What if the coming economic difficulties raise questions which have been hardly thought about yet? What if people start to reject the market liberalisation of the last 20 years because they think it leads to hedge fund managers getting rich by destabilising the price of essential commodities? Capitalism's arrangements will start to seem very unattractive to most people if, as is now happening, they get poorer ...

On top of that comes something that really is new. The assumption of our political attitudes ever since our mass democracy began a century ago is that "we" (by which is meant the West) can ultimately direct our destinies. If primary economic power really is passing away from America and western Europe, to China and to the owners of commodities that we need, will that assumption hold good? If not, what then?

A very pertinent question.

If our Grand Ideas start to wobble, others will take their place.

More from a reader on Craig Murray and all that:

On the subject of Craig and the FCO, I haven't read his book, or all the documents, but I understand some nasty and unsubstantiated allegations featured prominently. What's your view on what they mean?

To me the whole saga suggests that regardless of one's opinion of Craig's views, or his chosen way of expressing them, The System hates few things more than someone making a song and dance.

I too have not read his book, but I have looked at the various documents he has published on his site, a tiny fraction of the paperwork involved I suspect and of course put there by Craig himself.

I think simply that it is not in fact about 'the System hating someone making a song and dance'.

As an Ambassador at one of our overseas missions you have professional responsibilities and some important privileges.

Your responsibilities include:

• sending FCO/Whitehall honest, intelligent and accurate analysis and recommendations about what is going on in 'your' host country (and to a degree the region), plus about the likely local impact of British/EU/Western policies
• keeping a good network of contacts throughout local society to help you be intelligent and accurate
• doing your best to maintain some sort of productive relationship with the host government - they run the place, whether the Brits like it or not
• and leading a properly managed mission where public money is spent wisely to help you do all the above.

In return for all that you have a unique chance to use your personal skill and energy steadily to build your authority back in FCO/No 10/Whitehall so that your views and ideas have Weight. You can make specific recommendations on policy which, depending on effective you are in gauging how best way to make an impact back home, are likely to be seriously considered at the highest levels of government.

So, to repeat. It is not enough to be Right and Persistent. You must be Convincing.

And to be convincing there maybe comes a point when instead of banging off another strident telegram copied hither and thither, you drop a private hand-written letter to the Foreign Minister or Permanent Under-Secretary, calmly expressing your anxieties about the way things are going and suggesting that it would be wise to change course, or at least look hard at doing so.

And if, after all that, your best advice is considered carefully by the people paid by Parliament to look at such matters and is nonetheless rejected, your professional responsibility is to shut up and get on with implementing the agreed policy. The battle will have to be fought another day.

This is the basic point. In a democracy a senior official has the right to be heard. And the responsibility to accept the outcome.

I don't know the exact sequence of events in Craig Murray's case. But it all went badly off the rails.

Did it do so because there was a vast establishment conspiracy to 'silence dissent'?

I think not.

'The System' in fact does not exist. What does exist are a fairly small number of serious people working quite hard to make sense of myriad complexities and awkward choices.

You might suspect that such people end up getting a bit wound up and self-absorbed among themselves. Risk-averse. Inclined to 'not rock the boat'. And you might be right in various cases.

But they are at least experienced and thoughtful, and not prone to dart hither and thither in policy terms.

In the end it boils down to Ministers getting up in Parliament or on TV and defending their policies. They have found down the decades that people who make a Song and Dance are not necessarily the most reliable source of reliable advice.

Energy, passion, innovation are all welcome in the right proportions. They need to be attached to Planet Earth.

Serving as HM Ambassador in Belgrade from 2001-2003 I had the task of advising London on how best to handle the aspirations of demands in Montenegro for independence from Serbia.

At the time European capitals were just getting over the NATO bombing campaign aimed at ending Milosevic's appalling rule over Kosovo. So further Balkanization of the Balkans did not seem like a good idea, especially when opinion in Montenegro itself was pretty evenly divided.

Then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook took the view that such issues should not be decided on a wafer-thin minority. He also thought, looking at the Bosnia disaster, that it made no sense to support Montenegrin independence if the largest single 'ethnic' community in Montenegro (ie Serbs) were opposed to it.

Plus opinion had moved against Montenegro's ambitious leader Milo Djukanovic. He had brushed aside personal appeals from US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that he take part in the 2000 elections in the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to help bring Milosevic down. I stood in the FCO main courtyard listening to her in Washington remonstrate with him in Podgorica via the cell-phone of a US diplomat listening in on the animated conversation.

Djukanovic miscalculated. He thought that as Milosevic was bound to win by hook or by crook he would stand vindicated by boycotting the phoney election.

But Milosevic crashed. Leaving Djukanovic with the problem of remaining credible in Western eyes while standing aloof of FRY processes.

Djukanovic had his eye set on independence for Montenegro. He put his head down and decided not to cooperate on Western terms.

This did not work out as he hoped. He eventually in 2002 was compelled to agree to a new loose formation called 'Serbia and Montenegro', seen at the time as a major success for 'EU Foreign Policy'.

But nothing really worked properly in SAM. The Montengrins stalled, playing for time. Serbia's post-Djindjic leadership were unable to project any coherent policy, torn between fear of being seen as 'interfering' and unable to do much to help Montenegro's Serbs or to appeal to non-Serb Montenegrins.

My name during my posting in Belgrade was of course mud in Montenegro pro-independence circles, as I loyally pursued HMG's and EU/US policy of working to keep Serbia and Montenegro together.

All manner of banal communistic tricks were used against me when I visited Podgorica. Blatant telephone and conversation tapping. Grotesque personal attacks against me in the official and non-official pro-Djukanovic media.

I reported one especially lively piece to London in July 2002 in a telegram entitled 'Slimed!'. In it I recorded that I had been publicly denounced in Podgorica as a tool of MI5 and MI6, a Serbian nationalist with a love of "oriental cuisine, grilled meat, monasteryism and Smederevo wine". The article said that had Montenegro already achieved independence, I would have been PNG'd: "Note: as good an argument for independence as I have seen".

Anyway, I left Belgrade in mid-2003. The EU policy I was instructed to pursue steadily lost its way. The Patten (ie monied) part of the EU's external effort did not throw its weight wholeheartedly behind the Solana achievement. So much for European foreign policy

And lo, in 2006 Montenegro finally achieved its independence.

If Montenegro is now independent of Serbia it is not obviously independent of Russia, which has hit upon the happy idea of just buying goodly chunks of it.

Life goes on.

There I was in a Brussels restaurant last week when in walks Milo Djukanovic with a sizeable pack of Balkan security types, little plastic curly things sprouting from all available ears.

We greeted each other warmly. I congratulated him on Montenegro's independence and we exchanged visiting cards.

As ever, I praise fine technique.

Djukanovic knew what he wanted. And he got it.

A text-book example of a tiny, highly focused and sustained ambition defeating far larger but uncertain and disorganised opponents.

Montenegro has not followed the line of most EU countries and recognised its neighbour Kosovo as an independent state.

Why not?

Because doing so is "not high on its list of priorities":

Everyone understands our positive distanced and considered views on Kosovo independence.

Odd, that.

Positive? Hard to say - depends on one's point of view.

Considered? No doubt.

But distanced?

Is not taking a view on the legal status of an adjacent territory about the highest priority in any country's foreign policy?

Why is Montenegro now being so coy, after supporting Kosovo's aspirations to escape Belgrade rule to help its own plans for independence?

It has an Albanian minority of its own to think about. And it has a lot of Russian money and influence sloshing about its coastline.

A lot.

Those Russians with Moscow's support might think that the Montenegrins were being a tad ... ungrateful by moving to recognise Kosovo?

So down the Podgorica priority list that one goes.

Were/are all the horrors across former Yugoslavia driven by 'age-old ethnic hatreds'?

Or was/is it all more about gangs of criminals wanting to steal TV sets?

Misha Glenny, brilliant Balkan analyst, has the answer.

Buy the analysis here.

The Polish media are reporting that Polish local government employees dealing with applications for EU funds are quitting their jobs to join the private sector, where pay is much higher.

No surprise. The Polish Development Minister told me a while ago that the greatest problem Poland faced in spending its EU largesse was 'people'.

Poland not surprisingly finds it hard to mobilise and train the army of officials across the country needed to pick their way nimbly through the voluminous EU (and Polish) processes needed to get EU funds sent to (and spent sensibly in) Poland. And indeed we see a tendency for firms pitching for EU contracts to nab anyone in government who is any good at all this, since contracts can be large and anyone who understands both EU and Polish procedure is a highly valuable asset.

So, Poland will battle to spend all the EU funds available to it in the current Budget cycle. The basic sequence goes something like this:

• government agrees overall balance as between central and regional discretion in spending and priority sectors
• national/regional development plans are prepared
• project ideas emerge
• specific tenders are drawn up
• bids come in and are examined against financial/environmental and other criteria
• bidders win (or lose) - maybe rows and appeals break out
• specific contracts are then prepared
• work starts
• and is completed - checks needed that the job has been done properly
• with plenty of paperwork and checks still needed for the Brussels cheques to arrive once the work is nicely completed

Uuurgh.

Huge scope at each stage for delay and muddle, even with good intentions and reasonable people all round.

That said, the fact that Poland has not spent much of its EU funding so far is no surprise - in the nature of the process the big spending comes at the end of the Budget period (ie in a few years' time) once all those steps have been completed.

Or is all this money in fact a resource curse anyway? Funding which is so hard to access that it skews national efforts in an unhealthy direction?

This is indeed a bad security breach by a senior official.

What on earth was he doing taking Top Secret STRAP material of this sort out of the building?

One of my first Blogoir posts described a grisly experience I had with FCO Security twenty years ago after a I passed a journalist a rather banal but Confidential document I had written.

This episode is far more serious. Really secret stuff left lying around.

In one way we should expect more breaches, simply because there are far more documents sloshing around now; the likelihood of some fathead losing one now and then is therefore all the higher.

The incompatibility and technical ring-fencing of the various top-level security computer systems round Whitehall (at least this was the case in my last time in London a few years ago) likewise mean that actual papers need to be carried from one building to another. And they can be mislaid.

Some top officials also have specialist laptops available for carrying Top Secret material, which melt into malodorous jelly if an unauthorised attempt is made to open and read them.  

It all boils down - as ever - to the human factor. Once upon a time the FCO Resident Clerk was sunning himself on the FCO roof when a Secret message came in to Churchill from Stalin on the FCO system, and was brought to him to action on to No 10.

Imagine his consternation when a gust of wind blew said message away over the parapet and into St James's Park.

Life - somehow - went on.

Note: sign of the times that the plucky citizen finding these Top Secret papers on the train yesterday handed them to the BBC, not the police. Dipstick.

A neat article about the (erroneous) idea that a twitching butterfly wing can be shown to unleash a chain of events culminating in a hurricane:

 ... a point Lorenz amplified in his 1972 paper, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"

Well before this chaos theory notion started to get popularised, Ray Bradbury (of course) gave us the defining idea.

Maybe a little more humility is needed from eg the Climate Change industry?

Zimbabwe as expected falls ever more steeply to total disaster.

The gang of military/security leaders previously dependent on Mugabe now look to be running the shop, desperate as they are to cling on to power and privileges at the cost of ruining their own country. A text-book case.

Yet the UN still gives Mugabe a forum to rave away. And we taxpayers end up paying for it.

I have been looking at the True Cost of Stupidity.

Take Serbia and Slovenia.

After the initial flurry of violence when Slovenia broke from the then Yugoslavia, Slovenia has patiently got on with developing its economy.

Serbia by contrast got on with more violence against Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. This led to reduced investment, sanctions and even in the end a NATO bombing.

Result? In GDP per capita terms, Serbia is still struggling to match its economic position of 1991.

Thus the Cost of Milosevic(ism) can be accurately measured. It is the space between the two lines of a simple graph of total GDP measured over time:

• one line shows Serbia's actual awful performance
• the other line shows what Serbia would have achieved by growing at an average of 3% a year over the past seventeen years. (Note: a conservative estimate - of course it could have done a lot better than that with common sense leadership and policies.)

To calculate that gap, a mathematician uses the Trapezium rule. In Serbia's case the 'opportunity cost' of Milosevic and Milosevicism now runs towards hundreds of billions of dollars.

It is no exaggeration to say that Milosevicism in all its forms delivered a set-back to Serbia from which it will never recover. There is no conceivable chance of Serbia growing faster than Slovenia for the decades required for Serbia to 'catch up' the ground lost in the past seventeen years.

The political costs of this madness also have compounded up. Montenegro and Kosovo have broken away - had Serbia developed to its natural potential they could be clamouring to stay with Serbia and share its success.

Ditto for Mugabe.

Running the Trapezium formula on Zimbabwe's performance over the past twenty years and comparing it with eg Estonia is a profoundly depressing experience.

Mugabe like Milosevic for reasons of selfish paranoia has created national losses running to scores of billions of dollars, losses on a scale far exceeding anything development assistance might now do to put right. 

Zimbabweans will pay for this folly for many decades to come through low living standards, higher disease and death rates, worse roads, poorer education, weaker institutions.

Castro Communism is another horror story. Back in 1959 Cuba was richer than Singapore. Singapore got on with developing and building itself up, maintaining solid policies over forty years. It is now one of the most successful countries in the world. Castro's Cuba scarcely changed at all.

Conclusions? 

"What a triumph the Euro is!" says the EU Commissioner.

"Do you understand the subject?" says Tim Worstall.

And the arguments why the UK should join, or end up Icelandised. Brrr.

This noisy Independent piece argues for a huge increase in roof-top solar panels on British homes.

Its arguments are based on the success of an earlier government scheme to bribe people to instal solar panels: "When first launched two years ago, the grants – which, for example offered up to £7,500 to install photovoltaic panels – were an instant hit."

That's a surprise. Imagine being offered up to £7,500 for free and not wanting the deal.

Obviously it was crushingly expensive to roll out such state-funded incentives to everyone, so the scheme promptly withered.

Germany continues to subsidise these installations - total cost to the German taxpayer of course not mentioned in the article.

Why not let market forces do the business instead?

When I was in Belgrade I asked the Embassy to look hard at the options for installing solar panels on the roof of my Residence. This may be a perfect place for such devices. A large, flat space blasted by the sun from February through to November.

Yet our analysis concluded that it made little financial sense to make the change. Solar panels were too costly and generated too little power.

This was a few years back. Did we look at the wrong kit?

And how best to work out what these panels 'actually' cost anyway?

This is an an interesting snap-shot of an attempt to answer these questions:

Bizzarri and Morini point out that cost should not be the only consideration. The total energy and pollution involved in sourcing the raw materials, manufacturing, installing, and maintaining any particular system should also be considered. After all, if it uses far more energy to build a wind farm or install solar panels than the energy they can produce during their lifetime then it does not make environmental or economic sense to install them ...

 ... With this in mind, the researchers analysed all the costs from cradle to grave - in terms of energy use, pollution and carbon footprint, and economic - to find out whether photovoltaic cells are a truly viable alternative energy source ...

... In their assessment of the three different PV panel types on the south-facing roof of a school in Ferrara, northern Italy, the team found that the energy produced by the panels over their lifetimes considerably overcomes the energy needed during manufacture. In fact, energy costs are recovered within two years in this medium sunshine climate.

The team also showed that carbon dioxide emissions are significantly lower over the PV panel lifetime from cradle-to-grave compared with conventional electricity generation. Economic costs, the team found, would only be recouped if the panels remained fully functional for more than twenty years.

If even a simple installation on a sunny school-roof takes 20 years to pay off, maybe better to do all this on a large scale in a desert?

There is a point in the Independent article, even if the article does not make it.

Namely, if the taxpayer is directly to subsidise energy production one way or the other over decades to come, which sort of subsidy is 'better'?

Next to impossible to agree even the basic factual and economic assumptions for beginning a serious debate about this, let alone concluding it in a way which will command consensus?

At least a system based on (as far as possible) encouraging mass energy-producing decentralisation will not be vulnerable to terroristic or other centralised breakdowns?

But we need to get on with deciding if we are to avoid South Africa's fate...

Tragedy is said to be unfolding within the UK Labour Party.

Phil Collins (former speechwriter for Tony Blair) with Richard Reeves argue that the Party has lost touch with its liberal tradition.

The full text is in Prospect (subscription only). But the core thought is here:

Labour politicians too often see a social problem—obesity, children at risk on the internet or declining interest in high culture—and make two assumptions: first, that the problem is amenable to a policy solution; and second, that this solution ought to involve the establishment of a council, commission or task force. But many of the issues facing modern society are too complex and too cultural for such a wooden approach.

And this:

Brown and his allies retain a benign view of the power of the central, expert state to build a fairer, better society.

Hmm.

A bit hard to blame all this on Gordon Brown after Tony Blair spent years announcing one new 'initiative' after another?

The authors go on to propose all sorts of different schemes which they claim to be unreservedly 'liberal':

Liberals have always insisted that actions become subject to legal sanctions if they harm others. It is now irrefutable that the emission of greenhouse gases, mostly by rich nations, is causing climatic changes which will harm those in the low-lying, equatorial nations, which are mostly poor: a clear form of "passive killing."

... A new liberal fiscal policy would be based on two clear principles. First, tax "bads" (like carbon) not "goods" (like work). Second, tax "unearned" rather than "earned" income ... The riches flowing from inheritance or soaring house values should be taxed more heavily than at present. While people should be able to take some increase in the value of their house free of tax—up to, for example, what they could have received from a risk-free investment like a gilt—anything above that should be subject to substantial taxation.

Hard to know where to start demolishing all this.

Is not the 'active killing' of their own citizens by many equatorial nations through deliberate repression (Zimbabwe) or sheer socialistic incompetence (Burma, N Korea) a much more immediate problem than long-term environmental risks?

Why should inheriting a family house be treated as 'income'?

If the problem is a neurotic 'authoritarian' insistence on state power, surely the best thing to do is cut taxes and ergo cut the state's role?

And what about the UK's soaring contributions to the European Union, a major multiplier of high-level meddling, waste and regulation?

Above all, why are the Labour Party's agonies a 'tragedy'? It is not a 'tragedy' that CD sales decline while on-line music sales rise. That's simply the result of better options emerging, even if those who have banked on CD sales face some tough times.

Thus the Labour Party's misery is in fact a valuable market signal, telling us all that the accumulated policies and taxes of Blairism and Brownism are not working.

The real tragedy lies in the fact that such stunning sums of money have been wasted by Labour in finding this out, as Labour's own Denis MacShane bravely acknowledges:

I do not know of a single minister who privately does not despair at the waste of money on pointless projects, publications, or legions of press officers that add no value. The taxpayer has given more than £1 billion of aid to India, even though that great country has more billionaires and millionaires than Britain and runs its own well-financed development aid programme. I was baffled as Europe minister to be told I had to waste 90 minutes being quizzed by a consultant when the kindly but shrewd tea ladies in King Charles Street knew what needed to be done. How much was paid to the consultant? What happened to his report? No one in Whitehall knows or cares.

Madness.

All that said, Collins/Reeves are on to something important.

Many government processes exist simply because they reflect clunky information flow options of many decades ago.

It now is possible to give citizens a far greater say in how their money is spent, and how much of it they want spent on 'collective' purposes. The role of government surely has to move from 'controlling' processes to setting reasonable but flexible frameworks and incentives for shared private differentiated action.

Unfortunately far too many vested state-funded interests are now far too well established to let this happen without serious and painful disruptions.

Incoming.

This AP story about a robotic street-patroller catches the eye.

It took a while to invent one. But they were anticipated by Ray Bradbury back in 1951...

If you have all the high moral authority of being a terrorist group leader, you have the right - nay, the spiritual duty - to question the integrity of others.

Arncha sick of all those articles about 'fat cats' in the City and elsewhere,  proclaimed to be ripping us off right and left?

The Daily Mail has them. The Independent urges revolt against them. A soon-to-be disgraced former Minister says that they should be 'made' to hand over their money.

And P Toynbee's headline writer turns them into one word, not two!

Although even the Guardian puts in a good word for them now and again.

A couple of points.

First, whereas politicians wanting a cheap headline rave away against City fat cats, they do not have a go at footballing/golf/tennis/pop-star fat cats who earn more money to less overall public utility. Thus in 2006 the average (average) Premier League player salary was £676,000 pounds per year - before bonuses.

Why is it OK to give vast rewards to footballers, clever at football as they are for a while, but not to financiers?

Maybe the public sees the results of football and understands them (this one is a nifty example), whereas the 'results' of financiers are thought to be less obvious and/or trivial, and therefore less meritorious - 'all they do is juggle money' etc.

More generally, a cosmic failure of our education system is that it does not explain to children where stuff comes from. This (deliberately?) creates a culture prone to moronic populism and irresponsibility.

Why exactly can we go into a shop and buy cheaply untold thousands of different products, each one there thanks to the ingenuity of individuals and teams of people all round the planet?

When we flush the loo do we give thanks to the clever engineers decades ago who saved us from sewage-filled streets?

When we turn on the computer to read PollyToynbee droning on about 'fatcats' or to watch Robbie Keane lash one into the net, do we praise the millions of people out there who make that stunning technical feat possible, none of whom we have met or paid directly for their efforts?

Why do poor people in Africa get to benefit massively from cheap mobile phones without having invented a single component of them? What/who is creating these astounding machines, making them cheaper and better every day, and distributing them across Africa's vast distances?

The point is that we are all by any historical standards Fat and Greedy Mice, living selfishly and often gracelessly off the cleverness of other people.

The dimmest laziest welfare recipient whinging and wheezing on benefit-funded cigarettes is guilty of a far greater crime than the Fattest City Cat. He/she is leeching on the labour and intellect of others now and before us, while offering nothing in return.

The City person is working to give that leech some sort of chance by making the planet's money match up with the planet's clever ideas. Big complex risky stuff. Deserving generous rewards if they get it right.

Or, to be precise:

Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes.

Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time.

Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions - and you'll learn  that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean?

It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it?

Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy?

Money is made - before it can be looted or mooched - made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced...

The St Valentine's Day Massacre in gangland Chicago back in 1929 was an unusually awful event which shocked a nation.

But what about a busy weekend in Chicago these days?

Have our expectations of how people should live and behave been dumbed down?

If so, why?

As Zimbabwe's weekly/daily/hourly/minutely inflation rate soars into unimaginable numbers which portend possible mass starvation, normal people may be wondering how that exotic phenomenon actually works in practice.

Where do all those pretty new banknotes for a bazillion Zimbabwean dollars each in fact come from?

From Europe, of course!

This fierce piece by Sam Leith weighs into the British Government's handling of the Al-Yamamah fraud enquiry:

There was enough evidence of corruption in the Al-Yamamah deal to warrant an independent investigation. That investigation ... was stopped after an explicit threat to withdraw a big arms contract, and an implicit threat that "lives would be put at risk" were the Saudis to withdraw their co-operation with our counter-terrorism operations. That is to announce that we're willing to do business with people who promise to connive in the murder of our citizens unless they get their way. Nice.