Communism (Still)

This reads well:

Imagine what modern Europe would look like now if Poland had the political status of Georgia, lying in some sort of political-moral twilight zone with former Soviet interests linked to the KGB having a far freer time to penetrate into that society and play games with Polish assets.

As does this:

Foreign Secretary David Miliband spells out the UK position on Georgia:

The Georgian crisis is about more than vital issues of humanitarian need and rule of law over rule of force. It raises a fundamental issue of whether, and if so how, Russia can play a full and legitimate part in a rules-based international political system, exercising its rights but respecting those of others...

... Russian mind games on withdrawal do them no credit...

... International law must be obeyed. This goes to the heart of the question of how Russia comes to terms with its past, and how it sees its future; above all, whether it recognises that the old frontiers of the Soviet Union are now history, and whether Russia sees its future as part of a rules-based international system.

That sort of analysis rests on certain ... psychological assumptions.

One of them is that the reply will not be something like this:

The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.

Do we really look like a country with a plan? We don't have a plan.

The EU has plans, the World Bank has plans. You know what we are, West? We're a dog chasing cars. We wouldn't know what to do if we caught one. 

We just do things. We're a wrench in the gears. We hate plans. Yours, theirs, everyone's.

Schemers trying to control their worlds. We are not a schemer. We show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.

So when I say that what happened to Georgia, your girlfriend, wasn't personal, you know I'm telling the truth.

You guys in the West were schemers. You had plans. Look where it got you.

I just did what I do best. I took your Kosovo plan and turned it on itself. Look what I have done to this small country with a few tanks and a couple of bullets.

Nobody panics when the expected people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plans are horrifying. If I tell the Western media that tomorrow a gangbanger in Nagorno-Karabakh will get shot or a truckload of soldiers in Chechnya will get blown up, nobody panics.

But when I say one little country will get a small invasion, everyone loses their minds!

Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. We are an agent of chaos.

And you know the thing about chaos, West? It's fair.

Hmm. Doesn't this sound ... familiar?

More on Russia, always a rich seam for foreign policy First Principles.

Thus Max Hastings gives us a striking Russia metaphor:

The Russians yearn for respect, in the same fashion as any inner-city street kid with a knife. They will become willing to play with the west by western rules only if or when they no longer perceive those rules as disadvantaging themselves. Today they cannot compete on the EU's terms, still less those of the US, so they make up their own.

It is unnecessary for the west silently to acquiesce in the Russians' excesses, but it must tread cautiously in the face of their sensitivities.

Maybe the fact that we in the UK tread cautiously in the face of the sensitivities of street kids with knives accounts for this?

More from Max:

America must stop pretending that democracy is, of itself, the answer to all the world's ills ... US policy towards Moscow for almost two decades has been based upon the assumption that since the Russians were losers, their wishes could be ignored or defied on every front. No useful business could result from such a posture.

Blimey.

Democracy may not deal with the world's ills but it makes a good step in that direction. Indeed, the problem in Georgia is that the Russian leadership want to send a profound anti-democratic signal that Might is Right - that what Russia wants or needs is the uber-value in that part of the world. See this latest outburst from the reportedly mild-mannered President Medvedev.

Plus the USA in fact has spent large sums of money in and with Russia on all sorts of common projects, aimed at building a new sense of partnership. The problem is not that the Americans treat the Russians as losers. It is that the Russians behave like losers, unable to make do with their sprawling eleven time zones of territory and hankering after regaining former imperial lands elsewhere.

One recurring theme in Russian and some Western analysis is the deterministic but weird idea that Russia has to behave differently (ie badly) because it is 'surrounded by enemies'.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once said that the fall of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical disaster. This didn't mean that he wanted to retain the Soviet state; rather, it meant that the disintegration of the Soviet Union had created a situation in which Russian national security was threatened by Western interests.

As an example, consider that during the Cold War, St. Petersburg was about 1,200 miles away from a NATO country. Today it is about 60 miles away from Estonia, a NATO member. The disintegration of the Soviet Union had left Russia surrounded by a group of countries hostile to Russian interests in various degrees and heavily influenced by the United States, Europe and, in some cases, China.

If a country occupies such a vast land mass as Russia does, it necessarily has plenty of neighbours and all sorts of complex questions to deal with. The Russian problem is that it tends to see anything it does not like as 'hostile'. And that attitude extends even to the Bambi-ish spread of EU values and processes into eg Ukraine.

Because, of course, the point is not that 'Russia' has a problem with that. Rather the Russian post-KGB elite have the problem, since the spread of Western democratic values brings with it new transparency and reliance on open rules rather than shadowy power-plays. And that threatens both their biznes interests and their world-view.

Above all, the Western democracy which is sneered at so much in the West brings with it a sense that political behaviour has (and depends on) Limits - limits of law, of convention, of personal self-restraint..

Here is the profound cultural/philosophical difference between Russia and the West.

'The West' sees Limits as a source of strength. 'Russia' sees Limits as a form of weakness.

Max does not seem to get this:

... the west (sic) will find it easier to coexist with this tormented, intransigent, melancholy and oil-rich neighbour when Russia feels comfortable with itself, not when its nose is rubbed in its long history of failure.

This has to be mainly wrong. No serious community policy can be based round the idea that we all wait for the inner city street kid with knife to 'feel comfortable with himself', if his idea of being comfortable is to slash away at smaller kids who disagree with him.

If we are not brave enough to take away his knife and haul him off to therapy, we at least need to limit his room for slashing, and do a lot more to help those he threatens to defend themselves? 

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.

Welcome Instapundit readers.

While we Crawfs have been travelling the Georgia story has moved on, to the point where French President Sarkozy has been helping broker some sort of truce and possible peace plan.

No end of commentaries too, of course, many dwelling on what this episode tells us all about Russia's apparently resurgent power and equivalent 'Western weakness.

Here is the mordant Spengler saying that Putin should be the President of the USA, not Russia.

Or try the hopeless divisions in the EU, as described by the Guardian.

This rapier-like analysis by Victor Davis Hanson nails most of the right wider points:

We talk endlessly about “soft” and “hard” power as if humanitarian jawboning, energized by economic incentives or sanctions, is the antithesis to mindless military power. In truth, there is soft power, hard power, and power-power — the latter being the enormous advantages held by energy rich, oil-exporting states. Take away oil and Saudi Arabia would be the world’s rogue state, with its medieval practice of gender apartheid. Take away oil and Ahmadinejad is analogous to a run-of-the-mill central African thug. Take away oil, and Chavez is one of Ronald Reagan’s proverbial tinhorn dictators.

... When one factors in Russian oil and gas reserves, a pipeline through Georgia, the oil dependency of potential critics of Putin, and the cash garnered by oil exports, then we understand once again that power-power is beginning to trump both its hard and soft alternatives.

When the Soviet Union collapsed a new implicit Deal emerged. It had various elements, some more obvious and robust than others:

• the 'West' would not reorganise its economic and security arrangements developed during the Cold War (primarily EU and NATO) to accommodate a totally new situation.
• Russia was invited to cooperate with the 'West' but effectively from an objectively weak position, and therefore on Western terms albeit with significant Russian involvement (see the pretty good Contact Group period in former Yugoslavia)
• but Russia insisted on and somehow retained the idea that its 'near abroad' (ie the former Soviet Union republics) were more Russia's then the West's.
• The three tiny Baltic republics dashed from the Russian camp and formally joined the Western camp, but while the new 'Commonwealth of Independent States' led by Russia was an institutional flop it achieved its main purpose in Moscow's eyes, ie keeping the other new states involved in a Russian psychological space.
• For some years this seemed like a good enough outcome for the West. Involvement in these deeply Sovietised territories was hard work. Russia was arguably the most democratic state in the CIS and looked to be exporting modest pluralism or at least modernisation to them.
• Latterly we have seen two rival tendencies. The CIS states moving to some sort of open market relationships beyond former Soviet borders and therefore opening up to Western processes (and wealth); in short, having different and rather attractive new options. And Russia gaining a windfall of wealth from soaring energy prices while itself adapting to a strategic transformation.
• This gives Moscow impressive new ways to exert influence across the CIS - buying key assets, 'persuading' CIS leaders that cooperation is in their best interests and so on. Why strap these countries down in close and boring neo-imperial ties with Moscow when it is so much easier to buy or control indirectly the best bits?
• That goes only so far. Moscow has to be especially tough with the (few) parts of the CIS which are still making the greatest formal efforts to join the Western camp. Hence intense Russian efforts in Ukraine while keeping CIS frozen conflicts well chilled, to create local imbalance/uncertainty which Moscow can nudge as and when necessary.
• And, now, Moscow pouncing on Georgian miscalculation to up the ante by overt military intervention.
• This Georgia crisis therefore represents the formal end of the original West/Russia Deal, which was already dead in the water as evidenced in part over Balkan policy in general and Kosovo in particular.
• Russia instead is proclaiming a New Arrangement: that if there are to be Westernising processes in the CIS area they will take place on Russia's terms, and that Russia is ready to use force to defend its self-proclaimed interests.
• Russia could press on and topple the Georgian leadership, and maybe still will.
• But the Russian Mind also will relish the idea of leaving Saakashvili twisting forlornly in the wind, humilated both by having failed to recapture South Ossetia and by having been left standing alone as the USA and all Georgia's European friends watched aghast but did significant nothing to help.
• And the likely Russian tighter grip on South Ossetia also creates a handy pseudo-precedent for Serbia gripping the Serb-controlled territories in northern Kosovo.

Will the West sign up to Russia's New Arrangement for the CIS space? If so, what? And if not, what?

More generally, are we moving to a new, darker and unpredictable international situation?

In which Rules will matter less, Willingness to Prevail a lot more?

Does the objective correlation of forces favour those leaders who in a pre-modern way have a clear sense of what they want - and are ready to take risks to achieve it? Leaders who will think they have the upper hand against other leaders who rely on little more than post-modern flannel and uneasy hopes?

"Our peacekeepers and the units attached to them are currently carrying out an operation to force the Georgian side to [agree to] peace".

Richard Beeston and Edward Lucas both know what they're talking about on Georgia.

Both wonder if Georgian impulsiveness is not going to backfire. Lucas:

It seems Russia is ready to hit back hard, in the hope of squashing the West's pestilential protégé. In short, it looks more and more as though Georgia has fallen in to its enemies' trap. The script went like this: first mount unbearable provocations, then wait for a response, and finally reply with overwhelming military force and diplomatic humiliation.

What do the Russians want? Free Thinker drills down into the comment section of a Russian website to try to find out:

It's strange: this discussion thread is in some ways a model of democratic debate, with a wide range of views expressed.  There's a right-left spectrum of sorts, only its center of gravity of the discussion is in a disturbing place.

Mind you, look at the Comments on my own Indy Open House piece about the rules on memoirs for former diplomats if you want to see some 'disturbing' thoughts:

When is Britain going to cast-off the cord to Washington, and tell the yankee-doodles to go to hell? Sucking-up to tyranical despots because they're Uncle Sam's buddies is not in Britain's interests, and is a gut-wrenching travesty of what British diplomacy is supposed to achieve.

Sigh.

The one thing the disparate CIS frozen conflicts have in common is this. Russia could have worked with its European partners to use its weight and ingenuity to solve these problems on modern creative democratic terms. Instead it has done little other than create morbid little pockets of corruption and instability, essentially for psychological reasons: to show the world and itself than it can not be 'pushed around in its own backyard'.

Hence another failure of 'European diplomacy' in wanting to look away from the hard choice here which Poland and some other former Communist countries correctly insisted was the only real one. Either these European countries are given a fair chance to be free to join the Western democratic mainstream, or they stay in a new sort of virtual Soviet empire.  

Except that once the Russian tanks start moving in, it is not that virtual.

Edward Lucas again:

The fighting should be a deafening wake-up call to the West. Our fatal mistake was made at the Nato summit in Bucharest in April, when Georgia's attempt to get a clear path to membership of the alliance was rebuffed. Mr Saakashvili warned us then that Russia would take advantage of any display of Western weakness or indecision. And it has.

I swung by the FCO the other day to have a chat about Bosnia.

The snappy desk officer dealing with this problem now is 24 or thereabouts.

Let's say she is 24. She was born in the year I was British Olympic Attache at the Sarajevo Winter Olympic Games. She was 7 when the Soviet Union broke up, 11 when the Dayton Peace Accords were signed, 14 when NATO bombed Serbia.

Hence her formative years have seen the 'frozen conflicts' here and there in the former Soviet Union as part of normal life. Abkhazia, S Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transdnistria - all mysterious places in a geopolitical limbo where nothing much happens, or can or even should happen.

But ice melts.

Suddenly out of thin air (or so it seems) Georgia - a country hitherto pushing for NATO membership - is battling with Russian forces on its own territory in a struggle to control a few tens of thousands of Ossetians who do not want to be part of Georgia.

Various people warned that if 'the West' pushed ahead with Kosovo independence, Russia would move to change the rules in one or more of these frozen conflicts.

Kosovo course is (for Moscow) a sort of reverse S Ossetia. In Kosovo the Western parts of the international community are leaning hard on Serbia to drop its claims, and would react sharply against any attempt by Serbia to recapture Kosovo by force.

In Georgia the Western sympathies lie with the existing state, and it is Russia helping the tiny South Ossetian community stay separate. Russia plans to get round this conundrum by blaming the violence on Georgian fascism or somesuch, while NB opening a new form of external self-defence doctrine said to aimed at protecting Russian citizens alleged to be at risk beyond Russia's borders in other former Soviet republics. A doctrine with all sorts of ingenious political and other deployment options... 

This FT editorial gets it mainly right:

Mr Putin (and Dmitry Medvedev, his anointed successor) seem to want to prove two things: that Georgia is far too unstable to join Nato, and that they alone can determine the future of the former Soviet space.

But not quite:

They are right that neither the US alone, nor the Nato allies, would dream of intervening in a military confrontation. But Georgia is only unstable because of Russian policies. Encouraging secessionists sends a terrible signal to others inside Russia, especially in the rebellious north Caucasus. Moscow’s policy may be macho, but in the long run it will be utterly self-defeating.

Really?

How long is long?

And is Moscow sending a signal that 'encourages Caucasus secessionists'?

Or is it sending a signal that it means to keep a tight political and/or psychological grip on as much of the former Soviet Union as it can grasp - and that US/NATO had better back off?

Imagine a nice piece of land where under the law anyone can walk freely. Someone brings on to it a few big snapping dogs and lets them roam there.

The law has not changed - but if nothing happens to get the dogs removed or contained, the inclination of many people in fact to go for a stroll may well diminish.

If that situation becomes the norm, the owner of the dogs may feel that that land is now his for all effective purposes.

And he did not even have to buy it.

Memo to the Bosnia Desk: The North Caucasus area is like the Balkans but without the sense of ethnic harmony and self-restraint which has always prevailed in much of former Yugoslavia. Read Robert Kagan.

For those of you with weak memories, here is Arthur Scargill, defiant miners' leader who crashed to defeat against Margaret Thatcher.

He is still whirring away with the Socialist Labour Party, a lumpen Marxist phenomenon of no consequence.

But as if for old times' sake, here he is in the Guardian getting free publicity arguing the case for coal power as opposed to nuclear power.

Does he make any sense? Hard to tell - depends on how you measure the 'true' costs of coal as opposed to gas as opposed to nuclear calculated over decades.

But he is as defiant as ever:

I challenge George Monbiot to test out which is the most dangerous fuel - coal or nuclear power. I am prepared to go into a room full of CO2 for two minutes, if he is prepared to go into a room full of radiation for two minutes.

The Scargill case rests on the assumption that clean coal is Good and radioactivity is Bad. That said, it's not quite clear to me what a room full of radioactivity is, since all rooms are 'full' of natural radioactivity anyway. Go for it George!

Oh - and coal-burning itself is a handy source of radioactivity.

Whatever. Back to Kraftwerk.

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.

This story shows what is wrong with 'EU Foreign Policy'.

As previously posted, in dealing with difficult problems a thematic, sustained and firm approach can bring positive results. Especially if it is thematic, sustained and firm.

In this case the EU responds reasonably firmly to terrible killings by the Uzbekistan authorities in May 2005. But then is neither thematic or sustained.

Craig Murray would have us believe that it is 'short-sighted US Republicans' who turn the biggest blind eye to Uzbekistan abuses, because the USA has a huge airbase there.

Yet lo, it turns out that Germany has a goodly airbase there too, and in a generous gesture of humanitarianism issued a visa to the cancerous Uzbekistan Minister responsible for the massacre to help him be kept alive in a German hospital. Germany is said to be leading the push to drop EU measures.

Good news: US troops can use the German base now, the offending US base having been closed in 2005 after the short-sghted Republican Bush team spoke out against the Uzbeks' massacre.

So EU pressure on Uzbekistan looks to be dwindling a mere 170 weeks after the massacre, although various restrictions remain in place.

Why?

Basically because it is all Just Too Difficult.

The key argument in favour of an 'EU Foreign Policy' we hear in the UK is that it acts as a multiplier for British positions.

What tends not to be mentioned is that it acts as a multiplier for other EU Member States'positions too, not least when they disagree with us.

Result?

Junk Diplomacy. 

Chapter two of Craig Murray's book describes his pre-posting briefing rounds.

He heads for Eastern Department, effectively his 'line management' people. He finds it hard work:

The atmosphere in the department seemed to be unpleasant - heavy, pompous and serious. A pall of misery appeared to have settled.

I have a soft spot for Eastern Department, as I was there when it received the name.

Back in the mists of time (to be precise 1640) our Foreign Policy organised itself to deal with different parts of the world in endearingly simple ways. One Department of of State was Northern Department, covering great swathes of the globe north of the equator. The other was Southern Department, covering points south.

Northern Department eventually became the Foreign Office but an FO department with that historic name continued to operate until well after the Second World War, when a reorganisation created 'Soviet Department'. Good riddance. Northern Department had dealt ingeniously with UK/Soviet policy in part by having various Marxists working in its ranks.

I was posted to Soviet Department as Deputy Head of Department in mid-1991 on returning from South Africa. I inherited a vast old 'partners desk' which had an electric switch by one's knee - once upon a time the occupant of the desk could switch on a red light to alert others in the room that he was on the telephone to the Soviet Embassy, hence they should stop talking lest Secrets be Revealed. Cool.

Anyway, after the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991 we had to rename the department. It could not be 'Russia Department' as too many other countries were to be covered by it. Restoring the name Northern Department might provoke, hem, adverse media comment.

So Eastern Department it was, and is. I hope that that desk is still there.

Craig describes his various conversations there with two FCO colleagues whom I happen to know, mainly on Tashkent Embassy resources/management issues. Craig notes that he inherits a small and mainly junior UK-based team: only four FCO officers plus a Defence Attache.

There is a hint of a Problem with one of the FCO team. Craig (reasonably) expresses concern at the absence of a more senior political officer, but is more than confident that he will cope:

I was professionally very capable myself of a high volume of wide-ranging output.

Thereafter Craig meets some senior business people from British firms investing in Uzbekistan, feasts on yummy Uzbek plov with the Uzbek Ambassador in London, and has a pre-posting audience with Princess Anne and Prince Andrew (Note: trite moan about having to wear 'fancy dress' for the occasion).

Craig's final pre-posting calls are on FCO Minister Mike O'Brien ("all haircut and presentation") and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw who says:

"Whenever you get to ... wherever it is you're going ... tell them I'm thinking about them."

That was the extent of my instructions.

Putting to one side Craig's attempt (not it must be said totally unsuccessful) to portray his London interlocutors as largely uninterested in Uzbekistan, I find his account of these calls a bit strange.

Pre-posting Ambassadors are expected to work up their own pre-posting briefing round lists. Craig also had plenty of time in the margins of his months of Russian language training to see people.

So where are the calls on eg the FCO Human Rights and EU teams, HM Treasury, DTI, SIS, MOD, Cabinet Office, No 10 and so on? What about British human rights groups concerned about Uzbekistan? Uzbek dissident groups in London? Leading journalists and academics who cover the region? Did he pursue with FCO personnel people the question of the apparent poor performance of one of his future team?

Maybe he met some or all of these people and decided not to mention it in the book.

One way or the other, a key part of a new Ambassador's role is to ascertain 'what is out there' in the UK in respect of the country and issues with which s/he will be dealing, and to spot potential allies and friends.

No evidence is presented by Craig that he did this. The impression he gives us is of meeting only a few cynical busy people who treat Uzbekistan as a far away country of which they know little, and care even less. Their problem, not his!

So to say dismissively that Jack Straw's off-hand remark was "the extent of his instructions" is disobliging, if not untrue.

His detailed 'instructions' would have come from his many meetings round Whitehall.

If he had them.

Professional Judgement Rating: 5/10. Useful and blunt (if a touch dismissive) account as far as it goes of various significant briefing meetings, but no evidence presented that he did a full and comprehensive networking job.

Round at the Bruges Group last night to hear a thought-provoking Very Big Picture talk.

The argument went like this:

• not too long ago when Communism ended in Europe there were books about the triumph of democracy, the 'end of history' and so on
• now the emphasis is on Islamic fundamentalism. This is a physical danger but less obviously an ideological danger - Al Qaeda-ism is in bad human and intellectual shape (not a model for anyone) and the Iraq Surge is succeeding, with positive ripples elsewhere
• however, we also now we see Russia reappearing and China emerging, both with obvious and unabashed authoritarian instincts
• one advantage they seem to possess is a Confident Identity, and a sort of legitimacy with their own people flowing from that (Note: quite how true is that, I wonder?)
• so a global ideological clash is back with us, between Democracy and Authoritarianism (Note: indeed - see that recent UNSC Zimbabwe vote)
• in this the EU has a unique but not necessarily benevolent role as a sort of 'post-democratic society', an area where power and decision-making are seeping from electable/accountable people to non-elected and non-accountable people (Brussels institutions, European Court)
• some in the USA do not mind this and quite like the idea of a Strong Europe, since otherwise Europeans (even the Brits) add very little 'extra' these days
• "the EU likes to lecture potential new member states on democracy, but the EU is so undemocratic that it could not join itself" - see eg the open bullying of Ireland quickly to have another referendum and this time get the Right Answer
• if Obama wins there will be those who try to push the USA in a more 'European' direction, but strong democratic instincts/arrangements will stop that going too far ...

Hmm.

There is a serious question here as to where the EU stands on Democracy. The EU Project lumbers on, Liberal but not Democratic, knowing that key aspects of the project were put to referenda they would be rejected and not just in the UK.

Here in the UK the Labour Party promised us all a referendum, then broke the promise and ratified the Lisbon Treaty. The Conservatives would not have done this, but look unwilling to force the deeper issue wide open if they come to power. 

On the other hand, the fact that Poland and the likes of Estonia are now in the EU means that a much sterner EU eye has to be kept on Russian post-Soviet pronouncements and power-building.

In short, the Bruges Group speaker was right.

We are back into a global Grand Battle of Ideas.

The current British problem is that with the Labour Government in such a demoralised position and the economy wobbling, we now have nothing especially coherent to say - or much credibility when we mumble it. 

My earlier posting on Craig Murray's telegram to the FCO recording serious human rights abuses in Uzbekistan dismissed the response he won from HQ, namely that the UK would press for an 'EU demarche'.

Why? It sounds grand and important.

Not an easy question to answer simply.

What is a 'demarche'? In this context a formal representation of protest/concern agreed and issued by the EU member states as a whole, and delivered on behalf of the EU to a host government by a small group of Ambassadors.

Who they are depends on who is around. Thus it might be that the country representing the EU Presidency has no bilateral Embassy in the country in question, so another Ambassador will be representing the Presidency locally and take the lead. S/he might be accompanied by the Ambassador representing the country taking over the forthcoming Presidency and eg an official from the Commission.

I never liked being part of these 'group' demarches and (bad boy) turned a Nelsonian Blind Eye to any instructions to do so. It always struck me as arrogant and patronising - and therefore likely to be less effective - that a group of Ambassadors appear to gang up on a host governmentto to deliver a formal protest.  Much better to attack the target in coordinated parallel bilateral sessions, with each Embassy delivering the message in the way most calculated to have Impact.

Plus, to be frank, I never liked airing my dark diplomatic arts in front of other non-British colleagues. What if during the meeting a private hint emerged of a way of moving forward which needed some frank discussion? Harder to do that in an EU group without straying from 'instructions' or risking exposing EU divisions and risking a silly row. 

EU demarches are therefore true 'lowest common denominator' diplomacy.

In this case the UK probably will have put round a telegram called a COREU to all EU member states' Foreign Ministries summarising the Murray report, and proposing the text of a demarche.

There then may well have followed a painful round of Euro-teeth-sucking and drafting quibbling, of the form:

"The Foreign Ministry of Moronia thanks the UK for its draft Demarche on this undoubtedly important subject, but wonders whether more investigation of the case in question is needed before the European Union commits itself to the proposed course of action...Given the lack of clarity about the facts of this one case, perhaps the language in paragraph 6(b) needs to be rather less direct? May we propose instead ..." 

Because consensus is needed, the draft in successive rounds of wittering tends to get diluted to suit the weediest concerns.

And, of course, if by any chance the foreign Minister of Moronia is meeting the Uzbekistan Minister in the coming weeks, Moronia may well not choose to open a row beforehand by sending in its Ambassador for a demarche of this sort.

Bottom Line: slow, bad outcomes. No real impact expected.

As Craig reports later in the book, the French Ambassador delivered the eventual demarche accompanied by Craig and two other EU colleagues "in a tour de force of Gallic insouciance", giving every impression that the exercise was purely formal and of little substance. When Craig then pointed out that in Uzbekistan 99% of trials ended in conviction and so were probably not fair, the Uzbek Foreign Minister smirked "Under our system only the guilty are accused."

In other words, this way of doing diplomatic business did not strengthen the weight of the protest, as the EU liked to think. It obviously diminished it.

What's more, the process of lurching the EU machine into movement for hollow exercises of this nature is time-consuming and distracting.

Which, worst of all, creates in the FCO official mind a sort of pre-emptive dumbed-down British punch-pulling - "if we can not get the support of EU partners without a lot of hard work or at all, why bother?"

Is there any better way to proceed?

Alas not obviously in this case. The Uzbeks were too far away, too obnoxious and too impervious to normal diplomatic pressure. Engaging our efforts with the Americans rather than the EU might have been better. But as we shall see, Craig quickly fell out with the US Ambassador and whatever chances there might of been of using that approach dwindled away.

Why not press for a personal letter to be sent from our Foreign Minister to his.her Uzbek oppo, to express in frank terms strong British dismay at this example of Uzbek injustice?

But here too one is Nutted by Reality. A private letter makes more impact on the target Minister, but because it is private it is easier to ignore. Publishing the letter turns up the public rhetorical pressure but allows the target and local media to dismiss the whole protest as tired/toothless/'arrogant' British post-imperial nagging.

And in the Uzbek system the Foreign Minister is probably a suave front-man with no power anyway. Even if he too is revolted by the Uzbek courts, what in practice can he do? Does he want to risk his nice job and perks for the sake of someone he has never met and who he suspects (rightly) of wanting to bring about radical changes including the ejection from office and possible trial of himself?

Er ... no.

When all the diplomatic flim-flam is stripped away, it all boils down to some very fundamental propositions:

• Can we persuade them to behave better on Human Rights merits?
• If not, can we plus/minus others create a different cost/benefit calculation for them to mull over - either more Gain or more Pain, or combination thereof?
• And is the effort required to make a difference in Hell-Hole (A) really worth it? Better to throw our available Human Rights time and energy at places such as Hell-Holes (B) and (C) which for one reason or the other currently look more receptive and where we have more levers to pull?

Tough, huh?

Welcome to Diplomacy.

There are not too many UN Security Council vetoes.

So when one comes along it shows that things at that top table are not in good shape - lack of grown-up consensus and/or serious miscalculation by those who pushed the offending Resolution.

Although of course there may be cases where a Resolution is pushed in expectation of a Veto by one or other Permanent Member in the hope of embarrassing said Permanent Member before world opinion.

Last night the world saw the unedifying spectacle of Russia and China backed by South Africa, Vietnam and Libya blocking a Resolution to impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe as well as financial measures against key Zimbawe leaders.

The Russians and Chinese hid behind the pious rubbish that Zimbabwe is not a 'threat to international peace and security', the legal 'trigger' needed for action of this sort. Since it is quite easy to imagine Zimbabwe collapsing with dangerous ramifications for its neighbours, that argument is unconvincing if not downright dishonest.

The stance of Mbeki/Mandela South Africa, itself a victim of Zimbabwe's collapse, goes beyond shame.

So there it is.

Three countries with no democracy lining up with Russia which is doing its best to diminish its democracy, aided and abetted by South Africa led by a Soviet-trained narcissist, voting against meaningful pressure on a vile and incompetent regime which counts for nothing.

But why? 

The decision of course has nothing to do with Zimbabwe. The Chinese and Russians want to be obstinate just to show that as their post-Cold War wealth increases apace they can do what they darn well please, regardless of what the 'West' wants. Zimbabwe's luckless population are collateral damage. 

No better time to do flex these muscles than in the dying months of the unhappy Bush Presidency and with Gordon Brown's domestic credibility also low. A strong school of thought has it that when someone is down there is never a better time to kick him.

So, a new phase begins.

Mugabe and his core villains gloat heartily at the success of their daring smash and grab raid on their country's integrity.

Western measures of different sorts intensify.

Zimbabwe's already parlous situation gets worse. The Chinese may step in to buy the place if it gets cheap enough. Ruin. Human desperation and misery on a massive scale.

All as I warned. 

Plus there could be bigger picture effects too. The idea of a League of Democracies separate from the UN may get a boost. But would this move allow a significant League of Authoritarians to set themselves up in business? Is this the best the world can do?

Yet if one looks at these things from a grander perspective, one sees different patterns emerging.

Policies have Consequences, even if those consequences bite you far in the future.

For example, when did the UK wield its first UN Veto acting alone?

Perhaps on 13 September 1963: over ... the situation in Southern Rhodesia. 

This sorry Swedish story attracted fleeting global attention.

A school in Sweden confiscated a boy's party invitations being handed out to his friends as two classmates were not invited:

"Two people in class had not been invited, and that is not allowed. The ones who were not invited felt sad and left out," the school principal, who was not named, told the paper.

Let's assume that the two who were not invited had in some way or the other upset the party-host.

The boy hosting the party decides not to invite them. Cause - meet Effect!

The idea that behaviour has consequences is life's one core rule. Our world depends on it.

Society ideally should be organised so that Good Behaviour has Good Consequences; Bad Behaviour has Bad Consequences.

And if those basic principles are not taught and learned at school, when are they taught and learned?

What if the very distinction between Good and Bad is seen as ... discrimination? 

Thus to the Mandela Birthday Party in London. And the revolting spectacle of Annie Lennox on stage twittering on about HIV/AIDS, when Mandela has done so little about the utterly awful policies of President Mbeki in this area which have led to the deaths of countless South Africans.   

Then on to the African Union gathering, where 'President' Mugabe is welcomed as if nothing untoward had happened in his country's 'election'. Again, Mandela has done nothing to make a difference.

On the day France takes over the EU Presidency let us recall the infamous words of Jean-Paul Sartre in 1961:

The rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity. For in the first days of the revolt you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man; the survivor, for the first time, feels a national soil under his foot.

We see now that J-PS was 100% wrong.

Those African Marxist liberators, so generously supported by Sweden, did killing enough. But they remained unfree, locked in a profound Marxist/Swedish moral syndrome of Total Irresponsibility.

Unable to accept criticism, unable to set their standards high, ultimately loyal (like Mandela) not to their people but only to their own political movements.

Nor are we former colonialists free either, since we carry on sending 'assistance' to these villains, patronisingly subsidising and extending their countries' moral and actual impoverishment.

In Africa thanks to generations of the best Euro-Swedish non-judgmental educational thinking and development policies, Bad Behaviour has Quite Good consequences.

Result?

Disaster. Of course.

But it's no-one's fault. Except maybe ours.

Update: I learn that many schools in the UK and not only in Sweden have these 'all or no-one' policies for parties. Including the school where my daughter goes(!). They have a variation - it is OK within one class for girls to invite only girls to a party, and boys only boys. Hmm.

Not clear to me what exactly the 'policy' means. It is not (I think) in any contract one signs with the school. In practice it is little more than an impertinent device to give teachers an easier life, and maybe these days they need one.

Yet it is deeply perverse. Imagine if the teachers at a school were told that if they host a party at home they had to invite all their teacher colleagues. They would say 'Get Lost! It's my house and I'll invite whom I like.'

Parents and children are not extended a similar freedom and the accompanying responsibility?

A powerful TV programme in Poland has aroused a lot of interest there. 

Trzech Kumpli ("Three Mates") describes the fates of three men who were students in communist-era Krakow in the 1970s.

One became a poet murdered seemingly by the communist police.

One under the Kaczynski twins' leadership became the head of TVP (Polish BBC-equivalent), a fervent anti-communist.

And one became a prominent journalist for Gazeta Wyborcza (sort of Guardian equivalent in Poland).

The point is that the film describes how the third of the three also was a serious collaborator with the communist regime, spying and informing on his friends.

And how the crimes and abuses by the regime which he may have helped provoke have gone largely unpunished, while this collaborator like so many others who helped run the apparatus of repression has lived well on generous pensions and privileges, far beyond what the average Pole receives.

This collaborator not only has lived well. After communist rule ended he established himself in a senior role on the leading Polish newspaper which came out strongly against 'lustration' (the full revealing of who did what to whom in the communist period).

Nice work if you can get it.

Like a murderer from a gang of killers who manage to destroy the evidence which might convict them, who subsequently becomes famous for arguing strenuously in the media that murderers in general should not be punished harshly because 'society is to blame'?

Beyond sickening.

This issue - should we 'move on' from communist-era crimes - is a profound one for modern Europe.

I tackled it in my very final telegram for the FCO, sent from Warsaw:

... during the Communist period the authorities pressed a person to sign a simple document indicating a readiness to cooperate even when the security police did not care whether the person actually would cooperate or not.

What they wanted was the recognition by the person signing of his/her own psychological submission, expressed via just that mean little secret signature, whose very meanness and smallness and furtiveness made the act of submission even more total...

... the striking thing is how the psychological force of Submission lives on today. Clamour from the Poles and indeed foreigners against opening the secret police archives here comes from different angles.

From the former communist elite intending to keep ill-gotten gains by keeping the scale of their plunder and deceit well away from the wider public eye. 

From the rantings of Lenin's useful idiots in Western media and academic circles (and indeed! How useful they have been to the Communist cause down the generations - the Bolshevik poisoned gift that keeps on giving).

Some from well-intentioned decent people who unhappily conclude that even if the cause is just, the pain and disruption (including to the Catholic Church) provoked by tackling these problems will not be worth it.

The arguments and motives differ. The end result is the same.

The days trickle into months and years. It all gets ... difficult. Complicated. Memories fade.

Thus people who slyly presided over or benefited from the communist system are feted as modern European social democrats. Jewish, Polish and other victims of communism who had their property stolen or heroically refused to cooperate appeal to European institutions for justice, and often leave empty-handed. We prosecute elderly Nazis for their crimes. Elderly Communists go free...

... Do Al Qaeda and Hamas look at how Stalin got away with mass murder at Katyn, and think that by being viciously determined enough they can do the same? Do they expect the sheer intensity of their hatred of our pluralism to overwhelm our readiness to defend it? That they too can bring us to Submit?

How might we measure if they are succeeding? 

Well done Poland, for keeping the subject alive.

This is a sharp account of one serious Russian view on Russian energy issues:

Mr Chubais has spent the past 10 years masterminding the break-up of UES, the Russian electricity monopoly, which will cease to exist next week after selling off its generators in the biggest liberalisation of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. His insistence that Europe is misreading Gazprom is striking as he is a frequent critic of the gas monopoly.

He warned Europe’s actions were part of a broader international tendency in oil and gas towards increasing state intervention and closing domestic markets – which he warned were a “dead end” and posed big risks “for the world and for Russia”. A return to protectionism was “madness”.

He's right of course in that. But Europe's problem is that these energy issues are not symmetrical.

Russia has energy on a vast scale. Europe does not.

In Europe the use of major energy contracts as a political policy tool is ruled out. That is not obviously the case in Russia.

So, battle is joined. How does Europe import Russian energy on a huge scale while exporting greater transparency/due process back up the supply chain into Russia? Does Russia use its energy predominance craftily to export its political worldview as well?

See eg the reluctance in many parts of the EU (not only ultra-cautious Poland) to allow Russian interests to buy key energy assets, for fear that those assets will not be managed in a purely commercial way for purely commercial purposes.

Not surprising, given the way Russia under current management weighs in to rewrite former contracts and grab better terms when it feels like it.

But Mr Chubais has a point here:

Mr Chubais insisted ending subsidised gas supplies to former Soviet states was about “stopping handing out money for free”. “Why the hell should we supply gas to Ukraine” for discount prices, he asked. “And meanwhile, forgive me, these scoundrels are stealing gas…

I wrote about this problem back in 1996 while at the Embassy in Moscow. I said that the West hypocritically nagged post-communist Russia to behave in a market way, but then complained about Russian 'bullying' when Russia pressed eg Ukraine and Serbia to move towards paying market-prices for energy and stop 'diverting' gas supplies improperly.

That said, for a long time it suited Russia to leave other former Soviet republics and parts of the Balkans hooked on cheap energy as a way of keeping them within the Russian 'sphere of influence'.

Maybe we are finally emerging from that period to a tougher game, based on world prices with 'influence' won or lost via different means?

Daniel Finkelstein in the Times also takes up the charge against John Simpson's wretched analysis of the latest news from Zimbabwe.

And Lord Ashdown argues the case for intervening by force in Zimbabwe to head off a possible genocide.

But, comes the shriek, that would violate Zimbabwe's sovereignty!

Recently I was a Harvard-sponsored seminar at which issues of 'humanitarian intervention' and the Right to Protect were discussed.

I recalled seeing signs as one entered Harvard Square: Cambridge is a Domestic Violence-Free Zone.

I said that if you were walking down the street near Harvard and saw a man beating his wife/child/dog brutally with a stick in his front garden, you were morally and maybe even these days legally obligated to intervene to stop the violence.

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