Remember the Smolensk air-crash which killed President Lech Kaczynski and so many other senior Poles?
Disagreement has rumbled on about how far mistakes or misjudgements made by the Polish aircrew and/or Russian control tower were responsible, but a major Polish report has now accepted that a good slice of the responsibility is on the Polish side. The Defence Minister has resigned.
Part of the problem after any such calamity is working out the key facts: what precisely happened and why? In this case the Poles have been dismayed that, as they see it, the Russian side has not been as forthcoming as it might have been. Hence the usual conspiracy theories.
One way to improve information understanding immediately after any accident is to have vital data stored not in aircraft 'black boxes' but streamed in real time to different key places for storage and (as necessary) analysis. This super Wired piece describes how that might be done quite easily and fairly cheaply.
In the Smolensk case, the disagreements between Warsaw and Moscow over the causes of the accident might not have vanished had both sides had all flight data streamed to them during the flight, but the areas of disagreement perhaps would have been much reduced - and much more quickly articulated.
The text of this important speech is not (as far as I can see) on the Polish Prime Minister's official website, even in Polish. So we have to do with some quotes as reported by the Guardian:
The passionate and optimistic defence of the EU from the Polish leader was completely at odds with the mood in Brussels and other EU capitals, where commitment to the union is being eroded by the rise of populist Brussels-bashing, squabbling leaders, and soaring mistrust between member states.
In defiance of the gloomy European zeitgeist, Tusk said: "The European Union is great. It is the best place on Earth to be born and to live your life."
An odd non-sequitur here:
He dismissed talk of the EU encroaching on the sovereignty of the nation states of Europe, referring to his own experience as a Solidarity activist in communist Poland under martial law and Moscow's control.
"Until quite recently we saw a real restriction on our sovereignty," he said. "We were truly occupied by the Soviets. It was truly an occupation. That's why for us EU integration is not a threat to the sovereignty of the member states."
Donald Tusk boldly names. And shames:
"I just want to resist the phenomenon of the new Euroscepticism that is everywhere," he said.
He was not referring to the intellectual hostility to the EU that is the traditional British position, Tusk said, but a more insidious and hypocritical trend in countries long committed to Europe.
"The different phenomenon I am talking about is the birth of a type of Euroscepticism which does not declare itself. But it's the behaviour, the words, the actions by politicians who say they are for the EU, support further integration, but at the same time suggest actions and decisions that weaken the community."
He singled out the French and Italian campaigns, supported by many others, to use the north African upheavals to reintroduce national border controls and curb the travel liberties enjoyed under the EU's Schengen system.
As the Guardian notes, it is no wonder that the EU is popular in Poland:
He leads the only country in Europe not thrust into recession by the financial crisis, the fastest-growing economy in the EU, and where the EU enjoys high popularity ratings of more than 80%, not least because of the €10bn (£9bn) pouring in every year from Brussels, making Poland the biggest beneficiary of EU largesse.
But he nonetheless just isn't happy - for Poland 'more Europe' = 'more money', especially when provided by someone else? See this tiresome framing of the issue:
In a dig at David Cameron, Tusk also lamented the months of trench warfare looming over how to divvy up the next medium-term EU budget, describing the contest as one between those who want the budget to be "one of the main tools for European integration" and those who want "to give as little as possible to Europe".
narzekać{vb} (also: biadolić to kvetch{vb}[Amer.][coll.]
I think that Donald Tusk is doing a lively job leading Poland and setting out a sense of Polish ambition for the European Union. Goodness, it needs one.
But for my taste the tone of this first speech has just a bit too much of the archetypal lofty Polish professor sternly lecturing sullen students to reinforce his iron-clad intellectual and moral superiority.
He'll find out the hard way that if he wants to get the UK to pay more money into the pot, telling us that we are mean-spirited is unlikely to be the best way to succeed, the more so since huge slabs of the EU money pouring into Poland now are already contributed by UK taxpayers. Whatever happened to gracious gratitude?
Crawford says that Britain has created more jobs for Poles in Britain than the Polish government since EU membership was extended to another 10 countries last year. He visualises Blair or Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, telling the new member states that the UK wants to help them, despite their “rudeness and ingratitude”.
“We like you so much that we are proposing in the budget a huge new transfer of funds to you on a scale which will give your people the greatest boost in 1,000 years.”
Still, even in these dark policy moments we can always rely on good old-fashioned central-European sexism to cheer us up:
Feminists in Poland have condemned as "outrageous and unacceptable" remarks made by Mr Tusk in response to a question from Sylwia Bialek, a female radio reporter, about whether Polish preparations for the EU presidency, which the country assumes in July, were "buttoned up"...
"I'm looking at the lady's dress and buttoning up is not what comes to mind," said an amused prime minister, adding that he "liked the summer".
Hot!
By the way, you're no doubt baffled by the fact that Mr Tusk has a Polish name which is pronounceable even by the dimmest foreigner (albeit with rather unexpected elephantine implications). It's because he comes from a minority community in northern Poland known as Kashubians - take it from me, the Kashub language is very 'specific'.
As Poland starts its EU Presidency, the long-awaited announcement is made: HM Ambassador in Poland Ric Todd is moving on, to a significant and sunny new posting.
All is not (yet) quite lost. Lots of scope for transplanting modern progressive European values to the conservative locals - and flying that flag.
Equally, some of the stereotypes in Britain of Poland being a grey, concrete covered country with bad weather and intolerant people is (sic) also completely wrong
Here's how the next UK Ambassador to Warsaw should arrive. Properly dressed.
Update this is well put by Ambassador Todd as he tries to explain some simple truths about UK/Poland relations down the decades. And does not succeed!
I have failed utterly in my attempts to combat this anti-British thread. It is impervious to facts.
For example we got a “demand” that a British medal be given posthumously to General Sosabowski because Britain had denigrated him and not given him a medal to honour his war-time service.
When we replied that there is no evidence that Britain ever denigrated General Sosabowski and furthermore we gave him a medal when he was alive (as well as asylum for him and his family) the answer came back that we should give him another one, because Britain denigrated him..
“EU success story” gets some 600 Google News hits. “EU crisis” gets 14,000 hits.
What has gone wrong? Some people have a blunt answer: “Too much Europe!” EU structures and policies are said to be creating more problems than they are solving: over-complex institutions, over-ambitious integration (above all the euro zone), over-centralisation of decision-taking. We see a disturbing decline in confidence in European solidarity.
But for Poland, European integration is not a crisis. It’s an inspiration.
Twenty-two years ago when communism ended, Poland’s GDP shrank by 12 per cent. Inflation ran out of control. Key export markets vanished. We had to build a modern democracy and a thriving market economy from scratch, while disentangling ourselves from the Warsaw Pact.
With huge efforts – and generous help from our European partners – we have succeeded. Poland is growing at over 4 per cent per year. We are now the sixth largest economy in Europe, and one of the top 20 economies in the world. Poland is the only EU member to have maintained positive growth through the recent economic storms.
It is no surprise that surveys find Poles expressing strong confidence in the EU. All our success would not have been possible without the investment in institutional stability and solidarity which the EU delivered.
It is not enough to be optimistic and positive. We also must be realistic. The EU faces painful decisions.
Poland will not accept that the answer lies in less solidarity, or less integration. That is the sure path to disintegration...
Well put. But given the severe strains in the Eurozone (Poland says it wants to join but is not (yet) a member, so its role in Eurozone top-level discussions must at best be modest) and everything else going on, can any one Presidency really make much of a difference?
Poland wants to push ahead EU ideas for improving EU-wide e-commerce and better EU-wide patent arrangements - all good stuff but no prospect of short-term improvements arising therefrom.
The main success of Poland's Presidency is likely to be on the foreign policy front, achieving better/closer EU relations with Russia, Ukraine and Moldova and maybe (subject to developments) a new EU move to engage sensibly with Belarus. That last one depends on Belarus being able to open itself up to a new approach: not easy as Russia unemotionally turns the energy and other screws on the erratic President Lukashenko.
Poland also can aim to help set an intelligent hard-headed EU policy framework for helping North Africa through its various 'transitions'.
Meanwhile the next vast row over the EU Budget trundles into view. Here is Open Europe's analysis on the first and inevitably absurd Commission proposals.
The point here is that the Commission deliberately overbids to start the negotiation process, hoping and expecting to lurch the heart of the debate in the general direction of More Europe.
In this case as it happens Poland's Janusz Lewandowski is leading the charge in Brussels on behalf of the Commission. Polish wiliness is evident in the proposed package. 'Less' on CAP/agriculture, more on new EU-wide energy investments, 'efficiency savings' and so on: the EU Budget is very small, really, so we can and should afford to increase it [the more so since Poland is the largest net recipient] ...
But the key innovation is new EU-level tax-raising powers, said to simplify the way the EU is funded.
This is clever. Why?
Because any normal person will agree that the current mechanisms for funding EU spending need reform - too cumbersome, too many anomalies. Even London in principle is ready to talk about dropping the magnificent UK Rebate in exchange for deep reform to both how the money gets to the EU and what the EU then spends it on.
So Lewandowski is hoping to froth up alleged popular support across the EU for some sort of EU-levied tax on financial transactions to get new EU-level tax powers included as part of the final deal: "Y'all say you want reform and simplification - here's the neat way to do it!"
To be really clever he might add that national vetoes on any agreed tax level will still apply: if the UK and all other EU member states agree to launch this scheme in 2018 at tax level X, it can not be increased (or decreased) unless all agree in future. That (it could be said) gives a not insignificant level of real reassurance to national governments that Brussels can't run out of control.
To which we all say: "Nice try - but no thanks."
Because as we have seen in the USA, once the federal centre starts taxing it over time can and does run up insane debts. Somehow or other a national 'lock' on future increased tax increases inexorably will be nibbled away, as has happened with all the other EU policy vetoes we once enjoyed.
Plus the practical implementation of any EU-level tax will create a tsunami of new intrusive Brussels-driven mechanisms, rules and procedures which will erode national powers and set all sorts of over-arching legal precedents for a lot more of the same.
In short, this is the thin end of a huge fat wedge. Another one-way expensive ticket to a Lot More Europe. Which, in current circumstances, most of the EU Givers are not going to want to buy, however noisily the EU Getters cry that it is all for the best.
Anyway, my writings on the way all this works in practice (see many previous postings and this long account here) are a definitive guide to the months if not years of bad-tempered haggling which will now unfold. So check them out.
That epic Budget Battle is for tomorrow.
For today, even Eurosceptics can and should pleased that in the past 20 years Poland has made such an impressive transformation from its appalling communist past to be a credible and dynamic European country and, until 31 December this year, head of the EU family.
Autonomous Mind kindly gave a link and supporting comments to my recent piece about Negotiation Training. And, via Twitter, he asked for More on the Carrot/Stick negotiating paradigm. So, here it is.
The psychology of diplomatic negotiating is a vast, interesting and almost unanalysed subject. A couple of years ago I joined a course for FCO new entrants. The otherwise sensible trainers led off the Negotiation part with this PowerPointed assertion:
Aims
- to maximise interests
- to reach agreement
Really? This is an odd way to put it. Do the Chinese/Russians/N Koreans think that a key aim of negotiation is to 'reach agreement'?
Hell no. They want to WIN, or failing that win as much as possible. Negotiation and 'agreement' are simply possible methods to get there.
So is another outcome - negotiations crashing in failure - that shows steely resolve, as the Poles this very week have been keen to demonstrate within the EU.
In other words, very often a negotiation is not about what it says it is about. On the surface it is about EU Emissions Targets, or Global Climate Change, or new World Trade regimes. In substance it is more likely to be about who decides what, this time round and on into the future.
This explains why the psychological factors are so important. Look at this magnificent negotiation:
There is so much happening here. The two negotiators are weighing up bluff, mutual determination and hard facts. You can guess who wins on all scores.
Or try the superb scene in the Incredibles, where Mr Incredible has been captured by baddy Syndrome. Mr Incredible breaks free and grabs Mirage, Syndrome's lissom assistant, threatening to snap her in half if he is not released:
Mr. Incredible: It'll be easy, like breaking a toothpick
Syndrome: [chuckles] Show me. [after a tense few moments, Mr. Incredible lets go of Mirage]
Syndrome: I knew you couldn't do it. Even when you have nothing to lose! You're weak! And I've outgrown you
Amazing writing. It hits the negotiating nail bang on the head. Most negotiations are all about one thing: who in fact is weaker?
Here's what actually went on late last Friday night, as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi...
What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself.
The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his "superiors".
This shows that Sticks and Carrots as a metaphor for diplomatic negotiation are just not up to the job. In this case the Euroweenies and President Obama were keen to get a deal: lots of plausible Carrots (in the form of Western money), with a rather distant Stick (we're doomed without a deal, but only in 100 years' time).
The Chinese ruthlessly played on this situation to belittle President Obama personally, just to show who was boss.
I think that President Obama made a serious mistake by staying in the room, once it was clear what the Chinese premier was up to. Whatever puny and fleeting headlines he needed (and got) by sticking grimly to the core aim (for him) of getting some sort of outcome were much less important than showing Beijing that that was the sort of behaviour up with which he would not put.
In other words, Obama took modest gains on the day, but lost serious ground when it came to his credibility in negotiating with China well into the future. Both sides went home knowing that China had won on substance and powerplay presentation.
Back in Moscow in 1995 after dinner at the US Ambassador's Residence I watched as he sat on the sofa studiously winding up my boss Pauline Neville-Joneswith some not-so implicit sexistly patronising insinuations.
Pauline of course did not rise to the bait, but he knew that she would not do so and enjoyed watching the spectacle of her containing her annoyance, while she in turn seemed to know that he was enjoying that spectacle and so inwardly seethed all the more.
Here the ostensible subject of the negotiation was the fascinating issue of the design of Bosnia's post-Dayton money. But what in fact was happening was Holbrooke deliberately using the issue to wind up PNJ, who knew that he was doing just that.
He knew that she knew what he was doing, so did it all the more. She knew that he knew that she knew, and so found it all the more exasperating, but of course she did not want to show it. And so on. All seething just beneath the surface as they exchanged barbed remarks about the way the UK's pound coins have different markings.
Then we have ... the Russians:
Russia typically wants to project strength as an end in itself. Part of any negotiation is balancing incentive-carrots with pressure-sticks: “If you accept our position, we guarantee you a positive outcome. If you refuse, we’ll make sure you get a very negative outcome”.
Russian negotiators aim to neutralise that approach by conveying a very different proposition: “It doesn’t matter how much you try to pressure us. First, we can withstand more pressure than you can possibly exert, or even imagine. Second, whatever you do to hurt us, we will do something far worse to hurt you.”
The whole point of Moscow's time-honoured diplomatic negotiating style is to project a sense of depersonalised inexorable doom for anyone or anything which gets in the way of whatever Moscow currently wants.
This can be countered, of course, by hanging in there very tough: some of it is bluff, and Russian diplomacy can be as inept as everyone else's. But the very fact that the Russians set about their business in this way helps frame issues and likely outcomes on their terms and projects toughness/determination. A handy way to start.
Conclusion
As previously noted, the reason why Carrots and Sticks work (or don't) in diplomacy has little to do with their 'objective' size and plausibility.
It's all much more 'subjective'. It's about how the person with the carrots/stick is seen by the supposed target, and even more about how both the carrot-sticker and the target perceive themselves and what they believe the other one believes about the problem, the balance of forces and how this situation plays into other situations.
All of which explains why Gaddafi is still there and NATO's bombing campaign looks oddly ... lame. Going right back to President Obama's unwise Cairo speech, Washington and the wider 'West' have been unclear what they really wanted.
Indeed, the then President Putin found the then PM Tony Blair exasperating when they met: charming and smart as Blair was, Putin kept pressing him in private to say what he really wanted. And answer came there none.
Moral: if you don't know what you really want from a negotiation, don't be surprised if you don't get it.
Oh, and don't be surprised if other more single-minded people tend to prevail.
This is a brisk piece of work from Guy Sorman, a French economist philosopher who looks at global energy issues with a beady eye.
He concludes that the main victim of the Japanese nuclear disaster after the tsunami will be not nuclear power but Green Ideology, at least in its luxuriant European form:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government was the first to overreact by deciding to close down all nuclear reactors in the coming years – a radical move driven by domestic politics. Merkel's government does not include Germany's Greens, but the Green ideology has become a widely shared national creed in Germany. Indeed, one can relate popular hostility toward nuclear energy to Germany's traditional romantic cult of nature, not to science.
Germany's nuclear plants will be replaced by more thermal plants, implying a large increase in German carbon emissions – so much for Green concern about global warming. And so much for intellectual honesty, because a Germany without nuclear power of its own will be compelled to buy it from France, which has no intention of closing its nuclear plants.
Ha ha to that last point. C'est drôle, non? Ils sont fous, les Verts!
Meanwhile Poland digs in its heels and blocks ambitious EU energy emissions targets, an impressive show of Polish defiance just before Poland itself takes over the EU Presidency on 1 July.
Part of the issue here (I think) is that since 1990 Poland has cut emissions drastically simply by ending communism and shutting down value-subtracting heavy industries. Now, of course, it is building a modern economy and does not intend to be held back by other EU member states whose emissions targets make sense (or not) in a quite different context - Poland's energy use is necessarily very coal-intensive for practical reasons.
All of which goes to expose yet again the inherent stupidity and deceitfulness of the Precautionary Principle. Or maybe we should start to use it in hitting back against Greens and other advocates of 'healthy organic living':
According to World Health Organization statistics on E. coli deaths, in just the past two years, more people have been killed by the disease than all fission-related events since the dawn of the nuclear age — even if you include the use of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The time has come for even the mighty organic lobby to accept the precautionary principle — the idea that it is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to organic farms’ potentially deadly practices. Until we know for certain that the outbreak could not have been caused by the suspect organic farm, we must act to protect the public from the unknown risks of organic practices.
Shut down all organic farms. Now. They're a health time-bomb, waiting to explode!
Exhibit A: a superb article describing research which shows convincingly how the influence of the bureaucratic-cultural disciplines of the Austro-Hungarian Empire lives on in today's Europe. Thus:
Our results show that past formal institutions can leave a long-lasting legacy through cultural norms – even after some are generations of being governed by other authorities...
Comparing individuals living on either side of the long-gone Habsburg border within the same modern-day country, we find that respondents in a current household survey who live on former Habsburg territory have higher levels of trust in courts and police.
They are also less likely to pay bribes for these local public services, demonstrating that the institutional heritage influences not only preferences and unilateral decisions but also bilateral bargaining situations in citizen-state interactions.
... the cultural norms of behaviour are unlikely to have survived solely by intergenerational transmission within families. It rather seems that such channels as the persistent nature of continuous reciprocal interactions in local communities, the content of knowledge and behavioural patterns conveyed in schools, and the quality of human capital of bureaucrats and citizens may have also played a role.
This sort of thinking - that 'civilisational' characteristics and trends have an existence far beyond immediate day-to-day politics and even medium-term economic development - lay behind Sam Huntingdon's famous but controversial book 'The Clash of Civilisations'.
Sweeping and brilliant and provocative as it was, fashionable opinion did not much like it: too pessimistic about human progress and with a scarcely hidden anti-Islamic tone (they said).
Yet for me as a Balkanite, much of whose professional life had been spent on and around the historic faultlines of imperial Europe, he was on to something very profound.
Drive up towards Sarajevo from the Croatian coast and almost within a few hundred metres there suddenly comes a point where you cross from Austro-Hungary into Ottoman. The landscape and its mood changes. The attitude to roadside tidiness, gardens, public and private property, trust in government - they are all just 'different'.
Likewise in Belgrade. On the 'main' side of the river you're on the edge of the greater Ottoman space. Across the river and on up into Vojvodina the landscape and 'society' visibly changes. Part of this is (it's said) directly and literally connected with differing imperial legacies: property rights tended to be codified under the Hapsburgs, whereas under the Ottomans land ownership was far less systematic and untransparent. The result today is that land and investment decisions are much harder in central and southern Serbia, which duly stays poorer.
The authors of the study rightly mention Poland. At the 2005 elections clear voting tendencies emerged which could be mapped neatly against the boundaries of Poland's areas when Poland was partitioned up to WW1. People in Poznan (long part of the Germanic civilisational space) titter at the unpunctuality and unbusinesslike sloppiness of people in Warsaw (long part of the Russian civilisational space). And so on.
Read the whole thing. Most impressive.
And then read Exhibit B, Megan McArdle on the grisly problems of the Eurozone:
Europe has two choices: tighter integration, or partial dissolution. I agree, but I just don't see how the former can work. The Irish and the Germans and the Portuguese and the Greeks do not identify with "Europe" the way 1930s Americans identified with "America"; neither group is going to readily sacrifice its own self-interest for the others.
The elites have gotten around this so far by leaning heavily on unaccountable institutions like the central banks, but as Wolf shows, this cannot last forever.
Unless their economies rapidly start to mend, continuing in the euro will be economic suicide for the PIIGS once the backdoor subsidies stop. In this week's column, Robert Samuelson notes just how dire things are "Already, unemployment is 14.1% in Greece, 14.7% in Ireland, 11.1% in Portugal and 20.7% in Spain.
What are the limits of austerity? Steep spending cuts and tax increases do curb budget deficits; but they also create deep recessions, lowering tax revenues and offsetting some of the deficit improvement." Add on top of this the drawbacks of an expensive currency and a tight monetary policy for a troubled economy, and they'd have to be crazy to stay...
The real problem facing Europe is all about psychology and deep political culture. When the Eurozone was set up, the Germans insisted on stiff rules for all to make the new structure credible. These rules and European solidarity would suffice - Garliczone countries which hitherto had played fast and loose with public finances would realise that they had joined the grown-ups now and would have to behave themselves. Or else!
But as one senior German expert who worked at the heart of this project told me, the Germans got it flat wrong. It just did not occur to them that, say, Greece would actually lie to its EU partners about the state of its public finances. Yet they did.
It's a bit like a smart hotel where a strict no-smoking rule applies. The hotel admits all sorts of carefree party-loving guests who dutifully promise not to smoke. Some of them break the rules. Yet such is their insane irresponsibility that they don't even tell the hotel management that they have set the building on fire through their bad behaviour. When the smoke starts pouring from many large windows simultaneously, it may in fact be too late to save the building however soundly it was designed!
And see the Eurozone’s problems. Millions of Greeks cry out: “How dare the state/government/EU take away our rights!” But by what moral or political principle can Greek ‘rights’ to receive subsidies take precedence over the rights of non-Greeks to choose not to pay them?
Conclusion?
Neither conservatives nor liberal-progressives in the West have any coherent philosophy helping them decide which institutions, organisations or even values should best be ‘conserved’ by collective action, or how best to do it by suppressing X’s free choice to uphold Y’s privilege. Instead we get little more than mutually abusive political squawking and improvisation which look increasingly and annoyingly detached from reality.
Perhaps in these profoundly unsettling times it is no surprise that the British public show such Euroscepticism counterpoised by general support for the Monarchy which, for all its silver stick flim-flams and illogicalities, represents our best collective hope for some minimal sense of psychological continuity and shared experience?
The fact is that for reasons which are almost impossible to identify and maybe are highly unpopular to articulate, some things 'fit' and some things don't. It looks increasingly as if the EU itself as currently constituted is not a viable fit - the expectations and attitudes in different parts of the EU are simply not manageable within the over-rigid, prescriptive top-down format we now have.
And the more our UK and EU elites tell the public that it is all for the best when it clearly isn't, the more a deep-seated public unease will grow across Europe in a populist and increasingly incoherent way.
Researching a speech about Poland I came across the wise words of Thomas Banacek, a 1970s American TV Polish/American freelance insurance investigator who solved all sorts of improbable mysteries in part by delivering droll proverbs supposedly of Polish origin:
When the wolf is chasing your sleigh, toss him a raisin cookie but don't stop to see if he eats it
Only the centipede can hear all the footsteps of his uncle
A wolf that takes a peasant to supper probably won't need any breakfast
Though the hippopotamus has no sting on its tail, the wise man would still rather be sat on by a bee
If your socks are not in your shoes, don't look for them in Heaven
Peoples in transition from authoritarian rule – peaceful in Poland in 1989, bloody in Libya today – grapple with decisions that determine their fate for decades. How should the former regime’s worst wrongdoers and security police, with their insidious archives, be treated? Should the former ruling party be banned? How can civilian, democratic control of the army and police be secured? What role should religion play in public affairs? Should the constitution establish a presidential or parliamentary system?
The former communist world made those choices 20 years ago. But very different choices – for better and for worse – were made in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, in the Baltic states, across the former Soviet Union, in Central Asia, and in East Germany. The results form a crucial database of experience. Today’s Arab reformers thus can draw on our successes – and avoid our mistakes...
... Around the table sat improbable allies: some had been prominent officials in Qaddafi’s regime; others had spent many years in prison under sentence of death. They were united in recognizing that their country deserved a new start. I was reminded of Poland’s “roundtable” in 1989, when Solidarity sat with the ruling communists to negotiate the end of the regime.
Following this visit, my message to European leaders is twofold. First, Libya’s TNC is the best bet we can make now for Libya’s future. Its leaders are cooperating in an effort to bring about real reform in a way that was unthinkable a few months ago. They deserve the world’s energetic support.
Second, while Europe has much to offer its North African neighbors in terms of financial support, advice, and training, the region needs to find its own path to freedom and success.
Let us approach this task in the best spirit of European solidarity, but also with a certain humility. Europe’s former communist countries can make a special contribution to the process of transition across North Africa.
Above all, we understand that sustained reform requires assuming responsibility by mobilizing the energy of one’s own people, not relying on well-intentioned but often ill-focused outside help...
That last point must be right. Look at what resources the EU has poured into North Africa in the past decade, in the misguided hope of maintaining 'stability'. Or indeed into Bosnia.
Libya is potentially a very wealthy country. Where the EU - soon to be led by the Polish Presidency - can help is by drawing directly on the experience of the former communist countries and thereby working closely with sensible Libyans on the sequencing and sound constitutional principles of the Technology of Transition.
Simply that things come and go over years and decades and centuries. The age when Poles’ best opportunities to live decently lay in abandoning their country to travel some 6000km to Chicago (and perhaps never return) has ended.
Now anyone in Poland can get a cheap bus to London (or now Munich), work for a few days to earn some extra money, then go back home again, all within a week and with no expensive and humiliating visa queues. It’s inevitable that in that new situation national perspectives must start to change quite fast.
Finally, Poland itself is deliberately surrendering significant parts of its own identity and foreign policy to ‘Europe’, a process helped by the excellent and generous deal on EU funding for Poland negotiated by the UK Presidency in 2005. But Poland’s strong support for ‘More Europe’ – soon to be exemplified in Poland’s first EU Presidency - tends to mean ‘Less Poland’.
If Poland decides to outsource more and more aspects of its diplomacy and collective national policy energy to the European Union, Poland should not be surprised if Washington starts to see Polish views as simply one minor and not easily comprehensible part of a messy Brussels consensus.
An observation which, of course, applies equally to the UK as to other European countries.
It's not all doom and gloom with British diplomats. Over at Odessablog some warm words of praise for Judith Gardiner, Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Kyiv (Kiev, capital of Ukraine, for those who are not abreast of latest European city names).
Thus:
It is always good to catch up with what the FCO is doing in Ukraine and to be honest, it is always a pleasure to have any dealings with Judith, whatever the medium for communication...
A very broad agenda (as there wasn’t really an agenda) but what an absolute delight to have such quality conversation with someone so involved in Ukraine and access to the corridors of power here (and in Whitehall). It was nothing less than therapeutic at a certain level and incredibly interesting at another.
Here's a solid point about the steady reality of diplomatic work overseas:
So often it is easy to forget that whatever the FCO does or doesn’t achieve cannot be shouted from the roof tops, before, during or afterwards for sensitive reasons, often more sensitive to the nation in which they operate rather than the UK’s sensitivities.
So far so good. But wait. What's this?
Other things discussed included mutual acquaintances, such Mr Charles Crawford who has his own things to say aboutstandards within the FCO.
It seems Charles was one of the first diplomats Judith ever met (20 years ago) and described him has “fearsome”. Charles, fearsome? Well, maybe, I have never worked for him but in all our communications he has been nothing but direct and courteous. In his TED presentations he comes across rather well…..almost cuddly!
Blimey.
Update Odessablog adds a wise gloss on the 'fearsome' side of things:
I am sure you were a hard taskmaster, although "fearsome" maybe a little stretch for the majority of situations. Then, don't we all look back and remember those who were the hardest of taskmasters and those who insisted on excellence and thank them for the discipline and standards they imparted into our character? Was their praise, when it came, not worth more than praise from any others?
From school teachers to brigadiers and colonels, I have never forgotten those who insisted I be all that I could possibly be at the time.
For the occasion of the first annversary last month (10 April) of the Smolensk air disaster which killed President Lech Kaczynski and Madame Maria Kaczynska, I wrote a short piece recalling my own memories of them. It was published in the Polish weekly Uwazam Rze.
And here below is the core of the article as I submitted it.
One of my first encounters with Lech Kaczynski came in 2004 when he was still Major of Warsaw. I was on my way to his office accompanying the then Lord Major of London on a visit to Poland. My mobile telephone rang. The Polish and British co-organisers of the project to take the Moniuszko opera Straszny Dwór to London were fast running out of time to raise the sponsorship funds needed - perhaps we could raise the issue with Mayor Kaczynski and ask for the City's support?
The meeting went well as the two Mayors discussed Warsaw's fast-developing investment potential. As the discussion concluded I raised the Straszny Dwórproject and explained the problem. Mayor Kaczynski without more ado nodded to one of his team, saying in effect "Sort it out."
That immediate spontaneous gesture, motivated by his wish to see Polish high culture represented strongly in other world capitals, made all the difference.Not only Straszny Dwór but also Szymanowski’s King Roger and Penderecki’s Ubu Rex duly made it to London a few weeks later in a form never seen there before.
In late 2006 President Kaczynski was established in office and visited London for talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair. The visit featured a speech on Polish domestic and foreign policy at LondonUniversity. President Kaczynski delivered it without notes, moving expertly through a range of thoughtful points and sub-points and sub-sub-points while returning smoothly to his main themes.
A key policy problem then was how the European Union should deal with the fiasco created by the collapse in 2005 of the ‘Constitutional Treaty’ after the French and Dutch referenda. At the heart of the issue was the vexed question of how far if at all the new Treaty should reduce Poland's very favourable voting 'weight' at the European Union level as previously agreed under the Nice Treaty.
President Kaczynski during this London visit and separately when he met EU Ambassadors in Warsaw made a powerful impression when talking about the proposed new Treaty; it was more than obvious that he had studied the draft treaty with his own legal expert eye, and identified various objections not only on matters of detail but also on the underlying political and legal philosophy.
One of his main points was that an important principle of 'historic justice' was involved. Over the past 50 years Western Europe in general and Germany in particular had surged ahead, while Poland had been held back by the Yalta post-WW2 settlement and the ensuing decades of wretched communism. Poland now had the right - even the responsibility - to defend stoutly any advantage it now enjoyed in its long march to try to catch up with Western European nations.
President Kaczynski developed this idea to make a striking new political claim: even if Poland had no choice but to accept existing EU laws and norms known as the acquis communautaire, Poland should not be expected to abide by some sort of ‘progressive’ European moral and psychological acquis communautaire which it had not shaped because it had languished for so long behind the Iron Curtain. Poland’s family values and Christian heritage were, he insisted, European assets which at long last had to be respected as part of the European civilisational mainstream.
President Kaczynski knew full well that these arguments were not going to be popular with some parts of the European political and media elite. Indeed, this made him all the more convinced that he was right.
For some people his positions were baffling because they simply had not been heard before. Why was Poland now talking about the Second World War again? Should we not all be looking forward, not rummaging around in the past? Other people were keen to play down this approach for much darker reasons – the less said about communist crimes in Poland and across Europe, the better for them.
It was clear to European Ambassadors in Warsaw that President Kaczynski would be a stubborn advocate for Poland's position when the end-game negotiation on a new Treaty took place: a leader closely familiar with the actual text of the draft treaty who looked at the core issues in a sweeping historical context would be a rare phenomenon indeed at that level.
So it proved. In 2007 Tony Blair in his final weeks as British Prime Minister flew to Warsaw to meet Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and President Lech Kaczynski, to hear for himself how Poland planned to handle the final negotiation. He enjoyed the meetings and departed impressed at both the negotiating tenacity and intellectual grasp of principle which the Polish side had displayed.
At the final EU Summit in June 2007 under the German Presidency the core issue as expected was the voting question. Most other European leaders seemed to believe that after making a few rhetorical pronouncements President Kaczynski would quickly give way and strike a deal. The British team knew that Poland would negotiate hard and long. The arguments dragged on, with the German side pressing Tony Blair to use his friendship with President Kaczynski to urge 'flexibility'.
A deal was reached, late in the night. Germany achieved its objective of a new EU vote weighting package, but Poland won a long lead-time for the current arrangements extending well past the next EU Budget negotiation. President Kaczynski himself had been all the more formidable in the hard bargaining sessions at the top European level because he had done so much careful personal preparation - and because he was comfortable about the underlying justice of his position.
One of my final diplomatic receptions in Warsaw came in June 2007 when my wife and I hosted an exhibition of portraits by Barbara Kaczmarowska Hamilton at my Residence in Warsaw. We invited Madame Kaczynska to the event and she graciously accepted. We met her on numerous occasions officially and unofficially in Warsaw. She was a remarkable woman, invariably accentuating the positive and generous yet with touching self-deprecation and a twinkling eye of wry humour, as she displayed on one of her first official engagements as First Lady in early 2006 when she hosted a lunch for Princess Anne. When my wife and I left Warsaw Madame Kaczynska sent us a portrait of the President and herself signed with her own warm personal words of greeting. It is one of our most prized possessions.
To sum up.
Lech and Maria Kaczynska lived and died by their principles: unfailing personal integrity and private modesty combined with a profound love of their country and its historic role in European civilisation. Their political opponents seized on their refusal to make the usual easy compromises of politics as a sign of inflexibility, if not extremism.
But their distinguished lives - and perhaps too the appalling symbolism of their deaths en route to honour the memories of the victims of Katyn - remind us all that in a cynical world beset with relativistic nihilism there is a place of high honour for honest people who hold fast to their beliefs and are proud of their country.
With so many awful things happening in the world, why o why do UK sports commentators have to add to our woe by their utter inability to pronounce the simple name of the Polish goal-keeper playing for Arsenal?
His name is Wojciech Tomasz Szczęsny.
His first name is fine as the dimunitive Voy-tek, although Voy-check is a bit closer - the ch at the end of his name is the same sound as in the Scottish word loch.
His second name is simply Poland's version of Thomas: To-mash (sz in Polish = sh in English).
His last name has a slightly tricky opening, ie szcz (English sh and ch run together). Plus the second s is not pronounced z! It's a s, not a z.
The squiggle under the e makes the sound -en in English, or close enough (see also Lech Walesa, ie Lech Va-len-sa)
So he is not, repeat not, Shez-ny. He is Chens-knee, with a little added touch of sh before the Chens: shChens-knee.
By the way, commentators, his French team-mate Laurent Koscielny also has a Polish surname derived (I think) from the Polish word for church: Kościół.
I am unsighted on how his name is pronounced in French, but if it is going by the Polish version here again the -sci combination of letters in Polish makes that elided shch sound in English (as in freshcheeze, said quickly).
So he's not pronounced Kosh-elny, but rather Kosh-chelny).
There are less dramatic examples. For many months, opinion polls for the 2005 Polish parliamentary elections pointed to a clear victory for the Civic Platform party and then a coalition with the Law and Justice party. As Ambassador I dutifully informed London to expect this outcome – what could happen to stop it?
Yet in the final days of the campaign, Law and Justice closed the gap and won the election. The planned coalition promptly collapsed. I sent a telegram to London reporting that every prediction I had made for the previous nine months about Polish politics had been completely and utterly wrong. London did not mind too much.
Diplomatic predictions?
If you get them right, you’re a hero. If you get them wrong, quickly blame it on inconsiderate and inconsistent foreigners.
Back in deepest Oxfordshire, after a week in which I gave five set-piece presentations.
One was at a Wilton Park onference on the general theme of Russia and Social Media. The second was at TEDxWarsaw, a coaching session in public speaking for some of the speakers at the main event.
Then three different presentations, one to a small commercial audience and two more to Polish officials, on Presenting with Impact and Diplomatic Speechwriting themes.
Phew.
One of the ideas I elaborated was that a speech (or presentation) is not a lecture, an occasion for one person grandly to impart knowledge to an audience of people supposedly keen to acquire it.
Rather it is a conversation, not a monologue. Admittedly a conversation in which one person does most if not all the talking. But there are many other ways to communicate beyond mere talking, and the speaker/presenter will get best results by engaging the audience on the instinctive conversational level.
All sorts of different technqiues accomplish this deftly. Telling true-life stories (ie adding human interest). Producing an object which itself tells a story. Showing video-clips. Giving a speech/presentation structure, especially by using Questions and Answers (which by the way bring written work to life too).
This is why I believe that for most purposes the key aim of a speech is not to transmit information, but rather to create a mood.
The audience should leave not stuffed with facts, but rather with a warm glow of inner emotional satisfaction, feeling that the speaker has spoken to and for them all in a personal and even touching way.
Someone asked me after my TEDxWarsaw presentation how often I rehearsed these presentations, and was startled when I said that not only did I not rehearse - I could not imagine how one could rehearse. Would standing in front of a mirror really help?
Of course by now I am a hardened pro at such things. Many people have sickening attacks of nerves at the mere thought of getting up in front of even a small crowd.
Yet the answer to that is not (I think) to 'rehearse', if only because you risk losing that key sense of creating a conversation with the audience - only speaking naturally and easily achieves that.
Rather the speaker needs to have full confidence in the content of the speech/presentation, and make it simple, interesting and accessible on a human level. Channeling one's nerves into speaking more slowly and deliberately and adding some real-life experiences to illustrate the theme invariably help.
Best result of any speech or PowerPoint presentation? The most important people in the audience quickly text/email their underlings and say:
"That speaker I just heard made a lot of sense. Fix up a private lunch asap"
Anyway, it's always nice to get some positive comments after these courses. My favourite one this time round:
Short text, simple messages, conversation not teaching/lectures; avoid complicated words; I must change my style completely
Events in the Middle East show that we are fast entering a new phase in the spread of democracy, or at least a new pluralism.
People living under dictatorships are finding out who they are. They are realising that the only thing they have to fear is fear itself
Helping build pluralist societies is back on the agenda.
We need to help countries where political parties, rule of law, ideas of separation of powers scarcely exist.
Poland has learned the hard way how to move from oppression to freedom.
Free elections are the easy bit. Then comes the slow slog. Building democratic institutions and democratic practices -- above all self-discipline -- to make democracy work.
There are no short-cuts.
Poland and its people are now six times richer than we were in 1989. A major improvement. But a long way to go before we catch up with countries not held back by communism.
Tunisia, Egypt, Libya are all starting out on that long journey. One day Belarus, Cuba and North Korea will start too.
We can’t tell them what they want. Or try to impose an outcome. These days that just won’t work.
What we can and must do is offer a principled, generous helping hand.
Poland is ready to lead Europe as an active partner for the United States in exporting the technology of democracy, wherever it is needed and welcomed
Poland is a country of success - embracing freedom, ready to share it
Poland knows about sequencing key reforms.
We know about dismantling oppressive army intelligence structures.
We understand the moral dilemmas in opening up secret police archives.
We know about honest money -- our national position on government debt is one of the strongest in the Western world.
Above all, like Senator McCain we understand the pain of reconciliation between people who were oppressed, and those who did the oppressing
Because reconciliation brings confidence. Reconciliation allows a society to stop looking back at hatred and mistrust, and look to the future instead
Why do we think that Portia’s line in the Merchant of Venice: ‘All that glitters is not gold’ (‘glisters’ actually) says that there are things that glitter, yet which are not gold? The line does not say this explicitly. This is what we want it to say.
Strictly speaking, what it says is that whatever glitters is not gold. This is not true, because gold does glitter, or at least some gold glitters. As it stands, the sentence conforms to the E-type proposition on the square of oppositions, Aristotelian or modern. E-type propositions are of the kind: No A are B. A paraphrase of Portia’s line then would be: ‘Nothing that glitters is gold.’ Alternatively, ‘It is not the case that there exist things that glitter and are gold.’
What we want is an O-type proposition: ‘There exist things that glitter and are not gold,’ or, which is the same thing, ‘Not everything that glitters is gold,’ with the negation pushed out in front of a universally quantified sentence.
I have had a kind message from Stevan Hobfoll (former officer in the Israeli defence forces turned expert on Stress) about a novel he has written, The Imperfect Guardian.
The book is a Jewish adventure story, based loosely on his grandfather's early years in Poland and Russia from 1906 (the failed first Russian Revolution) to 1921, a time when (as Stevan puts it) Jewish life had its full share of horse traders, revolutionary leaders, scoundrels, soldiers, intellectuals, peddlers, gangsters, and doctors.
Anyone interested in learning more about what is happening in both the UK and Poland with different forms of renewable energy (biomass, wind, waste-to-energy and so on) should get on down to the Radisson Blu Portman Hotel at 22 Portman Square. London W1 next Wednesday (26 January), for a brisk seminar organised by the British Polish Chamber of Commerce and the Conservative Friends of Poland.
It's an afternoon event - register online here. Programme here.
Poland is a most interesting case from a European energy point of view. There are plenty of communist-era legacy systems still around (and lots of coal) but with scope for making great strides towards high-end efficiency in different areas, and the ever-fascinating but not straightforward strategic aim of reducing energy dependency on Russia.
I'd like to be there but alas have another fixture at the same time - lecturing to mass'd post-graduate students at SOAS on Foreign Policy Analysis. A tricky job but someone has to do it. At least now there are gazillions of Wikileaks US diplomatic cables to use as real-life examples of what works and what doesn't.
PM David Cameron made an important statement to Parliament about the latest EU Summit. Full text here (written it must be said in commendably clear language).
Though you'd never guess from our snow-infested news bulletins, this was a really important gathering from which, by the usual standards of such gatherings, the UK looks to have emerged in a strong position.
First and foremost, the countries in the Eurozone are scrambling to find a way to solve the Zone's problems in a way which does not leave the UK formally entangled in either the substance or the changes to EU treaties needed to set up new mechanisms.
Of course the UK is embroiled in all that anyway, as so many UK-based banks have exposure in Eurozone countries. An uncontrolled crash of the Eurozone might fleetingly amuse some UK Eurosceptic websites and commentators in a "we-told-you-so" sort of way, but it could also unleash a financial and social tsunami of damaging other consequences.
So it makes sense for the UK to stand aside and let the EU treaty changes (as applicable to Eurozone countries only) go through, just in case they do work and help calm things down. Not that that looks probable, as sovereign debt problems steadily escalate with no end in sight (except a bad end):
Jacques Cailloux, chief Europe economist at RBS, agreed that last week's European summit had failed to grasp the nettle.
"None of the policy responses put in place in Europe since the start of the crisis provides a credible backstop to prevent further contagion," Mr Cailloux said.
"We remain most concerned about an escalation of the sovereign debt crisis hitting larger economies in the euro area. Markets continue to underestimate the potential disruption via financial transmission channels that such an event could trigger."
Second, the fact that the UK and France and Germany - the three biggest Givers - have joined together to call for a freeze on any increase in the EU Budget in the new Financial Perspective period (2014-2020) is also excellent news.
Here is my recent definitive account of how the EU Budget process works. The über-point is that very few EU countries (and above all the UK/France/Germany) pay more into the common pot than they get. So when the Big Three line up and say that the budget is not going to increase by much if at all ("a real-terms freeze"), that counts for something significant.
(Note: just to add the irritating and unhelpful gloss that identifying what is or is not a budget freeze or a budget 'cut' is not quite as easy as you might think. Still, a 'freeze in real terms' is pretty specific - and in the right Scrooge-like direction.)
This initiative is bad news for eg the Poles, who as the EU's largest net recipients will have been hoping for a Lot More. But if the Poles are smart, they'll see that it is unrealistic if not immoral to expect much more from hard-pressed net Givers in the next decade. They should concentrate instead on attacking waste in EU budget processes as represented by a lot of CAP spending and the colossal communist-like propaganda banners dangling down the side of the Commission building in Brussels proclaiming the Year of European Volunteering or some such inanity.
Not easy for the Poles to do this, of course, as they are slowly but surely getting hooked on CAP payments themselves. In any case, the Poles need not complain too much - they'll continue to get generous support from the Givers for much of the next ten years, probably at something like the current levels.
Meanwhile the French will be delighted, since they'll believe that their practical chances of giving a Gallic shrug and clinging on to their CAP loot for a few years more will be improved if the Budget does not grow. Plus they'll shamelessly egg on the Poles to blame the Brits for this perfidious London-driven Giver selfishness.
The Germans will be less delighted as they hate being portrayed as selfish, but they know that any spare money will have to be used to help the Eurozone, not frittered away in EU processes.
All in all, some far-reaching decisions were taken last week in Brussels, for better or worse. London has quite a strong hand in current circumstances, partly because we are not in the Eurozone and so can extract concessions from countries fearful of the Eurozone's implosion as the price for quietly accepting more treaty changes without any UK referendum.
But quite strong hands are not always played well. This time round David Cameron has done a good job in terms of the immediate tasks, plus (more importantly) kept British powder dry for the bigger battles which will lie ahead in 2011 if the Eurozone lurches deeper into crisis...
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