Blogoir

Here is my piece over at Commentator on Drone Warfare, beginning with exploding the tragic George Monbiot and proceeding thusly:

Not that long ago Europe’s parents and grandparents were being blown to bits in their tens of thousands by bombs simply dropped from planes in the general direction of the target. The sheer precision of modern weapons has saved countless more innocent lives caught up in armed conflict than, alas, still get taken.

One perverse result of this development is to give new life to Stalin’s reputed infamous observation that “the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic”. Precisely because so few people are now killed in modern warfare, the numbers of those who die shrink to the point where individual deaths of unarmed civilians can be ‘personalised’, and attacks on specific military targets start to look more like ‘assassinations’ or common law murder than war. At what point can (or should) we start to think about war and the legal parameters of it completely differently?

...

The Guardianistas’ Monbiotish pronouncements on human solidarity and existential Gaian interconnectedness in, for example, the ‘climate change’ or development aid contexts seem to evaporate when it comes to defence questions. Yet the issues are exactly the same.

Just as the planet can be seen as a single organism worthy of collective respect, so too can the technical infrastructure which supports human life these days. No country in the world can survive in any meaningful sense without some reliance on the networks of real-life equipment (power-generators, communications cables, data storage computers) by which things get done and new inventions happen. Who protects those facilities?

Classic international law tells us that, in principle, it is for each state to protect those facilities sited on its own territory. But what if a state is too weak to do that, and/or allows terrorists and sophisticated criminals to use its territory as a base for plotting attacks on key installations in other countries?

If a country and its citizens want to enjoy the manifold benefits of belonging the modern global networked space, do they in turn have to accept an implicit obligation to take responsibility for defending those networks pro-actively and vigorously against those who, for whatever reason, want to wreck it? And if they can’t or won’t take the action needed to deal with such people, can they complain if other powers acting under a new version of the doctrine of collective self-defence step in to do that job instead?

Interventions need not be anything so crass as invading with huge numbers of soldiers. Rather the best available tools can be found to neutralise these threats from afar, including swarms of hi-tech drones that identify an enemy, watch the enemy’s movements to minimise the risks of collateral injuries – and pounce.

That sort of remote-controlled intervention in principle offers the most moral, controlled, restrained and proportionate expression of legitimate military self-defence the human race has ever seen. Which, of course, does not make it perfect or fool-proof. Or wise.

Several good comments - Commentator attracts a more, shall we say, thoughtful class of commenter than Daily Telegraph blogs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rather it is 'who decides?'.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not sure if I have linked here to my LSE book review about electronic voting, so here it is.

The book itself is interesting and worth buying, as it cogently looks at the pros and cons of different options for registering votes accurately and fairly:

NB:  There is an important distinction to understand, folks, between electronic voting and electronic counting.

An electronic voting system means voters pressing a button or touch a screen to register their vote automatically. This is attractive to local authorities wanting to save money on running elections. But it is fraught with operational and conceptual difficulties - how to make the process secret, transparent and safe from manipulation either by external hackers or by malevolent insiders programming/running the electronic system?

An electronic counting system of the sort I saw in Nizhny Novgorod is simpler. The citizen votes as usual on a paper ballot then inserts the ballot paper into the ballot box via an electronic 'reader'. The votes are counted automatically, but the paper votes are there as a back-up in case the result is contested.

The great advantage of the paper-based voting system is that it is clear, simple and in principle reliable. Ordinary people can see what is happening and understand it. Mistakes in counting are unlikely to make a difference. But it is amazingly labour intensive and therefore expensive.

Electronic systems for voting are accurate and fast but much less transparent. Plus an electrical blip of some sort might change the result without anyone knowing.

As the OSCE report on the latest Russian elections sensibly noted:

My extended thoughts on the Russian elections for the national parliament (Duma) which took place on Sunday, 4 December. 

I played a modest part in the proceedings as an official international observer accredited to the elections under the auspices of the International Institute for Integration Studies, a Moscow-based grouping close to senior circles of power in Russia. The Institute supports various public conferences around the world, including the strange one I attended in Belgrade in June. Full disclosure note: I was offered (and accepted) a fee for observing these Russian elections, but it was agreed that I was under no obligation to say anything other than what I thought about the elections or about developments in Russia in general.

Other groups of official international observers were also criss-crossing Russia as elections day approached and on the day itself. The OSCE delivered what looked like the largest observer effort, not least ‘long-term observers’ tasked with looking at the elections in the context of the wider Russian political process. The OSCE's provisional findings include a number of very critical observations on these elections, but also give credit where credit was due in a number of significant respects.

Anyway, I arrived in Moscow on the evening of 1 December to join a dinner with other IIIS group observers, namely some Serbs and Italians. The Serbs were all at the ‘patriotic’ end of the political spectrum in Belgrade and included the Radical Party's Dragan Todorovic who had started spluttering uncontrollably during my presentation in Belgrade in June. One of the other guests was Borislav Milosevic, brother of Slobodan, who had served as Belgrade's ambassador in Moscow after the NATO bombing of Serbia. I did my very best to explain to him the private frustrations of Western leaders and diplomats in dealing with his late brother.

The next day we had briefings about the elections process from the Russian Senate and National Elections Commission and I gave an interview to SKY TV before we set off on our various journeys to watch actual voting. I was relatively lucky (or so I thought) by being sent to Nizhny Novgorod, 400 km east of Moscow. Some of the Serbs had to go to Vladivostok.

IIIS deliver senior access. In Nizhny Novgorod I was given excellent personal briefings by the Deputy Governor and the head of the local elections commission, who showed me one of the new electronic counting machines being used in a number of polling stations across the country. 

I then headed for my first polling station. Mistake! I slipped on the ice and wrecked my ankle. I was taken to the nearby basic but efficient wrecked ankle clinic doing its usual brisk business on a Sunday afternoon in Russian winter. An x-ray revealed no breakage of bone, but I had seriously damaged everything else. 

The result of this fiasco was that I visited only one polling station, not long before it was due to close. It was run by cheery no-nonsense Russian women. The different parties taking part in the elections had their representatives there – almost all women (Russian men have better things to do on a Sunday afternoon). The party representatives reported no problems. I was intrigued to see arrangements for small portable ballot boxes to be taken to any voter unable to visit the polling station; party representatives were entitled to accompany the ballot boxes during such manoeuvres. It all looked very normal.

After a painful overnight train journey back to Moscow, I attended a desultory press conference at which a smug Bulgarian observer proclaimed that the elections as a whole had been more than free and fair. It was not made clear on whose behalf he was making this bold assertion: his statement was brought round for other observers to sign, and I of course did not sign it. I then departed for home, enjoying a forlorn ride by wheelchair from the aircraft at Heathrow through Terminal 5 to spare my sorry foot.

* * * * *

So much for the little I saw of the elections themselves. Wider considerations?

International election observers have to try to do three things. They need to look at the rules-in-themselves to see whether they make sense and are reasonable and comprehensive. They need to look at how the rules are then applied to real life: are the procedures on paper being properly followed and interpreted? Finally, they need to look at the process as a whole and to see where it fits into the country's political life.

It cannot be said often enough. Russia is an unfathomably huge country with unique issues of command and control (and associated attitudes to governance) going back many centuries. Until the collapse of communism in 1991 there was no tradition of representative democracy. Setting up democratic institutions and practices (and, most important) creating democratic instincts had to be slow.

The arrangements laid down by Russia’s law for conducting elections are technically impressive, albeit detailed to the point of obsession. Russian procedures are better than ours here in the UK in at least three respects:

• Votes are counted in the polling station concerned immediately after the polls close, in the presence of party and other observers (ballot boxes are not moved to central counting points with the risk of mischief en route)
• No ID, no vote
• No postal voting

Moreover, there are streamlined and well monitored arrangements for getting the election results sent fast to Moscow for central compilation. Amidst the complaints about Russia's elections, you don't hear the argument that the counting of the votes as cast has not been fair and accurate.

Remember (again!) the sheer scale of the voting process. Russia has 96,000 polling stations catering for nearly 110,000,000 voters. People are voting for national-level politicians, with totals for individual parties simply added together to get a final total (on one way of looking at it a much simpler and fairer system than they have in eg the USA). The Law of Big Numbers kicks in. Cheating on a scale that makes a significant difference has to be massive – and obvious.

So what's the problem?

First, there inevitably are a large number of electoral violations of different shapes and sizes. When I wrote my book review for the LSE on Electronic Voting, I was struck at how we all take for granted the procedural complexity of voting. The following (and many more) are all essential:

• voters lists compiled and kept up-to-date
• secret voting
• ballot boxes sealed throughout the process
• accurate ballot papers printed and distributed under controlled conditions
• identification for voters
• meticulous and transparent counting, to make sure that all votes are counted and only votes properly cast have been counted
• procedures for disputes as to what a messy mark on a given ballot paper might mean
• arrangements for recording the final outcome and storing all ballot papers securely in case of future legal challenges.

At literally every stage of the process in any country there is scope for human error and/or deliberate mischief. Ruling out both 100% is impossible. 

Thus we need to be careful in agreeing with those who allege “massive violations “of electoral procedures in Russia or anywhere else. If every polling station in Russia has only one complaint about some or other procedural violation, there will be 96,000 complaints! Massive violations! Yet many of those complaints (including two we heard: one party doing some campaigning on the “day of silence" before the elections and not printing its name on election materials) will have been trivial in themselves and quite irrelevant to the final outcome.

Some violations are deliberate and (as far as local conditions allow) systematic. One frequent claim again in Russia is that ‘captive’ voters in mental illness institutions and the Army were lent on hard to vote for the Putin party. Unofficial crowd-sourced election monitors Golos have put on the Web all sorts of other examples, some filmed as they happened.

Complicated official arrangements such as running a nationwide election work in good part because they are transparent. Yes, in formal terms Russia does all it needs to do to host international and political party observers. But this time round the blatant official and unofficial pressure put on Golos (including denial of service website attacks and the usual insinuations that foreign support for such organisations was illegitimate or sinister) created a very bad impression.

More generally the post-Communist ruling establishment in Russia has changed the law to make it harder for new political parties to make a breakthrough. (Note: UKIP has views on the subject here in the UK.) Smaller parties are not allowed to form a single voting bloc. The rules for forming a national party able to contest national elections are excessively strict and not easy to meet. An earlier, excellent option of including on the ballot paper a vote for “none of the above" has been withdrawn. And so on.

Add to all this the violence suffered by some journalists who try to expose official corruption, unrelenting pro-Putin media coverage and the way far too many Russian media outlets condemn or marginalise any liberal views, and you get the sort of outcome which the OSCE fairly criticises.

But…

Just look at the results. Four parties have made it into the national parliament, after roughly half the Russian population voted:

• The Putin/Medvedev party United Russia.
• The retread Communists who still rant on about Marxist-Leninism (now with added Patriotism)
• The erratic pro-Establishment Liberal Democrat populists led by Zhirinovsky, whom we fondly remember on a Russian train taking pot-shots at voters’ pets with a hunting rifle. 
• And A Just Russia, a relatively new party claiming to be social democrats which has proposed an alliance with the Communists

Parties representing a more liberal policy-set involving reduced state control and better human rights either did not get into the race or (as in the case of Yavlinsky's Yabloko party) failed dismally once again. A new supposedly centre-right party Right Cause won only 400,000 votes.

Western commentators and some in Russia are claiming these election results show rising dissatisfaction with the performance of Vladimir Putin. They might even be right. But that dissatisfaction is rising from a low and apathetic base, and insofar as it translates into changed voting it boosts tendencies which are even worse. Compared with the other three national/socialist parties which crossed the threshold to enter the Duma, Putin's party look almost normal. Putin remains the favourite to be voted back in as Russia's president in the forthcoming elections next March.

In short, the legacy of Soviet communism lives on powerfully in Russia. Lenin still moulders in red Square. Nizhny Novgorod railway station welcomes you with a vast Communist mosaic. Former KGB-type people have prospered since Communism ended, and use their power and wealth to frame things in their favour.

Under current management Russia is getting steadily more prosperous and steadily more pluralistic, albeit in a specific Russian way. Russians en masse have a (for us) startling capacity for putting up with hardships, including overbearing and neurotic state power. They are not bothered by their leaders sneering at foreigners or homosexuals or liberal attitudes. They do want to see progress and get richer, and they hate corruption and get-rich-quick types. But it takes a lot to rouse them to take a stand against the existing “system “. 

Are things changing, with young urban people in particular demanding wider changes? If so, does it matter?

Maybe. After the elections the head of the National Elections Commission proclaimed that evidence of electoral malpractice produced by Golos would not be investigated unless it was backed by 'official' complaints. This cynical view reflects a ruling Russian mindset going back centuries, namely that only ‘official’ procedures count. 

Yet in Russia as in so many other countries the mass of people are getting more powerful vis-a-vis the state. Perhaps the main story of these elections is the way many Russians are now using cheap mobile technology to follow and record what is happening across their vast country - and Vladimir Putin's so far uncertain response.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

different working hours or different family law in different countries.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does Poland ask of Germany?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One final thought.

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

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

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

Yesterday my Sunday was interrupted by a request from RT-TV (Russia's answer to the BBC's world broadcasts) to take part in a programme talking about the Eurozone in general and Italy in particular.

As they asked nicely and as it was not too far to the BBC Oxford studio where the short session was to be recorded, off I went.

Here is part of the transcript of the interview, with my friend Patrick Young as it happens also featured just below (Patrick knows more than any human being decently should know about software programs running Balkan and other such new stock exchanges).

Off I go:

“All the countries in the eurozone which are getting these debt difficulties are having the same problem. This is because they are in the eurozone and cannot devalue their currencies. In effect they are left with borrowing money from the international market and the other eurozone members. They are left with reducing government spending, which is sacking people, which is not popular with the people who are sacked. They are reduced to putting up taxes, which is not popular with everyone else," ...

“Once you’ve got into these very strong difficult debt situations, the ways out are all very painful. So in both Greece and Italy and in some other eurozone countries the choices available to the leaders of the countries concerned are very limited. That is why the eurozone is coming under stress – because the political and psychological pressures are coming up against the way the whole thing was set up in the first place,”

Crawford emphasised that the crisis in Europe is like an impressive house where the foundations, it turns out, were not very well built. And it is very difficult to repair the foundations while inside the house and without moving somewhere else.

If you're feeling brave, watch the full interview (only some four minutes) by pressing the link above. Lawks, I look tired. Maybe it was clear and fluent enough for the occasion, even if I got a bit too involved in one or two long sentence thoughts. Keep it short - and simple!

Fascinating in a grimly painful way to watch one's own twitches and mannerisms (such as starting each answer with "Well, ...") when part of one's work is training others in how to do media work ha ha.

A random comment below from one Bogdan shows that he/she has not quite grasped the point of a TV interview:

A weaker Italy might appeal to many inside the EU. It would be very interesting indeed if Mr Crawford could as well analyse the dire status of economy in his own country, which should be the UK by the biased style of his article...

The medium is the message, or something. Even in Russia.

Readers here know all about MTS and non-MTS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The FCO mind boggles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, there we have it.

It's not Climate Truth that counts.

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

QED. 

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

Try these two for size.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nice try. But no.

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

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

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

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

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

Update  it is sobering to see a long line of comments after such an article in a national newspaper, many of them buzzing away about issues far from the immediate points I made. Lots of not altogether focused Euro-scepticism out there. But this one from damage124 caught my amused eye: 

Unless I am very much mistaken, was it not the foreign office that were the big proponents not only of our entry to the EEC but also the euro?
I am sure your description is accurate but perhaps the "blue sky" was actually a very thick fog.
I appreciate that you have now retired but perhaps you should have taken this opportunity to apologise?

 * * * * *

I have been invited to join the lively sophisticated team of Daily Telegraph bloggers. Fame. At last. 

Here is the first result, a gallop over exhausted EU processes which has ideas familiar to attentive readers here but maybe not (yet) to a much wider audience:

Basically, there is the bloke in the bar anywhere in the world, railing against the iniquity of what foreigners get up to: “Can you believe what those Germans/Frenchies/Americans/Arabs/Brits/Jews are doing now?! They’re trying to cheat us! Do they think we’re thick, or wot? Innit!” 

Then above him (sorry, ladies, it’s usually a him) is a vast, unpleasant fog created by supercilious on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand people like me. Officials, technocrats, state-funded busybodies and experts droning on in high acronymic about Targets, Priorities, Road-maps, Objectives, Strategies, Policies and the rest of it.

When you break through that impenetrable, noxious layer of process, you suddenly get to clear blue sky where meetings of world leaders take place. And the impressive thing is that these leaders resemble the bloke in the pub. The language is (usually) not quite as blunt. But the thoughts and messages are...

EU Solidarity of course requires certain minimal levels of discipline and commitment by all sides, lest it become an unacceptable redistributive one-way street, money flowing from those who accept the rules to those who might (or might not) do so.

If richer Europeans ‘should’ help poorer Europeans – as they have massively done through EU Cohesion Funds and other redistributive mechanisms – what ‘should’ the poorer Europeans do in return? Work harder? Agree to refuse assistance when they have improved their lot? Stick to the rules meticulously? Be grateful?

No one has ever wanted to talk about this. Even to broach the subject is a howwid breach of Euro-etiquette, suggesting a narrow, penny-pinching, Thatcherite mistrust of European processes themselves. We're all Europeans, right? So by definition we are all equally worthy. We can – and must – be trusted!

Should Europeans trust each other? Mais oui. Do they? Not so much...

... For how much longer will Angela Merkel sit there glaring at her fellow leaders and glumly accept that, in effect, Germany is to be blackmailed by smaller, less scrupulous EU partners (“If you don’t give us your nation’s hard-won credibility – and its money – we’ll drag you down too!”)?

Is this acceptable as the basis for running a creditable and credit-worthy society in Germany, and for Germany as part of a wider European community? Is this what all those decades of Germany’s heroic post-WW2 rebuilding effort led to – a Europe of looters and moochers? How to sell that to the honest toiler in the Berlin bierkeller?

Maybe one day soon Germany will look the other shifty countries in the eye round the conference table. And, like Atlas, shrug.

Has last night's Summit solved the core Eurozone problem?

Of course not. It simply represents a new dizzy height for High Euro-Micawberism:

'Accidents will occur in the best regulated families...

I have no doubt I shall, please Heaven, begin to be more beforehand with the world, and to live in a perfectly new manner, if -if, in short, anything turns up.’  

Walter Russell Mead pours out one fine article after another.

Look at his blunt observations on the desperate situation in Rhode Island where years of not decades of public sector greed and a refusal by politicians and unions there to accept underlying financial realities (especially for pensions) is creating a ghastly mess now:

Rhode Island is looking more and more like Greece, and not in a good way.  That is one message of this important piece by Mary Williams Walsh in the New York Times.  Years of blue social policy have wrecked local and state government finance in the country’s smallest state, and now the bills are coming due.  Services are being cut to the bone and elderly retirees are losing money they thought was secure.

In Rhode Island, it is Democrats, not nasty union-hating Republicans, who are doing the dirty work.  Democratic mayors are telling their unions that there isn’t any money — not because they are vicious corporate stooges who hate working people and want to see them suffer, but because There. Isn’t. Any. Money.

... But “objectively”, as our Marxist friends would say, the union leaders and their political chums were the worst enemies of the workers: they told state workers that their benefits were secure even as it became increasingly obvious that, as a matter of arithmetic, they were not.

Let’s be crystal clear about this.  To tell a 50 year old pretty lies about the soundness of a pension plan is one of the most wicked and irresponsible things you can do without actually shedding blood; people who believe these phony promises will not make the extra savings, work the extra years or otherwise take steps to protect themselves until it is too late. 

Telling those pretty lies is exactly what Rhode Island’s establishment has been doing for some time; it is what Ostrich Party legislators, trade unionists, journalists and governors are still doing across much of the country...

Reform cannot and should not be understood simply as an assault on state and local government workers — although these workers cannot be insulated from the general consequences of a major failure of our political system. 

The problem is not that teachers and firefighters earn “too much” money; the problem is that we have developed a dysfunctional social system which cannot pay its bills.  The public economy needs to be rationalized and restructured, but the most important job is to revitalize and energize the private sector...

Devastating.

Neither the US political classes nor the EU political classes seem to understand that the game based on funding unaffordable spending via the hope of unending growth is up.

The. Money. Is. No. Longer. There.

Update  carried also at the Commentator

* * * * *

Here is Ed Miliband's Labour Conference speech today - in full.

A bad idea to hand out to the print media the same version in micro-sentenced blank verse as used to help the delivery. It looks oddly like something from a Noddy story:

Stock markets round the world falling.

The United States in difficulty.

The Eurozone struggling.

And people in Britain losing their jobs.

Now is not the time for the same old answers.

From us, on the issues that lost us your trust.

From this Government, on the growth crisis we face.

You need to know that there is an alternative.

You need to know that it is credible.

See what I mean? I can't stand it any more, so I'll run his words together to make them readable:

Government is cutting back. And the recovery has stalled. Of course, the world economy is suffering.

But our Government is making it worse. Because the current plan to raise taxes and cut spending more dramatically than any other country is not working.

Depends what you mean by 'working'. If it's strategically important to get on top of the insane debt levels Labour bequeathed, maybe that pain for a few years has to be part of any cure?

... with such great people, how have we ended up with the problems we face? It’s because of the way we have chosen to run our country. Not just for a year or so but for decades.

Now there are hard lessons here for my party which some won’t like. Some of what happened in the 1980s was right. It was right to let people buy their council houses. It was right to cut tax rates of 60, 70, 80 percent. And it was right to change the rules on the closed shop, on strikes before ballots. These changes were right, and we were wrong to oppose it at the time.

Now you're talking, Ed! Why were these things 'right', and what 'wrong' ideas did your party espouse?

We changed the fabric of our country but we did not do enough to change the values of our economy.

Oh. That's helpful.

And we have seen immigration policy which didn’t work for the people whose jobs, living standards and communities were affected.

Which Party deliberately opened the immigration gates as part of a vast social engineering scheme to make the UK more 'diverse'? Oops. It didn't work. Hard-working Poles came 900 miles to take took the jobs which illiterate rioting Yoof from our skools up da road woz too fick to do init. Do better next time. Promise!

We must never excuse people who cheat the welfare system. The reason I talk about this is not because I don’t believe in a welfare state but because I do.

We can never protect and renew it if people believe it’s just not fair. If it’s too easy not to work. And there are people taking something for nothing. And if at the same time people who have paid into the system all their lives find the safety net full of holes. No wonder people are angry.

Er, yes. But who created such a towering system of benefits and disincentivised work? Who howls with rage every time any government tries to curb abuses?

Let me tell you what the 21st century choice is: Are you on the side of the wealth creators or the asset strippers? The producers or the predators?

Ed, calm down. What is taxation to pay for all your ridiculous schemes including the folly of overseas development aid and the CAP and myriad Diversity Coordinators, if it is not predatory asset-stripping, imposed by force?

We need the most competitive tax and regulatory environment we can for British business.

But when I am Prime Minister, how we tax, what government buys, how we regulate, what we celebrate will be in the service of Britain’s producers

Er, no. Because EU laws stop you doing any of that. What's your plan for wriggling out of that one?

But our energy companies have defied the laws of gravity for too long. Prices go up but they never seem to come down.

You can't be serious. It is a huge collectivist Climate policy plank to force energy prices higher. Have you filled up a car's petrol tank recently, Ed? What % of the mad price is tax of some sort or other?

We’ve got to put an end to the idea that those at the top can take whatever they can, regardless of what they give back. It’s why we must end the cosy cartels of the way top pay is set in our economy. So every pay committee should have an employee on the board.

Ed. How a private organisation remunerates its employees is none of your damn business.

So we need a new bargain at the top of society, and in our benefits system too.

A bargain? Hmm. That sounds like an arrangement whereunder the parties, you know, agree on what happens? Not one where the state decides everything, including how private organisations set up their pay scheme committees.

When we have a housing shortage, choices have to be made. Do we treat the person who contributes to their community the same as the person who doesn’t? My answer is no. Our first duty should be to help the person who shows responsibility. And I say every council should recognise the contribution that people are making 

Utter incoherence. But so what? Lots of new jobs for thick social science graduates in the RMP (Responsibility Measurement Police).

And it’s not just in our benefits system that I want to change the way government works. It’s in our public services as well. Millions of public servants deliver a fantastic service every day of every week. But we all know that sometimes powerful organisations can become unaccountable. Work not in the interests of those who need them but in their own interests. That's what vested interests are.

Thanks for clarifying that. But what are you talking about?

You know what it’s like. You stand in the queue. You hang on the phone. You fill in the form. And then all you get? Computer says no. We need to change that.

To give power to the public. Like the power to the elderly couple to choose whether they are cared for in a care home or in their own home. Or the parents I know struggling with their council on their child’s special needs who want to know who else is facing the same challenges. So I will take on the vested interests wherever they are because that is how we defend the public interest.

So. We'll have the New VIP (Vested Interest Police) squads to keep an eye on the RMP and the rest of the sprawling bureaucracy, all of which is there to uphold, or is it oppress, the public interest. It's all so confusing.

But I’m up for the fight. The fight for a new bargain. A new bargain in our economy so reward is linked to effort.

Hurrah! A Flat Tax system does just that! Bring it on!

A new bargain based on your values so we can pay our way in the world. A new bargain to ensure responsibility from top to bottom. And a new bargain to break open the closed circles, and break up vested interests, that hold our country back.

Hurrah! Abolishing all Trades Union privileges and dismantling state education and health monopolies. I vote for that. 

I aspire to be your Prime Minister not for more of the same. But to write a new chapter in our country’s history. The promise of Britain lies in its people. The tragedy of Britain is that it is not being met. My mission. Our mission. To fulfil the promise of each so we fulfil the promise of Britain.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Oh ... he's stopped? After a mere 5830 words or so.

What's wrong with this speech? No, sniping aside, what's really wrong with it?

It's all so thin and phoney, aimed at a sound-bite culture. The words values or value appear 43 times. But repeating the word values like a parrot is, in fact, valueless. 

There are huge interesting things to talk about. The Eurozone and future European architecture. How to manage complexity. Where state action might best work when networked spontaneous order might not do enough. How to use the tax system to deliver incentives. How in fact to give people more choice. Why it made sense to sell council houses and reduce the state's role - scope for more of that now? How to make 'national' policies work in a globalised world. European demographics and pension schemes. Defence policy - heavy manned weapons or myriad unmanned drones? State v individual. Structure v freedom. What in fact these days works well, and why?

Not a single one of these issues appears in any meaningful form. If the one thing the Labour Party ought to have aplenty, it's intellectuals. Those clever people who swarm in higher education and Islington and Camden, some of whom are very smart and able to think. They should be able to help Ed articulate these tough subjects and more in a light-touch but mentally nourishing way. Is this what Ralph Miliband expected?

Instead we get this blast of lukewarm air, this cumulus of clichés, this infantilised gruel which in its faux soul-searching toughness pretends to be part of an adult diet but evaporates any time you stick in your spoon hunting for some substantial morsel.

Look at the Guardianistas trying to find something intelligent to say about it. If you listen closely you can hear them cringing with embarrassment as they tap away on their smart laptops while sipping their globalised Fair Trade coffee, all provided to them by the greedy uncaring private sector.

Conclusion?

The words values or value appear 43 times. But repeating the word values like a dying parrot is, in fact, valueless.

I write little here about Israel/Palestine as I have little to say which countless others are not saying. Plus I don't have first-hand professional experience.

What is going on? Of course the Palestinians want to advance their claims and demands on all international fronts. Upping their status at the UN to that of an 'observer state' might help them launch new legal claims against Israel. But that would be far from straightforward - maybe even impossible in practice:

European countries worried about Palestinian access to the ICC blocked a Spanish-French proposal for nonmember observer status for Palestine, and there has even been discussion among Europeans about creating a new legal status for the Palestinians that would provide an upgrade in status but block potential access to the ICC and other international legal enforcement agencies.

Even if the Palestinians got nonmember state status at the U.N., which is the maximum they could achieve under the present circumstances, and were able to become party to the ICC, there are serious doubts about their practical ability to bring charges against Israel or Israeli officials. Any request for such charges would be more a diplomatic and political question than a legal one, and both the ICC and prosecutors would be subject to significant domestic and international political pressures that make it hard to imagine such a scenario actually unfolding...

Here is a neat account by former UK diplomat Carne Ross of the procedural goings-on in the fetid New York UN corridors aimed at shunting the issue into the long grass so that President Obama is not embarrassed into using a veto to block Palestine's UN membership. Note Carne's shrewd view on the Russia/China angle here - to get some PR 'progressive'/Arab credit but not do anything on the substance:

So far, only the US has declared its outright opposition to the membership application, but we can be confident that there will be others who will abstain on the vote, giving the US some political company and, perhaps, avoiding them having to veto (this will happen if the Palestinians cannot muster the 9 votes necessary to pass a resolution, thus forcing a veto if the US wants to stop it).  Germany and Colombia will abstain, and perhaps the UK too.  

Russia and China will support the Palestinian initiative but without sufficient vigour to take on the Americans in the Council.  They will be not be desperately unhappy if this gets blocked.  Their objective is to look good to the Arab world, and this objective is met by merely promising their support, and not by spending any serious political energy on it.

Meanwhile, the US is putting ferocious pressure on weaker non-permanent members like Bosnia.  This is a vicious nasty business: I have seen it done.  A number of diplomats have told me about the extremely aggressive pressure being put on them by US diplomats, including here at the UN.  But the pressure will also involve high-level phone calls from Hillary Clinton and the President, and others.  

This type of pressure is very, very difficult for weaker countries, who may be dependent on the US in some way or other (like Bosnia), to resist.  This is how power works.

Yup. If you want the privilege of being on the UN Security Council, you have to play hardball with the mean players who always hang around there.

I wonder how Bosnia will end up voting if it gets to a UNSC vote where Bosnia and Herzegovina is currently a member. The Muslim/Bosniac position will be to support Palestine, and the Bosnian Serbs will vote for the best available anti-Muslim option (in this case whatever suits Israel). Bosnian Croats anyone?

Likely BH position: abstain. All too difficult.

Or is it Coup des États?

Definitely one or the other. Let's stick with the headline one.

My latest Commentator piece is out, belabouring a theme familiar to regular readers here, namely the Limits of Trust:

Once upon a time world leaders met only rarely if at all. They maintained their dignity if not power precisely by not meeting.

Now EU leaders are meeting and talking almost every month in one way or the other. This (for now) has the effect of making wars in Europe a lot less likely. How can Hans send his country to war against Juan and Maria’s countries when they had such a jolly expensive dinner together last week in Brussels?

There is nonetheless a downside. Which is that Trust reasserts itself in a peculiarly personal way. Private tiffs can spill over into public disagreements, and vice versa.

Imagine that you are the Dumpling Finance Minister who is getting it in the neck from the Dumpling media and public opinion for being far too lenient with the EU’s Olive tendency. You sit there at the EU Council meeting listening to an Olive drone on about urgent reforms which both of you know won’t be carried out quickly or honestly or even at all. Worse, the predecessor of this Olive (probably a cousin of the current one) actually lied at Council meetings time and again about the state of his country’s finances – that’s how the whole mess started.

Basically, your willingness to listen to any more Olive nonsense is trending towards absolute zero. Your exasperation is likely to burst out when it is your turn to speak. Meanwhile your unctuous officials sense your mood and are freezing out their Olive counterparts in the coffee breaks.

And lo! ‘Dialogue’ diminishes. Trust declines. Emails start to get no replies, phone-calls aren’t taken. Differences start to count for more than what people have in common. Those who have money start to bark out instructions to those who are hoping for yet more cheap loans. The whole mood shifts for the worse, defaulting to petulant defensiveness...

The problem for the European Union is that it has very little legal or political room for manoeuvre for tackling the Eurozone crisis. It's as if they designed a beautiful tall building without factoring in the right sort of fire safety plumbing. There is no direct way to put out all the small fires which have erupted on different floors of the building, and as these fires develop they in turn reduce still further the room for bringing in more water.

Thus:

... the mighty elite brains who got us into this mess will come up with an even better plan, but then implement it with even less public scrutiny and direct accountability than now exists. To do that they may have to start taking serious legal short-cuts, to the point of side-stepping or ignoring key national laws and EU treaty constraints.

A voter's right to choose.

This is not good enough. Insofar as it means anything it sounds like a coup d’etat, or more precisely coup d’etats.

I might be prepared to sign away some of my own autonomy and my own little slice of my country’s autonomy in return for a wider economic package which makes sense, but only if I get to take part in a proper debate about the options. Which, given what is at stake in current circumstances, means a referendum

Imposed behind my back on the hoof by the people who led us into this fiasco? No way. That breaks the most profound Trust test which allows our society to work freely

Maybe we are heading towards an existential democratic crisis. Stressed-out European leaders round on their bewildered and increasingly angry voters, and tell them in blunt terms: “Your money. Or your democratic life”.

Last week in the Krynica Economic Forum in deep Poland, a highlight was the exchange between former German President (and former IMF Director) Horst Köhler and Polish Finance Minister Jan Vincent-Rostowski.

In essence, Kohler argued that the time had come to stop throwing good money after bad in the Eurozone - countries should accept responsibility for their own performance in racking up unsustainable sovereign debt. Rostowski insisted that that was all very well - in the meantime the Eurozone could face drastic problems if the ECB did not respond to a 'classic Keynesian moment' by printing Euros on a vigorous scale.

As I understood their respective points, Germany was offering the ailing Eurozone patient some stern medicine - Poland retorting that medicine of that strength would be good in other circumstances, but now would kill the patient.

After this presentation a senior European expert told me that the Eurozone was on the 'verge of disaster'. If it struck and confidence crashed, great swathes of EU economic life would simply grind to a halt, including many German exporters. Germany knew this but did not want to accept it. I asked him how close to the Verge of Doom the system now was. "About two inches".

During his presentation the erudite and impassioned Rostowski quoted Tarquinius and the Sybil, helpfully reminding the large audience what that story was about. Basically:

The story of the acquisition of the Sibylline Books by Tarquinius is one of the famous mythic elements of Roman history. The Cumaean Sibyl offered to Tarquinius nine books of these prophecies; and as the king declined to purchase them, owing to the exorbitant price she demanded, she burned three and offered the remaining six to Tarquinius at the same stiff price, which he again refused, whereupon she burned three more and repeated her offer.

Tarquinius then relented and purchased the last three at the full original price and had them preserved in a vault beneath the Capitoline temple of Jupiter.

Rostowski's argument was that at each stage the EU had ducked the tough but correct option for tackling the Eurozone crisis, so that the cost of fixing it now was massive. 

Where do things stand now?

The real crisis, as we know, is not Greece but the EU banking system which has lent EU governments unsustainable sums to fund inefficient state spending. So, in the inevitable mess, where should the losses fall and be distributed?

Has Germany decided that if colossal sums must be spent to salvage something from the Eurozone rubble, it is better to invest that money in sorting out the big EU banks most in danger and let those national governments who are unable to keep up go their own sorrowful way? Agonising, but character-forming. See this hard-core analysis by Hussman Funds:

As for any public funds approved for use by various European governments to stabilize the financial system, IMF chief Christine LaGarde is right - those funds would be better used to recapitalise banks (ideally, restructured banks) rather than using those funds as a transfer to Greece in hopes of making bad debt good.

What is particularly unfortunate is that all of this is unfolding in a very predictable way, but the constant attempts to ignore reality and defer the inevitable restructuring is imposing enormous costs on the public. 

The misery and disruption to lives round the planet caused by hubristic European political elites are going to be incalculable.

Basically, the European Union has run out of policy manoeuvre-room. Its taxes are already too high, its populations too old, its bureaucratic dead weight too heavy. The existing Treaty structure does not work, and the latest German Constitutional Court ruling effectively (and wisely) reduces even more the scope for German leaders to dump debts on the German public.

Undaunted, the Euro-elites realise that they need a new Kardelj-like attempt to cure the sick cow, this time by changing the rules to give themselves even wider powers. In other words, EU treaty change.

This forces to the fore the UK dilemma. How to avoid a Euro-federalist concentration of power among Eurozone members directly affecting in substance everything the EU does? Euro-federalists have a problem too - how to get accepted such far-reaching national sovereignty-surrendering Treaty changes without referenda in the UK and (probably) elsewhere? 

This is impossible. The sheer intensity of the integrative forces required to make Eurozone 2 work will affect the EU as a whole, not least in the reach of Eurozone authority as upheld by European Law. 

The issues are already clear:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that the European Union must enact treaty changes in order to strengthen cooperation during the debt crisis...

Osborne said it was an "absolute requirement" that any EU-wide treaty would safeguard Britain's interests in key areas.

"It is crucial that Britain's interests on financial services, on the single market, on competition are protected, that we're not outvoted by the euro zone, that there is not an in-built euro zone caucus into the system ... that we are able to continue to have a decisive say on things that affect us."

Asked about opting out of other parts of the EU, Hague said: "It's true of the euro, it could be true of more areas in future. In fact we may get ahead as a result of being outside."

Luckily the key speech the Prime Minister needs when the crunch finally arrives has already been drafted...

I returned to the Embassy in Belgrade to be told to watch on TV what was happening in New York.

I did. The Twin Towers crashed.

My thought then is still valid:

This level of Islamist madness is quite different. It can't be defeated by normal means. Only moderate Muslims can do it, if they have the courage. And what will they demand from us as the price for sorting out their own lunatics..?

Israel?

What was 9/11? One thing it was not was a 'tragedy'. A speedboat death or a fatal fire in a tenement caused by drunkenness is a tragedy.

Some things are so much bigger than mere tragedies that it is insulting if not evil to use that sort of language. Yet a sizeable 'liberal' tendency wants to shrink 9/11 down to something manageable, if not banal.

Luckily we have Mark Steyn batting for civilisation. Sorry, Mark, but this column is so powerful I have to quote it at length:

Waiting to be interviewed on the radio the other day, I found myself on hold listening to a public-service message exhorting listeners to go to 911day.org and tell their fellow citizens how they would be observing the tenth anniversary of the, ah, “tragic events.” There followed a sound bite of a lady explaining that she would be paying tribute by going and cleaning up an area of the beach

Great! Who could object to that? Anything else? Well, another lady pledged that she “will continue to discuss anti-bullying tactics with my grandson.”

Marvelous. Because studies show that many middle-school bullies graduate to hijacking passenger jets and flying them into tall buildings?

Whoa, ease up on the old judgmentalism there, pal. In New Jersey, many of whose residents were among the dead, middle-schoolers will mark the anniversary with a special 9/11 curriculum that will “analyze diversity and prejudice in U.S. history.” And, if the “9/11 Peace Story Quilt” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art teaches us anything, it’s that the “tragic events” only underline the “importance of respect.” And “understanding.” As one of the quilt panels puts it:

You should never feel left out

You are a piece of a puzzle

And without you

The whole picture can’t be seen.

And if that message of “healing and unity” doesn’t sum up what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, what does? A painting of a plane flying into a building? A sculpture of bodies falling from a skyscraper? Oh, don’t be so drearily literal. “It is still too soon,” says Midori Yashimoto, director of the New Jersey City University Visual Arts Gallery, whose exhibition “Afterwards & Forward” is intended to “promote dialogue, deeper reflection, meditation, and contextualization.”

So, instead of planes and skyscrapers, it has Yoko Ono’s “Wish Tree,” on which you can hang little tags with your ideas for world peace.

What’s missing from these commemorations?

Firemen?

Oh, please. There are some pieces of the puzzle we have to leave out. As Mayor Bloomberg’s office has patiently explained, there’s “not enough room” at the official Ground Zero commemoration to accommodate any firemen. “Which is kind of weird,” wrote the Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle, “since 343 of them managed to fit into the exact same space ten years ago.”

On a day when all the fancypants money-no-object federal acronyms comprehensively failed — CIA, FBI, FAA, INS — the only bit of government that worked was the low-level unglamorous municipal government represented by the Fire Department of New York.

When they arrived at the World Trade Center the air was thick with falling bodies — ordinary men and women trapped on high floors above where the planes had hit, who chose to spend their last seconds in one last gulp of open air rather than die in an inferno of jet fuel. Far “too soon” for any of that at New Jersey City University, but perhaps you could reenact the moment by filling out a peace tag for Yoko Ono’s “Wish Tree” and then letting it flutter to the ground.

Upon arrival at the foot of the towers, two firemen were hit by falling bodies. “There is no other way to put it,” one of their colleagues explained. “They exploded.”

Any room for that on the Metropolitan Museum’s “Peace Quilt”? Sadly not. We’re all out of squares

Read the rest. And get very angry.

While you're doing that, reflect on the assertions now flying thick and fast that BlairBusHitler are responsible for "a million deaths and five million orphans" in Iraq and much more in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. The point here is that the vast majority of these deaths are Muslims murdering other Muslims. Part in fact of the battle I predicted, between more or less moderate Muslims and the lunatic not-so-fringe.

That battle has to be fought. See events across North Africa now. It reflects a huge 'civilisational' fault-line in Islam, where the various tendencies have played upon our dependency on oil to get fabulously rich and then lever up the struggle to the point of putting global security at risk.

The casualties in this war are bound to be huge, as the propensity to madness, extremism and savagery among extreme Islamists is so high.

Where do we as mere honest citizens fit into this war?

Watch George Bush and Bill Clinton tell us, in a superb example of the speechmakers' art drawing on the stunning events themselves and looking at the wider lessons.

They were speaking at a commemoration of the heroism of the passengers on Flight 93, who rose up against the deranged hijackers and thwarted their plan to blow up Washington - at the cost of their own lives. 

George Bush:

Aboard United Airlines Flight 93 were college students from California, an iron worker from New Jersey, veterans of the Korean War and World War II, citizens of Germany and Japan, a pilot who had rearranged his schedule so that he could take his wife on a vacation to celebrate their anniversary.

When the passengers and crew realized the plane had been hijacked, they reported the news calmly. When they learned that the terrorists had crashed other planes into targets on the ground, they accepted greater responsibilities. In the back of the cabin, the passengers gathered to devise a strategy.

At the moment America’s democracy was under attack, our citizens defied their captors by holding a vote. The choice they made would cost them their lives, and they knew it. Many passengers called their loved ones to say good-bye, then

Many passengers called their loved ones to say goodbye then hung up to perform their final act. One said, “They’re getting ready to break into the cockpit. I have to go. I love you.” Another said, “It’s up to us. I think we can do it.”

In one of the most stirring accounts, Todd Beamer, a father of two with a pregnant wife with a home in New Jersey, asked the air operator to join him in reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Then he helped lead the charge with the words “Let’s roll.”

With their selfless act, the men and women who stormed the cockpit lived out the words, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” And with their brave decision, they launched the first counter offensive of the war on terror.

The most likely target of the hijacked plane was the United States Capitol. We’ll never know how many innocent people might have been lost, but we do know this, Americans are alive today because the passengers and crew of Flight 93 chose to act, and our nation will be forever grateful.

The 40 souls who perished on the plane left a great deal behind. They left spouses and children and grandchildren who miss them dearly. They left successful businesses and promising careers and a lifetime of dreams they will never have the chance to fulfill. They left something else — a legacy of bravery and selflessness that will always inspire America.

If anything Bill Clinton is even better. Watch the video to see how he uses rhetorical pauses and historical allusions to put the Flight 93 passengers up there with some of the world's finest historical heroes.

Conclusion?

There are no sure, safe, rational, reasonable ways for dealing with the sort of cynical, depraved wickedness which Bin Laden represented. In fact these extremists bank on our very reasonableness to create operating space for themselves in our own societies.

But they are not doomed to succeed. Security measures work. Some moderate Muslims are fighting back. Western intelligence agencies have benefited from defectors from Islamic communities and used the information gained to destroy Islamist extremist leaderships and their structures. Spare a thought for those Muslims who have risked all to work with us and been murdered when they were discovered. They are true citizen heroes too. 

Since 9/11 we have done quite a good job in scaling down the risk in the 'West'. Soft policies of inclusiveness/diversity have a role. They show a willingness to talk, within civilised limits.

So does killing our enemies. That shows a refusal to be defeated.  

Over at Commentator is my latest piece on UK engagement with Libya, in which I argue that what happened in recent years was principled, smart and mainly effective. Take that, you chattering classes:

there are only two basic choices available to democracies when it comes to dealing with odious regimes: Isolation, or Engagement. And that both can have perverse consequences, because it is impossible to deal with perverse regimes without some perverse outcomes

Isolation (plus or minus sanctions) invariably drags on unhappily, mainly because the regimes are never in fact that isolated: see the wild success of those policies for eg Cuba, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Belarus. In some cases the regime may isolate itself, all the better to oppress its own citizens: see decades of North Korea.

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

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

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

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

This is also where I part company with my former UK Ambassador colleague Craig Murray. Forget his idiosyncratic leftism. My problem is that Craig's books and website lambast almost any 'Western' foreign policy as corrupt, mendacious, duplicitous or whatever. Yet he is almost 100% silent on how in real life to achieve any positive changes for the better, not least in Uzbekistan which is run by a hard-core regime which he knows only too well.

A loyal reader of my latest Commentator piece says this:

My initial instincts would be to disagree mostly with the kind of line you take on this particular issue. I'm a no compromise man on dictatorships. But, as you say, what are we supposed to do with them? If I may say, you make a very convincing case that really makes me think hard.

Let's think about this a bit more, taking for granted that a 'Western' democratic system with a strong legal system is just 'better' than a cruel torturing dictatorship. What should the democracy do about the dictatorship?

One option is to do nothing. Faraway wicked foreigners oppress each other - what's new?

That option is in fact quite often used, even if there is a busy pretence of 'doing something'. Saudi Arabia is the classic example of a system which in most respects imposes odious unfair apartheid-like restrictions on its citizens, and which we studiously treat as a 'factor of stability'. Communist China used to be far worse, murdering millions. As did the USSR.

In all these cases the hard fact that these systems are powerful, ruthless and/or rich compels a certain caution. But does the fact that we 'tolerate' (say) the Saudi system demolish any claim by us to moral superiority? Double standards, they shriek.

No. Any good policy has to be realistic as well as consistent. If you can't stop all killers, it's right to stop those you can stop. To that extent there is solid intellectual and moral territory between 'double standards' and 'no standards'.    

If we nonetheless decide to do something about a dictatorship, what in fact is likely to work, where 'work' means bringing about change for the more pluralistic, preferably without massive violence?

Hold it right there. Why is massive violence bad? Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tweeted recently thus:

What if we think that there are possibilities for more or less peaceful change? Egypt in some ways is a good current example. NB South Africa is always presented as a triumph for peaceful change but of course wasn't.

Libya might have been too, had the Gaddafi elite not reverted to stupidity instead of using its new improved relations with Western democracies to negotiate .

Cuba? Belarus? Myanmar/Burma? Zimbabwe? China itself?

Simply making a short list like that shows just how varied and problematic the challenge is. In each individual case the options range far and wide, as does the prospect of getting allies and building successful coalitions for change. 

Let's not forget too that Western political leaders' main focus is what their voters want. And voters (with rare exceptions) do not put changing the ways of revolting foreign regimes far up their priorities list. Or much taxpayers' money to be spent on the problem. In 1999 Robin Cook realised that it was a good investment to fund anti-Milosevic activities led by myself, and got superb results. 

So in the real world of foreign policy it makes no sense to take a stark 'no compromise' position of substance with dictatorships. They exist, they have UN and other votes, they can export trouble, they probably have Ambassadors in London. Your aircraft may need to fly over their territory, or they may agree with you on various international technical issues. It's complicated. 

You almost always end up with some form of 'engagement'. But the fact of matter-of-fact exchanges and opportunistically looking for areas to build some common ground is not the same thing as having a policy of Engagement aimed at deliberately using a range of options (openly or otherwise) to bring out reforms. 

When in Poland I quietly and privately explored with the then Ambassador of Belarus (smart, energetic diplomat) some ideas for engaging with the Lukashenko elite. But it all fell into the Not Important Enough category in London. Getting anything done there would take a lot of effort and senior time: Tony Blair saw no real upside in this long slog, and plenty of reasons for letting this one quietly fester under 'EU pressure'.

Was that the wrong decision by No 10? Or the right one? It's still festering, but EU governments are still wobbling unconvincingly between Engagement and Isolation.

A huge subject.

My point today is simple. British foreign policy and leadership can make positive changes in unpropitious foreign situations. But simply wanting to make a difference does not get results. Making that happen requires a powerful combination of strong policy determination, operational nimbleness and fine professional technique, an area where the FCO obviously declined under Labour. Plus some money.

What just doesn't help is facile sneering from the likes of the BBC's 'foreign editor' Jon Williams:

WilliamsJon Jon Williams

Any suggestion of MI6 relationship with #Libya into 2011 v damaging to FCO & No10. Til (sic) now claimed UK-Gaddafi ties part of Blair/Brown past

The fact that MI6 had a relationship with #Libya under Brown/Blair and continued under Cameron showed the policy was working, you silly fellow.