Blogoir

Here he is, in fine form: 

Think.

It as far from here to Sergeant Pepper as it is from him to 1925.

Lawks. Getting old.

And so it is that I recently have meandered back again to a couple of the records of my, hem, student years.

Quadrophenia, by The Who.

And (gulp) Tales of Topographic Oceans, by Yes.

These were both double albums intended to be in effect one long piece. Few bands have tried attempt anything on this scale. Even fewer have succeeded in achieving musical distinction and overall coherence. The Wall by Pink Floyd is perhaps the best known effort.

Listening again to Quadrophenia I am amazed above all by the drumming. Keith Moon's non-stop assault on the drum kit defined the sound of the whole group in a way no other drummer has ever achieved. Try this: 

Keith Moon was not a distinguished scholar ("'Retarded artistically. Idiotic in other respects"). But his frantic drumming and scarcely less frantic attempts to blow up hotel toilets were more than distinguished.

As for Quadrophenia, the general theme is (of course) teenage angst but cleverly expressed via a young man with a personality split in four ways, each member of the Who having his own memorable musical motif picked up variously throughout the album. Not all of it works or is especially memorable, but the best songs are terrific; the sustained lyricism and sheer musical technique shine through.

The concluding punning Love Reign O'er Me is a wonderful piece of music:

Only love
Can make it rain
The way the beach is kissed by the sea.
Only love can make it rain
Like the sweat of lovers laying in the fields.

Love, Reign o'er me.
Love, Reign o'er me, rain on me.

Only love
Can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky.
Only love can bring the rain
That falls like tears from on high...

On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool cool rain.
The nights are hot and black as ink
I can't sleep and I lay and I think
Oh God, I need a drink of cool cool rain.

Topographic Oceans is something else again. Serious top-end 'progressive' rock musicianship (ie likely to be bought by students with too much time to pore endlessly over the imagery and obscure words), but serving up many wonderful melodies, coming and going and twisting and turning for over an hour.

Here the 'sound' is defined primarily by Steve Howe's guitar, Rick Wakeman's keyboard solos and Jon Anderson's beyond impenetrable but yet somehow touching mystic-style lyrics:

Skyline teacher
Warland seeker
Send out poison
Cast iron leader

And through the rhythm of moving slowly
Sent through the rhythm work out the story
Move over glory to sons of old fighters past

Young Christians see it from the beginning
Old people feel it, that's what they're saying
Move over glory to sons of old fighters past.

This shows how in later years they were still playing sections from it:

Remember the fuss about the oppressive and unworkable FCO rules on what former diplomats might or might not say in public?

We now have new rules!

And they are actually sensible. They put the emphasis on intelligent people using their Judgement:

As I said before:

As I peruse the statistics for the readership of this Blog, I see that most people who swing by do so for less than 30 seconds, but a non-trivial number of people stay for an hour or more.

It is boring scrolling back through archived blog material on any site. It all dates so incredibly fast.

But in case anyone wants More in an easy-to-access way, I have set up a Greatest Hits category on the Index column so that certain pieces which prompted special interest can be read quickly.

So if (as I know you do) you want Russia/Georgia, Polly, Gagged Dips, the N-Word, Eggs, Craig Murray, Zhirinovsky, Kraftwerk, Beef, Nongqawuse, Bambiland, Liberal Fascism, EU Budget and my glorious role in crushing press freedom in the UK - here they all are, and more, in a handy convenience pack.

Just when I thought that there was nothing new to say on the subject of Leaked Ambassadors, along come two of them.

First, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles is said to have described the Western mission in Afghanistan as 'doomed'.

The source? A French diplomatic telegram leaked in Paris, said to be recording the French Ambassador's conversation with Sherard in Kabul.

So, did Sherard say that or not? The fact that the French have reported this conversation and may have 'sexed it up' for their own purposes gives the FCO plausible deniability, as per the Times report:

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that the cable did not accurately reflect the views of the Ambassador. It is understood that the meeting between Sir Sherard and the French envoy did take place, but that the French account of is regarded in Whitehall as a gross distortion.

Although if so, this is a bit odd:

“The trouble with the British Ambassador is that he is always at the high end of gloom and doom when in fact it’s not that bad,” a diplomatic source said.

Whatever. Afghanistan has always been and will continue to be Very Tricky.

But that leak is eclipsed by this new one: HMA Washington's ipsissima verba on the subject of B Obama, written as a top-level scene-setting briefing for Obama's visit to the UK in July, and intended not to be leaked:

This letter contains sensitive judgements. Please limit copying, and protect the contents carefully

Sir Nigel Sheinwald gave No 10 (and now the rest of us) an elegant Mandarinish analysis of Obama's life and views. Read the whole thing, as examples of this particular genre of senior civil service work are rarely seen when the issues are still current.

A word on the point of such pre-visit scene-setters.

They serve two main functions:

• to 'sum up' the visitor, his views and his prospects, so that when he walks into the room the PM has a good sense of what to expect
• to highlight areas where the subject of the text may want to do things differently and (perhaps) cause us to rethink some of our core positions

But there is also a tendency to play to the likely prejudices of the recipients. Thus here Sir Nigel does not bring up Obama's friendly relationship with unrepentant ultra-leftist ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers.

Partly no doubt because this fact is inconvenient to the mainstream media 'narrative' of Obama which we all know and love. And maybe too because there is not much to be gained in alerting a Labour Government to the dangers of associating with weirdo Marxist radicals from the 1960s/1970s?

The version published in the Telegraph looks to have been 'topped and tailed'. It ends on a rather abrupt note, as if overall key Conclusion passages summing it all up had not been divulged?

The Sheinwald letter as we now see it therefore summarises Obama the Campaigner on many key issues for No 10.

But what it does not give is any view on the Number One Question, namely 'cool' Obama's likely reactions and ability to cope in a Massive Crisis: what if there is another major terrorist attack on the USA, or if evidence emerges that Iran is seriously threatening a nuclear attack on Israel?

Not shared to the journalist with the rest of the text? A separate letter? Or just too politically sensitive to write down?

Thus, Questions.

Why was this letter leaked? And by whom?

Despite the stern caveat on the original it will have been copied pretty widely within senior Embassy circles in Washington and around No 10 and key Ministers/officials in Whitehall. So plenty of suspects' computers to investigate, in case the topping and tailing was done on-screen rather than with scissors.

Possibilities include:

• some zany effort by someone somewhere in the system to help or hinder Obama/McCain
• someone disgruntled with some aspect of UK policy and/or Sheinwald himself, and wanting to stir up trouble
• someone sharing the text with the Telegraph as a private favour, without laying down tight enough handling rules
• or maybe there were tight rules but temptation proved too much for the Telegraph

I think the time has come to commission a new tie for the elite League of Leaked Ambassadors.

Something like this motif in lush silk should work.

Welcome Britblog Roundup 189 Visitors

Here is a summary of the European Parliament's latest pronouncement on the media (including bloggers). You'll recall the original pernicious idea to 'validate' bloggers.

The full text of the ghastly resolution - 4352 words long - is here.

It is an exemplary Liberal Fascist document. Everyone should read it to see the full horror of the blandly oppressive collectivistic thought-processes dominating EP discourse, which is not legally binding but steadily contaminates Europe's governance instincts and outcomes.

Let the fisking focus on the EP's own press release:

MEPs defend media pluralism and call for discussion of blogs

As you'll see, apart from the fact that this is not what they in fact do, what is 'media pluralism'? This sounds very different from 'media freedom' or indeed just good old plain freedom.

Media pluralism must be safeguarded and all citizens should have access to free media, MEPs underline in a resolution adopted on Thursday.

What?! Why should all citizens have access to free media? What does that mean? Nothing man-made is free - there has to be a cost and an opportunity cost somewhere, so if 'citizens' are not paying for 'free media' someone else - not a citizen? - must be doing so.

And it gets worse. Much worse:

To prevent owners, shareholders or governments from interfering with editorial content, MEPs advocate creation of editorial charters.

Why should not owners and shareholders 'interfere' with editorial content? They own the goddam content! If I want to set up a newspaper and hire an editor to emit exactly the views I like and no others, that's my business and no-one else's. If the public like the product, they'll buy it. If not, they won't, and I'll lose my money. Validation by the free market. Sorted.

To shed light over the aims and background of the broadcasters and publishers, the resolution also encourages the disclosure of ownership of all media outlets.  

Why should light be shed on such matters any more than happens anyway under business practice?

MEPs also voice concern over the media's ability to carry out the role of a watchdog of democracy, when private media enterprises are motivated by financial profit, and warn that this could lead to loss of diversity.

Bang!

My brain has just exploded. Sorry. Let me scrape it back together to get this straight.

MEPs with their miserable electoral mandates are lecturing us on democracy? They dare to insinuate that the motivation of financial profit which pays their fat salaries and dodgy expenses somehow threatens 'diversity?

The nasty profit motive of course skews media quality. Hence deep in the resolution itself is this call for

... high-quality public broadcasting services which can offer a real alternative to the programmes of commercial channels and can, without necessarily having to compete for ratings or advertising revenue, occupy a more high-profile place on the European scene as pillars of the preservation of media pluralism, democratic dialogue and access to quality content for all citizens

Just like the BBC?

Having ensured the independence of journalists, the MEPs move on to bloggers.

Weblogs represent an important new contribution to freedom of expression and are often used by both media professionals and private persons.

A bit patronising, as if we bloggers would have a lowlier existence without this munificent EP blessing?

Therefore MEPs encourage an open discussion on all issues relating to the status of weblogs.

Sorry, I can't understand the 'therefore'. Who are these people to 'encourage an open discussion'? Have they never had a look round the Internet/blogosphere to see that it offers unending discussion there about blogs and their role/status? I have just typed in blogging legal status into Google, giving 260,000 links.

On this point the resolution is slightly different from the proposal from the Committee on Culture and Education, that suggested a 'clarification' of the status of weblogs and sites based on user-generated content, assimilating them for legal purposes with any other form of public expression.

What a relief.

Here, MEPs, is my status.

I say and write what I like, subject to the usual laws of slander/libel.

And the fact that I do so is none of your business.

In my opinion, the fact that you have wasted my taxpayer money to debate and then pass this bloated, sinister resolution by a comfortable majority shows that you both treat voters with contempt and represent a direct threat to my freedom and 'status' alike.

Update: Welcome Bruges Group readers, sent here by Helen. NB her absolutely central point:

Media pluralism, on the other hand, suggests a structure that is actually defined by the powers that be. Rather like a charter of rights that is graciously awarded to people by the state.

Doesn't the EP's usurpation of this new paradigm of 'media pluralism' remind me of ... something?

Ah yes. Got it:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."

A long report by the 'European Council on Foreign Relations' describes how the EU is losing ground at the UN in terms of mobilising support from other countries for votes on human rights issues.

A summary is here. See also the Guardian account.

The general problem? Thus:

"The EU is suffering a slow-motion crisis at the UN," says the report, noting that the west is now being regularly outwitted in global diplomatic poker by the Chinese and Russians. "The problem is fading power to set the rules. The UN is increasingly being shaped by China, Russia and their allies ... The west is in disarray. The EU's rifts with the US on many human rights issues at the UN in the Bush era have weakened both."

... The assembly kicked off this week in New York with the west bracing itself for another debacle. Serbia is to use the session to demand a vote on the "illegality" of the secession last February of Kosovo, whose breakaway was strongly backed by the US and most of the EU, and to refer the dispute to the UN's international court of justice.

Despite strenuous lobbying by the Europeans to prevent the vote, they have conceded defeat. Only 46 of the 192 UN states have recognised Kosovo's independence. And western attempts to rally support for Georgia in the Caucasus crisis will be rebuffed by the Russians.

... The poor European record on winning the world's hearts and minds contrasts with Brussels' habit of talking up the merits of its "soft power" attractiveness, and indicates that the EU's huge financial investment in being the world's biggest aid donor and the UN's biggest funder is not translating into political gains.

Well.

All this is not surprising.

The point is that ineffectiveness in EU 'foreign policy' is not a problem. It's a feature!

Once a decision is taken to try to coordinate views on difficult foreign policy issues between 27 countries (many lacking any serious analytical/operational capacity) and then try to swing resources into play to pursue the decisons finally taken, a crashing dumbing-down and sluggishness are inevitable.

As the report points out, instead of getting stuck in lobbying in UN corridors, EU diplomats in New York spend huge amounts of time 'coordinating' ... with each other.

Of course the EU tries to compensate for this by proclaiming that it uses nice, palatable 'soft power' rather than all that nasty 'hard' power deployed by the Americans, Russians and Chinese.

The EU prides itself on being a cheery, unthreatening Fotherington-Thomas, its blonde curls shining as it dances gaily on the world stage and urges everyone else to look at climate change: "hullo clouds, hullo sky!"

To the surprise of no-one but EU ideologues, a punch on the nose attracts global attention in a way that the busy waving of a powder-puff does not.

These are deep waters, swirling around the viability of the EU's external efforts as now designed.

The ECFR report contains this astonishing inept sentence:

The EU has to develop a political narrative around creating momentum for new human rights initiatives while protecting established principles against sovereignty hawks.

That n-word again. Followed by a long list of windy bureaucratic let's-keep-digging suggestions whose beneficial effect will be exactly nil (more human rights envoys, a new independent fund for campaigns run by NGOs!)

Wrong.

What the EU should do is stop sitting down at the UN or anywhere else to pronounce on human rights with countries who fail to meet basic human rights standards.

This means above all walking out from and de-legitimizing (and ideally collapsing) the so-called Human Rights Council at the UN, a body whose substantive role is to validate regimes which abuse human rights.

It also should start to use the aspect of hardish power where it has real weight, namely money. Countries which vote against key human rights positions at the UN get no more EU assistance. Create a different incentive structure. At the moment too many countries think the EU is a group of weak suckers.

To do this, take foreign policy and assistance policy out of the EU structure altogether, ie deliberately retreat from the Lisbon Treaty. Give back to member states their assistance money to spend in support of hard-headed objectives.

Stop all those debilitating coordination meetings. Start working hard and well to get what we want.

Redefine European power away from a slow, portly, doomed Hindenburg to become a series of small mobile attack helicopters.

Those member states which are generally strong at foreign policy can set up light-touch ad hoc coordination where it makes sense. Those member states which add something on specific issues can buy in if they like.

Above all, stop thinking in outdated categories.

Start looking at whether the 'concert of democracies' idea (which even Timothy Garton Ash thinks worth considering) is a better way to exert muscle.

Bottom Line:

There are two basic ways to advance the cause of intelligent pluralism.

One is persuasion - and the UN system is designed to make that work incredibly badly. So European states need to be extra smart and nimble.

The other is by creating sharper incentives for countries to move in an intelligent pluralist direction. And the EU as such is designed to make much of the effort we devote to achieving that neither smart nor nimble.

The point about EU-style intelligent pluralism is that it needs to be itself intelligent.

What we have now - and what the ECFR recommends - are not.

What is the precise mechanism which makes people start to talk in arch post-modern jargon?

Like this:  Labour needs to provide a convincing new narrative if left-of-centre politics are to remain the driving force in Britain.

Or this:  Mr Brown and Mr Darling must find new ways of telling a story ... a change of narrative will not be easy for them.

And this:  An effective Labour narrative on the environment can help us win back many of the middle-class voters...

Polly:  A new leader urgently needs to find a way to tell Labour's narrative anew.

Countless tragic Labour narratives around at the moment, but a cursory Google search reveals that the Conservatives have plenty too.

I railed against this horrible n-word when it started being used by the European Directorate of the FCO.

It conveys a sense of unserious sly, slippery subjectivity.

Of made-up fiction, not hard facts. Of fleeting disloyalty to Ideas as to Purpose.

"Wo, that narrative is not working, so let's get another one."

Memo to next Government:

Send back crossly any submission or draft speech with this odious word used in that creepy sense.

Have policies, not stories. Take responsibility for them.

I previously linked to Christopher Hitchens and Michael Totten analysing why the Kosovo case is quite different from the cases of either S Ossetia or Abkhazia, rendering spurious/dishonest Russia's recognition of the latter two as new states.

Here for good measure is former US Ambassador to Zagreb and Belgrade, my friend Bill Montgomery, who points up some similarities and concludes:

While Western leaders will be quick to point out what they view are profound differences between these cases (and also point out the brutal crushing by Russia of the attempted independence of Chechnya located in the middle of Russia as an example of a cynical Russian double standard), the reality is that the Kosovo case has opened the door for what has now followed. We are, at least to some extent, "hoisted on our petard," as the English would say.

[US/UK linguistic rivalry note: in fact we English say 'hoist'.]

Here is my view on this Kosovo Precedent issue.

There are in fact different sorts of precedent at play as between these three situations. They are not discrete or even conceptually coherent - in diplomatic and political life they overlap and get entangled in all sorts of ways.

1   Precedents of Fact:

These are factual similarities which give rise (or are seen as not giving rise) to good reasons for the states round the planet to deal with Case B as Case A has been handled.

Bill's article lists some pertinent similarities here, such as UNSC Resolutions, unilateral declarations of independence, use of (or threat of use of) force by the former capital against the territories concerned, historic struggles for ethnic identity.

As Michael Totten points out, the legitimacy of the now-existing facts may differ - a territory which chases out one ethnic group to try to proclaim itself independent is not coming to the issue with clean hands. (Note: indeed, as some people argue was the case for the state of Israel.)

Basically, in most of these circumstances facts can be ambiguous or contested or denied as being relevant. Therefore recognising new states is an issue fraught with politics and operational complexity, even though in international law theory one basic test of qualification for statehood sounds rather 'objective':

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

2   Precedents of Law:

This is the interpretation of facts as entered into international law norms through decisions or practice. If it can be shown that where facts A, B, C and D apply a state has been recognised, that makes it harder for those opposing recognition where such facts also apply. The whole 'legal' business in this area is of course highly political - hence general lack of recognition of Taiwan. See also Kurds, passim.

3   Precedents of Process:

These are earlier examples of how tricky recognition issues in fact have been handled previously. They are called in aid (or denied as being relevant) as necessary. One easy example is where a state divides in two via an uncontested divorce: see eg the emergence of Czech Republic and Slovakia from the former Czechoslovakia, or more recently the independence of Montenegro.

For a very different scenario, the Canadian Supreme Court has given some solid hurdles for Quebec to pass if it is to secede from Canada - an example not unfairly cited in Belgrade against the way Kosovo has been dealt with. And, of course, see Taiwan.

4   Precedents of Outcome:

How have different independence bids in fact fared? Failure to secure independence (and thereby general international recognition leading to UN membership) even in reasonably propitious circumstances may lead to a legal and actual mess, which both deters others from trying and deters states from recognising those who do try.

OK, OK.

Therefore what about Kosovo and S Ossetia/Abkhazia?

Where key Western powers went irrevocably wrong on Kosovo was (I think) on the Precedent of Process, although the Precedent of Law was also dodgy.

Following the end of the Cold War there had been a general and basically successful collective understanding in Europe (and therefore round the world) that new countries would emerge in Europe if 'all concerned were happy (or happy enough)'. This also linked in to the principles of the historic 1975 Helsinki Final Act, where respect for territorial integrity is writ large.

The core (accurate) conclusion of Washington and most EU capitals was that in the Kosovo case the prospects for Kosovo staying peacefully within Serbia were zero. This in turn led them to conclude (unwisely) that an enforced divorce now - and, vitally, solely on the terms demanded by Kosovo - was the only credible option.

They also took the view (wrongly) that Russia, Serbia and others known to be unhappy would come round to agreeing, or could safely be ignored huffing and puffing away inconsequentially in the corner.

To pursue this approach Kosovo had to be dealt with outside a Helsinki-style consensus framework, in a weird sort of 'multilaterally-unilateral' way. The first time this had happened since 1975.

We see now that this conclusion represented a serious misjudgement of Putin's Russia, and also of the capacity of Belgrade to drum up diplomatic support round the planet playing on old Non-Aligned Movement friendships. Failure to secure consensus for Kosovo's independence even within the EU merely piles on the embarrassment.

Having messed up on the Precedent of Process, the 'pro-Kosovo' Western powers have allowed Russia to pounce.

In Georgia's case Russia can make a sort of case that similarities between Kosovo and S Ossetia/Abkhazia tick the Precedents of Facts box, and that it is merely following Western examples on Precedents of Law and Process.

The very unconvincingness of the global community's recognition (not) of Kosovo makes the Russian move easier. Had the world community quickly moved to recognise Kosovo the Russians would have had to think hard about the fatuous independence claims of S Ossetia and Georgia, as they would have had no chance of achieving a similar result.

As it is, Russia more or less alone recognises these puny territories. And says "oh shucks, it will take time to secure general international recognition of Kosovo - just as in these two cases. But we are realistic - and patient..."

NB Moscow in fact scarcely cares whether anyone else does recognise as well! Maybe better if they don't.

The point of Moscow's policy is not to tick international law boxes, or to care about S Ossetia or Abkhazia or Kosovo or Serbia.

It is to put a political-psychological Russian force-field round these scraps of territory, separating them decisively from Georgia and keeping open the option of absorbing them into the Russian Federation if that is an easier way to deal with them down the road

That sets a lively new Russian Precedent:

"You do what we don't like, we do what you don't like. In our back yard (which, by the way, we define in rather expansive terms) we'll rearrange the post-Soviet demarcation lines as and when we choose to do so. Don't expect you to like it. But tell us - what exactly do you plan to do about it?"

So far?

Not much.

This posting on Russia/Kosovo/Georgia prompted a pointed comment from reader Will:

Fascinating philosophy question: if X responds badly to your action and cites your action as a reason for that bad behaviour, how far are you responsible for what X does?

Seems to me that the answer depends on what you think of X - what you think X actually is.

Three scenarios:

Mineral:   you can take the long road round the base of the mountain, or attempt a short-cut across a steep slope covered in loose stones. You know that the stones may slip and cause damage to houses in the valley. You go for the short-cut. The stones slide and cause such damage.

You suspect that your footsteps prompted the mini-landslide. If they did, the stones simply made a Newtonian response to some or other physical force you exerted. They had no choice but to slide. You had no real options to calibrate the stones' response to your steps, other than not to attempt the slope at all.

Vegetable:   you decide not to weed the whole of the garden. Nasty weeds/brambles grow strongly in the most neglected areas, less strongly in the places where you keep nature at bay.

Here the response of the weeds/brambles is 'inanimate, but dynamic. Your actions do calibrate to a generally predictable extent what happens in which part of the garden. Your 'responsibility' is more subtle.

Animal:    you live in a nature reserve where some fierce bears roam. How far to avoid the bears? When you can not avoid them, act kindly towards them or beat them back?

You start to feed one bear in a kindly but wary fashion. One day he eats one of your pets. You whack him with a stick. He responds angrily by eating a neighbour's infant. Did you cause that tragedy to happen, not just by hitting the bear but by deluding yourself that a friendly relationship with the creature was possible and altering its consciousness..? 

* * * * *

All this is a convoluted way of pointing to the contradictions in much of the analysis about Russia and whether/why Western actions are 'provocative' to Moscow.

Do we treat Russia's 'fear of encirclement', 'insecurities' and 'anxieties' as, so to speak, inanimate facts of life over which we (and they) have no control other than to top-toe widely round them?

Or are they simple genetically coded facts of life which do respond in a predictable but insensate way to what we do?

Or are they animate/sensate facts of life, where we need keener judgement to get the response we want?  

Or are they human, even reasonable fears?

What if they are human but basically unreasonable paranoid fears?

The gushing Western punditry on Russia contains confusing contradictory elements of all these ideas.

Some people appear to suggest that Russia for reasons of obvious history/geography/Tsars/Communism/vodka has no choice but to behave the way it does. Safest is to adopt a Finlandish stance to avoid risking trouble.

Others argue that Russia of course does have choices, hence all the more reason to behave in a subtle respectful way: keep that bear calm and happy, even if he eats some of your rabbits now and again.

And then there are those who say that Russia of course makes its own decisions, but we have to strive to set a robust context in which they know that bad decisions have bad consequences for them. Eventually they will come to see that they have no more reason to fear 'encirclement' by democratic NATO states than eg Switzerland does.

To answer Will's question.  

I expected Russia to play tough in the CIS if key Western countries went ahead and recognised Kosovo as independent without having secured first a reasonable global consensus and in the face of explicit Russian objections.

NB this was separate from my view on whether and when Kosovo 'should' be independent, or whether Serbia 'deserved' to keep Kosovo.

The vital point was and is that the Kosovo independence issue is partly about Kosovo, but also about a bigger vision of global order. Acts of state recognition are at the very heart of diplomacy - it is a high risk strategy to mishandle them when a UN Security Council member is closely engaged and has Views.

I expected a tough Russian response not so much because Russia cares tuppence about Serbia or Kosovo - rather because Russia does care a lot about some other issues, whose handling turns on a sort of informal shifting balance of power as between differing accepted principles. This balance is not easily defined or articulated at any one moment, but top politicians and diplomats are paid to sense it and manage it. 

To conclude. It may look worthwhile to take a calculated risk. You know that your move can lead to a bad outcome, because you know that someone prone to lashing out may well lash out in response.

You move, and the lashing-out occurs.

You are not in any moral causation sense 'responsible' for that lashing-out when it occurs. Yet you can not complain much when people say you miscalculated somewhere. And you end up having to deal with the damage.

Some actions may be well motivated. Perhaps even Right.

But not, all things considered, Wise. 

Welcome Instapundit readers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on the feisty Report by the HoC Public Affairs Select Committee report which came down heavily on FCO rules purporting to limit what diplomats might say after they leave the Service.

Craig Murray calls these regulations 'near-fascistic':

The idea, of course, is that only the ministers' version of truth will enter history. You can be confident that Jack Straw's memoirs will not tell you that he instructed Richard Dearlove that we would use intelligence from torture, or that we colluded with torture and extraordinary rendition in Uzbekistan and elsewhere. You needed my memoirs for that. If Jack Straw had his way, I would not have been able to publish my book telling you the truth; in fact the new regulations were born directly out of Straw's fury at Murder in Samarkand.

We now have a government so despised that it strives to protect itself further and further from scrutiny...

Let's be a tad more dispassionate.

Back to first principles.

The public want - and expect - to know in some detail what Government is up to with their money. 

The public also want Government to Just Get On With It, weighing complex interests and principles and taking hard decisions intelligently. 

As we are a free country, people should be able to comment on and/or write searching analyses of policy issues once they are out of public service, subject to some sort of reasonable cooling off period.  

That said, the public simultaneously like tittle-tattle and 'revelations', but also do not like seeing former officials trading in the public’s information to make a personal profit. 

These fickle public expectations are not invariably compatible with each other, or with real life. 

Foreign policy in particular requires a different quality of common sense confidentiality.

Domestic issues are in a way all 'ours' - disagreements and negotiations are within the British political family, all of whom claim that they want the best for the country.

Foreign affairs are different. Day in, day out HMG are involved in tough negotiations round the planet with people who may be our enemies, or who rightly want to do the best for their countries by exploiting British weaknesses/mistakes. It is madness to show our detailed analysis and negotiating hand to our rivals for ‘UK freedom of information’ reasons, when they of course will not reciprocate. 

At the very hard end of the spectrum are highly sensitive intelligence reports, sometimes gleaned from foreigners risking their lives to share information and insights with us (which NB does not mean that those reports are accurate/reliable).

The public know that the world can be a dirty place. They broadly trust the government to defend British interests by using such material wisely. This means keeping secrets secret, the public respecting limits on the public's 'right to know'. Lost lap-tops containing secret official material convey a sense of fathomless incompetence.

In return for ceding extra government discretion in this murky area, the public react badly to politicians whipping up public sentiment on the basis of inconclusive intelligence analysis, as happened in the run-up to the Iraq intervention. 

You know when you are seeing something Really Secret when its heading is a Greek letter or acronym you haven't seen before: TOP SECRET UK EYES A EPSILON/LOCKTIGHT or somesuch.

During my career I have seen all sorts of highly confidential analyses of controversial issues and countless Top Secret reports. I have written such papers myself.

Now I have left the FCO. Should I be free to use my privileged access to this fruity material to make money or stir up public anger, even if I happen to think the moral case is just?

In my view, no. Certainly not immediately I leave the Service, and for some purposes never.

The 'system' (and here I part company with Craig Murray) does offer all sorts of democratic best practice ways for officials to register substantive concerns, compatible with maintaining the secret methods needed to track foreign spies working against us, or managing threats posed by ruthless terrorist killers themselves armed with high-tech kit.

Have we got everything Perfect? No.

Room for improvement/tweaking? Probably.

Risky business for politicians and the public alike, one way or the other? Yes.

All that noted, if we agree that I am not to be 'allowed' to use my knowledge of highly sensitive processes/facts as I like immediately on leaving the FCO, how to give effect to that?

And if there are Rules or Principles, how to apply them? What threat should hang over me to deter me, a former British diplomat pecking away at my lonely keyboard, from overstepping the rules, in letter or spirit?

Legal proceedings against potential publishers?  Prison?

Threats to my pension? Ah now you're talking!

Finally, who in the end decides if a line has been overstepped, and what should happen next?

The Public Affairs Committee made a strong point in noting that in Freedom of Information Act disputes a separate outside mechanism has been set up to stop a Ministry being judge and jury where its own information is concerned. Something like that could be used to settle in a gentlemanly way rows over contested memoirs of the Jeremy Greenstock sort?

Ministers! The smart way to lean is towards generosity, creativity and flexibility. Do not appear vindictive/obsessive/defensive.

Few if any 'revelations' by former civil servants do drastic irreparable damage. We are in fact quite loyal for most purposes, most of the time.

Much worse political damage can be done by appearing to cover up and duck the hard questions than by taking some hits, heavy and unfair as they may be at the time.

And, above all Ministers, behave in an honourable, trustworthy and fair-minded way towards your officials and the public alike.

This gives you your best chance of winning their respect and so surviving the inevitable squalls of democratic public life in good shape, maybe even with a reputation enhanced.

Light touch, old boy, light touch – always the safest policy.

Craig cheerfully writes:

But at some stage you have to face the real question.  Nobody now doubts the CIA's use of torture, by proxy as in Uzbekistan or even direct.  And as you know very well, the UK government gets the CIA reports which are a result of torture.  There is an argument - advanced by many around Bush - that torture is justifiable in the War on Terror.  I did not invent what I was complaining about in Uzbekistan, and there are issues here other than the beauty of my secretary ... 

By the time you finish making fun of the more amusing bits of the book, I hope you'll have faced some of the deeper questions. 

I have replied that indeed I will do that. Debate is joined.

I proceed for now by taking the book as Craig wrote it. So, having dealt with the cover I move to the Preface.

Craig begins the book by saying that to the best of his knowledge and memory it is a true story, albeit told largely from memory:

But most importantly it is the truth as I perceived it ... Different people can thus experience the same events and have a different take on what happened. I am not saying that mine is uniquely correct. This is what seemed (sic) to me to be happening, and how it felt to be me, experiencing it.

As a fellow ex-FCO professional I do not like that passage. It comes across as somehow equivocal, maybe even a bit shifty.

Is there a sense here that Craig knows that his own actions and attitudes are open to severe criticism, and that the best way to head that off is to steer the book away from Facts and Judgements towards a much more slippery territory of Experience and Feelings?

Let me digress.

Promotion in the FCO as in much of the real world turns these days on 'competences' - those qualities the organisation in question looks for in its people at each level and especially the higher levels.

In the FCO as elsewhere Competences change according to fashion and latest management theory. Thus in my own very final appraisal of 2007/08 I was assessed on:

• Leadership
• Getting the best from staff
• Delivering results
• Strategic thinking
• Personal impact
• Learning and development 

There used (as recently as 2002) to be a longer and better list covering such issues as Adaptability and Creativity, Communication (Written and Oral), Relating to Others and above all Analysis and Judgement.

And the greatest of these is Analysis and Judgement. (Memo to next government: bring that back on Day One.)

Why?

Because in foreign policy things are complicated. Long-term v short-term. Big v Small. Certainty v uncertainty. Principle v Politics v Practical v Possible.

Thus in a democracy what Ministers need is a team of skilled people able to help them steer through these operational and philosophical complexities for a few years.

People who simplify complexity but in a subtle, nuanced way. Who are good at bringing people of rival opinions together and explaining convincingly what might best be done. People who can juggle numerous balls but keep their eye on the Big Picture. People of unerring accuracy.

And 'Judgement' is the word for all that. Without Judgement a civil servant (like a Minister) is fairly useless.

So what? The point - a serious one - is this.

Judgement is not about looking at the world from the point of view of one's feelings and 'experiences'. It is the exact opposite of that.

It is about keeping one's feelings/experiences in the picture but not letting them detract unduly from a hard-headed or even ruthless objective focus on the wider issues.

See eg this well-known example of Structural Judgement Failure in this sense.

So in presenting his whole book as essentially 'the truth as he perceives it' Craig turns his back on the World of Judgement and wanders off somewhere else. As we shall see, that question of Judgement (and Lack Of) is at the heart of the whole story.

Moving on.

Craig says that he never expected to have to confront extreme moral dilemmas of the sort he had debated at school.

But my brilliant career, resulting in my appointment as Ambassador at the age of 43, ended with me writing in an official telegram to Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary: 'I will not attempt to hide ... my shame that I work in an organisation where colleagues would resort to [casuistry] to justify torture.'

Reading that for the first time I thought that Craig was being ironic in describing his career as 'brilliant'. But on second thoughts I think he meant it!

What is a brilliant FCO career?

Not Craig's. Nor indeed mine.

A brilliant FCO career is one involving not merely serious jobs but also jobs at the heart of the policy machine as a whole. Thus it is almost impossible to get to the Very Top without one or more Private Secretary positions in the FCO or No 10. It is those jobs which give you both a vast range of operational insight plus knowledge of how Ministers and Parliament work - the very heart of our democracy.

Craig (like me) had none of those jobs. Nor did he work in eg the FCO Planners, another 'core' job. Nor did he work in a single Big Embassy.

It took him thirteen years to move from Second Secretary to Deputy Head of Department. It took me rather less, eleven years, and I did it younger. The brilliant ones would have done it notably faster

Tempting as it is to disagree on sight with everything written by Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, I did think about this one arguing the case against the International Criminal Court indicting the President of Sudan.

Spared as I am from knowing the slightest thing about Sudan, what might I offer by way of First Principles?

JS distinguishes this case from the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic:

The Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, was under military attack from Nato. Negotiations had been cut off. Ultimately, they were renewed but only with the good offices of the Russians who had shown no enthusiasm for the Hague tribunal's indictment.

All sort of true enough. But not the best argument for politically and morally supporting that indictment.

The point is that up Milosevic's indictment we all had been tempted to keep a number of policy eggs in his basket ("better the devil you know", "we have no choice but to deal with the people in power", "realpolitik has to prevail" etc etc).

This meant not throwing our full weight behind the democratic opposition, who consequently were even more demoralised: "even if we do everything we can in these appalling conditions to make Serbia a decent society, the West may not support us wholeheartedly".

Hence lots of unhappy neurotic tweebling at high levels of the FCO and elsewhere as the prospect of the indictment loomed: "now we'll face a cornered animal, even more dangerous and unpredictable... a bad situation could get a lot worse..."

The indictment of course as I expected had several excellent effects:

• Milosevic became a skunk - almost no-one serious would engage with him any more
• therefore all eggs thereafter placed in the opposition basket
• this allowed us quietly to drop hints to key regime supporters that the game was ending - better to jump ship than sink with him. Wedge-driving and all that. Worked a treat.
• and we could turn round his slogan that "in the end the world would come to Serbia via me".
• Instead we could at last say convincingly "Not true! Milosevic is Serbia's obstacle to rejoining the civilised world - throw him out!"

All this worked remarkably well. Out he was thrown.

Does any of this apply to Sudan? Probably some of it. Especially the wedge-driving bits - if the President is indicted we can start picking away much more effectively at those around him.

Not an overnight win, but a big change in the psychological climate, empowering at least a bit more those normal people caught in the Sudanese struggle.

As for Jonathan Steele:

Holding people to account for their actions is a desirable goal, but it has to be weighed against the difficulties it creates if the indictees still hold power. Bashir is not Pinochet, who was long out of office as well as out of favour in Chile when he was indicted (by a foreign judge, not by an international court).

The list of practical problems that would flow from an indictment of Sudan's president is long. It far outweighs the benefits. The ICC's prosecutor should think again.

Does this not miss the most basic point? That if the ICC thinks he ought to face charges for vile atrocities, they indeed must indict him regardless of the political inconvenience and practical problems?

Otherwise it is not an implacable independent Court, but a whim of whatever political fashion happens to be prevalent?

Plus, of course, if they sense ICC weakness local lunatics everywhere only have to threaten to create an even longer list of "practical problems" for the Guardian to bewail the 'likely' impact of any indictment.

Which rather defeats the point of setting the ICC up in the first place?

As the UN warns of mass starvation in Zimbabwe the time has come to stop talking about the 'Zimbabwe elections' as if they were/are elections.

What we are seeing are the deranged throes of a violent gang around and including Mugabe aimed at staying in power at any cost to their own country. No vote held under these circumstances can have legitimacy or credibility. Mugabe presumably is hoping to brutalise the Opposition into a boycott, so as to save himself the trouble of cheating and piously claiming victory.

Voting is a subtle process intended to give citizens a substantive choice in who runs their country. Just as voting was a meaningless farce in communist countries where only one party could take part, it also is meaningless in a country where the voters are being openly attacked and intimidated and the government is howling that its opponents are a deadly enemy to whom they will not cede power.

Mugabe in fact has a weird point when he rants that Western and especially British interest in Zimbabwe is racist.

Because of its sizeable and significant 'white'/European community and all the history involved, Zimbabwe attracts significant interest in our media. In a (patronising?) way we have notably higher expectations of this country. Perhaps they are being met. Compared to previous catastrophes in Rwanda and various wars elsewhere in Africa, Zimbabwe is still a model of decorum.

An intelligent Zim leader would be using the presence of this 'European' community to develop his country more speedily and creatively. Just as we could be doing far more to mobilise Zimbabweans in the UK and indeed in Zimbabwe against the collapse of their country, even if that would allow Mugabe to 'prove' that the Colonial Masters were back in business...

A few years back when Mugabe started to attack the farming community I talked privately to a British Cabinet Minister. I said that to my unexpert eye a likely course of events looked to be:

• ethnic cleansing of 'white' farmers
• speedy deterioration of the economy
• risk of widespread hunger/famine
• millions of people displaced plus countless deaths
• British taxpayers forlornly watching this fiasco, then being sent a large 'assistance' bill to try to repair some of the damage, much of which spending would do no good anyway

I urged the argument that HMG had to mobilise a vigorous intervention of one or other sort immediately to force Mugabe from power and so head all this off. Was that not the only 'moral foreign policy' way to go?

The reply: "I agree, but there would be no political support to do it..."

So much for the claim that HMG/DFID policy is all about lifting people from poverty - we have stood blinking unhappily as Mugabe has plunged Zimbabwe into ruin.

Whatever happened to our Moral Foreign Policy?

Or even Enlightened Self-Interest? 

Let's look a bit more closely at Will Hutton's arguments on the EU Treaty as published yesterday in the Observer.

He denounces 'Eurosceptic' celebrations at the Irish vote as a farrago of lies and disinformation.

OK. Let's proceed. WH v CC.

WH: The reality is that Ireland's 'no' voters have trashed an EU that is precious but weak.

CC:  No. The EU is untrashed, still as precious as ever and impressively strong - has anyone seen the Euro v Dollar rate recently?

WH:  Most 'no' voters, grabbing on to the worst fear rather than reasoned fact, have unknowingly set in train a political dynamic that, unless carefully handled, could lead not just to Ireland but Britain leaving the EU. Everybody will be the poorer.

CC:  Actually the Treaty for the first time established a procedure to let a disgruntled member state leave. That hope has been dashed by the Irish rejection of the Treaty, a cunning ploy by the Europhiles to keep everyone trapped in the EU. Curses! And if some member states did leave, would they really be poorer?

WH:  Such is the flaw of referendums as a means to practise reasoned democratic decision-making that the only way voters will come to realise that the sceptics are wrong is to be forced to live through the consequences of their vote.

CC:  Fair enough. The Irish will do so. Likely negative consequences? Nil.

WH:  For although the first reaction in Ireland, Brussels and the rest of the European Union has been to say that the will of Ireland's voters must be respected, the wider political logic is that Irish voters are in effect saying no to the European Union ...

CC:  No they're not. 'In effect' and more importantly in real life they're saying they like this EU, not the one proposed.

WH:  ... a will that can only be respected by other states freezing their ambitions.

CC:  True, sort of. But in the EU rules the Irish were made to sign up to when they joined, it explicitly states that all have to agree on how future ambitions are agreed in legal form. The Irish do not agree. So no such ambitions! That's the precious EU way. Or is the suggestion that the existing Treaty rules should be broken? In which case, why sign up to new Treaty rules which in turn will be worthless?

WH:  Ireland's voters have primed a bomb.

CC:  Or a damp squib?

WH:  Eighteen states have already ratified the treaty, some for the second time.

CC:  Huh?! Are you saying that the British Government have been lying? That this Lisbon Treaty is the same treaty as the previous one thrown out by the French and Dutch referenda? Gotcha!

WH:  The first reaction of José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, was to ask the last eight member states, Britain included, to proceed with ratification. Gordon Brown has agreed; the final reading is on Wednesday and to stop the process because of the Irish vote would be unreasonable.

CC:  Or maybe it's unreasonable to expect the UK Parliament to ratify a Dead Parrot?

WH:  So the EU on 1 January 2009 will have a treaty that 26 states have ratified - but not the Irish.

CC:  Hmm. Ratification enthusiasm might dwindle somewhat between now and then?

WH:  What can't happen is that the treaty is scrapped, rewritten to accommodate changes to meet the will of Ireland's voters and then re-ratified in 27 countries. There are the practical questions of time and expense and there is no political readiness in the other 26 capitals to go through the whole interminable process again.

CC:  Indeed so.

WH:  On top of these there is the political problem that the treaty can't be rewritten to accommodate specific Irish concerns because it already does; Ireland's 'no' campaigners told lies. The voters' great concerns had been met. There is a specific protocol that guarantees Ireland's neutrality and excuses it from membership of any joint European defence effort, if any surfaces. There is no possibility of Ireland being told to enforce abortion.

CC:  A core point here folks, one which bothers the Poles too. Is it true that Ireland can not be told to 'enforce abortion'? What if one day one a European Court proclaims that member state laws limiting abortion are against a woman's 'right to choose' as per various emerging European human rights provisons individually and collectively? The dark secret at the heart of all the EU's development is that the European Court of Justice interprets and therefore trumps all, however ingeniously state-level drafters try to exclude it.

WH:  And all states have autonomy over tax policy.

CC:  Ditto. What if the European Court strikes down member states' individual tax policies as inconsistent with the spirit and practice of EU integration? HMG lawyers sweat profusely over this possibility...

WH:  Crucially, the treaty contains a clause that states that do not agree to its provisions are required to leave the European Union.

CC:  Where? See the FCO Guidance: "The Treaty recognises a Member State’s right to withdraw from the European Union and sets out procedures providing for such an eventuality." Do you mean Treaty Article 49A: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements."? Not the same as being required to leave?

WH:  The EU will have to get tough and invoke the clause. It will have to ask Ireland to resubmit essentially the same treaty for a second referendum early in 2009, rather as Ireland held a second referendum over the Nice treaty in 2002. If Ireland votes similarly again, then it will have to accept associate status in the EU and not be a member of its governing structures. The EU will proceed without Ireland.

CC:  Actually, even if this clause does exist somewhere it can not be invoked, since the Irish have not ratified the Treaty, so the Treaty (with the clause) is not in force! Hoopla! Does anyone in their right mind think that Ireland will go for - or can be made to go for - a second Referendum? Why did we not lean on France and Netherlands to do that first time round?

WH:  Irish and British Eurosceptics, in close alliance, will react in fury. I can see it now. This will be proof-positive of the Brussels elite's malevolence and anti-democratic intent. David Cameron's Tory party will say that Ireland is being treated disgracefully. I don't see how Cameron will be able to avoid a pledge to give British voters the same chance for a referendum on the treaty as the Irish, not least to strengthen the hand of the Irish 'no' campaigners in their second referendum.

CC:  Nor do I. But why is this further UK referendum meant to be bad? How many more No votes do you need before it sinks in that these changes are unpopular all over the place?

WH:  Battle is going to be joined in earnest because it must. Pro-Europeans everywhere must engage. We need this Europe - to fight climate change, to ensure security of energy and food, to underwrite our prosperity and to fight for our common interests.

CC:  Quite right. If only we had more CAP, more ill-conceived Kyoto Protocol ideas and more EU regulation, all would be well.

WH:  The world needs it too. The EU is the citizens' friend. If it did not exist, Europe would have to invent something similar.

CC:  Yes! Something similar. But not necessarily identical. And maybe what we have now is friendly enough anyway?

WH (crescendo):  Maybe pro-Europeans can win Ireland's second referendum and then, in 2010 or 2011, our own. But referendums work best for the demagogue, the dissimulator and scaremonger, as Hitler and Mussolini, lovers of referendums, proved. Increasingly, Ireland and Britain are heading for the European exit and that could portend further break-up of the Union. Pro-Europeans look out.

CC:  Puh-leese. Not the H&M words! We once had a referendum to confirm our own EU membership in a genteel unHitlerian way. The EU is not going to break up, precisely because so many member states including Ireland do very well enough out of it.

This whole business reminds me of an old joke:

A man walks down the road with a banana in each ear.

Kid: "Hey mister, why do you have bananas in your ears?"

Man: (Removing one banana) "Sorry, I can't hear because I have bananas in my ears."

Ireland has asked the EU to take the bananas out of its ears. Not such a bad idea?

A typically splenetic piece from Simon Jenkins today rails against the Western world's failure to stand by previously championed ideals of 'humanitarian intervention'.

His argument runs that the USA has had its fingers badly burnt by Iraq/Afghanistan and will withdraw from those places in due course. Without American leadership there can be no serious humanitarian intervention round the planet:

So where does that leave our old friend, humanitarian intervention? The concept was certainly oversold. In Lebanon, Kosovo, Somalia and Haiti it was heavily media-inspired and left the underlying cause of catastrophe unresolved. It failed the Kantian test of moral deterrence, that it must be seen as universally applicable. The West simply cannot appear with guns at the ready at every scene of human tragedy. As for deterrence, that has always been a game for armchair strategists. Did Kosovo deter the Burmese generals, or Lebanon the Somalian warlords?

It may be that there is nothing we can do about the horrors of Darfur, Burma or Zimbabwe, or nothing that could make their plight any better. It may indeed be wiser to sit on our hands and leave it to our leaders to emit occasional howls of impotent contempt, like the Foreign Office’s postimperial lament that some or other part of the world is “unacceptable”.

Yet I am sure that the concept of humanitarian intervention, however limited, was sound. Willing coalitions should be able to enforce the relief of suffering where relief is feasible, as was surely the case in Burma. For the time being, the blood-soaked gutters of Baghdad and the poppy fields of Helmand have taken their toll. They have rendered the entire concept of intervention defunct. It will take decades to recover.

Really? Decades?

Try months. Would we really see President Obama doing nothing in some of these cases?

So much tendentiousness, such a small article.

What is missing here is some idea of what any reasonable post-intervention end-state might look like - how in practice and principle alike an intervention 'resolves the underlying cause of catastrophe'.

The Kosovo intervention may or may not have passed the 'Kantian test of moral deterrence' (Note: not a test much in the minds of the Western governments trying to restore hundreds of thousands of Kosovo people to their homes, as was accomplished), but it has set in motion a quite new quality of historical process in that area.

Elsewhere the picture is mixed, not least because any Western attempt to sort out any problem leads to howls of rage from different parts of the political spectrum, which means that an element of tentativeness/uncertainty creeps in, to immediately damaging effect.

Imagine an Iraq which had had the Surge right from the start, and where we had told Iran that for every attack in Iraq caused by Iranian subversion we would blow up one of their oil supply installations. Although even the confused Iraq intervention achieved one momentous Jenkinsian/Kantian deterrent outcome, namely the renouncing by Libya of weapons of mass destruction.

Intervening in a conflict is far easier if you go in hard, to ensure that one side wins an emphatic victory, thereby creating some sort of plausible stability for the foreseeable future. But that requires Will and a certain Ruthlessness.

All this is not popular these days. So instead we end up intervening to stop fighting by non-judgementally freezing a conflict and ploughing in humanitarian assistance to try to bribe people to stay peaceful.

Goes down well back home. But maybe it simply gives the warring sides a handy breathing-space of a few years. The war stops. It does not end.

Post-conflict end-states are tricky. But intervening in eg Burma to help people being brutalised by their own government after a cyclone is far easier. Just do it.

Simply tell the Burmese authorities that if they attempt to attack Allied assistance deliveries all their army and police equipment will be blown up, then get on with delivering assistance after blowing up part of the Burma airforce to show you mean it.

Restore Burmese cyclone victims to their pre-cyclone levels of misery and oppression. Then go home.

Deterrent effect? Of truly Kantian proportions.

In Zimbabwe's case, I asked a Labour Cabinet Minister a few years back - as Mugabe's lunatic policies got going - what was going to happen. I said that a surgical military intervention to topple the regime there could save thousands of lives and avoid the UK taxpayer having to fork out vast sums for ineffective new 'assistance;' as and when the agony ended.

Was it not moral and wise to weigh in quickly, and immoral/unwise to dither?

"I agree," came the reply. "But we'll never get political support for it..."

So we dithered.

Zimbabwe's options now are far worse.

Thousands of Africans die because our leaders campaign for office proclaiming that they will take a principled stand against the world's villains, but when elected they fret far more about their own political base, which in turn is wound up because the likes of Simon Jenkins get well paid stridently to denounce leaders for intervening, then stridently denounce them for not intervening.

We bang on about the cost of intervening. What is the cost of not intervening?

A wicked Global Village indeed.

On the subject of Pollarding, the case of Jonathan (Jay) Pollard is interesting.

Basically, JP in 1986 was sentenced to life imprisonment in the USA for spying for Israel. He is still in prison, despite the generally close US/Israel relationship and numerous public and private requests by Israel at the highest level to have him released. The Wikipedia entry and 'his' website give plenty of background.

The problem for Pollard is the sheer volume of material he passed to the Israelis - the 'agencies' insist that an example be made of him, warning successive Presidents very bluntly against Pollard's release.

His wife in turn campaigns tirelessly for his release, although some her arguments (eg that he was an Ideologue, not a Mercenary) are surely not exactly smart?

My interest in this?

I was a student contemporary of Jay Pollard at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, from 1977-79.

This was a period deep in the Cold War, with Fletcher known then for hosting some hawkish anti-communist academics who warned in an unfashionable but - as it turned out - prescient way of nationalist tensions in the communist world and the like.

Pollard was very much part of a hard-line 'bombs and missiles' group of US students who would argue over lunch that the USA should have used tactical nukes to win the Vietnam war. 

One of this group's favourite pieces of kit was a circular slide-rule needed by would-be Bombers and Missilers to measure the devastation likely to be caused by nuclear and other massive explosions according to such factors as (a) size of explosion, (b) density of buildings and (c) local population. At a student fancy dress party one of them came dressed in a costume made up as one of these slide-rules. Cool, huh?

When the CIA and other agencies came for recruitment awaydays, Pollard was in the queue. He signed up with Naval Intelligence. The rest is history.

When I visited the Fletcher School again in 1999 during my sabbatical year at Harvard I met some students and mentioned Fletcher's most infamous graduate. None of them knew that he had been at FSLD. Maybe Pollard never formally completed his degree there, so has been quietly airbrushed out of the School's history?

Fletcher students! Remember the Pollard case!

And, if you have to end up as a spy, be a bit more modest than Jay was in what you hand over to the other side.

One of the Basic Points I tried to teach my Embassy teams as I ascended through the FCO ranks was, "Never mind all that policy stuff, which will tend to be OK enough. Your job is to get it 200% right on the day!"

The best-planned visit or event can become a wash-out for lack of attention to basic or even any detail.

An epic example was a joint visit by the then French and German Foreign Ministers to Sarajevo back in 1997 or thereabouts.

This visit was billed as a key EU moment in post-conflict Bosnia, a resounding call from Europe to the war-weary Bosnians to settle their differences and walk together purposefully down the European high road.

The major set-piece event during the visit was a gala reception in a Sarajevo hotel with several hundred prominent Bosnians.

There we all gathered chattering noisily, waiting for the guests of honour.

Eventually they arrived and the moment came for the various speeches to start.

Someone must have spent loving hours drafting them. But no-one from the French/German Embassies or BH protocol appeared to have given any thought at all to how the speeches actually would be delivered, with interpreting, in that particular big room, full of guests who did not mainly speak French/German, at that time, on that evening.

The sound system was bad. The Visitors were positioned in not the best part of the room. No podium for extra height and 'presence'. Interpreters slowed everything down. No trumpet or gong was sounded to attract the audience's attention and establish quiet when the speeches started.

Thus it was that as the speeches droned on, more and more Bosnians present simply tuned out and carried on chatting among themselves.

An unseemly competition started. Which was louder? The mass of Bosnian guests, or the VIP speakers?

When the German Foreign Minister got going, a mini-crisis was reached. He could not be heard at all other than by shouting.

Which he did. To little avail.

The louder he went, the more the massed Bosnians themselves talked loudly, almost as if (perish the thought) they spontaneously thought it would be a good Balkan joke to drown him out.

So we connoisseurs of the Diplomatic Grotesque witnessed a fascinating moment.

A leading European politician from a country which had given generously to the post-war reconstruction effort was left bawling at a large crowd of senior Bosnians that they should be grateful to Europe, and respond accordingly.

And they did respond. They just ignored him.

A text-book study in incompetence by the organisers.

And a metaphor for EU policy in the Balkans?

We pay. They don't listen...

EU Referendum’s thoughts on why a ‘European Foreign Policy’ is not good idea got me thinking.

What actually is ‘Foreign Policy’ anyway? Could the EU in fact be good at some aspects of it but not all? What are the pros and cons for the UK of ‘More Europe’ in the foreign policy area?

Gooooogle ‘EU foreign policy’ and a lot of dull stuff appears, not least all sorts of academic books talking dully about the EU and Foreign Policy. See eg this. And this and this.

One also comes across distinguished former practitioners making the More Europe case. See eg Lord Hannay, one of the smartest diplomats of our times on why an EU foreign policy is a Necessity, not an Optional Extra.

I find these productions unconvincing. Why? Because they are pitching the arguments on a level of generality which suits the case they want to make, constructing all sorts of clever institutional mechanisms without first really looking hard at what an EU Foreign Policy might actually want to achieve and only then considering how best to achieve it.

Diplomacy is not a matter of structures and resources, although they help cope with a lot of routine and quite important stuff.  The real problem is at the sharp end, dealing with dangerous issues and dangerous people.

That requires a subtle, powerful – even risky – approach, with people and resources geared accordingly.

Anyway.

One part of foreign policy, perhaps even the nub of it, is projecting to others beyond your own borders a clear statement of what you are and what you want. In this, symbols matter.

As I wrote back in 2005 in a searching analysis (which won some Ministerial approval!) of what the UK should do to help sort out the EU following the French/Dutch referenda defeats: