Chekov at Three Thousand Versts generously takes up my posting on the psychology of Russia's foreign policy, and responds:

In addition, we can agree that insensitivity to Russia’s concerns, from Nato and other western structures, caused Russian disillusionment which effects ‘cooperation’ to this day. Nato’s support for Albanian separatists in Kosovo is a particularly lamentable example.

In fact I don't really agree about that 'insensitivity' point (see below), but moving on:

What are the aspects of ‘westernisation’ to which Russia most strenuously objects? Perhaps the foremost concern is the Ukrainian president’s desire that his country should join Nato. Then there is a large Russian speaking population in the east of the country, whose cultural rights and affinities Russia is keen to safeguard.

Agreed (-ish), but is not the point that these are Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens, who perhaps should be left to safeguard and decide their own rights and affinities?

President Yushchenko, whose regime comprises the least popular in Europe, does not share this ambition with the majority of his countrymen. The rhetoric from anti-Russian politicians (David Miliband is an example) holds that Ukraine should be free to chart its own course in foreign affairs. If that course is to reflect the will of the majority, then it will not involve membership of Nato.

Agreed. Which is why there is no immediate prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. That said, if a firm majority did vote to do that, would that be OK?

No doubt the annual wrangle between Moscow and Kiev over gas prices will once again erupt, this winter. Hysterical columns will accuse the Kremlin of engineering an energy crisis. By expecting payment for its resources, at market rate, Russia will be portrayed as opposed to ‘reform, transparency and modernisation’. Few analysts will ask why Ukraine should receive preferential rates whilst it continues to lambaste its neighbour.

A v good point. In fact I made it in an FCO message from Moscow to London back in 1996 or so. I argued that it made no sense for us to moan about the fact that Russia was unhappy about supplying Ukraine with cheap energy which in substance was an unhealthy post-Soviet bribe, bad for giver and getter alike. Much better for all CIS countries to move to market prices asap.

That said, these deals are (I gather) really nothing about the merits of market-pricing for energy, but instead all about the personal machinations of the oligarchs involved on both sides of the border as they jostle for personal advantage. Sigh.

Continuing Chekov's argument:

In the Caucasus a fresh Islamic insurgency is claiming lives. This region forms an important geopolitical tinderbox adjacent to Central Asia and close to the Middle East. It should concern policy makers throughout ‘the west’, as well as Russia. If we want to find a common area for cooperation, combating terror would be a great place to start.

Agreed. I in fact accompanied the then Ambassador to Moscow when we were summoned to receive a Very Secret dossier on what Russia knew from the Soviet period about the IRA's attempts to drum up international support. A dossier was handed over to us. Thin, but not trivial. Alas we did not get the impression that we would be getting a lot more. And many subsequent attempts to turn positive-sounding words into real cooperation just do not get far. It's not where the Russians are at.

Let's get back to that Insensitivity word.

Are we too often 'insensitive to Russian concerns'? And, if so, is that good or bad?

My problem with this whole line of argument and the related absurd claim that 'Russia fears encirclement' is that it takes Russia's 'concerns' as the defining issue, and relegates everyone else's.

The strategic problem is that for seventy years the Soviet Union pumped out violence, corruption and lies. Its brutalisation of its own people and others was on an incomprehensible scale.

So the basic logic of the situation is that the force responsible for so much malevolence needs to show a healthy contrition if it wants its current 'concerns' to weigh heavily with the rest of us. And, for all the sense of Order which has been won under Putinism, that is still lacking. Moreover, whereas Yeltsin tried to grapple with these issues with a democratic impulse (albeit flawed), under Putin that trend has gone sharply into reverse.

Russia of course is not responsible for the crimes of the Soviet Union. But an honest Russia likewise can not rummage around in the black, mouldy bun of Soviet history and extract raisins of glory, any more than Merkel can say some positive things about Hitler and expect to be taken seriously.

This is why PM Putin's speech in Gdansk at the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact commemoration was so depressing. The tone of it was evasive-aggressive, aimed at playing down the Soviet Union's responsibility for anything bad.

Imagine a different speech he might have made: praising the bravery of Soviet forces; blaming Stalin for starting the War and killing so many generals, thereby forfeiting millions of lives; offering to throw open all the Katyn massacre archives, once and for all; and saying that Russia of course does not want NATO enlargement, but looks in a quite new spirit of openness to look at European security in the round.

In short, a speech founded in painful honesty and a sense of personal regret, showing real sympathy and sensitivity towards the victims of Soviet/Russian imperialism and their millions of relatives across central and Eastern Europe.

A strong speech by a strong leader, but one based on universalist optimistic principles and basic decency, not one aimed at pessimistically dragging everyone down into the Dirt of Relativism.

So, insofar as we can identify the 'concerns' of contemporary Russia and see in them dark aspects of Homo Neo-Soveticus, we are damn right not to be 'sensitive' to them. Since to err in that direction is to be lured into a very deep psychological game aimed at framing issues to suit a specific, malign Sovietish/KGB view of morals and history and everything.

The main answer to this sort of apparently hawkish argument is that it is not 'realistic'. We have the Russia we have: it will take many decades to flush communist thinking and KGB nomenkatura from the system, so in the meantime we should be patient but firm and straightforward - keeping our own principles in order and not worrying about Moscow's.

Which broadly speaking is the aim of Western policy, in all its inconsistent fits and starts.

Because the main Guardianista alternative is to treat Russia like a lumbering local bully unable to stop itself bullying its neighbours, but in doing so to adopt a patronising, apologetic, sycophantic tone of trying to 'understand' its grievances as it duffs up the smaller kids on the block while revealing its Soviet tattoos to show how tough it really was - and still is.

The smaller kids don't like being duffed up, or threatened. They look to the people in the smarter houses down the road to protect them from that sort of thing.

What should we do, if we are not minded to sort out the bully once and for all? Look now and then over our hedges and ask the bully to be less unpleasant?

Or do all we can to protect the small kids, while not letting the brawl get out of hand and spoil the neighbourhood?

Diplomacy begins at home?

A reader writes:

I have been hoping for your comment on the recent move by EULEX concerning the border between Kosovo and Serbia which seems to have equally upset both sides.

I think he means this:

The EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo and Serbia have signed the policing protocol, despite strong opposition from the government in Pristina.

EULEX confirmed on Friday that it had signed the controversial agreement with Serbia's Interior Ministry which will allow for the exchange of information on cross-border crime.

Kosovo's President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci had earlier claimed that the protocol would undermine their country's sovereignty and stated that negotiations on the issue were 'closed'.

The diplomatic trick in such utterly messy situations as this Kosovo/Serbia one is to find a crafty way to draft a text which allows useful things to happen but does not cut across key issues of law and principle or otherwise compromise either side's basic positions. Thus here:

• EULEX is not allowed by the EU (since EU member states can not agree on the status of Kosovo/Kosova - is it independent or not?) to take a view on Kosovo's international status.
• The Kosovars insist that Kosova/Kosovo is independent across the whole of its territory.
• Belgrade insists that none of Kosovo is independent.

So to achieve substantive police cooperation across the 'border', these utterly incompatible positions have to be finessed.

Here is the Serbia view:

"The most important point is that the agreement is to be signed with EULEX, not the Kosovo institutions, which enables the Serbian government to clearly confirm that it does not recognize them,” Bogdanović said...

Bogdanović said that “with this document, the EU is confirming Serbia’s integrity even on the areas that our country does not have full control over. The act of signing this agreement means that instead of our institutions, EULEX will be taking over some the authorities of the police, which is in everyone’s best interest."

And the Kosovo leadership too can accept it for parallel reasons:

In a joint statement, President Sejdiu and Prime Minister Thaci said: “Such arrangements have not and cannot have any impact on the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Kosovo.”

And so life in this part of the Balkans goes on, in a miasma of opacity and fudge. Although the separate moves by the EU towards offering citizens of Serbia visa-free travel are interesting - how to manage that for people living in Kosovo?

Meanwhile, up the road in Bosnia and Herzegovina things are rather clearer.

It's hopeless:

Last year I wrote some pieces about How to Negotiate. These and other pieces with an implicit or explicit Negotiation theme are linked here.

Such as this one:

It does not follow that being bloody-minded or even threatening force actually works. So much depends on context, the objective balance of forces, how far one's bloody-mindedness is intelligently marshalled to focus on a specific objective, how one balances different Objectives, and just sheer technique on the day. Russian examples aplenty.

Nor, of course, am I saying that Might is Right.Or the smart way to go, or to bet.

My (very) basic point is simply this.

That confidence and determination play a big part in negotiating. And that if you are prepared to inflict pain on your negotiating partner(s) (or at least credibly threaten to do so) plus are ready to endure pain (or at least credibly project a willingness to do so), you have a much wider set of options - and possible outcomes.

Just as in negotiation, so in defending yourself.

If someone is attacking you, is it best only to defend yourself efficiently so he/she gives up in frustration?

Or to hit back so hard that the cost to the attacker of continuing the attack is felt by the attacker as much too high?

Enter Tim Larkin, martial arts teacher:

"Probably the most controversial thing that we advocate is to focus on stopping someone via causing an injury, rather than trying to block an attack," he says, in a soft southern drawl surprising from a man built like an all-American wrestler and who boasts he can teach people how to kill "in four moves".

"The person who survives a violent attack usually does so by fighting back and injuring the other person rather than protecting themselves," he adds. "When you look at the videos of real violence, real fights, it is the people who try to block or protect themselves that end up getting stabbed, kicked or punched to death."

... must civilians really be armed with such knowledge? After all, everyday citizens have a right to defend themselves, but only if it that response is proportionate.

Mr Larkin's response is typically uncompromising: "Here's the issue with 'proportionate response': it is a great theory, but the only ones who are actually concerned by it are law-abiding citizens. Most of the time you're facing someone who is going to use a disproportionate level of violence, and most likely you'll be facing multiple attackers."

So many international negotiations are all about this sort of thing - or the threat of escalating to disproportionate response if one side overdoes things. See Israel/Palestine/Iran, passim. Northern Ireland was another one which dragged on for decades and still flickers into violence when some micro-factions just won't give up.

Here is a very nasty Negotiation in the north Caucasus region, between Islamic militants and death squads allegedly backed by the Russian state: both sides taking and inflicting horrible pain. Alas, in this case no end is in sight.

Mark Steyn's claim to be a one-man global content provider is justified not only by the verve of his gloomy analyses of society, but also by his magnificent knowledge of the popular music business (gained in part from his earlier time as a hospital DJ and then theatre critic).

Does anyone else write superb pieces like this one - about a Leonard Cohen song -combining such knowledge and affection?

It starts with the difficulties of finding words in English to rhyme with love for song-writing purposes:

The constraints of language help define our notion of romance, and in English we're more constrained than most. There are just four and a half rhymes for "love," approximately three-quarters of which offer very meagre possibilities: "above," "dove," "glove," "shove," and (the half-rhyme) "of," pronounced "uv."

The last is the reason why, in English songs, "love" is a thing you spend a lot of time "dreaming uv." "Shove" is of limited application, except in ballads for spousal abusers. I think P G Wodehouse was the first to get any mileage out of it in a comedy song called "Tulip Time In Sing-Sing":

So just bob my hair and shove me
Where I know the warders love me...

Good grief. Who knows things like that?

He then weaves all this into Leonard Cohen's song Dance Me To The End Of Love.

Which, it turns out, has echoes of the Holocaust.

Treat yourself.

Read the whole thing.

There one is, pushing one's little godson round the back streets of Lewes, amazed at his genius as he points things out along the way.

And then, suddenly, he has grown up and his first full-length film is launched.

Rob Cannan and Corinna Villari-McFarlane have produced an impressive debut movie, a documentary called Three Miles North of Molkom.

It takes a group of people thrown together at a hippy-style No Mind Festival in leafy Sweden and watches how they each react to the various events laid on to help them connect with nature and their Inner Selves.

An Australian rugby coach somehow ends up among them and of course is wittily scathing about the whole business, fire-walking, tantric sex, hippy burbling mumbo-jumbo, and real-life hugging of real-life trees.

But then ...

A couple of good reviews reviews are here and here.

The scene where one gormless woman is knocked flying as her innermost cosmic rays fail to deflect an incoming onslaught from the smarmy instructor is alone worth the price of admission. 

Not to forget that it is possibly the cheapest film ever made?

All in all, a deft, perceptive and ultimately touching piece of work, all the more impressive for being lifted and edited so smoothly from countless hours of filming.

Go and see it.

Some good comments from readers on my (too) long piece about the US Missile Defence decision.

Two take a different view, arguing that Putin's Russian government is not motivated by crude nationalism, and that if one stacks up various decisions taken in recent years by the USA/West it is not hard to see plenty of reasons why Russia currently is uncooperative.

Thoughts on what 'cooperation' means in this context.

I was working closely in Moscow with the Russian MFA in the mid-1990s when the post-Cold War sense of official disillusionment with the West started in earnest.

We Brits helped this along by making a serious blunder, refusing to give a visa to a close friend of Mr Primakov who was designated by the Russians to head (in an openly acknowledged way) their external intelligence representation at the Embassy in London.

This decision, taken at a very high level in London against Embassy advice, was (as far as we could see) stupid and insulting and above all pointless. It gave terrific support to those in the Russian security establishment who argued that the Brits did not want true cooperation in the grown-up areas of policy but were bent on playing more Cold War games. 

Thereafter the Contact Group and other processes continued, but with Russian enthusiasm drip-drip waning as US/UK/German support for Kosovo's independence grew. I know that the Russians did try to get through to Milosevic just how damaging his policies were likely to be to Serbia's interests - I had a vivid account from a Russian diplomat who listened to him being ridiculous about the subject until 4am, then walked out in despair.

More generally, the practical problems Russia has faced in dealing with such sprawling new borders and all the other human and policy issues arising from the collapse of the Soviet Union have been daunting, and handled pretty fairly. The Putin period has led to much greater discipline and sense of purpose.

So a lot has been achieved in a generally positive direction.

The difficulty comes from the psychological aspects of the dissolution of the USSR:

• formally the Russian elite accept Ukraine's and the other CIS states' independence. But because they (rightly) see 'Westernisation' as a threat to their privileged and untransparent status, they do not want Ukraine to modernise according to normal European standards. So Western support for the tendencies which want reform, transparency and modernisation becomes a 'threat to Russia's interests'.
• the loss of Big Power status has been especially painful. Rather than appear to accept limits on what Russian diplomacy can now do by being 'merely' part of a pro-reform bloc under US leadership, Moscow tries to project power by being awkward and obstructive - see Russia's disgraceful support for Mugabe at the UN, a classic example of the Russian leadership having nothing at stake and blocking pressure designed to bring about improvements for the mass of Zimbabweans
• elsewhere the Russians have just not tried to make use of their strong KGB-style weight to improve the behaviour of obnoxious regimes such as Iran and North Korea. They appear to dislike the very idea that US-led Western pressure might be seen to be working in such cases (since if that were so, their own role might be diminished), preferring instead to hold back and make half-hearted moves only when they 'get something' as a price.   

In short, the Russia we now have sees no real advantage for itself in the world's bad regimes (including a good few in the CIS itself) behaving in an increasingly pluralist and measured way, nor in other parts of the CIS becoming more 'European'.

Nor can the Russian ruling elite bring themselves to come fully clean about the violence and horror of the Soviet period - perhaps because their own families were either victims or perpetrators or both? 

All this is not an irrational or 'crudely nationalistic' attitude. It makes sense, once the basic hard premise is accepted that for the next few decades Russia will do better for itself - and above all its self-esteem - by defining itself separately from 'Western' processes and (as necessary) countering them where the cost of doing so is not too high. 

And, if some territorial gains can be made and loud warning shots fired across European/Western bows in the process to send a strong message of a new psychological confidence (see S Ossetia and Abkhazia), so much the better.

When the Americans pressed that famous Reset button, what new (or old) set of conditions and beliefs were they trying to reset?

Do they know themselves?

And how would they tell if it had worked?

I mentioned a while back my latest article in DIPLOMAT magaizine about Ethnicity and Foreign Policy, with some general analysis of what is or is not a state under international law:

DIPLOMATIC HOBGOBLINS AND BALKAN OMELETTES: WHERE DIPLOMACY MEETS ETHNICITY

Here it is if you want to read the full version.

But hurry. The DIPLOMAT website as currently constituted does not keep these articles online very long...

Picking up the theme of the previous posting, I might add that after the St Albans School prize giving this week a smart young pupil asked me for a couple of lessons learned from my diplomatic career.

Gulp. Where to start?

I offered only this one.

Back in Belgrade in 1981/82 the Ambassador was Sir Edwin Bolland, who died last year. He was a small, wiry man from a Yorkshire working-class mining family who had a lot of sympathy for socialist principles.

He loved poring over communist newspapers and analysing all the dreary tripe in them. At our Embassy morning meetings he would sniff the Yugoslav papers Borba and Politika and say that they just did not smell like real Soviet communist newspapers such as Pravda and Izvestia.

Anyway, one day he decided to draft a long Despatch about a passing Congress of Yugoslav Socialist Self-Managers, an absurd event at which people from all over the country had a few days off work to come to Belgrade to drink coffee and listen to meaningless ideological pseudo-pep-talks. So in due course a long, turgid draft text emerged from his office, which was approved by the other senior Embassy officials. It then came to me for a final look.

The procedural point was that this was exactly the wrong way round.The junior Political Officer should have hammered out a first draft which would be cleared onwards and upwards through the Embassy, gaining polish and wisdom as it went, until the Ambassador himself loftily added some final insights and sent it to London.

I was summoned to the Ambassador's office to give my views on this tract. I went in.

"I have shown this to you last", said Sir Edwin, "because you are the only person in this Embassy who can write. Now, what do you think of it?"

I was lost for words. It was a boring and unnecessary piece of work.

"I know what you're thinking!" he said. "You think it's pedestrian!"

"Well, as a matter of fact I do think that", I said.

"Let me tell you something. You are also the only person in the Embassy who says what you really think. The others (gesturing down the corridor to his senior colleagues) are all Yes-men! Never give that up."

That was the story I gave to the St Albans schoolboy.

And, in trying to strike the right professional balance between being right, being convincing and being effective in my FCO career for the following 25 years or so, I tried never to lose sight of Sir Edwin's core advice.

Honesty is the best policy.

Here (h/t Skeptical Bureaucrat) is an interesting report about apparent self-censorship among US diplomats going back some years:

One diplomat told The Washington Times that he has decided to resign in part because of frustration with "rampant self-censorship" by Foreign Service officers and their superiors that has gone so far as to ban "bad news" cables from countries that are friendly with the United States.

The diplomat, who asked that his name not be used for fear of retribution against himself and colleagues, said that, in one instance under the George W. Bush administration, an embassy in the Middle East did not report local government interference in elections. Senior management censored accounts of low morale at another Middle East mission that had been the target of terrorist attacks, he said.

More than a dozen diplomats serving in Washington and abroad told The Times that they agreed with most of the officer's critique, and that the censorship has continued to a lesser extent in the Obama administration. All asked not to be named to avoid retribution.

It must seem self-evident to any normal taxpayer that there is not much point in having diplomats if they do not send back their best, honest analyses of the places they live in, but rather shape their analysis to suit prevailing policy prejudices back at HQ.

Well, yes. But...

Your job as a diplomat is to represent your government's policy abroad. If after due deliberation your government has decided that it is in your country's interests to befriend the odious government/regime in the country to which you are posted, that is what you are paid to do.

It then becomes a matter of nice judgement how far and often you call that position into question. You need to find a way to get across to your political masters that the position to which they have publicly committed themselves is, for one reason or the other, unwise or counter-productive or wrong in principle. Part of Craig Murray's problem as HM Ambassador in Uzbekistan was his inability to do this with even minimum guile and judgement. See eg here. 

And it is genuinely not easy to get such changes effected. Other partners/allies may have views. Domestic lobbies too. There may be some deeply-held secret reasons for continuing the policy which even diplomats in the country concerned do not know.

In these circumstances, the issue is not so much self-censorship as avoiding fighting battles which have been fought and lost, or which are just not going to be won this time round.

This earlier post by me takes up that question with some real examples, and features an interesting exchange (well, I thought it was interesting) between Craig and myself which goes into the professional issues in some depth. 

Two examples from my own career.

1   Back in 1983/84, a couple of us middle-ranking young dips at the British Embassy to socialist Yugoslavia in Belgrade came to the view that the decay of Yugo-communism was such that this country could no longer sensibly be termed 'a pillar of stability in the Balkans' as the official briefs in London proclaimed. In fact, it was a crumbling pillar of instability.

We had various internal disagreements if not rows with our senior Embassy colleagues about this: how far was it true, and how far should those who felt the policy analysis was wrong be allowed to put their concerns to high levels in London? One of my first blog postings was all about my famous MTS/Non-MTS paper about just these questions.

2   I think now that the Embassy pulled its punches in reporting the massive devastation caused by Moscow trying to suppress separatist elements in Chechnya in the mid-1990s. The general policy instinct had it that the nascent democracy in Russia just had to be supported come what may, and that if that meant looking away from gruesome human rights excesses in and around Chechnya, so be it. That approach made political sense at the time - but what problems did it store up for later?

So, all this is not as straightforward a subject as you might think, the more so these days when just about anything is likely to leak.

Yet the hard fact remains. It is right to take a firm policy stand, and sometimes the only available choices are all deeply unattractive.

But a firm stand in the end is only as firm as the ground it stands on.

And surely Ministers need to know if that ground is not as firm as it looks:

“One has an eerie feeling of being perched on a sandcastle with the waters of economic logic slowly but surely eroding the base.”

The most important sentence I wrote in my diplomatic career? Both because it was right in fact - and because I put it on the public record that I thought our policy was wrong?

A lively piece in the Guardian by Bonnie Greer about the all-pervasiveness of Racism.

She lays into one and all, but especially her fellow leftists:

I cringed during the campaign at the drooling of male broadcasters over the candidate's physique; the "cool black guy" envy many of them subliminally expressed in their words and their writing which risked reducing Obama to some kind of fantasy. There still are those lachrymose liberals who can't stop welling up every time they see a black face in their vicinity.

And there is the syndrome, whose name is even now being invented by psychologists, for those white people who feel that they can say things to black people that they would not have done before, simply because they stepped up to the plate and voted for Obama. Racism cuts both ways.

Obama's campaign slogan was "Change". We on the left need to change. Change our tired, ideologically driven responses to events. Change our moth-eaten rhetoric.

Luckily a website exists for such white people who are delighted to be seen as awesome by the Black community. And do they deserve that praise!

In our moments of most profound anxiety about racial questions, we always have one person to lead us to the truth: the Numinous Negro.

Me? I go along with this.

The Polish Government has showed its displeasure at the US missile defence decision by playing the protocol card:

Prime Minister Tusk refused to take a telephone-call from Hillary Clinton, steering her to talk to her opposite number (ie Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski). Tusk eventually talked to President Obama after initially not taking that call either.

The symbolism of this US announcement - the 70th anniversary of the Soviet attack on Poland under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - is as bad as it possibly can be for Poland, and for Russian smirking.

Anyone remember Smart Diplomacy?

President Obama has cancelled a plan to build US anti-missile defence radar facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.

This move has been hailed by Russia's President Medvedev as a "wise decision". Which, of course, prompts the ignoble thought that if the Russians like it so much, something must be wrong.

How to work out what is going on here?

When (as you must) you read John O'Sullivan's elegant book on the Reagan/Thatcher/Pope John Paul II relationship, you'll see that perhaps the deepest strategic/political and even moral conviction of President Reagan was the idea that as part of moving towards a world without nuclear weapons the USA should focus on developing a nuclear 'Star Wars' shield, not a nuclear sword.

This astounding new idea caused consternation in many quarters, for quite different reasons:

Mrs Thatcher was dismayed: if the USA could defend itself against the USSR through missile defence its commitment to European defence would dwindle, leaving Europe at the mercy of Soviet conventional forces.

US and European armies of professional left-liberals and useful idiots were aghast: if the USA no longer needed to fear Russia, it would be even more imperialistic and horrid than it was already.

Moscow was stunned: maybe the Americans could simply outspend and out-equip the USSR on defence and leave Soviet political power fatally weakened.

The global chattering classes were shocked: it was a wild, 'dangerous' lunge by this loony Hollywood cowboy, all the more  outlandish because it would never work in practice.

As John's book describes in remarkable detail, Reagan stood his ground against all these arguments and many more, angrily fending off Gorbachev in the process.

But Reagan saw further than everyone else. The technology one day would work. And the very fact of developing it would defeat Communism: "My idea of the Cold War is that we win and they lose".   

All of which came to pass.

Twenty years on the kit works pretty well. the workings of Moore's Law have given the USA the computer power to perform the trillions of calculations at top speed needed to spot hostile missile launches and then fire US missiles from different locations to crash into them or otherwise mess them up.

To do that, incredibly powerful radar installations are needed in different spots. Two were indentified in Poland and the Czech Republic as being especially handy for helping intercept missiles launched from (for example) Iran.

The idea of siting these installations so close to Russia led the Kremlin to make a strong political counter-attack.

Publicly the Russians insisted that these installations were 'aimed at Russia' and therefore represented a new destabilising factor in the post-Cold War nuclear balance.

But (in my view) the main reason for Russia's official anger (however synthetic it might be) was the fact that such installations yet again served to highlight Russian technical inferiority.

Meanwhile the idea of the new US sites was not especially popular in Poland or Czech Republic, where the provincial blandishments of European integration were coming to seem more relevant to the public than all that unsettling nuclear strategic stuff.

The Poles ended up in a curious policy contortion, noisily proclaiming that the installations were essential to keep Putinist neo-Soviet-style instincts at bay in that part of the world, while at the same time demanding from the USA that the Americans pay Poland generously for allowing the site to be built.

So, all in all, and taking everything into account, what?

Some Q and A.

Has Obama surrendered a key and irreplaceable US military interest?

Probably not. The technology keeps evolving, so maybe there are other even better ways to do the same job based on eg radars placed on ships? We won't necessarily be told, one way or the other.

Has Obama sold out Eastern Europe?

Again, it depends on what Washington wants to say to Europeans in private about its determination to stand up against Russian 'pressure'. There may well be other practical ways quietly to reassure Poland and other countries in this sense, once the rows about these installations start to fade.

That said, Bambiland generally wonders whether Obama's Washington really cares about Europe any more. And those US conservative commentators who for a long time have complained that the USA was giving Europe a free defence ride may even give a wry smile now.

Wider considerations?

Other nuclear weapons negotiations rumble on. It arguably makes sense for Democrat-run Washington to focus on these:

Discussions on a US-drafted resolution on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation had been underway for weeks when, out of the blue, Russia came up with objections to a text that is supposed to be the centrepiece of an extraordinary nuclear summit at the UN next Thursday to be chaired by Obama.

He is pushing for a bold collective statement that will help set the world on a trajectory to a future without nuclear weapons. Most security council resolutions end up being watered down. But the potential failure of next week's summit represents a threat to Obama's global agenda, much of which is focused sharply on the threat of proliferation.

So if Obama really needs this 'success' in foreign policy for its own sake - and as part of a political domestic power-play to revive his faltering ratings - why not throw a 'concession' to Russia to get them on board? 

OK, but what about Russia?

Ah, now you're talking.

The Really Big Problem for the USA and 'the West' since the Cold War ended has been a sense of vexation round the world that indeed the West did win the Cold War but then got too big for its cowboy boots.

This has steadily translated into a growing unwillingness on the part of Russia/China/India/Brazil and other such powers to go along with what the West wanted, just for the sake of being awkward.

In a unipolar world dominated by the USA, those countries which stand up to the USA wherever they can get away with it will get special attention in Washington and enhanced status elsewhere (see also N Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba,  and the other suspects).

Hence Russia and China in particular sit back and enjoy the benefits of Western market forces while doing little if anything to help the West against fanatically anti-West regimes. Classic example here.

Moscow and Beijing know that Iran and N Korea will never dare launch a primitive nuke or mass terrorist outrage against them, since their own retaliation would be massive and ruthless. It suits their ultimate über-policy - of their gaining strength as the Americans get cut down to size - to let the Americans and a few others do all the unpopular heavy lifting against such rogue elements, while they peck away at whatever scraps of diplomatic advantage fall on the floor.

So the problem with the Obama Administration's Russian Reset button approach lies in the apparent assumption that Russia and the USA can move towards a new substantive partnership which gives the USA significant new gains which Russia will be happy to support. This partnership can not be.

At the root of it, Russian foreign policy ambitions have nothing to do with ideals or principles but only a strange self-absorbed zero-sum nationalist-tsarist idea that whatever territory Russia at some point has conquered is ipso facto 'Russian' for ever. Where those lands are no longer in Russia itself, Russia must have some sort of psychological or strategic edge there, and other influences (Europeanisation, Westernisation) necessarily subtract from that and are a threat.

America by contrast does have real universalist ideals and principles, however much they are sneered at in America itself and more widely round the planet. Even if the execution of its policy is (inevitably?) often incoherent, messy and contradictory, Washington looks at the Middle East, Africa and other strategic problems in their own terms - what might work to get a substantively respectable and fair and stable outcomes, preferably in a way which increases freedom for ordinary people.

Which is why when the going gets tough, Russia will never do more than the bare minimum to give the Americans real help against obnoxious states and extremists and terrorists. Much better for Moscow to keep the prospect of such help dangling like a carrot indefinitely, so that Russia can negotiate from greater strength far down the road as and when its power has grown and America's has diminished.

Conclusion?

The optimistic interpretation of this Obama move is that he has given up something that really did not count for much in strategic reality terms so as to get some other modest diplomatic gains (all with a keen eye on Obama's poll ratings), wrapping it up in vast spin about a 'huge move' to make it look bold and statesmanlike. Poles and Czechs are too right-wing for Democrats, so get a sharp clip round the ear followed by a perfunctory kiss to make up. The Russians know that it is all (mainly) rubbish, but piously applaud the 'wisdom' of it so as to make themselves look more powerful than they are. No real change.

The pessimistic interpretation is that there really has been a 'huge shift' in US foreign policy and President Obama is ready to put at risk all the gains for freedom, pluralism and progress achieved around the world by Ronald Reagan with a little help from his friends, in the hope of creating a new world order based around a diminished unambitious USA in sly cahoots with left-collectivist post-democratic polities (EU, Russia, China) and sundry unhealthy pre-democratic Islamic regimes.

I report. You decide.

This week I distribute the prizes as guest of honour at my old school, St Albans School.

St Albans School is one of the oldest schools in the world. Thirteenth oldest in fact.

It was founded in 948 by the Abbot Ulcinus, whom I recall with affection. He was an avuncular prelate with white bushy eyebrows who chanted Latin psalms with great piety as he flogged us pert young choirboys with birchtwigs early every morning.

Later the school flourished thanks to a lucrative Wine Charter. The school still uses the historic Abbey Gateway which was attacked during the Peasants Revolt of 1381.

Its most famous Old Boy is genius Stephen Hawking, who, of course, was nothing special at school. Later in 1972 I was there to cheer as schoolmate Kirk Dumpleton whupped two other skinny teenagers (and future Olympic champions) Steve Ovett and Seb Coe to win the English cross-country championships - the only British runner ever to beat them in one race.

A distinguished former teacher who attempted to knock Music into me was Simon Lindley. He would make a half-hearted but witty attempt to beat the whole class one by one with a long ruler if we were too noisy waiting for him outside the old Lecture Room. Happy days. 

My own claim to fame at the time was more modest. I was captain of the school chess club which made it to the last eight in the Sunday Times National Competition. But I was Head Boy in my Oxbridge term. Creep Crawly Crawford indeed. 

The current Headmaster is the energetic Andrew Grant, who also currently leads the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC - national association for independent schools).

Should be a blast.

The Total Politics list of the Top 300 UK political blogs is here.

I have sunk to place 196 from 161 last year. Craig Murray has soared to 95 from 145.

Aaargh.

The methodology of this survey was curious this year, with people being expected to list ten blogs to take part:

Bloggers and blog readers were asked to rank their top ten blogs and then email them to Total Politics. The results were fed into a spreadsheet, with the top blog getting ten points, the second blog nine points and so on.

In total, people voted for 940 blogs (compared to 590 in 2008).

In other words, the sample is tiny, and skewed in favour of (a) people who read Iain's blog, and (b) people who follow ten UK political blogs - a bit of a stretch for many of us?

Given the vast numbers of people who do read Iain's blog, the participation rate was surprisingly small. I assume that he wanted to get the views of people who read a variety of blogs, so that less well-known blogs get a look-in? Were he to ask for people to vote for only (say) five blogs, he might get many more people voting but fewer blogs represented?

Anyway, all good clean fun. I wear my Top 20 Libertarian Blog badge with pride.

And feeble as my showing was in the Total Politics 2009 poll, I have moved up the Wikio ratings to a majestic 449th place for some reason.

Thanks, readers!

Former Ambassador Craig Murray has thrown himself back into the blogging ring after some self-doubt.

He has a long post about the Lockerbie/Megrahi business, which covers the ground with the volleys of adjectives and adverbs one has come to expect:

The Tories have shown their blood-baying, American bum-sucking true colours. New Labour have been caught in their usual horrible hypocrisy, attempting to capitalise on anti-SNP right wing media reaction, while having been deliberately paving the way for the release for years...

Syria was responsible for the Lockerbie bomb. But in the first Iraq war, we needed Syria's support, while Libya remained a supporter of Iraq. Lockerbie was a bar to our new alliance with Damascus, so extremely conveniently, and with perfect timing, it was discovered that actually it was the Libyans!! Anyone who believes that fake intelligence started with Iraqi WMD is an idiot...

Al-Megrahi was not the Lockerbie bomber. The scandal is not that trade deals and the realpolitik of relationship normalisation led to his release. The scandal is that trade deals and the realpolitik of relationship normalisation were what led the Libyans to hand him over in the first place - very much in the way their ancestors had given hostages to Imperial Rome.

Not sure I follow all that.

But what caught my professional eye was this amazing passage:

It haunts me that I had a chance to read the intelligence reports which, I was told by a shocked FCO colleague in Aviation and Maritime Department where I then worked, showed that the new anti-Libyan narrative was false. I say in self-defence that at the time I was literally working day and night, sleeping on a camp bed. I was organising the Embargo Surveillance Centre and I was convinced that a watertight full physical embargo could remove the need to invade Iraq.

I was impatient of the interruption. I listened to my colleague only distractedly and did not want to go through the rigmarole of signing for and transporting the reports I hadn't got time to look at then. Events overtook me, and I never did see them.

Wha-a-a-at?

Craig had the chance as a self-proclaimed FCO High-Flier to see intelligence reports 'showing' something or other to the effect that Libya was not responsible for Lockerbie - and he did nothing about them (and did not even read them) because he was too busy/tired?

Various points of interest here:

• Craig firmly believes these reports now, without even having read them then.
• Elsewhere in his oeuvre Craig denounces  many intelligence reports as 'dross', all too often obtained by torture. What if these reports had been obtained by torture or were somehow linked to torture? Would he have believed them any the less, if their subject-matter was so far-reaching?
• Had such reports been credible but probably or even possibly extracted by torture, would it have been right to rely on them to drop the case against Libya?
• What if anything made these reports seemingly so believable?

As for whether Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, I think that Col Gadhafi is made of stern stuff. He would not have coughed up so much LIbyan compensation for victims of the atrocity without a pretty damn clear case laid out before him?

FCO Quirk Note: I used to work in the predecessor of the FCO Aviation and Maritime Department which Craig mentions. In my day it was called Maritime, Aviation and Environment Department (MAED). But then Environment went elsewhere in a shuffle of responsibilities.

It would have provoked unseemly titters to call the new smaller department MAD. So they went for AMD instead.

A new site called Big Government is doing remarkable work in exposing the seamier side of the major pro-Obama 'community' organisation ACORN, which up to now has been receiving US taxpayers money on a lavish scale.

In particular their people have hit upon the ingenious wheeze of entering ACORN offices, saying that they are involved in child prostitution and other illegal rackets, and asking for help and advice.

And secretly filming the ensuing discussions.

Some results are spectacular.

Never mind the excellent fact that ACORN has taken a huge direct hit.

Look at the quality of the secretly filmed exchanges. And the thoroughness of ACORN advice on how to hide dirty cash in a backyard hole covered in grass or snow.

With IT video kit like this readily available we are entering a totally new era of Open Process for official and unofficial organisations, whether they and we like it or not: 

Update: what are the mathematical chances of three ACORN offices independently turning a blind eye to criminality aimed at exploiting vulnerable people?

Rather small.

Here is a piece by Douglas Rushkoff at Edge which tries to get at the deep roots of economic theory, and finds it wanting:

The economy in which we operate is not a natural system, but a set of rules developed in the Late Middle Ages in order to prevent the unchecked rise of a merchant class that was creating and exchanging value with impunity. This was what we might today call a peer-to-peer economy, and did not depend on central employers or even central currency.

People brought grain in from the fields, had it weighed at a grain store, and left with a receipt — usually stamped into a thin piece of foil. The foil could be torn into smaller pieces and used as currency in town. Each piece represented a specific amount of grain. The money was quite literally earned into existence — and the total amount in circulation reflected the abundance of the crop.

He goes on to argue that in successive distortions we have ended up creating ever-more elaborate 'theories' about the economy which are wrong in themselves and generate 'growth' rather than 'long-term value':

We ended up with an economy based in scarcity and competition rather than abundance and collaboration; an economy that requires growth and eschews sustainable business models.

It may or may not better reflect the laws of nature — and that it is a conversation we really should have — but it is certainly not the result of entirely natural set of principles in action. It is a system designed by certain people at a certain moment in history, with very specific interests.

Therefore:

The net (whether we're talking Web 2.0, Wikipedia, social networks or laptops) offers people the opportunity to build economies based on different rules — commerce that exists outside the economic map we have mistaken for the territory of human interaction.

We can startup and even scale companies with little or no money, making the banks and investment capital on which business once depended obsolete.

That's the real reason for the so-called economic crisis: there is less of a market for the debt on which the top-heavy game is based.

I don't really understand all this in technical terms, although he seems to be on to something when he identifies the rise of centrally controlled money as the start of a huge number of artificial problems which are with us today - and increasingly exposed?

I find my comfort instead in Ayn Rand's Money Speech, which is not about economics but about the way free people create and share value.

It justs get better every time you read it:

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money?

Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.

Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money.

Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow.

Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?

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

...

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities.

That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.'

No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will...

Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."

Are there popular stirrings in the USA to heave out the looters and moochers across government and aim for first principles again?

Fraser Nelson helpfully steers us towards the UK's greatest-ever looter:

Learn it off by heart:

Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

President Obama gave his speech on Wall Street today.

This was the bit I really liked:

Unfortunately, there are some in Congress who are misreading this moment. Instead of learning the lessons of the crisis from which we are still recovering, they are choosing to ignore them. They do so not just at their own peril, but at our nation’s.

So I want them to hear my words: We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for corrupt legislation and squandering of public money.

Members of Congress cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.

That’s why we need strong rules of the road to guard against the kind of systemic risks we have seen. And we have a responsibility to write and enforce these rules to protect consumers, taxpayers, and our economy as a whole.

But the old ways that led to this crisis cannot stand. And to the extent that some have so readily returned to them underscores the need for change and change now. History cannot be allowed to repeat itself.

At least, I think that's what I heard him say.

Our gibbering spiteful government wants to bring in a sprawling new registration scheme for all adults working with or having dealings with children, to help stop paedophiles popping up unexpectedly.

Uproar.

But we are told to calm down:

Sir Roger, whose agency will run the vetting scheme, said: "We need to calm down and consider carefully and rationally what this scheme is and is not about...

"It is not about subjecting a quarter of the population to intensive scrutiny of their personal lives and it is not about creating mistrust between adults and children or discouraging volunteering."

He added: "It is about ensuring that those people who have already been dismissed by their employers for inappropriate behaviour with children do not simply up sticks and move elsewhere in the country to continue their abuse."

Really?

Parents who ferry children to clubs face criminal record checks

Unregistered adults could be fined up to £5,000 under scheme to prevent paedophiles getting access to children

What caught my eye was this:

Researchers and experts have been studying the history of fairy tales and have traced different versions of Little Red Riding Hood all round the planet and back into history:

Whilst the European version tells the story of a little girl who is tricked by a wolf masquerading as her grandmother, in the Chinese version a tiger replaces the wolf.

In Iran, where it would be considered odd for a young girl to roam alone, the story features a little boy.

Contrary to the view that the tale originated in France shortly before Charles Perrault produced the first written version in the 17th century, Dr Tehrani found that the varients shared a common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years.

I hope they have not overlooked this very modern version.