Causes and Effects

This reads well:

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

As does this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As if the EU's ambiguous response to the Georgia crisis was not depressing enough, life is getting tougher on the economic side too in Europe:

The eurozone as a whole shrank by 0.2pc, the first contraction since the launch of the single currency a decade ago. Germany led the slide with a fall of 0.5pc. France and Italy fell 0.3pc. The delayed effects of the strong euro, tight credit, and slowing exports have now kicked in with a vengeance.

Problems for my own British-based budget as we sit in muggy Orlando:

The pound could soon dive to barely more than a dollar and a half while gold prices plunge to $650, experts predicted yesterday amid fresh evidence that the commodity boom is ending and the dollar's resurgence is under way.

But whereas the UK can hope to use its currency as a set of buffers, the Eurozone faces much more searching internal strains:

... the euro is nothing like the dollar. It has no European government, tax, or social security system to back it up. Each member country is sovereign, each fiercely proud, answering to its own ancient rythms.

It lacks the mechanism of "fiscal transfers" to switch money to depressed regions. The Babel of languages keeps workers pinned down in their own country. The escape valve of labour mobility is half-blocked. We are about to find out whether EMU really has the levels of political solidarity of a nation, the kind that holds America's currency union together through storms.

My guess is that political protest will mark the next phase of this drama. Almost half a million people have lost their jobs in Spain alone over the last year. At some point, the feeling of national impotence in the face of monetary rule from Frankfurt will erupt into popular fury. The ECB will swallow its pride and opt for a weak euro policy, or face its own destruction.

Gulp. 

Michael Binyon deploys chess metaphors to describe Russia' s military push into Georgia:

Vladimir Putin lost several pawns on the chessboard - Kosovo, Iraq, Nato membership for the Baltic states, US renunciation of the ABM treaty, US missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. But he waited.

The trap was set in Georgia. When President Saakashvili blundered into South Ossetia, sending in an army to shell, kill and maim on a vicious scale (against US advice and his promised word), Russia was waiting ...

... Moscow can also counter Georgian PR, the last weapon left to Tbilisi. Human rights? Look at what Georgia has done in South Ossetia (and also in Abkhazia). National sovereignty? Look at the detachment of Kosovo from Serbia. False pretexts? Look at Ronald Reagan's invasion of Grenada to “rescue” US medical students. Western outrage? Look at the confused cacophony.

There are lessons everywhere. To the former Soviet republics - remember your geography. To Nato - do you still want to incorporate Caucasian vendettas into your alliance? To Tbilisi - do you want to keep a President who brought this on you? To Washington - does Russia's voice still count for nothing? Like it or not, it counts for a lot.

Let's dwell on that chess metaphor a while.

Aron Nimzowitsch was a great chess Grandmaster. One of his famous reputed chess aphorisms is "the threat is stronger than the execution".

The sense is that one can wait for some time to play a strong chess move, letting the threat that it might happen create new advantages. However, once the move is played the threat is gone and the move stands on its own merits. And, of course, the move is 'committal' - once played it can not be taken back.

In this case the Russians have been watching the Kosovo precedent and waiting to move.

One possible move was to stand firm on rejecting Kosovo independence. Another was to say that if Kosovo gets what it wants, why should not some others do the same?

The Georgian episode opens the way for Moscow to play the second move, as looks to be happening: "Georgia's territorial integrity is a dead issue".

However, Russia is a UN Security Council Permanent Member so such moves have to be wrapped in some sort of credible international law ribbon.

By parking on unbending opposition to the Kosovo precedent, Russia claimed to rule out ad hoc exceptions to a key precept of international practice in Europe in recent decades, namely that borders can not be changed without general consent.

What exactly is Russia now saying?

That if a country behaves badly enough towards minority territories, those territories can break away?

That any territory can break away if it has a strong supportive neighbour?

Or is there a new realpolitik doctrine emerging, that a new twilight zone category of small pseudo-states might emerge whose 'independence' is recognised by a core of supporters but not the international community as a whole? See also Transdnistria.

These questions have mind-boggling political and diplomatic ramifications rippling on down the decades to come. What looks like a strong move now may (or may not) come to look like a mistake.

For now Russia has all sorts of operational options in Georgia, using the presence of Russian official and unofficial forces on the ground to play for time and create (as we chess-players say) unfathomable complications.

For a famous example of such complications, see Game 14 of the World Championship match between Garry Kasparov and Vishy Anand. At the height of the battle (and the Championship struggle as a whole) with both players short of time, Kasparov on move 27 made a dramatic speculative knight sacrifice throwing the position wide open. He outplayed his opponent in the ensuing dog-fight.

Putin maybe has in mind a famous American example:

I don’t believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.

The commentaries on Georgia pour out.

This one by John Bolton is sharp and good. Try this:

The European Union took the lead in diplomacy, with results approaching Neville Chamberlain’s moment in the spotlight at Munich: a ceasefire that failed to mention Georgia’s territorial integrity, and that all but gave Russia permission to continue its military operations as a “peacekeeping” force anywhere in Georgia. More troubling, over the long term, was that the EU saw its task as being mediator – its favourite role in the world – between Georgia and Russia, rather than an advocate for the victim of aggression.

And this:

The West, collectively, failed in this crisis. Georgia wasted its dime making that famous 3am telephone call to the White House, the one Hillary Clinton referred to in a campaign ad questioning Barack Obama’s fitness for the Presidency.

The point being:

 ... we are facing the much larger issue of how Russia plans to behave in international affairs for decades to come. Whether Mikhail Saakashvili “provoked” the Russians on August 8, or September 8, or whenever, this rape was well-planned and clearly coming, given Georgia’s manifest unwillingness to be “Finlandized” – the Cold War term for effectively losing your foreign-policy independence.

Hence:

 ... we should have a foreign-minister-level meeting of Nato to reverse the spring capitulation at Bucharest, and to decide that Georgia and Ukraine will be Nato’s next members. By drawing the line clearly, we are not provoking Russia, but doing just the opposite: letting them know that aggressive behaviour will result in costs that they will not want to bear, thus stabilising a critical seam between Russia and the West.

 ... Russia did not invade Georgia with diplomats or roubles, but with tanks. This is a security threat, and the proper forum for discussing security threats on the border of a Nato member – yes, Europe, this means Turkey – is Nato.

Saying this may cause angst in Europe’s capitals, but now is the time to find out if Nato can withstand a potential renewed confrontation with Moscow, or whether Europe will cause Nato to wilt. Far better to discover this sooner rather than later, when the stakes may be considerably higher.

What is interesting about Issues is that they do not go away even when we do not want to look at them.

'Europe' (in this case the EU) finds some things Just Too Difficult.

One example. Which countries are in Europe? This simple question is highly unsimple and (worse) uncomfortable, since to answer it clearly opens the prospect of EU membership to those countries who qualify.

Those EU members who (a) do not want much further enlargement and (b) see the EU above all as some sort of balance to the USA do not want to think about bringing any more of the former Soviet republics into the European fold. To do so opens questions about Russia's role which (they think) are best left unopened.

Alas for them the Russian intervention in Georgia does open that question.

So, EU. Are we going to stand nervously inside our fence listening to the cries for help of people looking remarkably like Europeans hammering at the gate as they get savaged by bears?

Back in the West, there is a health and safety policy I have not seen before here at Aquatica, the new water-park next to SeaWorld in Orlando.

As one waits in line for a good splashy ride, a tape-recording in a prissy male Australian voice tells us all that:

Your security is our number one concern. Therefore, lifeguards may not make eye-contact when speaking to you. Nothing personal, mates. No worries!

Huh?

Does eye-contact with lifeguards make some people feel insecure? Or is it that the lifeguards' beady eyes must be roving ceaselessly to spot potential trouble and so they may not have time to alight on you, so please do not feel offended? Something else?

I have sent a message to Customer Relations to ask. Always nice to know what is going on.

Update: almost instantaneous and friendly replies from Aquatica saying that indeed the point is that the lifeguards need to be looking everywhere so may not have eyes for you when talking. I have pointed out that that is not clear from the way the warning is phrased. Over to senior management.

Here is Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mikhail Gorbachev piously enjoining people in the Caucasus to live together nicely:

The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia's separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. Each time successive Georgian leaders tried to impose their will by force - both in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, where the issues of autonomy are similar - it only made the situation worse...

What happened on the night of August 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against "small, defenceless Georgia" is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity...

... Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of US instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of Nato membership, emboldened Georgian leaders.

... Small nations of the Caucasus do have a history of living together. It has been demonstrated that a lasting peace is possible, that tolerance and cooperation can create conditions for normal life and development...

The international community's long-term aim could be to create a sub-regional system of security and cooperation that would make any provocation, and the very possibility of crises such as this one, impossible...

What a superb performance. These Russian communists sure have staying-power.

A couple of the more obvious points:

1)     The roots of this problem are not to be found in 1991, but rather in the preceding decades of Soviet brutalisation of Georgia which continued while said Gorbachev was still in power. Eg this example of the Gorbachev communists tackling the National Question in Georgia in 1989:

At the dawn, the Soviet special task forces attacked the demonstration with sharpened spades and poisonous gases, killing twenty-two demonstrators, mostly women and teens. Some two thousands were left sick for weeks and months, in hospitals and at home, from the toxic gases. The brutality of the Soviet forces against the peaceful demonstrators was recorded on the tape and shocked entire Soviet Union. A number of cases of ethnic hatred by the Soviet soldiers was attested. As witnesses recalled, some soldiers, while battering victims with trenching spades, were yelling "This is what you get for Stalin."

2)     Gorbachev insinuates that Georgia is to blame for the current violence, egged on by the USA. No mention of the dismal Russian record in South Ossetia over the past decade or so.

3)     Most impressively, Gorbachev calls for a "sub-regional system of security and cooperation". That is Communist for "just give us back the Soviet empire and leave us Russians alone and all will be well". The whole problem is that parts of the former Soviet Union and indeed parts of Russia itself do not want to be in Russia's 'sub-regional security system'. Why should they be, when Russia is giving them only insecurity and lumpen corruption?

Gorbachev deservedly crashed from power because he believed in replacing discredited Soviet Imperialism with a fizzy and brightly packaged new product, Soviet Imperialism Lite.

Seems he is still selling it. And that the Guardian is still buying it.

Welcome Instapundit readers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

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

Edward Lucas again:

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

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

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

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

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

But he is as defiant as ever:

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

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

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

Whatever. Back to Kraftwerk.

Here is Future One. Martin Jacques gloating over 'western impotence' as evidenced by our inability to get what we wanted in Burma or Zimbabwe.

In the parallel moral universe of MJ, South Africa's President Mbeki has "scored a major diplomatic triumph" by getting the two main parties in Zimbabwe to the negotiating table.

If allowing one of the most dismally incompetent and vicious leaders in world history to ignore his defeat in an election and cling on to power is a triumph for Guardian readers, yes, well done Thabo!

Meanwhile In Burma the West could not intervene and ended up quietly channelling its assistance to cyclone-ravaged Burma via ASEAN, "the obvious and desirable course of action".

Yes, Martin, how obvious and desirable it is that thousands of people die for lack of the assistance we generously offered, helpfully to demonstrate Western impotence to Guardian readers.

Here is Future Two. Kevin Kelly talks about the next 5000 days of the World Wide Web and the profound transformations coming our way.

Set aside 20 minutes of your life to listen. And to think.

Future Two will defeat the banal emptiness of Future One.

It rolls out to the planet, including Zim and Burma in due course, the true new power of 'the West': connectivity, transparency and individual freedom.

And sure, as Asia and Africa and the Middle East take up these values 'the West' will have a lot to think about. New syntheses of power and responsibility will emerge. All very complicated.

But the problems we and our leaders face are all about managing Western success and indeed grasping  the scale of it, not managing failure.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at Harvard in 1978:

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations.

Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.

Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.

Was he writing the script for The Dark Knight?

Buying things is a redistribution of wealth.

Wood?

Meet Axe.

When you interfere with a natural process, there are consequences, not all of them good — and you should be mindful of them. It’s not just fish that end up getting hurt.

Via Brian Barder, this really good - and meaty - assessment of the current plight of Kosovo by Jeremy Harding.

It in fact headlines the Kosovo situation, but really it is about the Limits of Diplomacy - how far can countries on their own or in teams act deliberately (a) to change things and (b) for the better?

A couple of my own speeches have attempted to tackle this Limit from different Balkan angles. But the arguments apply just as well to 'assistance' for Africa, or intervention in Iraq, or the Korean War or whichever example you choose.

The awesome fact about Kosovo is that many billions of UN dollars and EU Euros have been poured into this tiny territory not much bigger than North Yorkshire.

And the results? According to Jeremy Harding, not good:

If intervention was supposed to bring about development, which optimists see as a prelude to civility, it has not been a success. The most startling features of Kosovo, now that the cleansing of the Serbian minority is on hold, are the poverty of the province – for Albanians and Serbs alike – and the pitiful economy that keeps it locked in.

Despite the creation of a small millionaire class, 45 per cent of its inhabitants are below the poverty level (unable to meet basic needs). Around 15 per cent live in extreme poverty, earning less than a euro a day ... Earlier this year, the British government put infant mortality in Kosovo at ‘35 to 49 deaths per thousand live births’ – at least twice as high as the rest of Serbia and greater than that in Mexico or the Occupied Territories.

How much have we paid to get this outcome?

Much of the disappointment centres on the fact that UN expenditure, now in the order of £25 billion, was ill judged: too much spent on traineeships and seminars – ‘institution-building’, ‘capacity-building’, ‘technical assistance’ – not nearly enough on infrastructure.

Let's recall the wit and wisdom of Major General Gen Raul Cunha:

The situation here is not brilliant and we are a lot to blame. We, I mean the western international community. We have maybe invested here in the worst way and we were not very careful with the money. Each time I take a look at the numbers, I notice that 80% of the investment was made on consultancy and capacity building and, practically speaking, we didn’t build any capacities.

Commenting on Brian Barder's gloomy Kosovo analysis, another former British Ambassador Jeremy Varcoe argues for ... Even More:

I consider the EU now has a duty to orchestrate assistance on a sufficiently large scale to kick-start development and to try to rekindle a sense of hope for all the communities, not forgetting all the minority groups, in this limpingly independent state.

No.

No!

Let's try Much Less.

If we start reducing EU assistance to the level we have given eg to Serbia, we begin finally to compel the Kosovo population and its leaders to think long and hard about how they might use the modest resources of their bleak Balkan plateau to make something like an honest living in today's Europe.  

This will mean some painful political and other sacrifices. Not least a stand by the mass of the population against the violence and corruption presided over by a few powerful Albanian clans. And adopting a much more realistic attitude to how they need to cooperate with their neighbours.

There is only one thing worse than being abandoned by the International Community.

Being rescued by the International Comunity.

Here's something new.

A husband-and-wife couple doing a job-share at Ambassador level, for the first time ever, anwhere.

Tom Carter and Carolyn Davidson are off to represent HM The Queen as High Commissioner in Zambia, taking it in turns to run the High Commission for four months at a time.

Here are their careers so far.

Ignoring if we can in the Guardian piece the witty and unexpected reference to Ferrero Rocher chocolates (and the vacuous innacuracy over another senior diplomatic husband and wife team mentioned who are no longer Ambassadors at Post in Bratislava and Vienna respectively), we ask ourselves: is this a Good Idea?

The Guardian article does not tell us. It tweebles on about the grimness of the diplomatic spouse's role, the handiness of the arrangement for the married couple themselves and the 'positive feedback' they had as job-sharing Deputy Head of Mission in Slovakia.

Nothing serious about the main issue: how to advance hard-headed British interests in that tricky part of the world? 

The point of course is that it is, mainly, not a Good Idea. Or at least that it is an idea whose goodness applies only in marginal cases which (HMG hope) do not matter overmuch.

The point of an Ambassador or High Commissioner is to represent British interests in the country concerned. Judgement calls are constantly being required. More often than not, they do not make much of a difference. But sometimes they matter hugely. Even in Africa.

Remember Sandline?

Say that there had been a husband-and-wife jobshare in Sierra Leone during that crucial period. Or in Uzbekistan trying to work out how best to balance all the moral and policy factors Craig Murray was tackling. Or for that matter in Warsaw when the UK EU Presidency was trying to negotiate a complex EU Budget deal.

Is it really likely or even desirable that two professional people in tough situations like that are going to agree fully on the analysis and on the recommendations on tactics and strategy, and will have equally good relations with key local interlocutors and in Whitehall?

One of them will be more credible and effective. When his/her four-month stint ends, is Whitehall going to be pleased to see him/her standing down to do an Open University course rather than grip the crisis?

Obviously not. It is weird even to pose the question.

Thus a job-share at this Ambassadorial level looks to rely on one core and unspoken assumption.

That in the greater scheme of things the job they are sharing is relatively unimportant to permit an experiment of this nature; that the UK's relations with the country concerned - here Zambia - can take some knocks from the obvious inefficiency/inconsistency the arrangement involves.   

Would we try this with China, or Russia, or Pakistan, or India, or France, or the USA?

No. 

And if we did, the countries would ask us to come back in three years or so after the job-share posters left, when we had decided to behave seriously again.

That said, if (as must be the case) the Zambians approved the shared posting, they carry a share of the cost of any mishaps and missed opportunities which occur. 

And, last but not least, good luck to Tom and Carolyn themselves. I am sure they'll give the job their best shot.

Does not all this remind us of the famous Gay Flag problem? How - and where - can the modern Foreign Office safely 'tick the boxes' of political correctness and 'diversity' while expecting to be taken seriously?

Memo to next Government:

• Just Say No to artful diversity dodges of this sort.
• Treat all countries with equal and significant respect
• Take diplomacy seriously

Pressing on through Craig Murray's Murder in Samarkand, we reach Chapter 4 - Diplomacy.

Craig has to present his credentials to President Karimov to assume the full rights and responsibilities of HM Ambassador. These credentials traditionally are formal letters in flamboyantly old-fashioned courteous language language from HM The Queen to the Head of State concerned, recalling the previous Ambassador and introducing the new one.

A diplomatic curiosity. My Portuguese colleague in Belgrade was proud to display on his wall the top copy of his letter of credentials from the President of Portugal to to President Milosevic - Milosevic had fallen from power between the letter issuing and the ceremony to present it, so the Ambassador kept it!

Craig goes to the high profile ceremony armed (to his surprise - no explanation given for this surprise) with authority from the FCO to say some firm sentences on human rights. He describes well his encounter with President Karimov. 

Karimov is a Tough Egg, briefed to pretend to praise the UK on its long democratic traditions and lament the fact that Uzbekistan had fallen under Russian and not British imperial rule - a version of the usual rubbish line used by Bad Leaders to explain away the absence of basic democratic principles in their territory ("Pity poor us - struggling to catch up with you noble Brits, from so far behind!"). 

Karimov congratulates the UK on recent anti-terrorist legislation allowing suspects to be held without trial. Craig describes this as "a striking illustration of just how much encouragement New Labour's attack on civil rights in the UK gives to dictators round the globe". 

Hmm. Not sure they need any such encouragement - and in any case a fraction of the due process available to prisoners under these British laws would go a long way to improve things in somewhere like Uzbekistan.

Karimov responds to Craig's words on human rights with strong words of his own directed at Islamic militants and Russian influence - Uzbekistan had little choice but to respond in an authoritarian way. Craig admits that this speech makes an impression: "while he might be a thug, he was a complex and shrewd one with a profound grasp of detail."

Craig moves on to meet his EU colleagues.

The German Ambassador says that Uzbekistan offers only the illusion of progress. No mention here of Germany's military airbase and political support for Uzbekistan. But the Germans have offered numerous Uzbeks political asylum.

The French Ambassador warns against rocking the boat - the Americans have the major interest in Uzbekistan.

The Italian Ambassador's office is guarded by "three absolutely gorgeous young women ... white low-buttoned blouses exposing a terrific amount of cleavage, hip-hugging black short skirts with stockings and shiny black high heels".

The Italian Ambassador - with hotty support staff like that, why not? - looks like "someone playing God in an old Jimmy Stewart film"; he accuses the Americans of failing to grasp the complexity of a situation, either at the time or in retrospect.

Craig first encounters his US colleague at a lunch he hosts for a visiting IMF delegation. The US Ambassador (supported by the French Ambassador) inclines to give the Uzbekistan authorities the benefit of the doubt on their so-called economic reform programmes. Awkwardness occurs when Craig as the newcomer albeit with some experts' support argues that Uzbekistan statistics may not mean much, if anything:

The lunch established my reputation for being difficult and outspoken, while convincing me that the US were willing to bend any fact in defence of their ally, Karimov.

The next day Craig has a rather bruising private meeting with the US Ambassador, who does not welcome Craig's concerns about human rights abuses. He argues that Karimov is the best available Uzbekistan leader, grappling with real problems caused by Taliban-style militants: "Extreme Islam is itself a kind of institutionalised violence". He gives an example of one case where his personal intervention helped secure convictions of three policemen for murdering a detainee.

Craig then has something of a row with the Uzbekistan Minister for Economic Affairs, arguing over the facts (or otherwise) of Uzbekistan's reform programmes. He departs concluding (not unreasonably?) that the Minister had been talking 'complete rubbish'. 

After these first briefing rounds and being in post and in the region only some 27 days(!), Craig reaches two far-reaching policy conclusions.

That the USA had got its Central Asian policy thoroughly wrong. And that HMG in turn were wrong to follow the US line:

I knew that as Ambassador it was my duty to inform Jack Straw and Whitehall of my view. But I was also aware that it would be acutely unpopular ... saying what I wanted to say was likely to damage my career pretty severely...".

Craig then drafts a pair of telegrams advising in strong terms that HMG do not support more IMF money for Uzbekistan: Uzbekistan's performance does not merit it, whatever political deal might have been done by the Americans to secure use of Uzbek air facilities. Without real economic reform poverty would get worse, breeding more Islamic fundamentalism:

You do not encourage real reform by applauding fake reform. The poor of Uzbekistan should not become the victims of September 11.

A second telegram weighs even more heavily into the morality of US support for the Karimov regime with its totalitarian controls and use of torture:

If Karimov is on 'our' side, then this war [on terror] cannot be simply between the forces of good and evil. It must be about more complex things, like securing the long-term US military presence in Uzbekistan ... 11 September had also been the anniversary of the overthrow of the democratically elected President Allende of Chile ... we should have moved on from the disastrous policy of US-backed dictatorships.

Craig knows that he was going 'way out on a limb'. His junior colleague Christ Hurst wisely opines that this telegram was "pretty long for a resignation letter".

The telegrams issue. The text of a draft version of the first one is here. It is in fact rather better than Craig's excited description in the book suggests.

A letter appears from Craig's line manager in the FCO, Simon Butt. Craig is 'overfocused on human rights', plus discussing human rights cases on open phone lines likely to be monitored by the Uzbek security services. Craig's performance is causing concern...

So we get closer to the heart of the book.

What is happening here?

A not so senior Ambassador, after less than a month in a new post in a region he has not served in previously, pops up and tells HMG in telegrams circulated far and wide round Whitehall and the British diplomatic network that they have got things seriously Wrong.

I think Craig gets it Wrong.

First, as he must have known well, such a noisy and abrupt opening shot was going to annoy more senior people than it persuaded.

Note: Yes, I know that Craig received many positive emails for these first telegrams, including indeed one from me.

But work which is praised by people with little to lose and/or not working on the problem is not always the same as work which, even if couched in robust terms critical of the current line, is seen by key people at HQ as basically reasonable and constructive.

Second, Craig projects no sense at all of explaining how, given the awfulness of the Uzbekistan regime, he thinks we might make practical if probably painfully incremental progress in changing it, and what HMG might lose if we decide to try that path.

Third, denouncing the Americans' policy in such abusive terms while not explaining that eg our EU partner Germans too are doing their fair share of cosying up to Karimov is monochrome, even banal analysis. Plus it lacks operational credibility - if the Americans do have the main Western weight in Uzbekistan (and have just suffered 9/11) how to woo them in Washington and in Tashkent towards what we might see as a more 'balanced' policy? Is telling them that they're blundering oafs really the way most likely to get the results Craig wants?

Fourth, there seems to be nothing said about Russian ambitions - maybe in the Greater Scheme of Things it is just better that Western governments engage busily with Karimov, hoping slowly to turn that society in a more pluralist direction, than that reactionary post-Soviet instincts emanating from Moscow recover their strength.

Finally, the world does not give us a choice between Good and Bad options. Often there looks to be only a range of Pretty Bad options available, some with longer-term implications than others. Maybe using an oppressive regime in Uzbekistan to hit hard at an even worse regime in Afghanistan is, for now, the Least Bad Option, and so good hard-headed diplomatic business?

In short, Craig throws himself in a tabloidy, unprofessional, unconvincing  way at a hugely complicated international bundle of issues, asserting (in effect) that there is a simple way forward.

Not too surprising that those in the policy chain in London were irritated at Craig's implication that they too were a bunch of duffers missing all the obvious points, and that they quickly started to wonder what they were now dealing with?

Professional Judgement Rating: 2/10.  Makes numerous important points about the dire human rights situation in Uzbekistan, but shows no appreciation of how matters might be taken forward in a way likely to achieve better results on that front as well as on the many other key policy challenges HMG face in the region. Worrying tendency so early in a posting to get carried away with his own naive rhetoric, losing perspective.

These celebrity revivals are sooooo exhausting.

First we have the long-awaited return to the stage of Joker Karadzic, although without his funny costume and disguise he was really not that scary.

And with him returns Batman Holbrooke, the distinguished former American diplomat whose considerable ego and ruthlessness helped bring peace to the Balkans.

Holbrooke grumbles that Karadzic was not arrested once the Bosnian war was over:

In an interview on CNN aired after the court hearing, Mr Holbrooke said: "I negotiated a very tough deal. He had to step down immediately from both his posts as president of the Serb part of Bosnia and as head of his party. And he did so.

"But when he disappeared, he put out a piece of disinformation that I had cut a deal with him - if he disappeared we wouldn't pursue him. That was a completely false statement."

Mr Holbrooke also said it was a grave mistake that Karadzic was not arrested after Nato forces deployed to Bosnia following the peace agreement.

"He should have been arrested. His green Mercedes was parked in its parking spot outside his office for six months after (the peace deal) each day. The Nato commander at the time refused to arrest him even though he had the authority to do so. It was a terrible mistake."

Agreed. A terrible and expensive mistake.

But by whom exactly?

The commander of the NATO Rapid Reaction Force in Bosnia in early 1996 was General Mike Walker (British).

Further up the NATO chain were two Americans, Admiral Leighton Smith as commander of IFOR and at the top of the NATO command chain General George Joulwan, Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

Holbrooke in another interview blames Admiral Smith by name:

... Karadzic should have been captured in the first few months after [the signing of the] Dayton [Peace Accords], in early 1996. Even though everybody knew where he was, he was not brought to justice because the NATO commander, Adm. Leighton Smith, failed to exercise his authority. Smith said it was not a mission of his command, which was a terrible thing to do. Had Karadzic been arrested back then, the history of the Balkans would have been much easier during the last 13 years ...

Weedy NATO fails again!

Really?

The point of course is that the arrest of Karadzic required a top-level political decision, since the risks of the Dayton deal breaking up if it all went wrong had to be factored in.

Thus:

... the military warned of casualties and Serb retaliation if an operation to arrest him took place. They said they would carry it out only if ordered to do so directly by the President; thus if anything went wrong the blame would fall on the civilians who had insisted on the operation, especially on the President himself.

This was a heavy burden to lay on any President, particularly during an election year, and it was hardly surprising that no action was taken to mount, or even plan, an operation against Karadzic in 1996 or 1997 (sic).

A 'heavy burden'?

Or is taking a tough strategic decision exactly what a President is paid to do?

Who wrote that politically disobliging passage anyway? No fan of the then US President Clinton, obviously!

The Riddler? 

It is not obvious to me what is wrong with the argument that says, “The criminals already have guns; gun control disarms the rest of us.” I don’t know how many times I have heard that view sneered at, or laughed at, or pointed to as an infallible marker of stupidity. But I haven’t ever heard it seriously confronted, let alone refuted.

An open-minded Brit visits a US gun show and comes away ... changed?

But of course there is a political dimension. Aside from other motivations–sport, self-defence – the gun-show universe is about pride, self-reliance, and resentment at being bossed around. Distinctively American traits, wouldn’t you say? Best in moderation, no doubt – but still, where would the country be without those attitudes? I may get thrown out of Georgetown for this, but I say, good for them.

"Here in the UK we need more pride, more self-reliance and much more resistance to being bossed around."

Discuss.

The FT attempts to describe how this morass of trade rules complexity has hit the rocks (Note: deliberate mixed metaphor). See also this.

When one has worked in Diplomacy for as long as I have, one realises just how little one knows.

So on this subject I have primitive instincts/prejudices in favour of 'free trade' as opposed to eg 'fair trade'. But if asked to write a succinct and sensible two-page essay on how world trade talks work, I could not do so.

Obviously some of it is about what actually happens, and some of it is about what might happen, and how different 'safety nets' can be used in case of things going 'wrong' (NB not easily defined what that means) on a local level.

Plus a lot depends on the individual power of specific national and international lobbies, with US elections and no doubt many others round the world looming.

And predicting what any deal will mean in practice with oil and food prices in such a state of flux round the world is next to impossible

Thus from the FT:

The US created some momentum last Tuesday by proposing to reduce its allowable ceiling for farm subsidies to $15bn (€9.6bn, £7.5bn). The figure was a couple of billion dollars below Washington’s previous offer and much less than existing limits of $48bn, though – as Brazil and India promptly pointed out – about twice its current actual spending.

It appears from this that the US slashed its farm subsidy safety net in this area from a potential $48bn to a measly $15bn. Pretty generous, huh? But Brazil/India pointed out that in fact the US was spending only some $7bn, so keeping the safety net at double that was suspicious.

See also this:

The US, with covering fire from some developing world agricultural exporters such as Uruguay, insisted that India and China open their rice and cotton markets; India and China, backed by other heavy hitters such as Indonesia, said that the US was asking them to sacrifice too much.

It does not sound from this as if the USA is going to be noisily blamed for this trade round failing. China and India as fast developing economies want to have their rice cakes and eat them - they want maximum freedom to export and maximum options to protect their domestic base. Nothing surprising there, but other developing countries might think that with the success they currently are enjoying they might take a few more 'risks'.

It is all horribly complicated. Business Standard:

The battle to conclude negotiations for Doha in agriculture and market-opening for industrial products broke down due to unbridgeable differences between India and the United States over the trigger and remedy for using the Special Safeguards Mechanism (SSM) by developing countries to check sudden surges in imports of vulnerable farm products.

After 12 days of intense negotiations, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath and his US counterpart US Trade Representative Susan Schwab failed to agree on a figure for using the SSM.

India proposed that if imports cross 115 per cent over a base period, it should be allowed to impose safeguard duties that are 25 to 30 per cent over its bound duties on products taking zero cut.

Uuurgh. How far in all that are they talking about things likely to happen in real life, as opposed to mere potentially destabilising possibilities? How many special interests stand to benefit corruptly round the world from the jungle of local rules needed to make such detailed provisions work?

Finally, the human factor. These articles bring out that the personalities of individual negotiators count for a lot, as does the guile or otherwise of the person leading the process, here WTO DG Pascal Lamy. He gambled that he could close some well known large gaps, and (says the FT) lost.

What next?

All being well that the main players will go off and lick their wounds for a few months without rocking the global trade boat too much in the meantime.

Then try again.

And hope that in the meantime those who lose out from rather less globalisation (ie the very poor) don't perish on a scale and in a way which allows anyone involved in these talks to be blamed.

Oliver Miles picks up on my reference to the possible indictment by the ICC of the President of Sudan and commends to me to an article by Palestinian author and editor Rami Khouri: Whose Crimes? Against Whose Humanity?

This is a good article of a certain Arab liberal genre - well worth a read for Big Picture thoughts on international justice from a 'non-Western' point of view.

Khouri notes that the ICC charges have to be taken seriously:

The critics of the ICC should not be dismissed as hopeless despots, nor should the court’s potential indictment of President Bashir be dismissed as neo-colonialism administered through the UN Security Council that asked for the investigation in the first place.

And the facts are tough:

The chilling details in the prosecutor’s summary of the case revolve around charges that include acts of murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, rape, attacks on civilians, and pillaging towns and villages. They state that Bashir “masterminded and implemented” a plan to destroy three of the largest ethnic groups in Darfur (the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa) by using the armed forces, the Janjaweed militias, and the entire government apparatus, to specifically and purposefully target civilians.

The charges state that over 35,000 were killed and 2.7 million displaced, and refugee and displaced persons camps were also attacked and harassed, in a policy aimed at destroying these people as distinct groups or tribes.

However:

[T]hese criminal charges against Arabs in Sudan have to be weighed against three other realities: massive crimes committed against Arabs by their own leaders in other Arab countries; crimes committed by Israel; and, the mass suffering, death, destitution, refugee flows, and other consequences of invading foreign forces -- especially the American-led troops in Iraq.

Will any of the crimes by Arab, Israeli or American leaders be equally investigated in due course? ... Criminal acts must be investigated and punished wherever they occur; and, the same standard of culpability and morality should be applied to all situations around the world.

The moral force and political validity of the rule of law emanate from its universality above all other attributes. Investigating and indicting Sudanese leaders while ignoring the crimes of Arab, Israeli, American and other officials are seen as a sickening example of double standards that reek of colonialism and tinged with racism. Yet we cannot ignore crimes by Sudanese in Sudan by arguing that other criminals and killers in the region are not prosecuted.

Sickening double standards? Racism?!

This issue deserves more than a blog posting, as it is at the heart of a lot of diplomatic work.

It goes to the deep legitimacy of what we all do - the legitimacy each government thinks it has, and the legitimacy others ascribe to those actions and their own. And Legitimacy is one important aspect of Effectiveness.

Still, a quick thought or two.

I happen to think that the world is becoming more democratic, albeit in an unruly and maybe ultimately danerously anarchic way. It is just harder to push people around at the local, national or international level. Authority is challenged head-on. People armed with hi-tech devices can quote back the law and organise to thwart attempts by ostensibly more powerful forces to control them.

Thus charges of 'double standards' resonate and circulate fast. They point up operational inconsistency and/or some sort of hypocrisy - why are you being tougher on X than on Y?

Yet in my experience the claim of 'double standards' almost always comes from leaders or commentators defending policies/practices based on no standards at all.

In Western democracies such as our own, leaders have to defend themselves in great detail. Papers leak. The media are free in any normal sense of the word. Elections come round - voters can throw out those they dislike.

So if those leaders are pursuing some sort of inconsistent/hypocritical or unwise/unjust policy, they are not going to do so quietly. There is real-time pressure at home and overseas - accountability - to correct mistakes or change course.

Contrast this with the 'Arab world'. Almost no leader is freely elected. The media are not free - they tend to be crude propaganda outlets. There is no comparable way to apply criticism and force change. Human rights abuses are far greater across that region than in 'the West'. No meaningful accountability.

These deficiencies are home-grown. The overwhelming mass of the millions of Muslims who have died in recent decades have been killed not by Western military action but by other Muslims, killing under one or other banner of political/religious fanaticism.

US-led intervention in Iraq has led to deaths. It also has saved many deaths which the Saddam regime would have inflicted, as it had inflicted in the past. Do saved lives not count too?

Is Israel to blame for this?

How are we to have 'universality' in international justice? What is the point of including on international tribunals or UN human rights fora representatives from countries/regions rotten with injustice and oppression?

Here's my solution.

Tha Arab world calls a Summit. It admits that it is in a historical and moral cul-de-sac, and underperforming accordingly. It calls for a transformation in human rights (above all for women). It opens the way to UN-supervised free and fair elections in every state within a year. It calls for full religious tolerance. It calls for top-end open dealings in public money, and an end to corruption. Those states which fail to sustain democratic pluralism are to be excluded from taking part in any international fora pronouncing on justice or human rights.

A couple of decades pass to allow the new governments to bring in these momentous changes and be replaced democratically and peacefully. Then the Arab world proclaims itself ready to take on the responsibilities of applying universal reasonable standards in a reasonable way. Indeed it is ready.

As its standards are now close to if not surpassing those of Israel, that dynamic changes for the better too.

Until all that happens, the Arab world accepts that even if others exhibit 'double standards', those standards are higher than the standards the Arab world itself is now able to deliver. So in a spirit of purposeful humility but also hard-headed ambition, work is needed to catch up.

Bosnia's President Izetbegovic made many political mistakes. But he was a brave and insightful man.

I understand that he got up at a meeting of the Islamic world in Saudi Arabia and told the assembled Islamic leaders that they had to learn from the West, where democratic principles and practices were simply better. Indeed.

The true pernicious racism in all this lies not in the likes of Bush and Blair bullying brown-skinned people.

It lies rather in the zeal of Western chattering classes to explain away brown-skinned people's dismal treatment of each other. In the idea that 'democracy can never work in the Middle East'.

Can't we all do better than this?

Peter Preston gives a rather overwritten analysis of Serbia and its prospects for joining the EU - see eg the obscure Paul Anka reference.

Why, he asks, is the EU mumbling about bringing the former Yugoslavia space (plus Albania) into its ranks?

Partly because the EU mumbles about everything.

Partly because countries like France plan to hold EU Widening hostage to get more EU Deepening (but on French terms, bien sur)

Also because there must be a school of thought out there that the former Yugoslavia should have joined nicely in the 1990s and had one vote - is this all an insane plot by the Balkanites to get themselves six or seven votes?

The arrest of Karadzic prompts another thought.

What if Tadic's Serbia has had a Clever Idea? To hand over all those war criminals, dash for EU standards and join the EU as a polite, penitent, respectable modern country. Even now Serbia is probably better run than some new EU member states one can think of. 

Serbia will believe with good reason there is no prospect of Kosovo joining the EU at that speed - its insititutional base is too weak.

And the point is this.

Once Serbia joins the EU it will be able to Define Terms for Kosovo, just as tiny Cyprus defines terms for Turkey.

Discuss.

One of the things British diplomats do in foreign parts is study the local media, to keep up with the obvious news but also to follow in a deeper way what makes those societies tick.

Armed with good basic background understanding, they then fan out to talk to the editors and pundits and politicians to ask the Big Questions.

Then they send (or at least they should send) terse, insightful reports to London with recommendations on what HMG should be doing.

Meanwhile foreign diplomats in London are studying our press too, to see what makes us tick.

And what do they make of - and report home about - pieces like this?

A familar argument heard against the the 1996 Dayton Peace Accords in Sarajevo is that in setting up a two Entity structure for post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina they 'legitimized genocide', namely by accepting Republika Srpska as one of the two Entities (the other being called, somewhat confusingly, the 'Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina').

Hence the arrest and expected conviction of Karadzic are being presented by some Bosniak leaders as a handy step towards ending the results of his actions, namely terminating Republika Srpska itself:

"Justice is not complete until we erase the genocide project that is still alive today. Radovan Karadzic has been arrested, Slobodan Milosevic is dead, but their project Republika Srpska still exists,” said Haris Silajdzic, the Bosniac member of the state’s rotating presidency.

The basic problem with this argument is that the Bosniac leadership themselves played a large part in setting up RS.

In 1994 the Americans were fed up with the spectacle of Muslims/Bosniacs fighting Croats rather than uniting to fight Serbs, so they leant hard on the Muslim/Bosniac and Croat leaderships to join forces. This took the form of the strangely named 'Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina', covering territory the two sides' forces controlled.

This formation was given constitutional status at the Dayton Peace talks, but it took almost a year to set it up formally thereafter.

The very basic point is that this was a sort of unique diplomatic Category Mistake.

Why?

Simple. Because by setting up the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a part of Bosnia and Herzegovina on what was effectively an ethnic basis (ie a space controlled by and for Muslims/Bosniacs and Croats), the Americans (egged on by the Germans) basically gave the Serbs the core of what they wanted, ie something not that.

In other words, if the whole point of Bosnian Serb nationalism and Karadzicism was for the Serbs to be 'separate', the clumsy creation of the 'Muslim/Croat Federation' to solve a short-term military problem achieved precisely that political goal for them!

This 'ethnic' nomenclature lives on