Category Archives: Political issues

1..2..3..And They’re Off!!

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Well, with the summer party universités d’été done and everyone going back to work, the run-in begins in earnest to the French presidential election. This shows every sign of being very interesting indeed. After all, it’s the biggest direct mandate for any politician in Europe and the second-biggest in the whole democratic world (I exclude Russia because whatever it is, it ain’t democracy), so it ought to be worth watching anyway. This one is especially interesting, though, as everyone has a lot to prove.

The Socialists are desperate to recover from the disaster of 2002 and regain some power. Whether they can do this, and how they do it, is going to be a bellwether for the Left throughout the world. Inside the party, there is a whole world of bitter conflict to work out. The extreme-left is desperately trying to unite, in the hope of capitalising on the victory against the CPE and eventually getting some tangible results from their combined 12-15 per cent of the first round vote. After all, whatever they hoped to achieve, you can be sure that a Chirac-Le Pen runoff wasn’t it.

On the Right, there is an even more savage internal struggle in progress. The blue-eyed boy, Nicolas Sarkozy, is lining up for the final straight with his bid to bring something eerily like Tony Blair to France – free markets and mass surveillance – whilst Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin still hopes to seize the succession to Jacques Chirac. This overlays the old distinction between the Gaullists and the “classical right”. But what’s this?
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The AFOE Plan

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Jonathan of The Head Heeb sums up the detail of the US-French UNSC draft on Lebanon, and it looks eerily like the AFOE consensus solution. Key points, as we predicted, are how to arrange for everyone to claim victory..

If all these hurdles are overcome, then the Israel-Hizbullah war will end on terms that allow everyone to gain something. Israel will have weakened Hizbullah and will get a stable northern border for the first time in more than 30 years, Hizbullah will be able to claim that it fought the IDF to the end, and the Lebanese government will obtain sovereignty over the entire country as well as a chance to resolve its outstanding disputes with Israel. France, as Lebanon’s once and future patron, will increase its regional influence, and even the United States will (against all odds) have played a critical role in brokering the settlement.

This means that the proposed resolution is, at this point, about the best possible end that can be imagined for the whole sorry mess. A war in which all parties can claim achievements is one that is less likely to fester and more likely to provide a foundation upon which the underlying issues can be settled. As Israel has learned from bitter experience, a draw that leads to a resolution of the root conflict is preferable to a victory that doesn’t – the Yom Kippur War ultimately resulted in peace with Egypt while the Six Day War led to nothing but an endless nightmare of occupation. If this war, like the war of 1973, leaves all parties proud but chastened, the not-defeat may have better results in the long term than an unequivocal battlefield victory.

Meanwhile, in Austria

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I’ve said before that Austrian politics has a really sick character you hardly find anywhere else, a sort of utter blankness of principle and whorish debasement in pursuit of preferment that would embarrass Silvio Berlusconi. But, Jörg Haider has managed to excel himself yet again.

Recap. Once upon a time there was the FPÖ, a rather nasty hard-right outfit that got into government by offering the mainstream conservative party, the ÖVP, a helping hand when it lost an election. Cue shock from many (mostly social democratic) European capitals and (practically meaningless) “sanctions” from the EU. A couple of years on, the sanctions are off and there has been a world of scandals. The FPÖ splits after its titular leader Susanne Riess-Passer, a relative of Haider’s who acts as his representative on Earth and Austria’s Vice-Chancellor, becomes dangerously independent and Haider launches a separate party conference to seize back control. Riess-Passer shuffles off to obscurity. Eventually, Haider and the Carinthian provincial party secede and rename themselves the BZÖ, using the colour orange rather than the FPÖ’s traditional blue.

The Chancellor promptly switches the new-old Haider group into his coalition instead of the rump (and never was the term more appropriate) FPÖ. By this manoeuvre, note, the Haider group has neatly ensured they don’t have to deal with the FPÖ’s debts, which are substantial.

Now, with elections due in October, Haider announces his BZÖ will campaign as “BZÖ – Die Freiheitlichen” and mostly in blue, with various old FPÖ stalwarts like Peter Westenthaler (who sat the whole thing out whilst holding a well-paid sinecure with industrialist Frank Stronach’s car-parts empire) and the execrable Helene Partik-Pablé. (She is remembered for explaining to parliament that “black people do not just look different, they are different, and especially aggressive”, and that “babies flee from a black shape placed over their cradle” in the same context.) Not just that, but his campaign material will carry a large stamp reading “The Original!”

Partik-Pablé does not seem to have improved with keeping. Her latest campaign is to examine the Geneva Conventions and the Refugee Convention to see if they are up to date. Gentle reader, the prospect buggers the imagination. Haider’s old followers in the original FPÖ are now appealing to the courts (they sure ain’t appealing to anyone else) to stop him going to the polls with their intellectual property.

Commenter “Munis” on Der Standard’s website sums it up:

ich kann einfach diesen widerwärtigen machtgeilen, arroganten Gnom, diesen neoliberalen Ex-Mascherlträger aus Hietzing einfach nicht mehr sehen und riechen. Sowas von überheblich und herablassend, sowas von charakterlos, untergriffig, diffamierend und wortbrüchig (wenn wir dritter werden dann gibts Opposition etc.). Ich frage Euch ganz ehrlich: Wie kann man so etwas wählen?? Diese ÖVP kotzt mich nur mehr an.

In English: “I can’t bear to see and smell this neo-liberal ex-goatee wearer, this arrogant gnome disgusting with lust for power any longer. There’s something both low and haughty, dishonourable, underhand, libellous, and liable to break his word (“if we come third we’ll go into opposition”) about him. I ask you, honestly – how could anyone elect him? This ÖVP makes me sicker and sicker.”

I remember the Austrian writer Robert Menasse saying, during a demo back in the spring of 2002, that Haider was a good thing for the country because he would force the Social Democrats to raise their game. I disagreed. Menasse told me I knew nothing of dialectics.

Coherent

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AFP, via the Beirut Daily Star reports that the US is to find the Lebanese army $10 million to buy equipment needed to patrol the southern border and, presumably, keep Hezbollah in hand. For one thing, it doesn’t sound much. For another thing, wouldn’t it be an idea to get the Israelis to stop bombing the Lebanese army before trying to rearm it?

Meanwhile, a glimpse of our leaders in action. What with that and Secretary Rice’s recital at ASEAN, it frankly makes Jacques Chirac look like a good example.

Update: Comments on this entry are now closed as the thread has got frankly dreadful.

OK, Scott – hour of Europe not at hand

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Well, it now looks as if the window of opportunity for a ceasefire in the Levant has slammed shut on the fingers of its proponents. With the destruction of a UNTSO observation post, the mobilisation of three Israeli reserve divisions (by contrast, the total force employed so far has been one division-plus), Hezbollah’s successful defence of positions close to the Israeli border and their first launch of a long-range rocket, and the Israeli government’s claim that the world has given them permission to fight on, all parties to the conflict now seem to be giving war a chance.

If anything arose from the debate here, it was that the employment of an international intervention force might be useful in the context of a ceasefire and mutual concessions. There is no ceasefire, and even if by accident, the danger such forces would be in has been underscored. Worse, Hezbollah has tasted enough success to want to keep going, and the Israelis seem riled enough by this to escalate further. It is therefore unlikely anything would be achieved by sending NRF-7 to wander around the dry hills of the Litani valley.

Jacques Chirac’s remark that NATO, as the “armed wing of the West”, should not be involved is interesting. It admits both a Scott Martens/Sam Huntington reading-that NATO plus a few others roughly equals “the West”, so getting involved in a fight in the Middle East would be a step perilously close to religious war-and also a more limited one. Chirac may also have meant that any force should sail under the EUFOR or UN banner, or that a so-called “Virtual NATO” solution – a UN force made up of NATO member states’ forces, like KFOR or the intervention in East Timor – might be preferable.

It’s worth putting on record, however, that European forces (NRF7) were indeed available and ready when the crisis erupted.

You say that like it’s a bad thing

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Says Scott: Why should outsiders participate in saving face for Israel and in solidifying what will no doubt be perceived in the Middle East as a Hezbollah victory?

Well, if a situation emerges where Israel can save face and Hezbollah is simultaneously able to claim victory, we’d be fools not to seize this opportunity. Put it another way, if both parties can convince at least themselves that they are coming away from the battlefield with their interests advanced, they are likely to stick to the agreement.

Think about it – if the Israelis, as seems possible, settle for a token retreat and an international force whilst giving up the Shebaa farms, thus terminating Hezbollah’s claim to legitimacy, and Hezbollah can meanwhile be satisfied with the feeling that they have beaten off an Israeli onslaught, the northern dimension of the Israel/Palestine conflict is not far at all from solution. There is nothing left to argue about, except disarmament (or something akin to it).

It’s unfortunate that both sides will probably claim they won it by force of arms, but it can’t be helped. In fact, Hezbollah’s extension of its self-declared insecurity zone with bigger rockets and successful delaying action on the frontier probably had more to do with it than the Israeli freakout blitz.

The only problem is the fish, of course. Time for a ceasefire, before the maniacs talking about “doing this for the whole Sunni world” get a hearing in Israel.

Maybe the hour of Europe is at hand

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…this time? The signs do appear to being pointing to a possible employment of European forces in Lebanon, not least with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and others expressing a preference for “EU countries” or NATO – which is mostly the same thing, especially militarily – to supply troops to any peacekeeping/peace enforcement mission there.

The reason why particularly EU forces might be wanted is that the experience with UNIFIL, the existing UN force there, is not great. As what could be termed a “classic” UN force – blue helmets, white AFVs, no Chapter VII authority, and often drawn from neutral and third world armies – it never had a chance of keeping the PLO or Hezbollah out, and neither did it have a chance of standing up to the Israelis. For their part, the Israelis would obviously like any international force sent to the Litani to be effective. And if it is not effective, it won’t protect the Lebanese from the Israelis either!

Unfortunately, effective international forces for this job are in short supply. The US is out of the question, even if it could spare the troops. British armed forces are frantically overstretched. It seems unlikely to say the least that India would get involved, Pakistan would not be welcome, neither would Turkey for different reasons. Vladimir Putin has said that Russia would support a peace force, but its deployable forces are small, and a dose of the Grozny approach to peacekeeping would do everyone a power of bad. That doesn’t really leave anyone else.

Update below the fold.
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Mr Potato Head

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Sometime during the group phase of the last World Cup, a lefty German newspaper, the Berlin-based taz, compared Poland’s current president to a potato. I’m sure that there was more to it than that, but the original version has disappeared into pay-per-view is here, and my reading knowledge of Polish isn’t what it was a decade ago. If yours is better, there’s a Polish version is here, do let me know.

Anyway, the satire was part of a series called “Rogues Who Want to Change the World,” and Kaczynski was in there with other figures you’d expect from an alternative daily, including Chancellor Merkel and German President Köhler. Whether the comparison was apt in Kaczynski’s case will be left as an exercise for readers.

I would think that the occasional irritating comparison is part of the price of being president, and you’d probably think the same, but maybe that’s why Mr Kaczynski is president of Poland and we’re not. Plus the matter of being Polish. Because being president means that there’s a law that says insulting you is a crime. Up to two years in the Polski pen, and Warsaw prosecutors are, even as I write this, investigating whether to take out an EU arrest warrant for the Berlin-based satirists. The smart money is on no, but smart has not exactly been the controlling adjective in what has the makings of a good silly-season story. (Quite a number of European states have these “don’t insult the president/state/ruling house/whatever laws,” and they are usually defended with the assertion that they are never used. Well.)

Godwin’s law, of course, has long since been violated, by Poland’s foreign minister no less. The president skipped a meeting with German and French leaders just before they went to the G-8 summit, though he quickly denied any connection with the satire. Said he had stomach trouble. Not due to tubers, surely. And the new prime minister, not coincidentally the president’s twin brother, saw no need to change course. “We haven’t insulted anybody.”

On the other hand, amidst all the foolishness, President Kaczynski did manage a cruel blow. He said, according to the weekly Zeit, “even in the history of this peculiar newspaper” the potato portrait was an unprecedented insult of a foreign head of state and a criminal act. If in thirty-plus years of lefty alternativeness, the taz has never done anything more tasteless than call a jumped-up szlachta a lumpen-potato, they have seriously missed out on one of the perks of being lefty and alternative. I think Kaczynski’s been clever here and cast aspersions on their capabilitieis as caricaturists and satirists. But for all I know, these aspersions will harm their business and professional reputations. Maybe the taz should consider a counter-suit?

Turkmen Gas and Chinese Bombs

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After the Russian gas showdown with Ukraine, the Turkmen gas showdown with Russia. Two can play at that game, it seems. No doubt a lot of this is motivated, like the Ukraine crisis, by the decision makers’ own corruption interests in their Austrian, Swiss or God knows where nominee companies and numbered accounts. No doubt the futility of refusing to sell one’s only product will be apparent soon enough.

But it does point up something-first of all, despite the apparent ebbing of US influence in central Asia (airbase agreements being allowed to lapse, etc), the ‘Stans are very far from a calm hinterland for Russian energy geopolitics. Another thing is that the wider version of this politics – the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, aka “OPEC with Bombs” or the Dictators’ Club if you want to sound Hollywood – might not be as stable as its creators would like to believe. This cuts both ways.

One view of the SCO’s future is that of a gas and oil-empowered alliance of Russia, China, central Asia and maybe Iran, or rather, of their elites. Dedicated to staying that way. It’s not a nice thought, and is certainly one that should inform the debate about the British nuclear deterrent. Another version of it is as a club of toughminded realpolitiker dedicated to keeping the jihadis away from the pipelines, and in the near future the railways. Bolshy independence within it could weaken both these scenarios, although (given the traditional Russian and Chinese approach to central Asian Muslims) that might be quite a good thing.