Only this morning I was reading some European rail updates on the excellent The Man in Seat 61 website. I wanted to read about the forthcoming drop in journey time between London and Amsterdam by Eurostar and Thalys. But as I’ve been looking east this year, I noted with interest the high speed Russian link between Moscow and St Petersburg.

In a sinister example of synchronicity, only a few hours later I read about the bomb explosion on the very same line last night. It has very quickly been blamed on terrorism, reportedly due to very obvious clues like the sound of an explosion and a crater.

Likely suspects, according to the BBC, include militants from the North Caucus and pro-Nazi nationalists. It’s speculated that because of the regular business and political clientele on this train, it was a direct attack on the ruling class.

Whatever the results of the ensuing investigation into the darker corners of modern Russia, it’s sure to be shrouded in claim and counter claim. I’m currently reading Edward Lucas’ The New Cold War; despite its rather unsubtle bias and sometimes rhetorical language, it does raise worrying questions about the direction of this wounded bear.

In the early days of the Putin era, the 1999 bombing of Moscow apartment blocks shook the country. Chechen terrorists were implicated, and this is highly plausible. But controversy has surrounded these attacks, with some suggesting that a rattled population, looking for a strong leader and ready to ‘hit back’, was just what some elements wanted. Others have been more specific, and their allegations can easily be found on the internet.

The latest incident, the second on this line in as many years, will do nothing for the idea of relocating some governmental departments to St Petersburg – or Russian tourism. Any military ramifications in this volatile region remain to be seen.

Putin called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. I heard a holidaying Russian, watching this November’s Berlin Wall celebrations in a kebab shop near the Brandenburg Gate, tell a Dutch man at the next table that “This is not a cause for celebration in our country”.

Despite the USSR’s consequent breakup, almost two decades ago, the fallout is still being felt. The pricing and distribution of natural gas may be the weapon of choice for the big boys these days, but as the new order settles old scores, there’s still a role for bullets and bombs in the shadow world of the former empire .

Links:
Summary of Centre for European Reform (CER) discussion paper
EU pipeline politics dossier
Edward Lucas in Spectator debate on ‘New Cold War’

The New Cold War; How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West, by Edward Lucas (2008)

Dead, but not forgotten

A friend of mine once ended an essay thus; ‘China is scary.’  Mr Lucas is an Economist journalist, so slightly more hardened to scary governments, but he is also scared.  There is a difference between China and Russia.  The former’s ascent is based on a projection of responsibility – since its economic domination is theoretically inevitable, the Chinese will do nothing to wreck it.  Russia’s world view, on the other hand, is a direct challenge to Western values, backed by a clan of KGB/FSB officials brought to power in the 2000 coup which has almost entirely reversed The Gorbachev Factor, as described so well by Archie Brown.   

Mr Lucas’ book is timely, and as much so today as when it was published.  Last year Russia went to war with Georgia over two separatist regions (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), which it claims are part of the Russian state by right.  This summer the threatening noises have been directed at Ukraine.  To be accused of feeding Georgian militias is not quite as serious as having territory threatened with annexation or ‘liberation,’ but it could barely be closer.  

Behind the doors of the Kremlin immense power is exerted by an ideology Mr Lucas refers to as ‘Sovereign Democracy.’  Taking its inspiration from the disastrous history of the 1990s, sovereign democracy replaces Marxist-Leninism as the justification for extreme centralisation (sovereignty, in place of democracy effectively) with a selective view of history, patriotism and a corrupt deal with the Orthodox Church.  The historical issue is more important than one might think, since Western countries are often ambivalent, if not self-debasing about their own.  In Russia, only ‘positive’ history is taught in schools.  Stalin is revered.  The Nazi-Soviet pact, regrettable though it might be, says Putin, is the legal basis for Russia’s intimidation and envisaged annexation of the Baltic states.

The Russian position is based on a state monopoly on oil and in particular, gas distribution.  Subsidised fuel, though wasted to an astonishing degree has been responsible for the rise in living standards in Russia itself (the proportion of those in poverty has declined from 1/3 of the population to 1/6).  With the Kremlin’s political position therefore secure, it has begun to exert itself in foreign policy.  Gas (the investment in and export of) is both the incentive for the West to be complicit in Russia’s current political state, and the weapon it most often uses to sanction its opponents – especially the former USSR states.

The threat Russia poses is so persuasive because its leaders are so confident and yet, they have no real reason to be.  After 2020, Gazprom will struggle to supply the Russian market, let alone the West.  Russia’s protests about the American plans to build missile defence systems are ludicrous.  Not only are the missiles reactive to Iran, they couldn’t stop a serious-minded Russian attack if there were ten times the number (10).  Most importantly in the long run, Russia is in demographic decline as a result of its ludicrously high death rate.  And yet, Russia has Europe and America on the back foot.  That is what makes the prospect of a risk-taking Kremlin so worrying.

The only person who comes out of The New Cold War with any nobility is Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor.  Perhaps because of her East German background, she alone has refused to do bilateral deals with Russia.  This responsible approach earns her laurels from Mr Lucas, especially in light of her odious predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder.  Indeed, Germany’s current attitude is all the more laudable because it has so long been grateful for the ease with which reunification was allowed.  Nonetheless, the West has shown enough gratitude, and must now begin to look at Russia for what it really is.  

Mr Lucas rather lets himself down by launching into talk of principles in his conclusion.  However, there is a practical response available.  Mr Lucas concludes that the EU must unite around a common security policy, make common cause with those countries on Russia’s borders who are increasingly threatened by the behemoth.  One of the more controversial suggestions Mr Lucas makes is to abandon the UN as a forum for dealing with Russia because the veto system will make stalling inevitable and protracted.  Then again, liberal internationalism is a two-way deal and Russia is dangerously obsessed with doing business on its own terms.

Change within Russia, signs of which were once eagerly sought at the beginning of this recession, looks unlikely.  Putin’s government, fronted by Dmitri Medvedev is popular and increasingly bold.  Pretences are being dropped – the war with Georgia, but also Russia’s discontinuation of the WTO talks being two good indicators. Russia is unpredictable, the more so from a viewpoint as rational as Mr Lucas’.  The business of Russia is still business, but the stability of the nation (and therefore the security of Putin’s party) is also a prime determinant of policy.  Essentially, unless Europe can bring down an iron curtain of sorts, further East than the last, of course, we are at the mercy of the siloviki.  Now, that is scary.

War is still much revered

This excerpt was quoted in Mr Lucas’ book, and backs up his conclusions pretty well.

Russia is a Spinx.  Rejoicing, grieving,

And drenched in black blood,

It gazes, gazes, gazes at you,

With hatred and with love!

Aleksandr Blok, The Scythians

Britain's Ex-PM (phew)

While everyone else was talking about the death of New Labour, Tony Blair went on a bit of a greatest hits tour last week. Back in 1999, Blair spoke before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs about internationalism and interventionism, presaging his later position on Afghanistan and Iraq with a plea for involvement in Kosovo. On Wednesday, he reprised that theme. The world may have moved on, but Blair has not:

Of course the solution in each case will be in many respects different. But it is time to wrench ourselves out of a state of denial. There is one major factor in common. In each conflict there are those deeply engaged in it, who argue that they are fighting in the true name of Islam.

This just days before President Obama authorised the release of 2000 photos of American abuse of prisoners from the two wars which most symbolise Blair’s engagement with this ‘problem’. Blair remains influenced by the work of Samuel P. Hinton, who denies the existence of anything like a universal world civilisation: “This argument cannot be sustained,” he insists in his The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, before embarking on a 300-page treatise on global realpolitik. (Obama’s overtures to Muslim nations will “expose, too, the delusion of believing that there is any alternative to waging this struggle to its conclusion,” argues Blair.) George W Bush may have left us, but the architect of New Labour remains a culture warrior on a grand scale.

What is astounding about this position, other than Blair’s supposed position as an independent mediator in the Middle East, is that the monomania ignores the true complexities of the world. In his The New Cold War, Edward Lucas calls the ‘war on terror’ a disaster, distracting us as it is does – indeed, forcing us into common cause with – regimes (Russia, Saudi Arabia) which act against our interests. Historians such as Gilles Kepel have convincingly argued, in Eric Hobsbawm’s words, that Islamist terrorist acts “are symptoms, not significant historic agents.” Whilst events in Pakistan continue to bring Islamism closer to geopolitical centres, it still seems absurd to see the world through the prism of so particular a phenomenon as Islamism.

Indeed, Blair’s voice seems out of tune with the current political noise, right down to reports that he would have cut taxes in the Budget. Yesterday’s man? Perhaps, but so perhaps no more so, alas, than his successor…

W październiku ubiegłego roku – a więc relatywnie niedawno, biorąc pod uwagę ilość publikacji poświęconych tematowi, ukazała się książka zatytułowana Nowa Zimna Wojna autorstwa Edwarda Lucasa. Absolwent London School of Economics oraz Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, korespondent The Economist na Europę Środkową i Wschodnią w publikacji tej próbuje zdiagnozować współczesną pozycję Rosji na świecie i “starym kontynencie”, jej politykę zagraniczną – a w szczególności poczynania wobec sąsiadujących z nią krajów. Z lektury dowiedzieć się można wiele o kulisach nowej zimnej wojny, której symptomy pojawiają się coraz częściej. Wydawcą tej pozycji jest Rebis, za przekład odpowiada Jarosław Stawski. Książka kosztuje ok. 45 PLN i liczy sobie 352 strony w twardej oprawie.

Nowa zimna wojna. Jak Kreml zagraża Rosji i Zachodowi - okładka

Poniżej prezentuję opis ze strony wydawcy:

Autokratyczne państwo Putina ucisza swoich krytyków i tyranizuje sąsiadów. Wedle Ed­war­da Lucasa morderstwa dziennikarki Anny Politkowskiej i emigranta Aleksandra Litwi­nien­ki to dla nich ostrze­żenie. Z niepokornymi krajami należącym niegdyś do imperium ra­dzieckiego Rosja walczy taką bronią jak blokady energetyczne i handlowe, szantaż atomowy, cyberataki czy dezinfor­ma­cja w radzieckim stylu.

Nowa zimna wojna objaśnia taktykę Kremla i ukazuje słabości Zachodu. Edward Lucas twierdzi, że choć jesteśmy blisko klęski, ciągle jeszcze mamy szanse na zwycięstwo.

This question comes up in nearly every conversation about The Economist. Why don’t we have bylines? And will we ever change? It is one of those quaint eccentricities about us that people either love or hate, or love to hate, but at least they know about it.

(At the bottom of this post you get to vote whether we should have bylines. But just to be clear: this is meant as a bit of good fun. Nobody, as far as I know, is actually considering changing the policy.)

John Micklethwait

Orville Schell

First, just a few examples of the way that this topic comes up. A couple of years ago, I introduced our editor-in-chief, John Micklethwait, and Orville Schell, then dean of Berkeley’s journalism school (where I was lecturing) for this conversation. (You can see Berkeley’s chancellor introduce me, then me introduce John and Orville, and then John and Orville chatting.)

At about minute 24 Orville gets the inevitable question from the audience. Why no bylines? And, Orville teases John, “I understand that there is a good bit of grousing” about it among the journalists. “They feel they don’t exist in a certain sense.”

John gives what I think is the best answer: “We haven’t done anything. We’ve kept the same, and everyone else has changed.” In other words, The Economist is 160+ years old, and back then anonymity was the norm. Then the industry went on a slightly disturbing path toward writer celebrity, and we simply chose not to participate.

But, John goes on, it is more than mere inertia: “Why do we keep it? Firstly, because it’s, I suppose, a brand. But it’s more than a marketing gimmick.” It also, he says, fits our method of collaborative writing. (This, I must say, strikes me as the weaker part of the answer, because most of my writing in the past eleven years has in fact been very individual, very “authorial”, and barely edited. And journalists at other magazines and newspapers also occasionally collaborate in their writing, despite having bylines.)

Orville and John then kid around, using, ahem, me as the guinea pig for their humor.

Another view is this one by Brad DeLong, an economist also at Berkeley. Greg Ip, a blogger and writer for the Wall Street Journal, had just quit both his blog and the Journal (and thus his personal brand) to join us at The Economist in chaste anonymity: “How could Greg Ip leave the WSJ for The Economist? I mean, he’s a brand – and the Economist doesn’t do brands, except its own. (And that it does exceedingly well.)” His commenters then vent on what they think about our policy.

Bill Emmott

Yet another instance: Here Bill Emmott, John’s predecessor as editor (and the man who hired me), tells an interviewer that

Journalists are egomaniacs and protective about their own territory and their own work, and not having bylines mitigates against that somewhat. With bylines, you worry more about your own story. With no bylines, you worry more about the whole paper because your reputation depends on the reputation of the whole paper.

And, most recently, Adrian Monck and Katrina Bishop have a bit of fun when I allowed my own veil of anonymity to slip a little (on this blog). And off they go, debating the pros and cons.

So I thought I might chip in.

What our policy is (and is not)

First, our vaunted anonymity has never been absolute. Yes, the vast majority of articles in The Economist have no byline. But there are exceptions.

1) Special Reports

Formerly called “Surveys”, to the confusion of our American readers (who think that the word means questionnaire), these are huge essays of about 13,000 words around a specific topic, such as a country or an industry. In effect, they are small books. Whereas most other newspapers and magazines throw a team of reporters on these kinds of special sections, The Economist gives each report to one author. This is a great idea. That way, you get coherent, well-structured and individualistic reporting in great depth.

One thing that annoys me is that most readers don’t realize this. They think that the chapters in a Special Report are written by different people. And we don’t really help them with our layout. But we do hide a byline in each Special Report. Not doing so would simply be too cruel. A Special Report is its author’s baby.

So the author’s name shows up in what we call the “rubric” of the opening chapter. It looks like this:

2) The World in 200x.

Another exception concerns our sister publication, The World In [Year]. It’s an annual magazine, and the new one, The World in 2009, just came out. Here is my piece in it. As you see, it has my name at the top and at the bottom.

3) Podcasts and video

This is an interesting category of exceptions, because it is new. We have had audio interviews with the authors of Special Reports for a while, but in 2006, when I wrote this Special Report about the new media, we fittingly experimented with podcasts. Somewhat to our surprise, they became hugely popular, hitting the iTunes charts with almost no effort on our part.

The thing about audio and video, of course, is that these media are extremely intimate and extremely personal. There is absolutely nothing anonymous about them. You hear the author’s “voice,” literally. This did not go unnoted at the time. The door of anonymity was opened ajar by another inch.

4) Reader letters

When you send a letter to the editor, it gets forwarded to the author of the article in question. And I have, I believe, answered every single letter by email for the past eleven years. Like many of my colleagues, I sign my replies, so anybody who wishes to know who wrote a particular piece can simply write a letter and wait.

Ironically, the new-media revolution has had a contrary effect on these exchanges. A while ago we started allowing people to comment on our web site directly underneath our stories. There are still a lot of letters to the editor, but a lot of this traffic now seems to get diverted to the comments sections. And I do not bother to answer those.

5) Extracurricular activities

As correspondents, we have always moderated panels at conferences and such. Each time we do, we are introduced by name and affiliation, and then the audience hears us talk. So they meet us.

Nowadays, several of us have also started personal blogs. Mine is the most recent example. Edward Lucas has for years had his blog about Eastern Europe and his book. Gideon Lichfield wrote a blog about Israel and Palestine while he was posted in the Middle East. Tom Standage has his site, as do all of us who write books.

My views

I won’t tell you. But I will say this: When I joined The Economist in 1997, I loved the anonymity. I had no name, no personal brand, and I felt that from my first day my articles had the same chance of being on the cover as anybody else’s. I expend as much effort on a tiny “box” as on a huge Special Report.

Admittedly, during the past eleven years, there have been moments when I wished that my cumulative work might have given me a personal brand. Writers at the New Yorker eventually become known as writers. We don’t. Writing a book is one way out of that dilemma. That is not why I’m writing a book. Nonetheless, it is quite remarkable how many of us do.

The view that counts

Ultimately, what the writers think ought not to be the decisive criterion. Duh. It is the readers who matter. But this is where it gets really interesting. Anecdotally, I have found that most readers tell me that they would prefer to know the writer’s name. But I wonder whether they actually do. It is also possible that something might get lost along the way. Something je-ne-sais-quoi. There is only one way of finding out, but the problem is that this experiment would be hard to reverse. So, what do readers actually want?

The poll

Time for you to vote:

That’s me, at least for the time being. Which is to say, I’m in two minds about blogging about my book, depending on whom I’ve asked for advice last.

The “pros”:

On one side, there is an army of tech-savvy, media-savvy, modern, sophisticated, worldly people who say to me: Blog! Bloooog! For book authors, obscurity is the enemy, not piracy, theft or plagiarism. So blog, build a community, learn from that community, and then let the community help you when the time comes to launch.

One person whose example sticks out in my mind, as I’ve mentioned before, is Chris Anderson. His first book, The Long Tail, began as an article in Wired (of which Chris is the editor), then became a book-deal, then a blog, and then, well, the book.

I ran into Chris the other day and asked him if he had any regrets at all, and Chris said Nope, blogging about the book has been entirely for the better. He’s actually learned a lot from his blog’s audience (“crowdsourcing” is the fancy new term for that), and it built buzz for the book’s launch.

Intellectually, Chris has also thought about giving entire books away, free, on blogs or otherwise, and this is becoming something of a micro-trend.

The book, it should be said, did rather well. On the other hand, I should also say that I personally, having read the original article and the blog (and finding Chris’s idea profound and spot-on), did feel that I didn’t need to read the book when it came out. I was comfortable that I already knew the ideas behind it very well.

Chris has a lot of support. Tim Sullivan, who is not my editor but an editor of books, at Basic Books as of this week, told me that:

I’m all for divulging in blog-length entries. You can really work through some issues, and I think that it encourages sales rather than depressing them (in most cases). I also think you end up with a better book, in the end, if you can generate involvement from a group of interested outsiders

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (left) wrote their new book, Groundswell, using the blog to test and refine ideas and seem to have loved the process.

Jeff Howe (right) has been blogging his book Crowdsourcing, and using the blog in part, well, to crowdsource. (Meaning: to make “open calls” on the anonymous audience to contribute knowledge, in the hope that the best-qualified people may be hiding in the crowd.)

The “cons”:

My mom is a con. Now, it’s no fair poking fun at moms–they are the people whose intentions toward us are purest. So I won’t. I take her concerns seriously. And she has support: Virtually all of the, ahem, “older” people I know react with dread: Are you crazy? Somebody will steal your best ideas! You undermine the element of surprise! Don’t do it! If you must blog, don’t give anything good away.

Then, there is…

Everybody else:

That category, obviously, includes a lot of people. I’m in it myself. Among my colleagues at The Economist, for instance, there is Tom Standage, author of several books, the latest of which is A History of the World in Six Glasses (right). He is one of the most tech-savvy and media-savvy people in the world, and yet he resides slightly toward my mom’s end of the spectrum. He puts up a “teaser” about his book and some updates about the process–launch, book tour and such–but otherwise leaves it to the book itself to make the splash. I take his advice very seriously, especially since his genre of book and style of writing is much closer to mine than the tech-centered books above.

There is also Edward Lucas, who had a blog for many years before he sold his idea for a book on Russia, the New Cold War (left).

Ed says that yes, he did crowdsource. Exactly once, in fact. He had to fact-check a detail during pre-launch production, and put it out there. Within an hour, several people got back to him with the answer.

But beyond that, he says he did not give away much from the book on the blog, which he uses mainly as a personalized and running anthology of The Economist’s Russia coverage. When he tried to have discussion boards on individual chapters, the results were disappointing–”mostly Russians posting obscenities.” He thought about putting the introduction online, and maybe a few chapters, but then decided against it. “The book must promise that it gives you something you can get nowhere else,” he said to me.

And on and on. Everybody has a different view. Basically, nobody knows.

And that leaves me… schizophrenic. Which is not a good thing for a blogger. It’s like blogging with one arm tied behind your back–possible, but tedious.

Within the coming weeks, I will sort out my thoughts on this and decide one way or the other. You’ll know when that happens, because the blog will show it.

Why has an odd alliance of leftwingers, Tories and bankers come out for this fascist kleptocracy?

By Edward Lucas

On Russia, at least, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg think alike. Belatedly and perhaps emptily, all three party leaders have condemned the invasion of Georgia and demanded a tough response. Yet a different and even odder alliance is taking shape on the other side. Its members include such unlikely figures as Andrew Murray of Stop the War Coalition, David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth, and historian Correlli Barnett, as well as anonymous but influential City bankers and lawyers.

The Kremlin’s most constant allies are the old pro-Soviet left: people such as Bob Wareing, the veteran leftwing MP for Liverpool, West Derby. He recalls warmly the wartime alliance with Stalin’s Soviet Union, and the promise of social justice in the communist system. In the Morning Star, Andrew Murray blames the war in Georgia on American imperialism and contrasts it with the success of “Soviet nationalities policy” in promoting “the cultural, linguistic and educational development of each ethnic group, no matter how small or how historically marginalised”. Chechens, Crimean Tatars and other victims of Stalin’s murderous deportation policies presumably don’t count.

A simpler approach is pure Russophilia: people who love Russia’s culture or language, and rejoice in what seems to be a national rebirth under Vladimir Putin. A wider group is sparked chiefly by anti-Americanism. If you hate George W Bush then you may cast a friendly glance on the people who make life difficult for him, such as Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, or Putin in Russia. It is countries such as Russia, however spiky and unattractive, that can derail the new world order. Yet that’s odd. If, say, you feel that Muslims get a hard deal from America, then surely the Russian torture camps in Chechnya should make your blood boil?

In odd alliance with the anti-globalists are the champions of international business: those who do well out of selling goods and services to Russia. In the City, investment banks, law firms, accountants and consultants have enjoyed a bonanza thanks to their Russian clients. Auditors such as PricewaterhouseCoopers have not flinched at doing the Kremlin’s dirty work – for example in withdrawing their audit of Yukos, once Russia’s biggest oil company, which conveniently coincided with Kremlin allegations of fraud. For this pinstriped fifth column, business is business, and worries about human rights or the rule of law are tiresome distractions.

David Wilshire, a leading Conservative member of the Council of Europe parliamentary assembly, has lobbied hard to make Mikhail Margelov, a pro-Putin Russian parliamentarian who used to be a KGB language instructor, the next president of the organisation, which is supposedly devoted to promoting human rights. Then come those such as the polemical Peter Hitchens, who have no great liking for tycoons, but a deep admiration for the nation-state. He writes: “I often wish we were more like Russia, aggressively defending our interests, making sure we owned our own crucial industries, killing terrorists instead of giving in to them, running our own foreign policy instead of trotting two feet behind George W Bush.” Russia, he says, has come to stand for national sovereignty and independence, while we give up our own.

Correlli Barnett praises the regime in Russia in a similar vein. In the past few days, for example, Barnett has said: “World peace? Give me Putin any day!”; and “the West should jettison moral indignation and global do-goodery as the basis of policy, and instead emulate Russia’s admirable reversion to 19th-century realpolitik”. The main motive here is dislike for the whole apparatus of modern diplomacy – multilateral organisations governed by international treaties and at least a notional commitment to human rights.

It is all very odd. Russia is an oil-fuelled fascist kleptocracy ruled by secret police goons and their cronies. It is authoritarian: critics risk forcible incarceration in psychiatric hospitals, or are simply murdered – such as the shooting dead in police custody of Magomed Yevloyev, an Ingush journalist, this week. It is imperialist: bullying neighbours with oil and gas cut-offs, let alone the occupation of Georgia, where Russia’s proxies have practised ethnic cleansing on a scale that recalls the atrocities of the wars in former Yugoslavia. And it is deeply corrupt and lawless: something that even Putin’s successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev, has acknowledged publicly. However bad other countries may be, it is hard to find anything there worth emulating.

· Edward Lucas is the author of The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West

]]> http://the8thcircle.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/blogosphere-talk/ Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:46:05 +0000 Vitaliy http://the8thcircle.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/blogosphere-talk/

This is a mix of things: either stuff I wanted to write about, but others have done the job already or something that caught my attention.  In no particular order:

• Lucas writes about Colonel Khuiyovich is returning to duty – a hilarious true story account about a fake memo in the early 1990s that rattled the Baltics (via Wu Wei).
• After the Georgian-Russian War, other frozen conflicts have been attracting increasing attention (for the moment).  Julien Frisch follows-up on Transnistria.
• LEvko (at foreign notes) translated an article from Rinat Akhmetov’s Segodnia advocating neutrality for Ukraine in the intensifying conflict between the West and Russia.
• Finally, for an argument against NATO membership for Ukraine, see a letter to the editor of Kyiv Post by Jeff Luebbe.

Lucas, Edward. The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West. Palgrave MacMillan, Feb. 2008, pp. 272.

The book has been read and back on the shelf for a couple of weeks now with a short review not too far in the offing. Below, I didn’t devote too much time to the summary of the book. For that, please refer to The Time magazine review – a good starting point for both a summary and a critique.

What follows are snippets and commentary I wanted to note as I read.

Perhaps the best way to look at Lucas’ book is as a continuation of Baker and Glasser’s volume Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the End of Revolution published in 2005. Although some of the material in both overlaps, Lucas’ The New Cold War is a logical conclusion that Baker and Glasser could not reach at the time.

The book’s main thesis is that after a short honeymoon period, a different conflict is developing ongoing between Russia and the West. Yet it is obvious that Lucas does not believe that the New Cold War is a repeat of what was before.

“The old Cold War will not return, and analogies with it are outdated. But so are the rosy sentiments that succeeded it” (pg. 6).

To dispel these illusions, Lucas discusses Putin’s rise to power and his two administrations, Russia’s relations with its neighbors, pipeline politics and other topics.

Particularly disturbing is chapter 5 – The “New Tsarism.” It explores the unwillingness under Putin to critically examine dark episodes in the country’s history, for example the Katyn massacre, the illegal annexation of Estonia. The framing of Stalin as a “great leader forced by circumstances to take harsh decisions” (pg. 107) is indefensible.

The role of history is important for peace and stability, because it shapes how future generations of Russians will view themselves and the outside world.

In the words of Eric Jansson, Lucas writes…

with sympathy for the average citizen of Russia and yet also with sympathy for citizens of smaller nations that most analysts and reporters have taken too little time to understand. Estonia and Georgia, two key examples, may be small on the map but as places in which the meaning and purpose of state sovereignty are being challenged directly by Russia, they deserve serious attention.

Neglect by the copyediting department can be found on pages: 45 (top), 160, 174, 182 “…something that it is (sic) has so far lacked…”, 194, 206 “realism rather (than?) sentiment”, 211 “…we are penalize (sic) our…”

Also at least two of the maps used were out of date: a) the map of Europe at the very front of the book, and b) the more localized on Eastern Europe and the Balkans map on page 188.

The problem in both was marking of Serbia as Yugoslavia, even though the latter ceased to exist in 2006.

The book will be appreciated by those interested in the post-Cold War Europe. You don’t have to accept Lucas’ claim of a new Cold War, but you are very likely to find the book an excellent review of the past 17 years, captured in slightly over 200 pages, with additional 30 devoted to endnotes.

Edward Lucas talks about his new book (The new cold war – How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West) at Google HQ:

Cosa pensereste se il vostro vicino vi minacciasse di puntarvi una pistola alla tempia? Certo, avete ottimi rapporti commerciali con lui; ma la gravità del gesto resterebbe inalterata.

E’ questo quello che è successo fra l’Europa e la Russia. Come ritorsione contro i Paesi Ue che sembravano accettare l’ignominioso Scudo spaziale americano che prevedeva la realizzazione di basi missilistiche, per giunta, in Stati ex satelliti di Mosca; in quell’occasione Putin dichiarò che avrebbe puntato le sue armi contro l’Europa. E, all’epoca, la reazione diplomatica europea non fu molto veemente, in vero.

Il 2007 appena conclusosi è stato l’annus horribilis delle relazioni diplomatiche fra Russia, da un lato, e Ue e Stati Uniti, dall’altro. Eppure, mai come in questo momento dalla caduta del Muro in poi, Mosca ha goduto di tanto credito internazionale.

Grazie, si direbbe, alla politica spregiudicata dello Zar Putin; per ricapitolare, il presidente ha paragonato gli Usa al Terzo Reich, è stato accusato di aver cercato di portare avanti un attacco informatico alla Nato e ha portato fuori la Russia dall’Accordo Europeo sulle armi convenzionali. Fra i suoi “successi” annoveriamo le recenti elezioni truffa alla Duma, l’affaire Politkovskaya e le ritorsioni energetiche contro l’Ue: è facile comprendere, allora, perché l’editorialista dell’Economist Edward Lucas abbia deciso di intitolare il suo ultimo libro “La Nuova Guerra Fredda”.

Ciò non ostante, gli americani sembrano affascinati dal ritorno di questa Grande Russia imperiale. Il Time magazine ha appena nominato Putin la “Persona dell’anno 2007”, dedicandogli la famosa copertina che solo “grandi” come Gorbaciov, Kennedy e papa Giovanni Paolo II hanno avuto l’onore di ricevere. La Russia, secondo il settimanale statunitense, avrebbe ripreso possesso di un naturale ruolo internazionale, smarrito solo durante gli amari anni post crollo dell’Urss.

La presidenza Putin, deficitaria dal punto di vista democratico, è un successo per molti fattori. Dal 1990 l’economia russa è cresciuta al ritmo del 7% all’anno; il Paese ha estinto un debito pubblico che, all’indomani della caduta del Muro, ammontava a 200 miliardi di dollari. Dal 2003 anche gli stipendi degli operai sono più che raddoppiati.

Un successo, però, giocato strategicamente in opposizione agli interessi euroamericani.

Dopo l’implosione sovietica, l’Ue si era affrettata ad annientare geopoliticamente la Russia, mentre si diffondeva l’idea che il mondo assumeva un assetto unipolare incentrato sull’impero americano. L’appoggio Ue alle rivoluzioni rosa in Georgia e arancione in Ucraina erano destinate a disinnescare il potenziale energetico di Mosca, attraverso il quale, oggi, il Cremino riveste il ruolo di giocatore strategico.

Molti Paesi dell’ex Patto di Varsavia erano stati inizialmente assorbiti nell’influenza Ue, soprattutto attraverso accordi commerciali tedeschi che potevano prefigurare una sorta di nuova Drag nach Osten; un rapporto speciale Ue-Paesi dell’Est imperniato su Berlino. L’adesione di queste nuove nazioni alla Nato era stato il passaggio successivo. La nuova Russia di Putin ha invertito questo trend proiettando la propria longa manus dal Caucaso alle regioni turcofone ex sovietiche e riuscendo a stabilizzare uno scenario difficile, attraverso accordi spregiudicati con l’Iran, la Nord Corea e la Cina; il tutto sempre professandosi “sincera amica” degli States.

Ma il punto è – come ha dichiarato Henry Kissinger a Time – che Putin non ritiene fondamentale che questa Grande Russia faccia propri i valori e i principi democratici dell’Occidente. Egli vuole sedere al tavolo dei big della Terra in una condizione di parità. Anzi, probabilmente, ricerca una posizione di uguaglianza con gli Usa e anche di superiorità rispetto all’Ue. E’ un passaggio interessante. L’identità russa si è sempre giocata su questo doppi crinale Occidente-Oriente. Mosca era la Terza Roma e, anche l’esperienza leninista, ha rappresentato l’applicazione di una delle ideologie filosofiche ed economiche più affascinanti prodotte dall’Occidente. Ma il capitalismo russo attuale non è solo un altro modello occidentale. E’ un perverso sistema politico e sociale che si giustifica grazie ai risultati economici; ma con un’allarmante compressione dei diritti civili.

Quel che è certo è che le decisioni principali globali ora vanno assunte con l’avallo di Mosca: dal Kosovo all’Iran, dal Venezuela alla Cina.

Alessio Postiglione (Notizie Verdi)