Czech court green-lights EU Lisbon Treaty. {sort-off ?}
LUCIA KUBOSOVA

26.11.2008 @ 16:59 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The Czech constitutional court has unanimously ruled that the disputed parts of the Lisbon Treaty are in line with the Czech Constitution but, the judges have admitted they did not analyse the treaty as a whole, sparking speculation that the issue could be raised again by its critics in the country.

{The Lisbon Treaty does not change the fundamental direction of the EU - they said - But why did they not read the whole treaty so they can make a final judgement?? So now the game is not finished yet.}

In his closely watched verdict announced on Wednesday (26 November), Vojen Guttler, the presiding judge rapporteur, argued that the new reform treaty does not change the fundamental direction of the EU, nor does it harm the sovereignty of the member states.

He added that a new provision in the treaty that clears out the terms for countries that wish to leave the union is “the indisputable confirmation” of their sovereignty, while a transfer of powers to the EU level can only happen if it is approved by member states.

The statement contradicts the arguments put forward by President Vaclav Klaus on Tuesday (25 November) in his address to the judges during a public hearing. Reacting to the verdict, President Klaus commented that the court’s approach was “inexpert”, “subjective” and “political”.

“I regret to state that the Constitutional Court has not given appropriate response to my legal arguments. I expect a group of deputies or senators will raise these and more other arguments again,” he said in a statement.

The court itself pointed out that it was only reacting to the concrete questions received from senators earlier this year. Rapporteur Guttler said that if the judges had reviewed the treaty as a whole, they would not respect the right of other politicians or institutions to raise other issues.

But the chair of the Czech Senate, Premysl Sobotka, of the ruling centre-right Civic Democrat Party (ODS) said that it is “unlikely” that senators would address the constitutional court again, CTZ agency reported.

“At this moment, nothing is blocking the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in both parliamentary chambers” in the Czech Republic, Mr Sobotka added. The ODS party is divided on the issue however, with some deputies following the line of President Klaus, who argues that the ratification should only continue if the treaty is approved in Ireland.

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Reactions in Brussels:

Meanwhile, some EU personalities in Brussels rushed to comment on the keenly awaited verdict of the Czech court.

“Today’s decision of the Court brings to an end the treaty ratification standstill in the Czech Republic,” said European Parliament president Hans-Gert Pottering and reminded Prague of its key role as the country chairing EU’s rotating presidency country in the first half of 2009.

“In this regard in the European Parliament we trust that the new EU Presidency will seriously contribute to push forward the ratification process,” he noted, adding that “ideally” this process should be finalised by the June elections of the EU assembly.

“The decision of the Czech supreme court is very welcome, although hardly a surprise,” commented Andrew Duff, a British Liberal MEP in the constitutional committee. He said that the interventions by both senators and President Klaus were “erratic”.

“Neither the Senate nor the President showed a sure grasp of the realities of the legal constitutional order of the EU, or of the fact that when the Czech Republic signed up to become a member state of the Union it was subscribing not only to the acquis communautaire [rules] of the past but also to all future obligations.”

Nigel Farrage, the leader of the UK’s eurosceptics in the EU legislature also said that the verdict came as no real surprise - although for different reasons.

“The pressure from the European Commission and the Czech government’s desperate need to fall in line with Brussels as it prepares to take over the Presidency made it a foregone conclusion,” he said in a statement.

The European Commission said it does not want to comment on various stages of the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in member states but its spokesperson added: “We are confident that the Czech parliament will honour the commitment which the country made when the treaty was signed.”

Austrian minister quits over EU referendum clause.
VALENTINA POP

25.11.2008  the EUobserver - Austria’s pro-European foreign minister Ursula Plassnik has refused to be part of the country’s new governing coalition because it did not rule out future referendums on EU treaties.

“I was not ready to serve as an EU warranty or fig leaf for a government where some of its members do not distance themselves enough from a fruitless and energy consuming alliance with EU-critical forces,” Ms Plassnik told Die Presse.

The minister’s center-right OVP party formed a “grand coalition” with the populist Social-Democrats (SPO) at the weekend, following two months of talks that locked Austria’s resurgent far-right factions out of power.

The new SPO chancellor, Werner Faymann, declined to insert a clause into the coalition pact guaranteeing that future EU treaties will be ratified through parliament instead of referendums, prompting Ms Plassnik’s departure, she explained.

Instead, the coalition signed up to a “self-destruct clause” under which the two parties can seek EU-wide or national referendums by mutual agreement. In case of disagreement, the government would be dissolved.

The OVP and SPO both officially want the Lisbon treaty - which was ratified by the Austrian parliament in May - to come into force.

But in tendering her resignation, Ms Plassnik recalled that Mr Faymann and the then SPO chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer in July wrote a letter to Hans Dichand, the editor of the tabloid Krone newspaper, pleading for national referendums on EU affairs.

“Future changes on the EU treaty, which touch upon Austrian interest, should be decided through a referendum in Austria. The same applies to a possible EU accession of Turkey, which would overstrech, in our view, the current EU structures,” they said, as part of the SPO election campaign.

“It is not about cutting ‘the people’ out. Mr Dichand [the editor of Krone] is not ‘the people.’ It is about explaining carefully and clearly the EU and its co-operation with Austria. The EU must not be chased as a scapegoat through the villages. This is false and brings Austria to a dead end. And Austria is no dead end country,” Ms Plassnik told Kleine Zeitung.

A coalition cannot assume governing responsibilty and have an “official pro-EU line,” but at the same time “enter a coalition with EU opponents,” she added. “It shouldn’t be the case that Austria becomes a risk country [in terms of future EU integration].”

The Austrian public is the most eurosceptic in the union - only 28 percent had a positive view of the EU in a June 2008 survey, the lowest among all 27 states.

The majority of Austrians also wanted a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, with 59 percent saying they wanted a popular vote in a Gallup poll in April 2008.

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Prague - It is inevitable for the Irish to vote on the EU Lisbon treaty in a referendum again, Dick Roche, Irish minister for European affairs, told CTK in Prague today.

He emphasised that the new referendum would take place only after careful negotiations with the EU removed objections and dispelled the apprehensions the Irish public feels about the reform treaty.
In a month Dublin is to disclose the main areas the Irish want to discuss with the EU in this connection, Roche said.
At the European Council meeting in December the Irish prime minister will propose a “road map” to identify the main areas we believe we have to discuss with our European colleagues in order to clarify the problems the Irish feel worried about, Roche said.
The complex negotiations will probably continue throughout the period of the Czech Republic’s EU presidency in the first half of 2009 and they could even be completed not before the start of the Swedish presidency, Roche said.
After the Irish apprehensions of the Lisbon treaty are dispelled, Ireland will see another referendum, Roche said.
He said the Irish government has not discussed the referendum’s date as it will be topical only after a final agreement with the EU is reached.
Roche said he personally hoped the process not to take more than a year.
One of the issues for the Dublin-EU discussion will be the proposed new size of the European Commission. Ireland insists on the principle of one commissioner from each member state, Roche continued.
The Lisbon treaty, nevertheless, contains a mechanism that enables to preserve this principle until 2014. Afterwards it will be possible for the EC to decide on an increase in the number of commissioners.
Dublin also objects to the EU’s liberal approach to abortion. Roche said Ireland respects it that other EU countries have a different approach, it is their right, Roche said.
He said the planned negotiations could bring about a declaration recognising Ireland’s different view in this respect.
The other problems Ireland considers important include the sovereignty of individual member countries in deciding on their own systems of taxes.
In this respect Roche said he believes that the Czechs and most small countries share a similar view.
He said the Irish also differ from most European countries by their strive for neutrality.
Other countries ensure their security by their participation in NATO. Ireland respects this, but it has a different view, Roche said.
He said he believes that a result can be achieved after all the worrying problems are analysed. The Lisbon treaty must not be approached with fear. It is necessary to assure the Irish that they rights will be guaranteed, he said.
The negotiations will last many months and they will require much good will. The discussion must not destroy the balance the other EU states have achieved, Roche pointed out.
In the Czech Republic, which is the last of the 27 EU countries not to have taken an official position on the Lisbon treaty so far, the document has been assessed by the Constitutional Court these days.
At the court’s public proceedings today, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, an ardent opponent of the treaty, said in his opinion the treaty is at variance with the Czech constitution.
Klaus previously said that if the court gave the green light to the treaty and if the Czech parliament ratified it, he would not sign it until it is ratified by Ireland.
Roche said he would not dare to comment on a political debate in the Czech Republic as it would be impolite.
He said the ratification process in an EU country should not be made conditional on the ratification elsewhere.
Roche said there will always be discussions about the balance between national sovereignty and the advantage to be a member of a bigger grouping.
The Irish do not have a feeling of being less Irish in the EU. The opposite is true, Roche said.
Author: ČTK
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Irish parliament to debate second Lisbon referendum.
LUCIA KUBOSOVA

November 26, 2008, EUobserver - An Irish parliamentary committee is to debate a report arguing that a second referendum on the EU’s Lisbon treaty is legally possible.

The draft report, first seen by the Irish Times, has been discussed in a private session by the Subcommittee on Ireland’s Future in the EU and is due to be presented to the joint Committee on European Affairs on Thursday (27 November).

It argues that a second poll on the EU’s new reform treaty - following the debacle in June when the Irish voters rejected the document by a clear majority - would be preferable, suggesting a vote on the same text but accompanied by clarifying declarations on controversial issues.

One concrete issue of the kind likely to be considered is a protection of the country’s neutrality. Parliamentarians argued that a new procedure should be set up to boost national decision-making powers regarding military-related matters.

Also, they would like to see in an attached declaration assurance that all member states keep their commissioner - if other European partners agree with the move.

Under the Lisbon treaty, EU member states would take turns at having a representative in the commission, meaning that once every 15 years, each country would be without a commissioner for a period of five years, as the number of commissioners is scheduled to be reduced from 27 to 18 as of 2014.

Earlier this month, Irish foreign minister Micheal Martin hinted that his government is in talks with other governments and EU officials on the issue of the composition of the bloc’s executive.

But some insiders doubt this modification could be achieved, as it is one of the major elements of Lisbon’s institutional reform and was introduced parallel to similar changes for other institutions, notably the European Parliament.

Under the Lisbon treaty, the new EU legislature will have 750 members instead of the current 785.

However, if the new parliament is elected according to the currently applied Nice Treaty in June, its size will be reduced to 732. In such a case, the new commission - due to be appointed later this year - should also have fewer than 27 members.

Julian Priestley, the parliament’s former secretary general, believes that Ireland itself should face some “consequences” if there is no second referendum by mid-2009.

Speaking on Tuesday (25 November) at a debate on the next EU elections organised by the European Policy Center, he argued “it would be a mistake to get some kind of a fix around the clear provision of the Nice treaty.”

Mr Priestley rejected the possibility of having 26 commissioners and to not count the president of the commission as part of the team, stressing that the EU should respect the provisions of whatever treaty is in force.

“If Ireland is the only country that hasn’t ratified the Lisbon treaty and at least superficially prefers the Nice treaty, it should face the consequences of Nice and lose the commissioner,” he concluded.

Waiting for the verdict on Lisbon

Meanwhile, Prague is expecting a verdict from the Czech constitutional court on whether the EU reform plan is in line with the Czech constitution after a heated exchange between the country’s president and government officials in the courtroom on Tuesday (25 November).

The Czech Republic is the only country that has not yet voted on the Lisbon treaty. Despite this fact, the republic is preparing to take over the helm of the EU from France in January, when it assumes the six-month rotating EU presidency, and must then lead talks with Ireland on how to solve the institutional problem.

But top politicians in Prague are divided on the issue. While deputy prime minister Alexander Vondra praised the document and its improvements to the bloc’s functioning, President Vaclav Klaus strongly criticised it at a public hearing.

He argued that the democratically elected institutions in the Czech Republic would be weakened and that key conditions for the country’s EU membership - as stated when the citizens voted on entry in 2003 - would change due to the new treaty.

In a radio interview on Monday (24 November) President Klaus also indicated he might sign the treaty - if adopted by parliament - only after it is ratified in Ireland, echoing the stance of Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski.

Meanwhile, Ireland’s minister for European affairs, Dick Roche, told the Czech CTK news agency that a second referendum on the Lisbon treaty is “inevitable,” adding that he hopes the whole process would not take more than a year.

Poland rejects French CO2 compromise as summit looms.
RENATA GOLDIROVA, November 20, 2008

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Poland has given the cold shoulder to concessions offered by the French EU presidency on how the union’s power sector should reduce CO2 emissions.

“It does not solve the problem of electricity prices in a satisfactory way,” one Polish diplomat said on Wednesday (19 November) in response to the French proposal.

What will happen if the 11 December EU summit, the post-Poznan summit - fails to see agreement?

The concessions paper is aimed at addressing Warsaw’s key objection - against the buying of 100 percent of pollution permits under the union’s reformed emissions trading scheme (ETS), the cornerstone of the EU’s strategy against climate change.

Under the reform, EU governments would no longer give away permits to pollute to the power sector. Instead, the industry would be forced to buy the right to emit carbon dioxide by auction, with full auctioning expected to kick in from 2013.

To get Poland on board, the French EU presidency has offered a three-year long exemption from the regime to those countries that produce at least 60 percent of their electricity from coal and are poorly connected to the grids of other EU states.

Their plants could receive half of their pollution permits for free until 2016, France has suggested.

Poland - the chief opponent of the ETS reform - swiftly rejected the French ideas, however. It claims the changes would harm its economy, as almost 95 percent of the country’s energy production is based on coal.

***
Alternative suggestion:

Instead, Warsaw has tabled its own alternative to full auctioning - a so-called “benchmarking-auctioning approach” that suggests granting free allocations on the basis of actual production.

In practice, separate benchmarks would be set for each type of electricity production - hard coal, brown coal, natural gas and fuel oil - while free allowances would be granted “ex-post” based on actual emissions.

The system would reward best performers, a Polish diplomat said.

Starting from 2013, the base benchmark would be reduced by one percent each year - something that should put additional pressure on the power sector to modernise technologies.

Warsaw argues that its proposal helps address concerns about the level of electricity prices, while full auctioning is likely to see producers passing on the entire market price of allowances to consumers in the electricity price.

“In countries where coal is the main fuel for electricity production, the electricity price increases will be particularly visible due to a need to purchase a proportionately larger quantity of allowances at auctions,” the Polish paper says.

In addition, Poland suggests to promote development of clean coal technologies rather than to eliminate coal from electricity production. “The EU should treat coal as an energy source, which improves its energy security,” it says.

***

Another EU summit?

The 27-nation bloc has been in a race against time, trying to reach a deal on the ambitious package of green legislation in mid-December (11-12 December) when EU leaders are set to meet in Brussels .

“For the time being, we hope for an agreement on the 11th and the 12th. If there is no agreement, then we will see,” a French presidency spokeswoman told EUobserver.

 The EU Suffers From Not Having A Longer Term President - The Incoming First Half of 2009 Czech Presidency Starts Out With A Flap As Sarkozy And Blair Opt For Continuity In Dealing With The Global Financial Crisis. In Any Case, Czech President Vaclav Klaus Has Small Minority Views in Europe - He Even Does Not Believe In Human Caused Global Warming. Clouds Over The Czech Presidency.

France wants post-EU presidency financial summit.
PHILIPPA RUNNER, November 19, 2008,EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS

France has unveiled plans for a post-French EU presidency financial summit, despite the Czech Republic’s sensitivity over its upcoming chairmanship of the EU.

The Elysee Palace on Tuesday (18 November) formally announced an “international summit” to be held in Paris on 8 January, entitled “New World: Values, Development and Regulation,” continuing France’s ambition to create a “new model” for capitalism in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Mr Sarkozy - known for having a high-octane personality, is to chair another major international meeting.  The meeting is to bring together international leaders as well as intellectuals such as economist Joseph Stiglitz and philosopher Francis Fukuyama and will be co-chaired by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and former British PM Tony Blair.

The move comes after a G20 summit in Washington last weekend fell short of EU hopes to tighten global financial regulation.

The new Paris meeting is the latest in a long line of high-powered events organised by France since it took over the EU helm in July. An EU presidency normally hosts two EU summits, but Mr Sarkozy has already added one extraordinary Georgia war summit, one special financial crisis summit, a eurozone summit and a G4 financial summit.

***

French officials in October proposed that the eurozone should form an “economic government” led by Mr Sarkozy after the French EU presidency expires in December in order to maintain the “impetus, the energy” of the Elysee Palace’s efforts.

Mr Sarkozy and Mr Blair have also been floated as candidates for the Lisbon treaty-envisaged job of permanent EU president.

But the Czech Republic has resented any suggestions that a small, new EU state cannot lead the bloc in times of crisis.

Prague has also rejected MEPs’ accusations that it will be a lame duck presidency because it is split over ratification of the Lisbon treaty and because the ruling ODS party suffered defeats in local elections last month.

“Nobody can take the presidency away from the Czech Republic,” Czech deputy prime minister Alexandr Vondra said in October on the eurozone government idea.

Prague also plans to hold two extraordinary summits during its EU chairmanship, one on the Eastern Partnership of deeper integration with the EU’s post-Soviet neighbours and one to greet new US President Barack Obama.

French public policies minister Eric Besson toned down the language of the French president’s original statement on the 8 January event when talking to the Associated Press on Tuesday.

The meeting will be a “conference” not a summit, he said. “It’s not an operational and decision-making colloquium.”

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Czech President, Vaclav Klaus came to the US in 2008 to back President Bush on his avoidance of dealing with climate change. He Spoke at that contrived Heartland Institute’s Anti-action New York City week. He even had the audacity to write to US Congress opposing Al Gore’s position on the issues please see:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54803

and our own

Vaclav Klaus, President of The Czech Republic, Sets The Timing For The Heartland Institute’s New York Climate Change Conference, He May Yet Become, Personally, A Serious Impediment On The Road To Copenhagen.

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 9th, 2008
by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com)

What sort of a European meeting with President Obama does President Klaus think he wants to chair?

We hope that this brewing flap can open the eyes of Europe that time has come for a real EU Presidency.

And The Czech Republic deserves every little bit of the contraversary it has created:

“The EU cannot punish a country for having pluralist opinions” says the following Opinion column - but this is not the point - the point is that a minority of the EU should not be allowed to speak for the Union - and Vaclav Klaus is just the extreme example. We listened to him in New York and we know that he is a very fringe point of view, President of a complicated EU Member State - in no way President of the EU.

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[Comment] Prague is as capable as any capital of taking over EU helm
MAREK NEUMAN, The EUobserver, November 19, 2008

COMMENT - After a Hallowe’en working lunch, French president Sarkozy assured his Czech counterpart, prime minister Topolanek, that France in no way intends to sabotage the Czech Republic’s EU Presidency, which the country assumes on 1 January, 2009.

Despite this, recent weeks have witnessed a large amount of analysis and commentary by international media dwelling upon the question of whether the Czech Republic is a suitable country to lead the EU in times of crisis or whether an experienced administration, such as the French one, would not be a better option.


The EU cannot punish a country for having pluralist opinions.

Although the prospects of the Czech Republic being stripped of its presidency are at the very least hypothetical, the numerous comments certainly deserve further thought, since any such activity would clearly break with the long-established traditions governing the union.

Moreover, just by invoking this debate, are we not already deliberating about the possibility of creating a European Union of two classes?

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There have been several arguments put forward by commentators as to why the Czech Republic might not be a suitable president of the EU for the upcoming six months, but the Czech Republic’s demography has been the overriding issue for a variety of pundits.

It is true that the country, with its population of roughly 10 million, is not one of the largest states, but neither does it belong into the group of European micro-states. However, as a closer look into the history of the rotating EU presidency shows that the size of a country has never been an issue for consideration until now.

Countries such as Belgium or Luxembourg have periodically held the EU chairmanship and have performed just as well - or just as badly - as any of the major European powers in terms of efficiency. Moreover, Slovenia, the first new EU member state to hold EU Presidency, which held the function at the beginning of this year, certainly did not let its demographic size be an obstacle. Indeed, Ljubljana handed over the baton to France largely to wide acclaim from the Brussels community.

In fact, it turns out that some of the major integrative steps in European integration have been advanced while these small countries have been at the helm, most notably the Maastricht Treaty under the leadership of Luxembourg.

Commentators have also claimed that the Czech Republic lacks the experience to lead the union through the financial crisis.

It is important to realize that the Presidency is to a large extent a representative function, which the respective country uses to move certain points up or down on the agenda. By no means does the existence of the EU Presidency imply that decisions will not be brought about collectively. Interestingly, thus far, the Czech Republic has been surprisingly lightly hit by the financial crisis and therefore might even have something to teach in terms of economic expertise to even the largest EU members.

Domestic difficulties

It is true that the Czech Republic is currently going through a bit of internal political turmoil and the current government is somewhat less than stable. However, by now, the main policy goals of the upcoming EU presidency are set and one can expect these to be followed up by whatever political party is in power during the first six months of 2009, since the proposed agenda goes beyond partisan issues.

Additionally, there are other EU members who are also experiencing domestic difficulties, not least of all Belgium, but it is questionable whether the ability of these countries to lead the EU would be disputed if it were their turn.

Finally, the international peanut gallery have repeatedly carped about the growing euro-scepticism among some parts of the Czech political elite.

While it is true that the Czech president, who refuses even to fly the European flag at Prague Castle, is a hardened eurosceptic, this has no bearing on the country’s ability to effectively perform its tasks while holding the EU presidency, since these would be performed by the rest of the government, not the head of state.

But even in the most extreme scenario, such as having a euro-sceptic party or coalition in power, the scheduled country still could not be denied its turn at bat. The EU cannot punish a country for having pluralist opinions if it wants to uphold the image of a democratic entity.

Nevertheless, this most extreme scenario is hardly likely to materialise in the Czech Republic in the next six months, since both major political parties are strongly in favour of further European integration and have proven to be so for the last five years of the country’s membership.

How long must a member state wait to prove its loyalty to the European “idea” before it can enjoy all rights that come from membership? In a community of pluralist, democratic states, the personal beliefs of one politician cannot be a litmus test for allowing a country to assume the presidency.

It is crucial to realize what is the true essence of the EU presidency. The bearer of the chairmanship essentially just outlines the overall agenda for the union for the next six months. Naturally, with the world currently fighting the most severe economic crisis in a century, no one needs to be worried that this issue would not figure high on the agenda of the next presidency term, whatever the country actually in “power.”

When the European Union’s big-bang enlargement process was completed in 2007, the European Union acknowledged that the individual countries were not only fulfilling the legal requirements of membership - the Copenhagen criteria, but were also able to perform all tasks of membership - the rotating EU presidency included. The right to hold the EU presidency is the executive zenith of the numerous duties and obligations that come with EU membership.

Were the Czech Republic indeed stripped of its treaty-based right, the European Union would both internally and externally be sending the message of a hierarchy of important and less important countries.

Not that such a scenario is remotely likely, but the very discussion that is currently occurring is already an acknowledgment of this two-tiered Europe.

Objectively, the Czech Republic is as qualified to lead the European Union from 1 January 2009 as any other EU member.

Marek Neuman is a researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

This weekend, as expected, the TV was plastered with the Russians in Georgia and the Beijing Olympics.

President Bush and Secretary Condaleezza Rice said that Russia will not get away with this like it happened in Hungary.

On CNN, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the man with the Kosovo and Bosnia experience, said this was not Kosovo. The Russians were ready to stage this action already two years ago. It happened now because there was a Russian provocation and there has been indeed a real ethnic cleansing going on in Ossetia and in Abkhazia that caused many thousands of refugees pouring continuously into Georgia. The US says the number is 150,000 displaced people.

Holbrooke looks back into history and thinks of Budapest of 19956, Prag of 1966, Afghanistan of 1968 - so this is the invasion of Georgia that was executed in similar methodology.

Dmitry Simes, President of the Washington DC Nixon Center, and Rose Gottemoeller, Director of Carnegie, Moscow, agree to the above and say that the fact that this happened again at the time of the Olympics, just shows the Putin self confidence and that Putin does not worry that this will harm Russia’s Sochi Winter Olympics of 2014. That area is in fact just across the border from were fighting was going on now.

Governor Bill Richardson stressed that this is not time for high US talk, simply, “we have no leverage on Russia,” so we have to engage them and not isolate them. He knows the area, problems, has been there - all as part of his UN Ambassadorship.

Georgia was incorporated into Russia in 1801 and stayed under Russian rule for 190 years. They re-emerged as an independent state only in 1991. The Ossentians always considered themselves different from the Georgians - and also not similar to the Russians. The same goes for Abkhazia and Azaria as per Rick Stengel, editor of Time Magazine, who was this Sunday’s coordinator of the GPS program that is usually brought out by Fareed Zakaria.

So, can one ostracize Russia from world business? Will this bring about a renewal of the Cold War?

He does not think that Russia has become a revisionist State and that it is fighting for a larger Russia. His idea is that the area is specially complicated - something like the Balkans, and that there were many reasons to what went on.

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***

Cold Friends, Wrapped in Mink and Medals.

By BILL KELLER
Published in The New York Times August 16, 2008

Writing in The Financial Times last week, Chrystia Freeland recalled Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay “The End of History?,” which trumpeted the definitive triumph of liberal democracy. The great nightmare tyrannies of last century — the Evil Empire, Red China — had been left behind by those inseparable twins, freedom and prosperity. Civilization had chosen, and it chose us.

Related
Map
Russia Marches, Neighbors Check Their Cards (The New York Times, August 17, 2008)
Specter of Arrest Deters Demonstrators in China (The New York Tines, August 14, 2008)

Chrystia Freeland’s Article: The New Age of Authoritarianism  www.ft.com August 12, 2008)

So much for that thesis. Surveying the Russian military rout of neighboring Georgia and the spectacle of China’s Olympics, Ms. Freeland, editor of The Financial Times’s American edition and a journalist who started her career covering Russia and Ukraine, proclaimed that a new Age of Authoritarianism was upon us.

If it is not yet an age, it is at least a season: Springtime for autocrats, and not just the minor-league monsters of Zimbabwe and the like, but the giant regimes that seemed so surely bound for the ash heap in 1989.

The Chinese have made their Olympics an exultant display of athletic prowess and global prestige without having to temper their impulse to suppress and control. From the dazzling locksteps of that opening ceremony, to the kowtowing international V.I.P.’s, to the carefully policed absence of protest, this was an Olympics largely free of democratic mess.

Individualism has been confined between lane markers. The pre-Olympics promises that attention would be paid to international norms of behavior went unredeemed. The New York Times’s Andrew Jacobs followed one citizen who decided to take up the government’s Olympic offer of designated protest zones for aggrieved parties who had filed the proper paperwork. Zhang Wei applied for the requisite license and was promptly arrested for “disturbing social order.” Take that, International Olympic Committee.

The striking thing about Russia’s subjugation of uppity Georgia was not the ease or audacity but the swagger of it. This was not just about a couple of obscure border enclaves, nor even, really, about Georgia. This was existential payback.

It turns out that if 1989 was an end — the end of the Wall, the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire, if not in fact the end of history — it was also a beginning.

It gave birth to a bitter resentment in the humiliated soul of Russia, and no one nursed the grudge so fiercely as Vladimir V. Putin. He watched the empire he had spied for disbanded. He endured the belittling lectures of a rich and self-righteous West. He watched the United States charm away his neighbors, invade his allies in Iraq, and, in his view, play God with the political map of Europe.

Mr. Putin is, in this sense of grievance, a man of his people, as visitors to the New York Times Web site can see in the sampling of breast-beating commentary from Russian bloggers. It is safe to assume that Mr. Putin’s already stratospheric popularity at home has grown to Phelpsian proportions, not least among the long-suffering military.

In China, 1989 was the year that a spark of liberal aspiration flickered on Tiananmen Square, and was decisively extinguished. That was another beginning, or at least a renewal: of Chinese resolve. In May of that year, in the midst of the Tiananmen euphoria, Mikhail S. Gorbachev visited Beijing, and two visions of a new communism stared each other in the face.

The protesters on the Chinese pavilion held banners welcoming Mr. Gorbachev as a champion of the greater freedom they sought. Meanwhile, the visiting Russian delegation marveled at the abundance in Chinese stores, the bounty of a policy that chose economic liberalization without political dissent.

The Chinese and Russians scorned each other’s neo-Communist models, but in some ways they have evolved toward one another. Both countries now tolerate a measure of entrepreneurship and social license, as long as neither threatens the dominion of the state. Both countries have calculated that you can buy a measure of domestic stability if you combine a little opportunity with an appeal to national pride. (The Chinese “street” felt no more sympathy for restive Tibetans than the Russian blogosphere felt for Georgia.) And both have discovered that if you are rich the world is less likely to get in your way.

President Bush was mocked from both sides for his seeming impotence. Neoconservatives were appalled by photos of President Bush sharing a laugh with Mr. Putin in Beijing while Russian armor gathered at the Georgian border. For a president who has made the export of democracy his signature doctrine, that looked to the stand-tough crowd like a “Pet Goat” moment.

Others argued that this was a crisis Mr. Bush tacitly encouraged by talking up Georgia’s rambunctious president as a friend and NATO candidate. By midweek, possibly goaded by the wailing of neoconservatives and the aggressively anti-Putin rhetoric of Senator John McCain, Mr. Bush had abruptly amped up his opprobrium and dispatched an American airlift of humanitarian aid. And by the weekend there was a cold war chill in the air.

But Mr. Bush’s predicament is not just his. The question of how to deal with these reinvigorated autocracies bedevils the Europeans and will surely rank high among the legacy issues that confound Mr. Bush’s successor.

This time it is not — or not yet — the threat of nuclear apocalypse that limits the West’s options toward our emboldened Eastern rivals. The Chinese, in fact, are acting as if they have gotten past the saber-rattling stage of emerging-power status; they lavish diplomacy on Taiwan and Japan, and deploy the might of capital instead. The Russians may be in a more adolescent, table-pounding stage of development, but Mr. Putin, too, prefers to work the economic levers, bullying with petroleum.

The United States, meanwhile, is mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, estranged from much of the world, and bled by serial economic crises.

History, it seems, is back, and not so obviously on our side.

Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, covered the last years of the Soviet Union for the newspaper.

***

——————

The New Age of Authoritarianism.
By Chrystia Freeland
Published: August 12 2008 in The Financial Times.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, democracy was on the march and we declared the End of History. Nearly two decades later, a neo-imperialist Russia is at war with Georgia, Communist China is proudly hosting the Olympics, and we find that, instead, we have entered the Age of Authoritarianism.

It is worth recalling how different we thought the future would be in the immediate, happy aftermath of the end of the cold war. Remember Francis Fukuyama’s ringing assertion: “The triumph of the west, of the western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to western liberalism.”

Even in the heady days of 1989, that declaration of universal - and possibly eternal - ideological victory seemed a little hubristic to Professor Fukuyama’s many critics. Yet his essay made such an impact because it captured the scale, and the enormous benefits, of the change sweeping through the world. Not only was the stifling Soviet - which was really the Russian - suzerainty over central and eastern Europe and central Asia coming to an end but, even more importantly, the very idea of a one-party state, ruthlessly presiding over a centrally planned economy, seemed to be discredited, if not forever, then surely for our lifetimes.

That collapse brought freedom and prosperity to millions of people who had lived under Soviet rule. Moreover, the implosion of Soviet communism inspired hundreds of millions of others around the world to embrace freer markets and demand more responsive governments. The great global economic boom of the past 20 years, which has brought more people out of poverty more quickly than at any other time in human history, would not have been possible had the Soviet way of ordering the world not been discredited first.

Yet today, in much of the world, the spread of freedom is being checked by an authoritarian revanche. That shift has been most obvious in the petro-states, where oil is casting its usual curse. From Latin America to Africa to the Middle East, the black-gold bonanza has given authoritarian regimes the currency to buy off or to repress their subjects. In Russia, oil has fuelled an economic boom that prime minister Vladimir Putin, and some of his foreign admirers, mistakenly attribute to his careful demolition of the chaotic democracy of the 1990s.

For Russians, that argument is strengthened by the fact that the rising economic power of the moment - China - is unashamedly sticking to its faith in one-party rule. The end of the cold war made it tempting to believe that as countries opened up their markets, and became richer in the process, they would inevitably open up their societies, too. George W. Bush, US president, reiterated that hopeful thesis on his Asia tour last week, insisting: “Young people who grow up with the freedom to trade goods will ultimately demand the freedom to trade ideas.”

But the Chinese mandarins and the Russian siloviki are taking a different view - and acting on it. As China scholar David Shambaugh recounts in his new book, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation , the CCP studied the collapse of Soviet communism with great care. And rather than seeing it as proof of the inevitable, global triumph of western liberalism, the Chinese comrades treated the Russian example as a textbook case of what a ruling Communist party ought not to do.

In this version of history, sinologist Andrew Nathan tells me, 1989 is also a turning point, but not because that was when communism’s most notorious wall came down. Instead, the key event of that year was the bloody suppression of protesters in Tiananmen Square: “As a propaganda position they have put it out that we had a crackdown in 1989 and we saved the party and we saved the country,” he says. “We didn’t have a failure of will like the Russians. Without that, we wouldn’t have been a great, modern power.” That’s a point of view Mr Putin has embraced, too, describing the collapse of the Soviet Union as a tragedy and his own reconstruction of a neo-authoritarian state as the only way to restore Russian “greatness”.

The west has been remarkably sanguine about this resurgence of authoritarianism, and one reason is that, this time, the comrades have money. Even as the Kremlin repeatedly confiscates the assets not just of its own businesspeople but of foreign ones, too, investment bankers, and plain old investors, are flocking to a Moscow flush with petro-roubles. The same is true of the Gulf states. China, on a path to become the world’s largest economy, is the most attractive of all.

But the Age of Authoritarianism is bad news for all of us, not just the human rights campaigners that businesspeople and practitioners of realpolitik love to dismiss. Like all overly rigid objects, authoritarian regimes conceal a tremendous fragility in their apparent strength - and their leaders know it. It is this realisation that has driven Mr Putin’s systematic destruction of all forms of civil society - an eminently pragmatic measure, although it has mystified some outside observers, who wonder why so popular a leader needs to be so heavy-handed. China’s chiefs have figured this out, too, hence their anxiety about everything from the Muslim Uighurs to the internet to the former Soviet Union’s “colour revolutions”.

Of course, another way to ensure popular support for your authoritarian regime is by playing up nationalist sentiment. We are more tolerant of our home-grown bullies if we think we need them to fight our enemies abroad - as even democratic America has demonstrated in recent years. Mr Putin has understood this all along, launching a brutal attack on Chechnya even before his coronation as president in 2000.

Russia’s expert taunting of the hotheads in Georgia, followed by immediate and massive retaliation the moment Tbilisi took the bait, is the latest evidence that, for the Kremlin, neo-imperialism is an essential bulwark of neo-authoritarianism. Bringing down the walls really did make the world safer. Now that so many leaders are building them back up again, figuring out how to contain the 21st century’s monied authoritarians is our most pressing foreign policy dilemma.

 chrystia.freeland at ft.com

Georgia and the Ukraine made moves to get closer to the West - they applied to become members of NATO. Georgia also worked with Western Europe in order to help the EU with access to Azerbaijan and Central Asia petroleum and gas. Russia clearly did not regard this bypassing of its traditional authority over what it considers as its brood. At the UN they still are bunched as former CIS and other Eastern bloc friends. Georgia had to be punished and Ukraine had to be thought that its future may be of the same sort.

Now, did the Georgians think that the US will be more then a paper tiger? Lots of promise, social help - but militarily? Then - it really is not direct US interests, but rather EU interests. So, why would Russia not say to itself that showing the EU that the US is a paper tiger - nu - that is something that can also help loosen further the EU-US ties.

Will the US react by telling the Russians that their economy does not justify their being members of the G8? That would be a reasonable game-play, but who will pick this up in the US Presidential contests?

Aha! so here we go. Bush looked into Putin’s eyes and saw honesty. Perhaps he was right of sorts and Putin has now provided a pay-back. Russia’s moves strengthen McCain in his competition with Obama.

Was this move intended to help the Republican’s in the Presidential competition, and a sign of an oil-hungry party in charge, that barks but does not bite, rather then a new force that would make the world less dependent on oil - and oil these days is indeed the only thing going for the present version of a degraded Russia. The future is bleak for Russia in a world that will be dominated by China and India with the billion-plus people, and their booming internal economies that by now whistle at Russia as there is very little except brute nuclear power that this country has to offer them. Oil - yes - but the oil to China and India will arrive by ship rather then by pipe - and if it is a pipe - that pipe will come from Central Asia and not Russia.

Do we think that National borders are holly? No! But then South Ossetia belongs together with North Ossetia to one Free Ossetia State - and that is clearly not what Russia wants. They did not let go of Chechnia either. So the question here is whose ox is being gored - and the ox will suffer just the same under this or another regime. The South Ossetians of Georgia had at least a chance at a new and better life. By playing the Russian cards they blew it and that is why the civilized world is on Georgia’s side. If this sort of game digs deep into the Ukraine, our best advise to the Ukraine government is to take the Czech example of friendly divorce, and let go of those eastern territories that want some more Russian punishment. Ukraine will then soon find out that they are better thereof - and the Russian Ukrainians will just be set back and have to start their lives anew.