Blogoir

Today the latest edition of DIPLOMAT magazine arrived.

I opened it to find an article written by me which I could not remember writing(!). So I read it with much enjoyment and appreciation.

Check it out. It describes my attempts as an argumentative young diplomat to persuade the Embassy in Belgrade in 1983/84 that the then Yugoslavia was possibly heading for a breakdown, with unfathomable consequences. To no avail.

Which prompted me at the time to write my legendary MTS, Non-MTS paper - as per one of my very first blog postings here.

My DIPLOMAT article describes what happened next:

I left the post in 1984. Back at HQ I went along to Personnel to discuss my future. ‘You are getting a reputation for being argumentative,’ said the frumpy HR lady. ‘Wouldn’t you argue if you saw disaster looming but everyone else ignored it?’ I replied in some exasperation.

‘See, you’re arguing again,’ came the smug response.

I still remember this conversation so vividly, not least the supercilious but unimaginative female on the other side of the table. I pointed out to her that it had been annoying dealing with senior Embassy colleagues who instructed me to go out and talk to Yugoslav dissidents and get their devasting observations on the fecklessness of the Yugo-communists, but then could not spell when they wrote afterwards that these people were 'obviously dissaffected'.

"I find that hard to believe", she sniffed.

Pshaw.

And so I moved onto the Air Services Desk and then FCO Speechwriting. The Cold War ended. A mere 300 weeks or so after I left Belgrade, Yugoslavia indeed collapsed into appalling violence and ghastly war crimes. Huge British and international resources were poured in to help stop the fighting and pay for post-conflict reconstruction.

Yes, I had been argumentative. I had even been right. What I see now, with the benefit of much more experience, was that I had not been convincing.

Not that it would have made much difference had I been convincing. Finance Ministries don’t want to adjust their plans to warnings of disaster. They prefer to ignore the problem and instead pay out reluctantly as and when disaster creates real problems, which the taxpayer is prepared to fund to clean up.

In Yugoslavia’s case, this was far more expensive than the cost of investing in diplomatic initiatives to bribe the reckless Yugoslavs into calming down.

What are feisty young Chinese or Indian diplomats now drafting in their European Embassies? Maybe a paper entitled ‘The eurozone: MTS, or non-MTS?’

Will they be allowed to send it back to HQ?

Read the whole thing.

Have you read this production of mine from 2008? An extract:

Recently I was a Harvard-sponsored seminar at which issues of international 'humanitarian intervention' and the Right to Protect were discussed.

I recalled seeing signs as one entered Harvard Square: Cambridge is a Domestic Violence-Free Zone.

I said that if you were walking down the street near Harvard and saw a man beating his wife/child/dog brutally with a stick in his front garden, you were morally and maybe even these days legally obligated to intervene to stop the violence.

Thus we long ago moved on from the idea that the 'sovereignty' of one's home was a shield behind which seriously illegal acts could proceed uninterrupted.

So if it is unacceptable to brutalise one person in one's own garden, why is it acceptable to brutalise millions of people in one's country without fear of being stopped?

Enter the Right to Protect (R2P), the idea (a) that states do have exclusive sovereignty over their own internal affairs but also (b) that that sovereignty is qualified: other members of the international communty may intervene to stop massive crimes against a population when that population's own government is either taking part in the mayhem - or is powerless or unwilling to stop it.

Sounds ok?

On this site I have warned readers about the pernicious impact of the EU's several attempts to limit working hours by law, especially in the UK National Health Service.

See eg here.

And here.

My best friend happens to be an NHS consultant. He has warned me for years about the way the Working Time Directive has scaled back training hours for doctors, which must lead to more blunders in treating patients when the doctors are finally working alone.

Plus he made a not so obvious point about 'information decay'. The more shifts you introduce into hospital work as caused by the WTD, the information about patients has to be passed from doctor to doctor more often and so tends to decline. Decisions become less smart. 

Not to forget the fact that a new trend must emerge, namely slowing down one's effort as a shift draws to an end and leaving any tricky issue to the next doctor.

All of which is duly happening:

Consultants who took part in the study were most damning about the impact of the changes on their trainees.

Among responses from more than 500 senior surgeons taking part were repeated warnings that the rules were creating a generation of "clock-watchers" with a "lazy work ethic" who no longer felt personal responsibility for their patients.

Trainees were now spending so little time in operating theatres that they would lack the "cutting skills" required to perform safely when they became consultants, many warned.

College president John Black urged the Government to take urgent action to address the concerns, having pledged in its Coalition agreement that it would work to limit the application of the EU rules in the UK.

He described the situation facing the NHS as "acutely urgent".

Mr Black said: "Without action we are going to see a generation of specialists with less experience than any that have gone before."

As previously noted, the vile Precautionary Principle is used to stop all sorts of actions by citizens on a 'just in case' basis. But when it comes to official policies which are obviously likely to lead to people dying at the hands of the state, it is nowhere to be seen.

Madness:

The heart surgeon, 48, said that by the time she became a consultant, nine years ago, she had undertaken 900 cardiac operations. The current generation were likely to become senior doctors after performing less than 300, she said.

My piece in the Independent:

Belgrade's application in London looked like a weird attempt to cover everything in political slime to make a specious Serbia-favouring syllogism:

All slimy people are guilty

All involved in the Yugoslav imbroglio were equally slimy

Therefore all were equally guilty – and, by the way, equally innocent.

This sits (putting it mildly) uneasily with the facts...

Update: my piece has been picked up by B92 in Belgrade - with added picture!

A London court has rejected Serbia's application to get former Bosnian/Bosniac leader Ejup Ganic extradited to Belgrade to face charges on the infamous Dobrovoljacka Street killings in Sarajevo in 1992.

The word 'rejected' perhaps does not do justice to District Judge Timothy Workman's demolition of Serbia's case. Perhaps 'blew to smithereens beyond all recognition' would be more accurate.

The judge probed behind the Serbian application, exploring not so much the substantive merits of the case itself but rather the implicit and explicit motivations of the plaintiffs. He examined the fact that other substantive and credible war crimes processes (ICTY and in Bosnia) had found no case for proceeding against Dr Ganic:

On the first day of this extended hearing I was satisfied that there was prima facie evidence of an abuse of process and as a result of that ruling evidence has now been adduced in relation to that issue.

No evidence having been adduced to show a striking or substantial change in the evidence available to the ICTY or to Mr Alcock, I have concluded that there is no valid justification for commencing proceedings against Dr Ganic.

But much worse, from Belgrade's point of view, was this: 

I am satisfied from the evidence of Mr Arnaut that during the course of these extradition proceedings attempts were made to use the proceedings as a lever to try to secure the Bosnian Government’s approval for the Srebrenica Declaration.

If indeed the Government [of Serbia] was prepared not to pursue these extradition proceedings in return for Bosnia co-operation, that in itself must be capable of amounting to an abuse of the process of this court. Some corroboration of Mr Arnaut’s evidence could be found in the unusual circumstances in which an application to vary conditions of bail was made to this court to enable Dr Ganic to return to Bosnia.

It would appear that that application was founded upon attempts at diplomatic agreements. I am also satisfied that the descriptions in the request [of the alleged grave breaches of Geneva Conventions] are as described significant misrepresentations.

The combination of the two leads me to believe that these proceedings are brought and are being used for political purposes and as such amount to an abuse of the process of this court.

The Serbia side says it will appeal against the ruling.

My assessment? See (if they use it) my piece for the Independent tomorrow.

But for now...

There is a maxim of Equity which says that equity must come to court with clean hands.

In this case Bosnian/Bosniac hands are far from spotless. The Bosniac leadership wail in rage at anything which suggests that they themselves and their predecessors may have made any unwise or immoral moves in the chain of events culminating in the violent collapse of Bosnia, or in their conduct of the ensuing conflict.

Instead they park on one big principle: that the Serbs (and indeed just Serbs) are Guilty.

Which means - as they see it - that an attempt by Belgrade to open episodes such as the Dobrovoljacka Street killings and cast some blame on senior or any Bosniacs must be at best ill-intentioned, and at worst downright evil.

(For about as reliable a view of what actually happened as we are ever likely to get, see this interview with Jovan Divjak, a senior Serbian JNA officer who bravely decided to fight on the Bosnia side of the conflict.)

Meanwhile the Serbs in Belgrade and Banja Luka try forlornly to salvage something from the wreckage of Milosevic's policies.

They (mainly) accept that Milosevic, Karadzic and the rest of that cast of weird second-raters pursued ruinous immoral policies, but they then froth up arguments that, bad as Belgrade's leaders were, others leaders were not really much better and even, perhaps, worse.

And this argument does have some merit. One of the very best things Robin Cook achieved as Foreign Minister was to act upon the proposition that Croatia's leader Franjo Tudjman was in much the same category as Slobodan Milosevic, ie a zany and pernicious national socialist cum fascist menace to European values. Cook stubbornly held the line against all sorts of EU pressures to 'show flexibility' towards Tudjman. Tudjman then helpfully died, isolated and unmourned by moderate opinion round the planet.

The Bosnian case is a harder one for Belgrade to prove. OK, Izetbegovic was a convinced if (by many standards) moderate Islamist, but he was defending a weak position.

Belgrade had all sorts of options to deal with the BH conundrum, but Milosevic chose to let rip Arkan and all sorts of vicious gangsters as a political tool. Far from using its weight and intellectual resources to show modern leadership, Belgrade went on a massive binge of greedy violent cynicism, seemingly relying at each stage on erratic improvizacija and Western lack of resolve.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that any London court is likely to have in mind the fact that sixteen years on Belgrade has still not arrested General Mladic and thereby confronted the horror of Srebrenica. And that, accordingly, Belgrade's claims to be able to deal fairly with war crimes trials may well be true, but somehow held hostage to deeper political manipulations.

Belgrade here looks to have made a blunder in trying to trade behind the scenes with Sarajevo: 'Ajde bre, we'll end the Ganic extradition application in London if you guys cut us some slack on the Srebrenica declaration going through our Assembly...

Whereas in normal Balkan bazaar terms this sort of thing makes perfect sense, a steely London court not unreasonably could conclude that the whole extradition application had nothing (much) to do with Justice and was more about shady political machinations.

Result?

Serbia has taken a severe tonking in a London court today, following a pretty miserable result at the ICJ last week. The Bosniacs will be exultant, feeling that this represents a historic day of vindication for their core 'narrative'.

All of which said, anyone watching the evasive interviews with Ganic and other leaders on the gripping Fall of Yugoslavia video series will feel that something dark and dishonourable did occur at Dobrovoljacka Street. Not much chance now of justice being done for the victims of that war crime, alas.

Bottom Line?

Belgrade under democratic and fair-minded leadership can make all sorts of important points about the collapse of Yugoslavia. Not all Belgrade's arguments were bad just because Milosevic made them.

But until Belgrade bites the bullet and arrests Mladic, those arguments look contrived and morally hollow.

Washing those dirty hands is much better than pointing with them at the grime on others' dark fingers.

Toy Story 3 is just superb. Go and see it.

One highlight is Barbie abruptly hollering out one of the greatest ideas of Thomas Jefferson:

Authority should derive from the consent of the governed; not from the threat of force

Hurrah!

Yet ... what if those governing start off that way, but then slowly but surely change the rules towards rewarding themselves first and looking after the governed second?

How are the governed to withdraw their consent from this situation, when the governors of all main political parties seem to have more in common with each other than with those who pay taxes and vote?

This problem featured in a very different context in the famous 1957 book by Milovan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System.

Djilas had been one of the very top Titoist communists after WW2. Some older Serbian staff working in the Embassy in the early 1980s hated his memory, as (they said) he had dominated Belgrade after the war wearing jackboots and carrying a whip brutally to impose comunist rule.

With the publication of this book Djilas was sent to prison by the Yugo-communists and achieved international glory as the first senior communist leader to renounce communism in its Stalinist-bureaucratic form.

Djilas' core ideologically devastating argument was that far from replacing a class-free society, the new communist elite themselves had become an effective class, hoarding power and privileges for themselves at the expense of the masses.

Which leads us now, via Barbie, straight to this:

The current state of American politics can be summed up in this poll data, published today by Rasmussen Reports:

75% of Likely Voters prefer free markets over a government managed economy. Just 14% think a government managed economy is better while 11% are not sure.

Well, one would hope so. But here is the kicker:

America's Political Class is far less enamored with the virtues of a free market. In fact, Political Class voters narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin.

... It strikes me that these data largely explain the political turmoil of the last year. The political class, now firmly in the saddle in Washington, wants to substitute government control for free choice wherever possible.

Since members of the political class communicate mostly with each other, they evidently underestimated the extent to which such policies would be unpopular with mainstream Americans.

A point also made eloquently by Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit).

All of which applies to the European Union too. Whatever its merits in allowing all sorts of processes to be 'harmonised' for general public benefit, the fact remains that the 'consent of the governed' is not exactly something which preys upon EU elite minds as they pile on new 'Directives'.

Where is all this heading?

Somewhere dangerous, I fear.

Welcome Browser and other new readers. After reading my thoughts below, check out this piece I wrote back in 2008 about inat. If you don't understand inat, you can't understand Kosovo or Serbia or anything about former Yugoslavia. Sorry, but there it is.

* * * * *

The International Court of Justice has ruled that the declaration of independence "is not in conflict with international law".

The ICJ site is overwhelmed so I can not yet share with you my wise thoughts on the full text of the decision.

Quickies anyway.

The ICJ decision was likely in view of the strange question which the UN General Assembly posed at Serbia's request:

Is the unilateral declaration of independence by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government of Kosovo in accordance with international law?

Since international law loftily takes no view about declarations of independence, unilateral or otherwise. As I previously wrote:

Because in a trite sense a declaration of independence (or of anything else for that matter) has to be 'in accordance with international law', since it has no relevance in international law. International law does not deign to take any notice of declarations.

Thus, for example, if the town council down the road here in the UK makes a solemn unilateral declaration of the town's independence from the UK, the rest of us will make a wry smile and go back to blogging or working.

The declaration is 'in accordance' with UK law - free speech and all that. But it is just that, and no more. It's what happens afterwards that counts one way or the other in legal terms, in domestic as in international law. 

If citizens of our town en masse support the declaration of independence, put up road-blocks, stop paying taxes to Westminster and proclaim Vladimir Putin their new king with his consent, things begin to get more interesting.

Norms are being created and broken in all directions. Realities start to be created. Loyalties start to shift...   

Why did Serbia pose the Kosovo question in this odd form? Maybe because it did not want to force the ICJ to answer head-on the Kosovo independence question (eg Is Kosovo now a state recognised by international law?) in case the Serbs lost, thereby incurring an epochal defeat?

This 'advisory' ruling on this curiously open-ended question allows Belgrade to say that nothing significant has been decided one way or the other, so its struggle against Kosovo's independence blithely continues.

The ICJ ruling itself confirms that view in a sense, saying that the Court has not taken a view on whether the consequences of Kosovo's independence declaration have included Kosovo acquiring statehood.

According to B92 in Belgrade (in Serbian) Russia has been quick to confirm that it will not recognise Kosovo for (in effect) this very reason.

If other global big-hitters such India and China and Brazil and South Africa likewise decide to stay put and not shift their view, Kosovo's awkward half-in, half-out international status will drag on indefinitely - the map at the link shows how poorly Kosovo has done with the East/South of the planet.

On the other hand, the headlines round the world will tend to present this as a Win for Kosovo's cause, which in due course might well lead a larger number of countries to recognise Kosovo as a full independent state.

Basically, Kosovo falls into the All Too Difficult box for international law and policy.

Why? Because it is astride two huge tectonic plates underpinning global order and so is bang in the middle of a jurisprudential, political and moral earthquake zone. 

One plate is all about the right of identified peoples to be independent - the principle of self-determination).

The other is all about the circumstances under which existing states can split up into smaller or different formations (or not) - the principle of territorial integrity.

So it all wends its way back to the cynical deals done within the EU and between key European capitals and Washington back in the early 1990s. Basically, it was agreed to recognise Slovenia as an independent state since it (sort of) ticked both boxes simultaneously.

Slovenia was dominated overwhelmingly by Slovenes (self-determination).

And it had an undisputed geographical/political identity as a republic within the former Yugoslavia (territorial integrity), so its independence flowed neatly in parallel with the recognition of Russia and the other former Soviet republics as independent states.

Kosovo certainly makes its mark in the self-determination box, but as it was 'only' a province within Serbia (albeit with many attributes of a full republic, including membership of the eight-person SFRY Presidency itself) the territorial integrity issue is far less clear.

The more so since our cherished Helsinki Process norms basically lay down that there shall be no change in borders within Europe without the consent of all concerned. Which in this case there manifestly isn't.

Here is a tidy Russian look at the wider issues of principle at stake for Europe as these two tectonic plates grind away against each other. 

Implications for Bosnia? Not many.

The Republika Srpska leadership (more or less in coordination with Belgrade) will continue to press the self-determination argument: if Kosovo's declaration of independence is not against international law, why should Republika Srpska too not make a similar declaration at some point?

Down the road in Sarajevo the Bosniacs will noisily insist that the territorial integrity principle is supreme, and that RS itself is in different ways 'illegitimate'.

The Balkans. Where nothing is ever settled.

A curious article over at Foreign Affairs about the efficacy of democracies in doing better to protect citizens from earthquakes.

Is it because democracies are simply richer and so build better buildings? No:

In a democracy, leaders must maintain the confidence of large portions of the population in order to stay in power. To do so, they need to protect the people from natural disasters by enforcing building codes and ensuring that bureaucracies are run by competent administrators.

... Earthquakes in politically sensitive areas such as the capital may threaten autocrats, but high-casualty events elsewhere do not; politicians respond to the desires of their immediate constituents and regard the needs of others as far less salient.

It matters little that the means exist to mitigate the effects of disasters if politicians are not incentivized to implement them. Despite high casualties, autocrats can expect to keep their thrones.

On the other hand, democratic leaders who fail to prevent natural disasters from causing calamity are replaced. As such, democrats plan and react to natural disasters, while autocrats do not.

No doubt there is something or other in this argument. The hot breath of angry voters on a politicians plump neck no doubt catches said politician's attention.

That said, if the issue is incentives this article surely incentivises leaders to become autocrats - why put up with all this democratic hassle when you're likely to be thrown out of power for something which was not your fault?

My beef with the piece is that it somehow assumes in a mechanical way that 'democracy' is only about power being dispensed downwards in a notably more efficient way than happens in autocracies. The true virtue of democracy - toughly enforcing building codes!

It's far more interesting than that.

In a democracy people themselves have power.

The power to sue other people (and indeed the government) if they do not do their jobs properly. The power to work for private corporations or research labs and create better, stronger materials. The power of transparency so that people can see what designs are being used and how contracts are awarded. The power of using the Internet to find global best practice in earthquake prevention techniques. And so on.

Not that all of this works well 100% of the time. But these things are mutually reinforcing, and the overall impact is to empower and incentivise everyone in a better direction. The system as a whole is more responsible and responsive.

The article contradicts itself:

In China, the government only half-heartedly assisted the remote province of Qinghai after an earthquake in 2010 and suffered few political consequences for its inaction. But when an earthquake hit Sichuan in 2008, the Chinese government -- wary of protest in this politically and economically powerful center -- undertook relief operations that won the approval of much of the international community.

Ha! Having seen that disasters annoy the masses, the crafty Chinese autocrats lifted their game. And became more effective autocrats. Nay, they won the 'approval' of the 'international community'. Tra-la.

H/t Samizdata who lead us to this vivid site featuring three Texas fun-lovin' ladies.

One a Polysomnography Technician (what else?), another at college, the third looking after her family.

Yup. Beautiful smart strong women who have it all. The feminist's dream come true?

That said, men with a nervous or unfaithful disposition might consider it wise not to apply.

Not much.

Various more or less unsatisfactory inquiries and analyses have been done. Nothing too bad or egregious to report, they say.

Move along, folks! Back to mass collectivist action to run down civilisation - according to Green Rules.

Clive Crook likes the idea of acting to mitigate the risk of climate change but is unimpressed:

But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even wilfully wrong.

The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause...

It's not the extreme or otherwise ill-advised policy recommendations of the greens that have turned opinion against action of any kind, though I grant you they're no help. It's the diminished credibility of the claim that we have a problem in the first place.

That is why Climategate mattered. And that is why these absurd "vindications" of the climate scientists involved also matter.

The economic burdens of mitigating climate change will not be shouldered until a sufficient number of voters believe the problem is real, serious, and pressing. Restoring confidence in climate science has to come first.

That, in turn, means trusting voters with all of the doubts and unanswered questions -- with inconvenient data as well as data that confirm the story -- instead of misleading them (unintentionally, of course) into believing that everything is cut and dried.

The inquiries could have started that process. They have further delayed it.

Scroll down through the comments of the usual incompatible for and against sort, until you get to steveinch, who reads my very mind:

The issue isn't whether climate is changing. The issue is whether there is a credible plan with an IRR above the cost of capital to do something about it.

For the moment, the answer to that question, particularly as it applies to unilateral action by the US, appears to be no. With regard to coordinated global action, the answer may be yes, depending on how you think of the notion of intergenerational discount rates. If you are willing to argue that there should be no discount rate for intergenerational issues, you can conclude that a coordinated global approach would work. Of course, if you take that point of view, no sovereign nation should borrow to finance its operations unless it will pay the debt off within a generation.

But even with that charitable view of discounting, the case for unilateral action is weak because unilateral action will not solve the problem. Thus the costs of action exist and so do the costs of climate change.

The case for unilateral action economically must be made based on an expected value calculation, and, even with a zero discount rate, the numbers simply do not add up.

Precisely.

Is it wiser (a) to heave away at impossible global expense now ("just in case") to try to stop the climate changing? Or (b) instead spend money as and when the climate does 'change' to alleviate the effects (some of which will be positive anyway).

No-one knows. The Stern Review seemingly failed on this most central point.

The only fact that counts is that Western governments are not going to pass any measures which make a massive one-off difference. Money and voter support are not there.

So let's get on with adapting and accumulating lots of small advances in energy-saving and more modest use of resources.

Bring on Interflush.

And this Israeli invention for solar power.

Now that Cuba has agreed to release - and exile - a goodly number of political prisoners, Spain expects the European Union to 'respond' and be more flexible.

I have written here on various occasions about Cuba. Maybe the most astonishing thing about this run-down Cold War relic is not the fanatical loyalty its incompetent undemocratic regime attracts from so many foreign people who appear to enjoy their own democratic way of life.

No, it is the fact that the EU has in fact no real policy on this matter.

This ought to be a no-brainer.

Cuba is island which is geographically and civilisationally part of 'the West', which speaks European languages and which is thought to be keen to keep some distance between itself and its massive USA neighbour.

So the EU should be pressing a Deal:

• here's what we'll do, Cuba
• we'd like you to be independent and, if that's what your people really want, a country which emphasises Equality rather than Freedom
• and we'll help you stay independent of the USA
• so large sums of money will be made available to help you make the sort of transition which has happened so successfully elsewhere in the former Commie world
• you can move at your own pace, as long as you do move with some energy in the right direction
• Dull but honest European advisers will pour in to help you devise modern welfare programmes
• and your young people can come en masse to Europe for scholarships and training in non-American ways of running business and a government
• BUT, there is a but
• you do have to accept, and we hereby call for as an integral part of the process, a date for free and fair elections and an end to one-party communist rule. Not tomorrow. But definitely within a sensible time-span.
• We'll even help the Communist Party with campaign advice of the sort we give to other parties set up once politics is liberated properly once and for all 
• OK?

The EU is nowhere near that sort of common sense, generous deal, aimed at ending the misery in Cuba in a progressive, measured and principled way.

Indeed, my spies in the FCO tell me that the new British government is busy limply positioning itself 'in the middle of the EU pack' between those who want to suck up to the Cuban Leftists (Spain) and those who want freedom in Cuba (Poland).

Come on everyone, including in the FCO.

Lift your horizons. We can do better than this!

Oh, and if anyone wants to know how we brought democratic change to Milosevic's Serbia, they only need to ask me.

Two weeks ago I made my prediction about the Polish Presidential elections:

My bet this evening? Komorowski to edge home in two weeks' time, something like 53% - 47%

Earlier today it looked as if Kaczynski might have squeaked home, but that bet looks more or less to be the final result. Jaroslaw Kaczynski has conceded defeat on the basis of the exit polls. The gap between the two candidates may narrow somewhat as the votes are counted, but not enough to allow Kaczynski to win.

Kaczynski did very well to close the gap to this extent, and his Law and Justice Party are well placed now to consolidate their position as the leading opposition grouping, or even actually win the next Parliamentary elections.

As for Bronislaw Komorowski, he will have to show some guile in leading Poland without seeming the prisoner of Citizens Platform, the governing party. PM Donald Tusk has been able to blame former President Kaczynski for blocking various reforms - now he'll have to take more responsibility for specific political outcomes.

It will be interesting to see whether Radek Sikorski survives as Foreign Minister. Some muttering is heard that Komorowski may prefer him shunted back to the Defence Ministry with eg former communist turned wily independent-minded social democrat Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz replacing him, as a gesture to the centre left.

In any case, well done Poland for managing the Smolensk disaster and its painful political aftermath with such dignity and attention to due process.

Both Kaczynski and Komorowski have campaigned honourably and well. A model of how modern democracy should work, acting as both a source of national stability - and a moral value in itself.

This site always praises good technique.

So let's hear it for the FBI, who have done a most impressive number on cracking open a sophisticated Russian spy ring.

Most of the lurid media reports this morning simply rehash what is in the US Justice Department published material. Check out the two PDFs at the link to read the originals.

One of the accused is one Vicky Pelaez, who appears to be a non-Russian (born in Peru) who married one of the 'illegals' ('Juan Lazaro') and was a prominent anti-imperialist New York journalist. Here she is in full neo-Marxist rant, on Honduras.

This pro-Castro site forlornly tries to froth up a conspiracy theory: because Pelaez was the only Spanish language journalist in New York worth a damn, something had to be done about her!

It will be. The detailed Justice Department accounts of her complicated manoeuvres to help 'Lazaro' contact the Russians and carry large amounts of cash too and fro are most instructive.

This one will run for a long time, revealing all sorts of fascinating details about the Russians' spycraft. It's worth recalling that the key problem with having spies is getting from them any useful information they may have picked up, and indeed communicating with them to set targets and follow progress. How to do that regularly without arousing suspicion?

Hence the mysterious world of Steganography, the art of hiding digital information in a publicly available image.

The FBI reveal many other hi-tech ruses used in this case.

Here is an earlier alleged British attempt to effect clever communication which was very smart - until it wasn't.

We all agree that government spending in many Western countries is too high - stupidly high.

We are cranking up debts to pay for current consumption at a rate which suggests to the markets that we have lost our minds. The markets look to charge us higher interest rates, as lending to possibly mad people starts to look more risky.

Once that happens we drift towards Greek-style crisis - the interest on the debt we owe goes far beyond what we can ever afford to pay back. The risk that cash-machines across the Western world suddenly will stop issuing money grows apace...

The latest ploy is to announce 'cuts' in government spending. Shock! How dare they hurt our feelings?

But what exactly is a cut?

Any normal person would think that if the government in any one year spends £Xbn, a cut occurs if the government announces that it will spend only £Ybn, where Y is less than X. And then in fact does spend £Ybn, as promised.

That turns out to be a slippery idea.

Cuts can mean all sorts of things, some of them simultaneously. Thus:

• spending in cash terms goes down in 2012 compared to 2011
• spending in inflation-adjusted terms goes down in 2012 compared to 2011
• spending over the period 2011-2015 will be less than in the period 2009- 2013 (but we'll still spend more)
• the rate of increase of spending will be cut sharply (but we'll still spend more)
• we'll spend much less than we previously said we'd spend (but we'll still spend more)
• the proportion of government spending within the overall economy will go down (but we'll still spend more)

And so on. Guido helps us see what is really happening. No cuts.  

We'll still spend more. Instead of paddling fast to the waterfool of doom we'll paddle much more slowly. Relax! 

What no-one appears to be mentioning is the UK's approach to the EU Budget. This gruesome negotiation comes round again in a couple of years' time.

One thing is obvious in all this jiggery-pokery.

Namely that if we make even these so-called cuts in UK government spending but make no comparable reductions in our contributions to the EU Budget, we are in proportional terms at least increasing our contributions to the EU Budget!

More EU = Less Westminster.

So a key test for our coalition government's resolve and credibility will be how it responds to the usual cry from Brussels that the only direction the EU Budget can go is upwards.

Make no mistake, there are many ways in which EU spending might be not merely curbed but actually reduced.

Commission offices inside and outside (and even the WCs) are awash with banners and posters exhorting their own officials to enjoy the EU's wisdom and programmes.

In following all this as best we can, it is important to keep an eye on the main ball.

Thus this seemingly defiant UK statement about the 2011 EU budget is largely irrelevant:

The chancellor made clear, however, that Britain would oppose a proposal from the European commission to increase the EU budget by 6% next year, a move that would mean a £600m increase in the size of Britain's gross contribution to the EU.

"We had a lively discussion on the proposal for the 2011 EU budget, for which the European commission has proposed a 6% increase, including a 4.5% increase in administration costs" said Osborne.

"I was not alone in saying that this is unacceptable. Many countries are accepting public spending restraints and administration cuts. I am glad that has been noted at this early stage."

He insisted he had not "banged the table" on the EU budget or anything else...

Umm ... why not?

Anyway, NB that the 2011 EU Budget total is an annual total within the overall 2007-2013 Financial Perspective whose size was agreed back in 2005. That money is already committed to the EU, and goes up and down as EU spending patterns unfold over the Framework period.

Thus the EU budget probably has to rise in 2011 as major structural support contracts for Poland's roads and so on start to get drawn down, es anticipated.

No. The big prize is what happens in the 2014-2020 Financial Perspective, and to the UK's rebate within that.

If the UK government refuses to hang in exceedingly tough on that one while 'cutting' services at home, using the UK veto as necessary to block a deal, it will have failed.

That said, keep an eye out for wily French stratagems. What if they offer to 'cut' the Budget and allow the UK to keep most of the Rebate, BUT insist on setting up some sort of EU-level income tax to fund it all..?

And NB too that if there is no agreement on a new EU Budget for the forthcoming Financial Perspective period, the old one is likely to roll over.

In effect the EU Budget can never be cut...

Sorry not to have been more active recently, folks. But I have had to travel to Stuttgart, Geneva, Warsaw/Cracow and now Brussels all in the past ten days, while keeping an eye on our attempts to sell Crawford Towers.

My latest manoeuvres involved leading a course on Ethical Dilemmas in Diplomacy. I tried with some success to distinguish between home-based dilemmas, which typically should be managed within the HQ organisation's rules and house culture, and dilemmas at an overseas posting where relationships between colleagues are completely different and things look and feel different.

Plus overseas postings are where policies collide furiously with real life, throwing up all sorts of moral and operational conundrums (or, lawks, should that be conundra?)

What, exactly, is an ethical dilemma for a diplomat representing a democratic country? After all, a dilemma is a dilemma only if you treat it as such - otherwise it's a fact of life.

Should a diplomat brush private moral concerns aside, saying that if the policy has been approved by a fairly elected government in a lawful way, that sets a sufficiently robust moral framework of checks and balances within which to operate?

NB this is not the same as a bland "I was only obeying orders" defence as used by Nazi concentration camp guards, since it presupposes a substantively fair and democratic process leading to the policy concerned - in such cases it arguably is reasonable for an official to outsource part of his/her own conscience to that wider process of consultation and debate.

In any case, what is a fair way to allow diplomats to express private reservations and have them taken into account? And, then, if such a procedure is available but fails to give the unahppy civil servant enough moral certitude, then what?

Should a diplomat who feels that a given policy in aim or outcome is inherently immoral simply resign? Why not? 

One of the few examples of a senior diplomat resigning on an issue of principle was Elizabeth Wilmshurst, an FCO Legal Adviser who in 2003 chose to leave public service when she could not accept that it was lawful to use force against Iraq without a new UN Security Council resolution.

She made a prominent case that the invasion of Iraq was unlawful and so in one or other sense Just Wrong. But let's remember that a significant number of her Legal Adviser colleagues either disagreed with her on the core arguments or, if they saw decisive force in her argument, nonetheless decided to stay within the system and pursue their moral choices in a different way.

Watching this the general public might be tempted to think that the likes of E Wilmshurst and C Murray are in some ways heroic figures, whereas their colleagues who did not leave the system were less principled or even cowardly.

However, would the public really want all the heroic principled people to quit the FCO or the civil service, leaving the shop run by only snivelling jellyfish who remain behind?

One of my very first postings here touched on all this:

Maybe I had lacked imagination previously, but this episode brought home to me for the first time that in my own rather limited and indirect way I was a non-trivial part of (and as it turned out some sort of spokesman for) an elaborate process which had led to some people far away dying violently.

That a diplomatic service career sometimes involved grim moral dilemmas. And that if that was not what I was ready to face in a job, I should get another one.

I still think about that night. For a few hours I was one of the few voices available to the public defending an unpopular UK government decision which had led to military action and numerous deaths in Libya.

I was not myself in any way involved in the policy chain which had brought that decision about. Yet surely as a promising middle-ranking FCO policy officer I somehow had to be seen as more 'involved' in some of the moral responsibility coming with that policy than eg a cleaner or messenger, even if cleaners and messengers themselves played an important functional role in helping that policy be delivered.

Anyway, it was an interesting course which helped shape my own thinking in new ways. 

Is the nice point about training that the trainers often learn more than the course participants?

Excellent NYT piece by Errol Morris via Browser exploring the Dunning-Kruger Effect: the fact that our incompetence/ignorance masks our ability to recognize our incompetence/ignorance:

Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about “unknown unknowns.”  It goes something like this: “There are things we know we know about terrorism.  There are things we know we don’t know.  And there are things that are unknown unknowns.  We don’t know that we don’t know.” 

He got a lot of grief for that.  And I thought, “That’s the smartest and most modest thing I’ve heard in a year.”

Of course there are different sorts of 'unknowns'. 

Facts I know I don't know (eg the longest river in Uzbekistan).

Facts which may or may not be facts (are there any rivers in Uzbekistan).

And phenomena which I am unaware might even exist (by definition indescribable).

See this:

To me, unknown unknowns enter at two different levels. The first is at the level of risk and problem.  Many tasks in life contain uncertainties that are known — so-called “known unknowns.”  These are potential problems for any venture, but they at least are problems that people can be vigilant about, prepare for, take insurance on, and often head off at the pass. 

Unknown unknown risks, on the other hand, are problems that people do not know they are vulnerable to.

All of which goes to point up the stupidity of wasting too much time on 'risk management matrices', another New Labour blight on public life:

Embassies have to complete every few months a spreadsheet which lays out 'risks' to policy and the accomplishment of our Objectives.

The first demand for one of these arrived in Warsaw, attaching the Asia Directorate's model as a splendid example. I crossly sent back an email saying that maybe, after everything which had happened in the Asia region not that long ago, a risk assessment which omitted the word tsunami might be thought to be a little ... ridiculous? I predicted that in a few years' time these banal exercises like so many others would have collapsed under the weight of their manifold contradictions.

I was told off for being 'unhelpful'.

The real problem in foreign policy objective/target-setting is indeed the unknowable unknowns - the impact of a tsunami on Indonesia's fortunes, or indeed 9/11.

Which again is why it is so stupid to organise British/EU policy round the things the Treasury thinks it can measure.

But then precisely because we are stupid enough to do just that, we can't recognise that stupidity.

QED.

Slowly but surely the language of lumpen totalitarianism creeps into democratic political life.

Scarcely a day goes by with President Chavez of Venezuela 'seizing' some or other private company, usually with some banal bombastic menacing statements:

A few days ago, during one of the rambling television and radio monologues for which he is notorious, he announced he was “declaring war” on the private sector. The main battleground, it seems, will be the food industry and the principal target the Polar group, which is Venezuela’s biggest private conglomerate owned by the Mendoza family.

The group supplies Venezuelans with many of their basic foods, including margarine, cooking oil and maize flour. It claims to represent nearly 3 per cent of non-oil GDP.

“But you’re mistaken if you think I don’t dare expropriate Polar, Lorenzo Mendoza,” Mr Chavez said, addressing his broadcast remarks to the company chairman.

Then we have this headline in the Times in 2008 (which uses fascist language not reflected in the article itself):

Americans must give the Republicans a good kicking on November 4

What does that 'good kicking' conjure up? A group of cowardly, bullying Clockwork Orange-type thugs viciously piling in to someone on the ground - an image far from moderate, inclusive democratic process which assumes mutual respect and open-minded tolerance.

This violent expression seems to have inflitrated the Labour Party in particular, sneaking in with the influence of Trotskyist activists and their proclivity for street brawling during demonstrations.

Here's a typical example oozing post-modern irony, from a Labour blog written by one Chris Paul. The subject is the National Bullying Helpline - which itself is said to need the incentive structure offered by a bullying boot:

The National Bullying Helpline (NBH) deserve a good kicking, a good metaphorical kicking, for their truly horrendous fails in professional standards.

Most recently we have this appalling example from two senior members of the Obama administration:

Sunday talk show of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar describing their tough dealing with BP by saying, “Our job is basically to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum...”

The “step-on-the-neck” image had the White House seal of approval that was made clear on Monday by Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs. “I think that kind of sums up in that Western Colorado way how – what we’re trying to convey,” Gibbs said.

Not so much Western Colorado as jackbooted Brownshirts in Weimar Germany?

Vile, and inexcusable. President Obama himself quickly but unconvincingly rowed back from that expression, but now has come up with another crude kicking metaphor.

Maybe as his ratings deservedly decline it will dawn on him that by kicking BP he is kicking millions of American shareholders, pension fund stakeholders and workers. But by then real damage to everyone will have been done.

All this sort of thing stems from a dumbed-down populist nervousness in our decaying political classes, manifesting itself in the idea held by many politicians that these days they are entitled to lash out at any opponents and even at their own voters to show how tough they are.

And for a stunning example of this, live on camera, enter US Congressman Bob Etheridge - angry Democrat bully and, we fervently hope, now Official Loser:

Could nimble French banks be getting bailed out in effect at Germany's expense, by playing the way the French-led European Central Bank helps Greece?

That would be perfide indeed, and at a very high level of betrayal.

Surely not.

Maybe it all gets just too complicated. Too many things go wrong at the same time.

The capacity of the world's leaders and institutions to respond in a coherent and authoritative way on several huge problems at the same time ebbs away. This opens the way for calculated lunges by different regional powers, aiming quickly to establish some new facts on the ground while attentions are distracted elsewhere.

Imagine some sort of geo-political storm featuring, among others:

• escalating tensions between Turkey and Israel, with Arab countries and Iran weighing in opportunistically to arm Hamas and drive up a sense of inevitable confrontation. Israel's very existence is openly challenged in numerous capitals
• South and North Korea relations decline amidst mutual recriminations over various off-shore naval incidents
• the European Union's legal authority is hammered by rulings in the German courts declaring unconstitutional the various attempts by Brussels to underpin the Eurozone by side-stepping existing EU treaties
• the Eurozone crisis quickly enters a new phase, with civil unrest breaking out in Greece and financial markets seizing up in other European capitals. Cash machines across much of Europe run dry; just-in-time supplies of food to Europe's supermarkets falter 
• ethnic clashes break out in several southern European countries, including some within the European Union (Slovakia, Hungary, Romania) and in Serbia/Kosovo and Bosnia
• Europe's leaders run out of intelligent joint responses to these simultaneous crises - the European Union itself looks vulnerable to abrupt disintegration, as France and Germany bluntly disagree over what needs to be done merely to keep the show on the road
• the financial crisis in Europe spreads to Russia, causing numerous banks to fail. Various parts of Russia proclaim a new autonomy, defying Moscow's authority. Road-blocks start to appear on many internal borders. Attempts by Moscow to crush opposition in the regions backfire, causing widespread violent demonstrations against Putin's rule
• NATO forces in Afghanistan and US forces in Iraq suffer heavy losses in a series of terrorist suicide bombings, giving the impression that the USA is being driven back
• Christian/Muslim communal fighting in Nigeria spills beyond Nigeria's borders
• the BP oil leak suddenly gets worse again
• Israel warns that it will use every possible means to defend itself, and bombs a number of suspected Iranian nuclear bomb installations
• Turkey announces that it will use military force to 'blockade' Israel and its airspace.
• the Obama administration cannot react coherently to any of this, above all the soaring tensions in the Middle East. Washington dare not try to rein in Turkey and/or Israel, lest one or other or both simply ignores the pressure...
• The UN is powerless - the five Security Council permanent members are overwhelmed with internal and external dramas

It is not so much that any one of these problems is uncontainable. It is the fact that they come along simultaneously, creating a sense that the shared understandings and responsibilities which have kept some sense of global order since WW2 are giving way to a new 'grab what you can' attitude.

Western policy-makers in particular are paralysed, bogged down in their economic problems and unwilling to use military force since it is no longer clear (a) that Western military force can achieve victory in the sort of conflicts now breaking out in different places, and (b) what a stable outcome in any one place might look like.

Western hesitation is matched by Chinese, Russian and Indian hesitation. Those powers themselves are struggling as world markets seize up, but they see an historic opportunity for themselves to move into the philosophical space created by Western retreat.

World Wars One and Two were conflicts with global reach arising from European power-struggles. But there was at least a clear context, involving thematic rivalries in an understandable form. 

World War Three is different. For the first time in centuries the USA and Europe are unable to set or even define the global agenda, and so face philosophical and psychological defeat. Other powers come to the fore, fighting and redrawing the map - and therefore the rules - as they see fit.

The turmoil is all the more dramatic and vicious for being in a sense anarchic and incoherent, even if civilisational principles are implicitly at stake.  

Or maybe it will all be fine.

BP stop the leaking oil. Turkey and Israel meet for a quiet drink and sort out their differences. 

Brussels' efforts to reform the Eurozone are seen to be brilliantly successful, and prompt even deeper happy integration among all EU members.

England win the World Cup, Jermain Defoe scoring a brilliant solo winner.

Phew. I was getting worried there.