Poland, Europe

Far from accepting the defeatist idea of different and inevitably rival 'spheres of influence' in Europe, the EU should use its one true serious advantage vis-a-vis Russia, namely far greater wealth and a far better example.

Andrew Wilson captures it well:

The most effective way of dealing with a newly-assertive Russia will be for Europe to issue a collective refusal to accept a bipolar Europe of distinct Russian and EU spheres of influence. The place to start is Ukraine.

His various solid ideas on how to do this look quite right to me. But above all the EU needs a Policy backed by some evident determination.

Which means the EU being serious about Europe, and not just about itself.

Russia's intervention in Georgia compels EU leaders to realise that the time has come for assuming grown-up responsibilities. Poland should have a lead role to play here by being steely, convincing - and creatively realistic.

This reads well:

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

As does this:

More on Russia, always a rich seam for foreign policy First Principles.

Thus Max Hastings gives us a striking Russia metaphor:

The Russians yearn for respect, in the same fashion as any inner-city street kid with a knife. They will become willing to play with the west by western rules only if or when they no longer perceive those rules as disadvantaging themselves. Today they cannot compete on the EU's terms, still less those of the US, so they make up their own.

It is unnecessary for the west silently to acquiesce in the Russians' excesses, but it must tread cautiously in the face of their sensitivities.

Maybe the fact that we in the UK tread cautiously in the face of the sensitivities of street kids with knives accounts for this?

More from Max:

America must stop pretending that democracy is, of itself, the answer to all the world's ills ... US policy towards Moscow for almost two decades has been based upon the assumption that since the Russians were losers, their wishes could be ignored or defied on every front. No useful business could result from such a posture.

Blimey.

Democracy may not deal with the world's ills but it makes a good step in that direction. Indeed, the problem in Georgia is that the Russian leadership want to send a profound anti-democratic signal that Might is Right - that what Russia wants or needs is the uber-value in that part of the world. See this latest outburst from the reportedly mild-mannered President Medvedev.

Plus the USA in fact has spent large sums of money in and with Russia on all sorts of common projects, aimed at building a new sense of partnership. The problem is not that the Americans treat the Russians as losers. It is that the Russians behave like losers, unable to make do with their sprawling eleven time zones of territory and hankering after regaining former imperial lands elsewhere.

One recurring theme in Russian and some Western analysis is the deterministic but weird idea that Russia has to behave differently (ie badly) because it is 'surrounded by enemies'.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once said that the fall of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical disaster. This didn't mean that he wanted to retain the Soviet state; rather, it meant that the disintegration of the Soviet Union had created a situation in which Russian national security was threatened by Western interests.

As an example, consider that during the Cold War, St. Petersburg was about 1,200 miles away from a NATO country. Today it is about 60 miles away from Estonia, a NATO member. The disintegration of the Soviet Union had left Russia surrounded by a group of countries hostile to Russian interests in various degrees and heavily influenced by the United States, Europe and, in some cases, China.

If a country occupies such a vast land mass as Russia does, it necessarily has plenty of neighbours and all sorts of complex questions to deal with. The Russian problem is that it tends to see anything it does not like as 'hostile'. And that attitude extends even to the Bambi-ish spread of EU values and processes into eg Ukraine.

Because, of course, the point is not that 'Russia' has a problem with that. Rather the Russian post-KGB elite have the problem, since the spread of Western democratic values brings with it new transparency and reliance on open rules rather than shadowy power-plays. And that threatens both their biznes interests and their world-view.

Above all, the Western democracy which is sneered at so much in the West brings with it a sense that political behaviour has (and depends on) Limits - limits of law, of convention, of personal self-restraint..

Here is the profound cultural/philosophical difference between Russia and the West.

'The West' sees Limits as a source of strength. 'Russia' sees Limits as a form of weakness.

Max does not seem to get this:

... the west (sic) will find it easier to coexist with this tormented, intransigent, melancholy and oil-rich neighbour when Russia feels comfortable with itself, not when its nose is rubbed in its long history of failure.

This has to be mainly wrong. No serious community policy can be based round the idea that we all wait for the inner city street kid with knife to 'feel comfortable with himself', if his idea of being comfortable is to slash away at smaller kids who disagree with him.

If we are not brave enough to take away his knife and haul him off to therapy, we at least need to limit his room for slashing, and do a lot more to help those he threatens to defend themselves? 

Welcome Instapundit readers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Busy ploughing through Lonely Hearts by John Harvey.

The hero of this series of well praised detective stories is Detective Charlie Resnick. He has a Polish background which makes a lugubrious appearance now and again.

But if Arrow Books are going to do detective stories with a Polish angle, they ought to get Poles to help the proof-reading.

Imagine my shock and dismay to see on p 249 of the 2002 edition (corrected now?) the Polish national dish traduced by being turned into something with an Albanian flavour: they meant pierogi, but it appeared as pieroqi.

Resnick visits a Polish woman settled in the UK. There on the wall (p 251) is a picture of Cardinal Wysznski. Who or what is he? Can't they spell? They must be referring to Cardinal Wyszynski.

Come on, Arrow Books. These are all easy words.

Try Polish for beetle: chrzaszcz.

Then move on the infamous Polish tongue-twister:

W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie
I Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie.

Which Wikipedia kindly helps one pronounce: 

[fʂʧε.bʐε.ʂɨ.ɲε xʂɔɰ̃ʂʧ bʐmi ftʂtɕi.ɲε]
[i.ʂʧε.bʐε.ʂɨn stε.gɔ swɨ.ɲε]

And means:

In the town of Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed
And Szczebrzeszyn is famous for it.

As it should be.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

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

Edward Lucas again:

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

An interesting pair of Ambassadorial letters to newspapers have appeared in recent days.

First, HM Ambassador in Poland Ric Todd wrote in July to the Polish paper Rzeczpospolita about the death in a plane accident in 1943 in Gibraltar of General Sikorski.

Various Poles continue to insist that this death was suspicious, with one latest theory being that the conniving British persuaded some Poles to effect sabotage. Huge efforts have been made down the years to investigate this tragedy, but the fact that nothing suspicious is ever found makes those who have suspicions even more suspicious.

Ambassador Todd aims once again to put the record straight:

The facts are sad but simple. Plane travel was more dangerous then than it is now. People who travelled by air during the war took risks. General Sikorski was a brave man who took those risks to see his troops and died in a plane crash. The British Government has already released all documents in its archives relating to the circumstances of General Sikorski's death, including the report of the 1943 Royal Air Force Commission of Inquiry and 1969 Report of the investigation into the accident, carried out by the then Co-ordinator of Intelligence, Sir Dick White. 

 Nothing has been found in the Secret Intelligence files to link Kim Philby or anyone else with General Sikorski's death. There is nothing to indicate that his death was not accidental. All the documents are in the public domain and are accessible to all researchers in the National Archives in London. Following their declassification these documents have continually been open to the public.  Nothing is being withheld.

Separately the Polish Ambassador in London Barbara Tuge-Erecinska has written to the Times about an article about Poles in the UK by Giles Coren, which in his usual bruising style takes up the theme of Polish anti-semitism:

... I thought how interesting it was, at a time when many of the current generation of Polish immigrants are said to be returning home because the construction work is drying up, that we were all still here - dozens of us descended from a single Pole who came in 1903 - more than 100 years later. Not one of us has gone back. Even to visit.

That is the difference between the two kinds of migration, you see. The economic and the humanitarian. We Corens are here, now, because the ancestors of these Poles now going home used to amuse themselves at Easter by locking Jews in the synagogue and setting fire to it. Harry didn't leave in the hope of finding a better life. Just a life. The option to return was not there for him, for obvious reasons, and by 1945 the Poland he had left did not exist anymore.

My sympathy for the plight of the modern Polack is thus limited, and if England is not the land of milk and honey it appeared to them three or four years ago, then, frankly, they can clear off out of it.

The Polish Ambassador replies:

... The issue of Polish-Jewish relations has been unfairly and deeply falsified in his emotional text. During the Second World War Poland was the target of the Nazi Germany’s aggression, and the Poles themselves were treated as the race of sub-humans. Any sort of assistance given to Jews was punished by death. Such assistance required heroism, as it was not only one’s own life that was put at stake, but also the lives of one’s family. Still, it is the Poles that make up the most of those awarded Israel’s Righteous Among the Nations honour.

I will not make detailed references to the remaining aggressive remarks on Poland, unsupported by any basic historic or geographic knowledge. What I find most important is that the general public, as result of similar publications, should not lose an understanding of what the Holocaust was and who the perpetrators were.

In short, Nazi Germany decided to wipe out the whole nation. This was unprecedented in human history. Poland’s role in the tragedy of the Holocaust consists in the fact that the extermination of the Jewish people happened to take place on Polish territory. The author seems to have forgotten that Poles were not responsible for devising and perpetrating this hideous crime...

In each case sensible and dignified letters, giving the readers of the two newspapers concerned (and thereby in effect putting on the public record) a clear official view but with a personal touch.

The general professional issue for Ambassadors is this.

On any given day in the country where one is posted there will be all sorts of annoying, tendentious and even untrue/stupid things being said about one's own country. A few of them bubble up to a wide readership or otherwise gain some public prominence.

Even if there is no reason to think that these views are held or in any way supported by one's host government, the very fact that they circulate potentially affects the 'climate of opinion' in the bilateral relationship.

So, when to write something in response? And what to write?

No good answer.

Not writing has a cost. It may allow erroneous or malign opinions about one's own country to circulate indefinitely, perhaps in ever more lurid fashion.

But writing a letter for publication also has a cost. It somehow dignifies and gives weight to the views being expressed, maybe thereby drawing even more attention to them. And it invites all sorts of further weary sniping from people who have an axe to grind or who just want to poke back at Ambassadors.

The Polish Foreign Ministry has something of a policy to respond firmly every time anything appears in the foreign media implying that the Holocaust was a Polish invention (phrases like 'Polish death camps' prompt a fierce and often successful response).

The British FCO leaves it to an Ambassador's discretion when and how and if at all to respond to annoying local views on official British positions.

I wrote to various Bosnian/Serbian/Polish newspapers on different occasions. I suspect my letters made not a scrap of difference one way or the other.

In especially scandalous or ridiculous cases where material consistently wrong had been published by ostensibly serious papers to the point of suggesting a dishonest campaign against British positions, I went to meet the Editor to offer an official view as and when one was needed.

I used the line that of course they could write what they liked when it came to comment/interpretation, but could we at least try to agree to get the facts (eg of what a British Minister or I myself had actually said) accurate?

That worked in a sporadic way. But often the newspapers concerned just did not care.

All in all, writing an Ambassadorial letter to a newspaper is best done sparingly. But even if you know that it is unlikely to change many minds, you feel better after sending it.

Which is part of the story too.

Anglican Bishops have been marching against world poverty - then tucking in to a worthy feast.

Hypocrites!

When Pope Benedict XVI visited Krakow in 2006 the Polish authorities were determined to prevent any unseemly scenes of drunkenness among the vast crowds thronging to see him.

So alcohol sales were banned in Krakow and for miles around.

In Krakow for the Pope's Mass I went for dinner at the Hotel Stary, where as it happened the main restaurant had been booked for a mass of Catholic Archbishops and others from the Church hierarchy. There they were, finely berobed.

Imagine my suprise to see the long bar groaning with bottles of champagne and wine, laid out in long rows beautifully for their benefit. They did not hold back.

Research needed? 

President Kaczynski of Poland says that 'for now' he will not sign the EU's Lisbon Treaty.

The BBC report describes Kaczynski as "a conservative who has long opposed the reform treaty". But what about this? "I really want ratification."

One way or the other, President Kaczynski is good at saying exactly what he thinks, so unless the Irish come round to accepting the Treaty of their own free will there is no chance of Poland signing it.

Plus, unlike (I suspect) almost every politician in Europe talking at great length about the Treaty, President Kaczynski will have read it with great care, identifying exactly what he likes and what he does not like.

As a lawyer himself with a beady eye for detail, he is comfortable in the view that if the EU's own rules say that an EU Treaty has to be approved by every country, one country has the right to say No and block the Treaty. Which ends the matter.

Anything else (he argues) means that the rules on paper are not the rules in practice, which means that the EU Strong tend to fix the game. And after the experience of the past century, that is just the sort of thing which Poland has good reason not to want.

Plenty of Poland's politicians will now make a big noise saying that in taking this position Kaczynski is not being 'European', while quietly being quite pleased that if the Treaty founders Poland keeps the (for Poland) terrific Nice voting formula all the longer.

President Sarkozy takes over the EU Presidency today:

"Something isn't right. Something isn't right at all ... Europe worries people and, worse than that, I find, little by little our fellow citizens are asking themselves if, after all, the national level isn't better equipped to protect them than the European level."

Sarkozy called such thinking a "step backward".

Would Kaczynski argue that sticking to the rules is in fact the first step forward?

A powerful TV programme in Poland has aroused a lot of interest there. 

Trzech Kumpli ("Three Mates") describes the fates of three men who were students in communist-era Krakow in the 1970s.

One became a poet murdered seemingly by the communist police.

One under the Kaczynski twins' leadership became the head of TVP (Polish BBC-equivalent), a fervent anti-communist.

And one became a prominent journalist for Gazeta Wyborcza (sort of Guardian equivalent in Poland).

The point is that the film describes how the third of the three also was a serious collaborator with the communist regime, spying and informing on his friends.

And how the crimes and abuses by the regime which he may have helped provoke have gone largely unpunished, while this collaborator like so many others who helped run the apparatus of repression has lived well on generous pensions and privileges, far beyond what the average Pole receives.

This collaborator not only has lived well. After communist rule ended he established himself in a senior role on the leading Polish newspaper which came out strongly against 'lustration' (the full revealing of who did what to whom in the communist period).

Nice work if you can get it.

Like a murderer from a gang of killers who manage to destroy the evidence which might convict them, who subsequently becomes famous for arguing strenuously in the media that murderers in general should not be punished harshly because 'society is to blame'?

Beyond sickening.

This issue - should we 'move on' from communist-era crimes - is a profound one for modern Europe.

I tackled it in my very final telegram for the FCO, sent from Warsaw:

... during the Communist period the authorities pressed a person to sign a simple document indicating a readiness to cooperate even when the security police did not care whether the person actually would cooperate or not.

What they wanted was the recognition by the person signing of his/her own psychological submission, expressed via just that mean little secret signature, whose very meanness and smallness and furtiveness made the act of submission even more total...

... the striking thing is how the psychological force of Submission lives on today. Clamour from the Poles and indeed foreigners against opening the secret police archives here comes from different angles.

From the former communist elite intending to keep ill-gotten gains by keeping the scale of their plunder and deceit well away from the wider public eye. 

From the rantings of Lenin's useful idiots in Western media and academic circles (and indeed! How useful they have been to the Communist cause down the generations - the Bolshevik poisoned gift that keeps on giving).

Some from well-intentioned decent people who unhappily conclude that even if the cause is just, the pain and disruption (including to the Catholic Church) provoked by tackling these problems will not be worth it.

The arguments and motives differ. The end result is the same.

The days trickle into months and years. It all gets ... difficult. Complicated. Memories fade.

Thus people who slyly presided over or benefited from the communist system are feted as modern European social democrats. Jewish, Polish and other victims of communism who had their property stolen or heroically refused to cooperate appeal to European institutions for justice, and often leave empty-handed. We prosecute elderly Nazis for their crimes. Elderly Communists go free...

... Do Al Qaeda and Hamas look at how Stalin got away with mass murder at Katyn, and think that by being viciously determined enough they can do the same? Do they expect the sheer intensity of their hatred of our pluralism to overwhelm our readiness to defend it? That they too can bring us to Submit?

How might we measure if they are succeeding? 

Well done Poland, for keeping the subject alive.

Back from Brussels, hearing lots of theories about whether the Lisbon Treaty is dead, alive or in some sort of suspended animation.

The core options appear to be these:

• brutalise/bribe the Irish into submitting mainly via various 'Declarations' aimed at meeting most of their identifiable concerns, allowing a further and this time successful Yes referendum in Ireland next year. Ideal outcome for Europhiles, but High Risk.
• let the Treaty die and soldier on as now. Embarrassing, but Low Risk. Some (France) will try to use this to block enlargement across the board. Germany may support shutting the door but only if Croatia is let in quickly. Others (Poles, Czechs, UK) likely to be deeply unimpressed with such cynicism - and what does the EU do with the non-EU Balkan Black Hole within its own geographical space? Madness to say that those 20 million people can not join a Union of 500 million?
• try to bring in via cherry-picking those parts of the Treaty which can be effected without a full-blown new Treaty. Unglamorous and Unedifying, seen as Undemocratic, Lowish Risk

France faces the unenviable task of trying to pick a way forward through its coming Presidency on the basis of some sort of reasonable consensus.

To be continued. 

If you have been beaten up by someone for nearly fifty years, does that 'cloud your judgment' about the beater?

But however clear-eyed Lithuania's decison-makers claim to be about today's Russia, many seem myopic about their own country's past. Anger over 48 years of Soviet occupation clouds their judgment about the Communists' recent role.

Still, the scale of the monstrosities which went on under the Nazis in Lithuania and elsewhere in Europe - and the complicity of local people in complying with Nazi plans - is indeed a question.

The 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact next year should give these Twin Vampire issues a much-needed airing.

The Polish media are reporting that Polish local government employees dealing with applications for EU funds are quitting their jobs to join the private sector, where pay is much higher.

No surprise. The Polish Development Minister told me a while ago that the greatest problem Poland faced in spending its EU largesse was 'people'.

Poland not surprisingly finds it hard to mobilise and train the army of officials across the country needed to pick their way nimbly through the voluminous EU (and Polish) processes needed to get EU funds sent to (and spent sensibly in) Poland. And indeed we see a tendency for firms pitching for EU contracts to nab anyone in government who is any good at all this, since contracts can be large and anyone who understands both EU and Polish procedure is a highly valuable asset.

So, Poland will battle to spend all the EU funds available to it in the current Budget cycle. The basic sequence goes something like this:

• government agrees overall balance as between central and regional discretion in spending and priority sectors
• national/regional development plans are prepared
• project ideas emerge
• specific tenders are drawn up
• bids come in and are examined against financial/environmental and other criteria
• bidders win (or lose) - maybe rows and appeals break out
• specific contracts are then prepared
• work starts
• and is completed - checks needed that the job has been done properly
• with plenty of paperwork and checks still needed for the Brussels cheques to arrive once the work is nicely completed

Uuurgh.

Huge scope at each stage for delay and muddle, even with good intentions and reasonable people all round.

That said, the fact that Poland has not spent much of its EU funding so far is no surprise - in the nature of the process the big spending comes at the end of the Budget period (ie in a few years' time) once all those steps have been completed.

Or is all this money in fact a resource curse anyway? Funding which is so hard to access that it skews national efforts in an unhealthy direction?

Let's look a bit more closely at Will Hutton's arguments on the EU Treaty as published yesterday in the Observer.

He denounces 'Eurosceptic' celebrations at the Irish vote as a farrago of lies and disinformation.

OK. Let's proceed. WH v CC.

WH: The reality is that Ireland's 'no' voters have trashed an EU that is precious but weak.

CC:  No. The EU is untrashed, still as precious as ever and impressively strong - has anyone seen the Euro v Dollar rate recently?

WH:  Most 'no' voters, grabbing on to the worst fear rather than reasoned fact, have unknowingly set in train a political dynamic that, unless carefully handled, could lead not just to Ireland but Britain leaving the EU. Everybody will be the poorer.

CC:  Actually the Treaty for the first time established a procedure to let a disgruntled member state leave. That hope has been dashed by the Irish rejection of the Treaty, a cunning ploy by the Europhiles to keep everyone trapped in the EU. Curses! And if some member states did leave, would they really be poorer?

WH:  Such is the flaw of referendums as a means to practise reasoned democratic decision-making that the only way voters will come to realise that the sceptics are wrong is to be forced to live through the consequences of their vote.

CC:  Fair enough. The Irish will do so. Likely negative consequneces? Nil.

WH:  For although the first reaction in Ireland, Brussels and the rest of the European Union has been to say that the will of Ireland's voters must be respected, the wider political logic is that Irish voters are in effect saying no to the European Union ...

CC:  No they're not. 'In effect' and more importantly in real life they're saying they like this EU, not the one proposed.

WH:  ... a will that can only be respected by other states freezing their ambitions.

CC:  True, sort of. But in the EU rules the Irish were made to sign up to when they joined, it explicitly states that all have to agree on how future ambitions are agreed in legal form. The Irish do not agree. So no such ambitions! That's the precious EU way. Or is the suggestion that the existing Treaty rules should be broken? In which case, why sign up to new Treaty rules which in turn will be worthless?

WH:  Ireland's voters have primed a bomb.

CC:  Or a damp squib?

WH:  Eighteen states have already ratified the treaty, some for the second time.

CC:  Huh?! Are you saying that the British Government have been lying? That this Lisbon Treaty is the same treaty as the previous one thrown out by the French and Dutch referenda? Gotcha!

WH:  The first reaction of José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, was to ask the last eight member states, Britain included, to proceed with ratification. Gordon Brown has agreed; the final reading is on Wednesday and to stop the process because of the Irish vote would be unreasonable.

CC:  Or maybe it's unreasonable to expect the UK Parliament to ratify a Dead Parrot?

WH:  So the EU on 1 January 2009 will have a treaty that 26 states have ratified - but not the Irish.

CC:  Hmm. Ratification enthusiasm might dwindle somewhat between now and then?

WH:  What can't happen is that the treaty is scrapped, rewritten to accommodate changes to meet the will of Ireland's voters and then re-ratified in 27 countries. There are the practical questions of time and expense and there is no political readiness in the other 26 capitals to go through the whole interminable process again.

CC:  Indeed so.

WH:  On top of these there is the political problem that the treaty can't be rewritten to accommodate specific Irish concerns because it already does; Ireland's 'no' campaigners told lies. The voters' great concerns had been met. There is a specific protocol that guarantees Ireland's neutrality and excuses it from membership of any joint European defence effort, if any surfaces. There is no possibility of Ireland being told to enforce abortion.

CC:  A core point here folks, one which bothers the Poles too. Is it true that Ireland can not be told to 'enforce abortion'? What if one day one a European Court proclaims that member state laws limiting abortion are against a woman's 'right to choose' as per various emerging European human rights provisons individually and collectively? The dark secret at the heart of all the EU's development is that the European Court of Justice interprets and therefore trumps all, however ingeniously state-level drafters try to exclude it.

WH:  And all states have autonomy over tax policy.

CC:  Ditto. What if the European Court strikes down member states' individual tax policies as inconsistent with the spirit and practice of EU integration? HMG lawyers sweat profusely over this possibility...

WH:  Crucially, the treaty contains a clause that states that do not agree to its provisions are required to leave the European Union.

CC:  Where? See the FCO Guidance: "The Treaty recognises a Member State’s right to withdraw from the European Union and sets out procedures providing for such an eventuality." Do you mean Treaty Article 49A: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements."? Not the same as being required to leave?

WH:  The EU will have to get tough and invoke the clause. It will have to ask Ireland to resubmit essentially the same treaty for a second referendum early in 2009, rather as Ireland held a second referendum over the Nice treaty in 2002. If Ireland votes similarly again, then it will have to accept associate status in the EU and not be a member of its governing structures. The EU will proceed without Ireland.

CC:  Actually, even if this clause does exist somewhere it can not be invoked, since the Irish have not ratified the Treaty, so the Treaty (with the clause) is not in force! Hoopla! Does anyone in their right mind think that Ireland will go for - or can be made to go for - a second Referendum? Why did we not lean on France and Netherlands to do that first time round?

WH:  Irish and British Eurosceptics, in close alliance, will react in fury. I can see it now. This will be proof-positive of the Brussels elite's malevolence and anti-democratic intent. David Cameron's Tory party will say that Ireland is being treated disgracefully. I don't see how Cameron will be able to avoid a pledge to give British voters the same chance for a referendum on the treaty as the Irish, not least to strengthen the hand of the Irish 'no' campaigners in their second referendum.

CC:  Nor do I. But why is this further UK referendum meant to be bad? How many more No votes do you need before it sinks in that these changes are unpopular all over the place?

WH:  Battle is going to be joined in earnest because it must. Pro-Europeans everywhere must engage. We need this Europe - to fight climate change, to ensure security of energy and food, to underwrite our prosperity and to fight for our common interests.

CC:  Quite right. If only we had more CAP, more ill-conceived Kyoto Protocol ideas and more EU regulation, all would be well.

WH:  The world needs it too. The EU is the citizens' friend. If it did not exist, Europe would have to invent something similar.

CC:  Yes! Something similar. But not necessarily identical. And maybe what we have now is friendly enough anyway?

WH (crescendo):  Maybe pro-Europeans can win Ireland's second referendum and then, in 2010 or 2011, our own. But referendums work best for the demagogue, the dissimulator and scaremonger, as Hitler and Mussolini, lovers of referendums, proved. Increasingly, Ireland and Britain are heading for the European exit and that could portend further break-up of the Union. Pro-Europeans look out.

CC:  Puh-leese. Not the H&M words! We once had a referendum to confirm our own EU membership in a genteel unHitlerian way. The EU is not going to break up, precisely because so many member states including Ireland do very well enough out of it.

This whole business reminds me of an old joke:

A man walks down the road with a banana in each ear.

Kid: "Hey mister, why do you have bananas in your ears?"

Man: (Removing one banana) "Sorry, I can't hear because I have bananas in my ears."

Ireland has asked the EU to take the bananas out of its ears. Not such a bad idea?

Battle is being joined on what happens next with the Lisbon Treaty following the irish No.

The Irish are saying that there can be no quick solutions.

The French and Germans are calling for everyone other than the Irish to ratify.

The Czechs are saying that the Treaty is dead.

The Poles are surprised, but will respect the Irish decision.

The British are urging a new route. Lord Owen is calling for the UK Government not to proceed with the final stages of Treaty ratification. Will Hutton has experienced total melt-down and needs to be mopped up.

This is all in fact very simple.

There are now two camps among the EU member states.

Those who Really Want the Treaty.

Those (probably a majority) who Don't Really Want the Treaty, or Don't Care one way or the other.

Look out for the need to decode the tricky noises coming from the second group.

Many will say noisily that they really want the Treaty, safe in the knowledge that those who Don't Really Want the Treaty will stall it, even at the expense of being denounced as anti-European by those who Really Want the Treaty.

The political and legal ramifications of trying to set up a Two-speed Europe go beyond calculation. The UK pretends to be worried about it, but in private says "Bring it on! Try having a top-speed EU without our money oiling the engine!"

Which means that if we want to keep the whole show on the road we default back to the Nice Treaty which is working quite well enough, and try to make some ad hoc arrangements for implementing some of the Lisbon Treaty changes which make the most practical sense, whatever they might be.

To help the EU be more effective, do we for example need an External Action Service, fleets of expensive EU Embassies squeezing out member states' Embassies?

No.

There is plenty more the EU can do to be 'effective' within current arrangements and budgets. And what was so ineffective about the sophisticated high-speed (and bureaucratically 'light') diplomatic shuttling by Lord Owen and Cyrus Vance in the early 1990s in the Bosnia crisis? The plan crashed, but not for lack of EU effectiveness.

As John Redwood puts it:

What is it about these public servants that they arrogate the right to do the opposite of what the electors, their paymasters want? Why do they think they should be able to draw salaries and expenses of a generous nature in order to take more power away from us, and order us about in new ways, when we want the opposite?

If anyone in the European bureaucracy is listening, understand the mood of many people living in the EU. The economic performance is not good enough, taxes are too high for the amount of public service we get, and there are too many laws and regulations. Why, in such a context, do you think we want more of the same? We want change - we want more freedom. 

Busy times in the ever-complicated relationship between Poland and Germany.

Robert Kubica becomes the first Pole to win a Formula 1 Grand Prix race - driving a BMW in Montreal.

Then Germany beat Poland 2-0 in Euro 2008, with Polish-born Lukasz Podolski scoring twice - for Germany!

Before the match there was the usual noisy tabloid war, rising to excellent heights of "Give us their heads!" tastelessness, even though one of the noisiest Polish tabloids is owned by the German Springer group.

All this reminded me of the wonderful Malbork Castle in northern Poland, founded in 1274 by the Teutonic Knights:

The castle was expanded several time to host the growing number of Knights, and became the largest fortified Gothic building in Europe, featuring several sections and walls. It comprises three separate sections - the High, Middle and Low Castles, separated by multiple dry moats and towers. The castle once housed approximately 3,000 "brothers in arms", and the outermost castle walls enclose 52 acres (210,000 m²), four times larger than the enclosed space of Windsor Castle.

The Knights were Tough Eggs, rampaging to and fro against the then Poland and into the rest of Europe down the succeeding centuries. But they did have a keen sense of humour.

In one smart tower of the castle is a hole in the floor by way of de luxe mediaeval lavatory. If a guest had failed to meet the Knights' exacting standards he would be offered the use of this facility, and in using it would be surprised whan a hidden lever was pulled, plunging him down on to the rocks far below.

The football tabloid war prompted the usual dreary calls from some windbags in Germany for the Polish government to 'take action' against such abusive media material.

Pathetic. The whole point of football is that it gives us all a marvellous and (usually)harmless outlet for atavistic, raw nationalism. Not to mention post-modern irony.

Which is definitely better than what we had previously.

Zimbabwe as expected falls ever more steeply to total disaster.

The gang of military/security leaders previously dependent on Mugabe now look to be running the shop, desperate as they are to cling on to power and privileges at the cost of ruining their own country. A text-book case.

Yet the UN still gives Mugabe a forum to rave away. And we taxpayers end up paying for it.

I have been looking at the True Cost of Stupidity.

Take Serbia and Slovenia.

After the initial flurry of violence when Slovenia broke from the then Yugoslavia, Slovenia has patiently got on with developing its economy.

Serbia by contrast got on with more violence against Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. This led to reduced investment, sanctions and even in the end a NATO bombing.

Result? In GDP per capita terms, Serbia is still struggling to match its economic position of 1991.

Thus the Cost of Milosevic(ism) can be accurately measured. It is the space between the two lines of a simple graph of total GDP measured over time:

• one line shows Serbia's actual awful performance
• the other line shows what Serbia would have achieved by growing at an average of 3% a year over the past seventeen years. (Note: a conservative estimate - of course it could have done a lot better than that with common sense leadership and policies.)

To calculate that gap, a mathematician uses the Trapezium rule. In Serbia's case the 'opportunity cost' of Milosevic and Milosevicism now runs towards hundreds of billions of dollars.

It is no exaggeration to say that Milosevicism in all its forms delivered a set-back to Serbia from which it will never recover. There is no conceivable chance of Serbia growing faster than Slovenia for the decades required for Serbia to 'catch up' the ground lost in the past seventeen years.

The political costs of this madness also have compounded up. Montenegro and Kosovo have broken away - had Serbia developed to its natural potential they could be clamouring to stay with Serbia and share its success.

Ditto for Mugabe.

Running the Trapezium formula on Zimbabwe's performance over the past twenty years and comparing it with eg Estonia is a profoundly depressing experience.

Mugabe like Milosevic for reasons of selfish paranoia has created national losses running to scores of billions of dollars, losses on a scale far exceeding anything development assistance might now do to put right. 

Zimbabweans will pay for this folly for many decades to come through low living standards, higher disease and death rates, worse roads, poorer education, weaker institutions.

Castro Communism is another horror story. Back in 1959 Cuba was richer than Singapore. Singapore got on with developing and building itself up, maintaining solid policies over forty years. It is now one of the most successful countries in the world. Castro's Cuba scarcely changed at all.

Conclusions? 

Read this remarkable piece by Ben Macintyre about the huge collection of papers and other material deliberately buried by heroic Polish Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto disaster of WW2.

They knew what they were doing:

The compilers of this archive knew they were doomed, and framed their project as an act of intellectual resistance to totalitarianism. “History is usually written by the victor,” wrote one of the team. “Should our murderers be victorious, should they write the history of this war, our destruction will be presented as one of the most beautiful pages of world history. Or they may wipe out our memory altogether.”

In Warsaw there is a fine collection of rare coins, including wonderful early English examples. This collection too was buried as the Nazis attacked (if I recall correctly under the National Museum itself), only to be thought lost but unearthed after Communism ended when someone (now elderly) involved in the plan came forward to describe the hiding place.

And remember Kragujevac in Serbia, where the Nazis rounded up many hundreds men and boys and executed them. They too knew they were doomed and wrote messages to their families on the scraps of paper they had with them. Many of those messages are on display in the museum. Unbearably awful and poignant.

Maybe this explains why so much of modern politics is so unforgiving.

The winners want to control the Present so as to control the Future and the Past alike. A lot at stake.

Here is Pat Buchanan rambling on about the utility of talking to dictators.

He somehow contrives to say that Poland brought Hitlerian disaster on itself by being a bit too "proud, defiant and heroic", albeit egged on by "insane" British guarantees.

All this and more is meant to cast in a bad light President Bush's powerful speech in Israel warning against extremist ideologies:

There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It’s natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”

We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. (Applause.)

Buchanan snipes at this from various viewpoints. But the very example he builds his case on - Poland - refutes it.

Is he saying that if only Poland had given Hitler what he wanted everything would have been a lot better? If so, would there ever have come a point when Poland had to tell Hitler 'No', and deal with the ensuing carnage?

In any case, Stalin went along with Hitler in a Buchananish way. And look what happened then.

From the point of view of Negotiating Technique, the real problem in 'talking to extremists' is not that it is morally wrong to do so - you have to deal with what you have to deal with.

Rather it lies in betraying and marginalising more moderate voices. Why should anyone in the Middle East stand up against terrorists for 'moderate Islam' if vicious Hamas-style Islam carries the day and gets to the Top Table?

In case you were wondering what vicious Hamas-style Islam sounds like, here is the Hamas Culture Minister in full flow. Someone likely to bring to any senior negotiating table a measured sense of give-and-take?

As the joke I heard in Poland has it:

All the word's problems are caused by Jews! And bicycles!

Huh? Why bicycles?

Why Jews?

Back from Poland, my first foray back there as a businessman - or, as they say in that part of the Europe even for one such - biznesmen.

A linguistic quirk. Many Slavic nouns have a feminine form. So as well as appropriating the word biznesmen, many Slavs informally call a female businessperson a biznesmenka.

From what I saw of Warsaw and Lodz, Poland is whirring away well. Lodz is a city transformed in the past few years, as its fine collection of wonderful old brick factories and warehouses from its nineteenth century heyday as a regional industrial powerhouse (the 'Manchester of Poland') are at last being restored and turned into sassy offices,' hotels and lofts.

Seeing how Poland is developing at top speed now, one has to wonder just how far it would have come had it not had all those long decades of communism following the disaster of WW2 holding things back. It of course also would have had a much larger population...  

As I return to Poland today I am reminded of a revealing episode back in (if I recall correctly) early 2006.

The Polish Foreign Ministry announced that it planned to revive an earlier tradition of an annual ball in honour of the Diplomatic Community, with a 'First Post-War Diplomatic Ball' (ie the first since World War Two).

We all dutifully assembled at the Royal Castle in Warsaw on the appointed evening. As well as the mass of excellent Excellencies various distinguished Poles arrived, including the new Foreign Minister, the late Stefan Meller. Mr Meller had not been at the Ministry long, but already was rumoured to be leaving because of differences with the newly elected Kaczynski twins.

Once the guests had arrived the usual welcome speeches started, led by the Polish Chief of Protocol.

The form on such occasions in Poland is for the most senior guests (and not especially senior guests) to be welcomed by name and title - a formal and often unduly lengthy process.

The Chief of Protocol duly worked his way down the list. But somehow he omitted to mention Mr Meller himself.

Mr Meller spotted this, and to the amazement of the thronging diplomats threw up his arm in anger, uttered an audible imprecation, and angrily walked out. Did he think that the slight had been deliberate?

This intemperate high-profile departure by the Foreign Minister from an event hosted by his own Ministry, the first such diplomatic gala gathering in over sixty years, rather spoiled the evening.

What might a British Foreign Minister might do as the victim of a similar affront? 

Options include:

• Do nothing - in the Great Scheme of World Disasters, this ranks fairly low
• Do nothing, but have a 'quiet word' later - making an open fuss draws attention to the error in a way which disobliges everyone and detracts from one's guests' enjoyment
• Wait for the Protocol Chief to finish then walk to the front, take the microphone, and welcome the guests with a few words as if nothing had happened
• Or perhaps add a wry but pointed joke to the effect that the Protocol Chief was trying to make his/her presence here a surprise?
• And/or the next day send the Mother of All Rockets privately to the Protocol Chief, or even evict said Chief from his job?

Surely anything but crossly, ostentatiously march out, not to return. That above all would convey to two hundred senior foreign representatives the impression that the Foreign Minister is not in control of the immediate situation, or of his/her temper, or of the Ministry team.

Not a mistake the current Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski is likely to make.

I return to Poland this week, my first visit back since driving across the border into Germany at the end of September last year.

To help prevent Ambassadors from setting themselves up plumply in the country of their final posting, the UK Civil Service has a rule to the effect that former Ambassadors should stay away from their final host country for at least six months.

My six months having elapsed, back I go. Reincarnated. As a businessman.

Poland of course acquired a new government as soon as my back was turned, when Jaroslaw Kaczynksi's party was soundly beaten in Parliamentary elections by Donald Tusk's Citizens Platform party.

Since then the new government has cruised along with enviably high ratings. And business is booming in Poland, drawing Poles back home again.

Polish foreign policy led by the energetic Radek Sikorski is also popular - the truculent Kaczynski approach came across as unnecessarily negative and defensive to many Poles. 

And as a former distinguished member himself, Sikorski no doubt enjoyed  seeing the Bullingdon Club's plans for world domination take a further significant step forward last week. 

A long self-promoting piece by David Edgar on how generations of 'renegades' have left the Left is worth a quick glance, if only to see how some privileged people can end up in a severe state of confusion.

Edgar names many renegades. Thus:

[C]ommentators Nick Cohen, David Aaronovitch and Andrew Anthony all had left-wing parents, and were involved in political campaigning around race, gender and class in the 1970s (Aaronovitch was one of Manchester University's notorious University Challenge team, who answered "Marx", "Lenin" or "Trotsky" to every question). Although none of them has abandoned the whole progressive package, their main target is a left-liberal intelligentsia, which, as they see it, opposed the overthrow of a fascist dictator, Saddam Hussein, and is now in an unholy Faustian alliance - justified by modish, postmodern cultural relativism - with the far right

Andrew Anthony himself responds briskly here. If you can bear it, scroll down through some of the ensuing feuding in the Comments. Sarka's comment is one of the few firmly anchored in balance and real life.

Norman Geras too has weighed in. His contribution has the great advantage of being readable and clear.

My view?

It is now established beyond any scientific doubt that if you have too great a role for 'the state' and try to control market mechanisms, even for altruistic reasons, things get in a bad way for everyone. Scope for intelligent debate on getting the balance right here. But if you opt for a Better More State Than More Market paradigm, you are unlikely to make much sense, or achieve lasting positive results.

Plus, if we want a reasonable but in historical terms highly unusual society in which men and women have something close to equal rights and responsibilities, everyone has to stand hard against all violent religious extremists who hate such freedoms and threaten and carry out terroristic violence against us to achieve their reactionary ends. This is non-negotiable.

Some of these extremists plot against us overseas, raising tricky moral/political/realpolitik questions of self-defence. Do we defend ourselves in the first ditch (their back yard) or the last one (our front yard) or somewhere in-between? Scope for intelligent debate and disagreement here over means, but not the principle.

As for D Edgar, who can take seriously someone who still calls the Russian Revolution "one of the most radical and progressive achievments of the 20th century"? This progressive event led progressively to countless millions of people being starved to death or murdered. Maybe he should get out of the theatre and go to the cinema more often to see some real Progress?

Edgar mentions various famous writers and others who suffered from 'disappointment' at the ruinous events ('crises') which ensued, and moved to the Right. The astonishing thing of course is not that some Leftists jumped ship in the face of all these horrors. It is that any of them stayed on it.

And are still there, advertising their new plays and sniping at those who have been more honourable and honest than they are. What a waste of time.

This