Blogoir

Working on some slides for a Mediation Technique presentation in Geneva next week.

Mediation as a professional discipline has some core assumptions. One of the most noted is the idea that there are three levels in the way people look at disputes, namely PIN:

• Positions
• Interests
• Needs

Thus Kosovo. The Serbs and Albanians alike say noisily "Kosovo is ours!" They have incompatible positions.

Yet 'below' that level there are (it is argued) some areas of common interest - not fighting over the place, moving towards EU membership, getting richer and so on.

And below even that, maybe some common needs: maintaining credibility, not being humiliated, staying alive and so on.

Thus a mediator trying to help Serbia and Kosovo sort themselves out will want to move the discussion from Positions through Interests towards Needs, exploring ideas for building on those areas where existential agreement can be found rather than focusing on implacable differences.

Another way of looking at negotiation is a ZOPA: Zone of Possible Agreement.

• Mary wants to pay between £5000 and £8000 for a new car.
• Nancy is ready to sell her car for as little as £6000 but hopes to get £9000.

Somewhere between £6000 and £8000 is the zone of possible agreement, a price both could accept with more or less satisfaction.

Thus the skilled mediator coaxes the parties to move from their extreme positions and look instead at where interests might overlap.

In the Kosovo case, even the International Crisis Group is now looking at territory swaps as the potential ZOPA:

The international community should facilitate as complete a settlement as is possible, leaving it up to the parties themselves to decide how far and in what direction they can go to achieve the goal of recognition.

The most controversial outcome that might emerge from negotiations would be a Northern Kosovo-Preševo Valley swap in the context of mutual recognition and settlement of all other major issues. Neither Pristina nor Belgrade proposes this openly, but officials in both capitals have begun to speak of it quietly in contacts with Crisis Group.

Many in the international community would be unhappy with this option. Crisis Group believes that ruling out this or any specific mutually-agreed option from the onset, however, would risk freezing the Kosovo-Serbia conflict, with no guarantee of eventual resolution.

So much for theory.

All of this assumes some sort of intrinsic ability of the parties to look 'rationally' at what they want now and in the future. To weigh up options in some sort of calm, cooperative spirit, based upon (ultimately) the motherly comforting notion that we are all human beings on Planet Earth together and that there are better things to do here than fight.

Which is usually fine, or at least good enough.

But there are cases where parties each seemingly have internalised different, incompatible levels of rationality.

Such as, in the Balkans, Inat. Someone playing the Inat card is claiming to gain psychic or negotiating strength from the very perverse intensity of his/her irrationality:

See - you are right to say that what I am doing is against my interests! But that's the point.

The fact that I am prepared to do insane things in response to their antics shows just how strongly I feel about this!

And because I am being driven insane, I can not be reasoned with in your bourgeois/sentimental way. Take it or leave it! 

It may be that it is all a wearying bluff, a highly calculated attempt to extract specific negotiating advantage by feigning wild-eyed lack of calculation.

But what if it is real? Or if the effort of doing all that feigning somehow warps the mind of the feigner and starts to create a genuine level of irrationality if not madness?

Sure, with enough therapy and patient counselling this may be turned round.

Does anyone have a quiet couch big enough for Serbs, Albanians, Macedonians, Bosniacs and Croats to lie on for a couple of decades while they get it all off their chests?  

The Daily Telegraph reports that the new EU Ambassador In Washington Joao Vale de Almeida is bent on elbowing out of the way such diplomatic minnows as HM Ambassador Nigel Sheinwald:

Mr Vale de Almeida has stressed to Washington officials and politicians that under the EU's' Lisbon Treaty, he has more power than his predecessors. "I'm the first new type of ambassador for the European Union anywhere in the world," he said. "I'm supposed to have a wider mandate than my predecessors."

Mr Vale de Almeida said: "Our delegations now cover a wide spectrum of issues well beyond the economic dimension, trade dimension and regulatory dimension, to cover all policies in the union, including foreign policy and security policy...

In a comment that has come to symbolise the American view of the EU, Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, is once said to asked: "When I want to talk to Europe, who do I call?"

In a response to that question, Mr Vale de Almeida declared: "In this area code, you call me." The ambassador insisted that he did not wish to "impose myself" on member states' ambassadors, who will continue to oversee "bilateral matters." But he declared: "Where we have a common position, I am the one leading the show."

Where to start?

Let's start here, with Mr Vale de Almeida's appointment to this top job. A controversial choice.

His mainstream diplomatic and sharp-end overseas credentials? Nil, other than an important job running Commission Chairman Barroso's office in Brussels, reached via the giddy heights of the EU's policies on something called Youth:

Youth, Society, Communication. Particular responsibility for Youth policies and programmes, including White Paper on future of Youth Policy in Europe and Open Method of Coordination on Youth

So when Hillary Clinton picks up the telephone at 0300 hours to ask the new EU Ambassador about a sudden crisis, she is not likely to get an informed and operationally nimble response (unless of course the issue involves Coordinating EU Youth, in which case she has hit the jackpot).

Surely there's more to it than this? As Mr Vale de Almeida himself says, where the EU has a Common Position he leads the show.

But therefore what exactly?

Common Positions tend to be limp, unreadable texts drawn up from lowest common denominator drafting exercises expressing such agreement as might be manageable as between 27 countries.

See eg this one on Cuba which has floated listlessly, dead in the water since 1996(!). The point being that there is no consensus to say anything simple and reasonable such as "The EU calls on the Cuban leadership to hold free and fair elections".

On perhaps the one basic issue where the USA might expect the EU to take a robust and united view, namely which countries in Europe exist, there is no Common Position: various EU member states do not recognise Kosovo.

In other words, if there is a Common Position it probably means that the subject is operationally unimportant or at least politically routine, even if various and not unworthy EU spending activities will flow therefrom.

Moreover, the EU Ambassador in Washington has a tough job in maintaining even that Position. He dare not stray far if at all from it, lest he annoy one or other member state who approved that Position and only that Position.

This means that if Hillary asks him what direction EU policy is likely to take if (say) things get worse in N Korea, he'll have no mandate to have a sensible conversation with her. Because the direction of said EU policy - if there is to be one going beyond mere declaratory noises - will be shaped mainly by the EU Bigs (London, Berlin, Paris and so on) ,as always. As he will have to tell her if she rudely asks.

In other words, the EU has indeed given Washington a single telephone number to call.

But all Washinghton really gets is a telephone answering service with a complicated digitalised menu leading to monotonous readings of assorted Common Positions which the USA already has in its files.

For a sensible conversation looking at a wide range of options including top-level handling of the N Korea portfolio at the UN in New York, here's the place they need to call.

Here's an interesting one.

The German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is homosexual. He has decided not to take his partner with him on official visits to countries where homosexuality is a prosecutable crime.

His somewhat obscure argument as quoted in the excellent Spiegel Online:

We want to promote the concept of tolerance in the world ...

But we also don't want to achieve the opposite by behaving imprudently. At the same time it is important that we live according to our own measures of tolerance and that we do not adopt the sometimes less tolerant measures of others.

This position prompts an energetic rant from one Henryk Broder:

One doesn't have to read his remark twice to understand what it signifies: Tolerance is a wonderful thing, but we shouldn't push our luck. This is more than the usual hot air from a politician. Westerwelle's words are an example of moral hara-kiri in slow motion, and they're a disgrace for Germany...

When the Soviet Union broke up, an interesting issue emerged: how should the FCO/HMG name (in English) the many new countries which had appeared on the world scene?

Those of us at the policy coal-face had a radical idea. Go for the simplest option, ie the one most easy to spell and more or less resembling how the name was pronounced in English. Thus we preferred Kirgistan to Kyrgyzstan or even Kyrgystan when describing the territory known as the Kyrgyz Republic (Кыргыз Республикасы).

The FCO Department dealing with Geographical Names were aghast and launched a fierce rearguard action, arguing that the 'correct' way to deal with such problems was to use the formal standards for transliterating (or whatever the word is) the original linguistic form into English. Thus here the (to us) somewhat strangled Russian ы vowel is best represented with a y, not an i.

Tricky. To my ear the ы sounds most like the ur sound in murder, or indeed the ir sound as in fir-cone.

This issue also comes round in Polish. Thus the muted uh sound represented by the y in Kaczynski - in Polish the i vowel is prounced quite strongly as a short ee (as in me).

The brave policy officers lost out to the holders of the purist flame, so now we have Kyrgystan on the FCO website.

This looks like a feeble compromise, to avoid scaring English-speakers by removing a z. There is a definite z sound in the local languages - the people there are Kyrgyz - so if anything it ought to be Kyrgyzstan.

There is no logic to any of this. If there were, we would not call Deutschland 'Germany'. Partly it's fashion and partly some sort of linguistic political correctness: once upon a time we had Peking, then we were told that it was Beijing. The Chinese started to get peeved that we were not using the name of their capital correctly, and said so.

Paree anyone?

The only issue in all this of course is the eternal one. Who decides?

Take the FCO. It had and for all I know still has a team of people who are deemed to be the Deciders, and from whom the FCO and the rest of Whitehall and thereby much of the UK media and schools take a lead. This echoes an earlier tradition when decisions of this sort were issued by an unchallenged authority.

But these days things are different. Authorities are challenged. Not only governments make maps. People themselves do en masse, using Google and other technologies.

Which is in part why Google has different names for different places, depending upon where you make the search.

Geography and borders - like everything else these days, becoming more ... elusive?

As usual there are pros and cons:

Unpopular as it may be, such uncertainty has become a central dynamic of life on the Internet. The erosion of traditional authority is followed quickly by anxiety over its absence, from Google to Wikipedia to the lesser-known precincts of PetitionOnline—where millions of people direct their impassioned grievances not to any official arbiter but straight into the ether.

What results is an irony. The digital culture that encourages the inclusion of multiple names for a single feature on a map is the same digital culture that has encouraged hundreds of thousands of Iranians to voice their discontent. The very medium incites nationalism, yet also frustrates it.

... What is Google? Is it a repository for all of our mutually exclusive claims, or is it a higher power to which we appeal? It cannot be both, and yet we seem to treat it as both. This tension may only heighten going forward.

“In a world where mapmaking is cheap and anyone can do it,” Goodchild says, “you would eventually expect things to become more and more local.” In such a future, either we will reconcile ourselves to the lack of a central arbiter, or the conflicts will be all over the map. 

Great article. Read it. Via Browser.

My piece analysing David Cameron's high-profile speeches in Turkey and India has attracted some attention, and various well-taken comments.

Part of the problem for a speechwriter for a top politician is to work out who the audience is, and craft the words accordingly.

Most speeches of any consequence by (say) a British Prime Minister overseas have several different audiences. They include:

• the people sitting there on the day, among whom may well be some local VIPs whose ears will be closely tuned to note certain policy nuances and inclusions/omissions of familiar diplomatic code-words
• the local media outlets (electronic and newspapers) for the in-country foreign audience
• the UK media - what is the headline you want them to carry?
• the international media: what headlines do you want to see in other countries who maybe follow closely UK policy and the policies of the country you're visiting?
• academics, think-tanks, chattering analytic classes - they'll pore over the text in slower time to see what if anything looks to be new/different and what may lie 'behind' any changes
• the PM's own political allies in his own party and its coalition partner - do some different policy emphases there need acknowledging/fudging?
• the PM's domestic opponents - what will the Opposition look to attack

In other words, it's all very well talking blithely about a speech needing 'key messages'. But getting exactly right different key messages to these different audiences is no easy job.

And let's not forget one other audience: history. How will this speech read in ten or fifty or one hundred years' time?

One other point about Key Messages. In the immortal words of Frank Luntz, It's not what you say - it's what they hear.

The speaker may think that the key messages in the speech are neatly turned for style and significant in policy terms. 

And they may well be. My point in that earlier piece was to suggest that they also might come across - be 'heard' by one or other of the various local audiences - as patronising or trite.

Getting that right is not about being good with words. It's about having a subtle, experienced understanding of what works and does not work for Indians, for Serbs, for Brazilians, for Malaysians and so on. Each community has (for better or worse) its own sense of what British Prime Ministers represent and how they should behave.

Hence the fact that many Bosnians felt insulted when PM John Major appeared in war-torn Sarajevo in a military jumper. That mode of dress may or may not have won some brownie points with TV viewers back in the UK. But it blew the whole visit presentationally in Bosnia. 

He was saying: I have come here to help.

They were 'hearing': This person is treating us disrespectfully - if our leaders can manage to look smart in this ghastly war-zone, so should a British PM! 

See also the bizarre visit of PM Tony Blair to Sarajevo in late 1997, when his spin-doctors refused to let him say a single word to Bosnian media people. The Bosnians 'heard' from this visit: rude, too grand to talk to us, flying in and out in a couple of hours - he doesn't care.

All of which brings us to David Cameron's unwise remarks about Pakistan and terrorism during his India trip. As Andrew Rawnsley describes it:

That remark was not planned. It came in an answer to a businessman at the very end of a Q&A in Bangalore.

It was a gaffe. I am using here the classic definition of a gaffe: it is to say something which is true, but liable to cause controversy, embarrassment or harm if spelled out in public. Scoring him on presentation, he stands tall at home, but is still finding his feet away...

Here is the view of John Elliott who is based in New Delhi:

Cameron was of course on target with his criticism of Pakistan, but India was not the place to say it because it diverted attention from his investment-oriented visit – unless you take the Machiavellian approach that it increased media coverage of a trip that might have otherwise made few headlines.  

It was also unwise to make such a snap remark without planning for the downside – in this case endangering Britain’s links with Pakistan’s intelligence services.

That's mainly right. Pakistan opinion will be all the more likely to be really annoyed by senior British remarks such as this when they are made in India. All sorts of subliminal and other thoughts surge to the fore in Islamabad:

• is he taking India's side in the Kashmir problem?
• why is he saying such things before he's even talked to us, and on the eve of the President's visit to London? Deliberate provocation?
• why is he undermining the people in Pakistan who want to modernise the country? This sort of thing simply allows the extremists to play populist cards against the West and makes a hard job even worse...

Key message for senior speechwriters and speakers?

Remember that there are many audiences listening to or reading your every word.

And that what you are saying and what they are hearing may be quite different.

Update: a very clever piece by Hugo Rifkind over at WSJ muses on what if anything in David Cameron's recent so-called public speaking gaffes was in fact wrong or unwise or ineffective. See eg this:

The spin, from Britain's Conservative Party, is that Prime Minister David Cameron did not commit "gaffes" on his recent, whirlwind world tour, but was in fact just "speaking his mind."

I am always wary of people who say "I speak my mind," as though that was a good thing to begin with. It's a better strategy, surely, to think your mind, pick out some edited highlights, and speak those. Otherwise, what's the point of having a mind at all? You might as well just have your mouth wired up directly to somewhere else entirely...

Yet, which of these messages was really a gaffe? It's a decent rule of thumb in politics that you can always afford to annoy the people who need you the most.

British Conservatives need David Cameron, so he annoyed them to agree with America. Israel needs British support, so he annoyed them to agree with Turkey. Pakistan needs Britain in Afghanistan, so he annoyed them to agree with India.

True "plain speaking" could never manage so many twists and turns. This was David Cameron speaking his mind by speaking the minds of other people. Gaffes aside, to my mind, this was a pretty impressive performance.

Not that I'm speaking my mind, of course. No. This is just the edited highlights.

My recent piece about the feebleness of Peter Mandelson's speechwriters looked ahead to the coming international tour of David Cameron to see if his people would do a better job.

NB folks, what follows is not about policy as such. It's about speechwriting and diplomatic technique, and the way messages are sent/received both explicitly and implicitly.

First, the headlines were caught by the Prime Minister's strong support for Turkey's EU membership:

When I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a NATO ally and what Turkey is doing today in Afghanistan alongside our European allies, it makes me angry that your progress towards EU membership can be frustrated in the way that it has been.

My view is clear: I believe it is just wrong to say that Turkey can guard the camp but not be allowed to sit in the tent.

I will remain your strongest possible advocate for EU membership and for greater influence at the top table of European diplomacy.

Strong meat. But is it quite wise to strike such a forward position within hours of landing in Turkey?

Not according to this scathing review by Barry Rubin:

It is a textbook example of how not to conduct international affairs ... everything should be conditional. The message to be delivered is that it is in your interest to respect my interests.

Cameron did the precise and exact opposite. His message was: The UK needs Turkey. Turkey is wonderful. Its behavior has been perfect. We are desperate for your help.

What is the effect? A man goes into a bazaar, points to a carpet, and says, “That is the most beautiful carpet I have ever seen. I must have it no matter what the price! How much is it?”

In addition, Cameron committed some other howling mistakes, several of which will amaze you...

Which he proceeds mercilessly to describe.

It has to be said. There is a serious point here. To open a speech like this...

Turkey is vital for our economy, vital for our security and vital for our politics and our diplomacy...

... is dubious technique. It gives a gauche hint of subservience, almost desperation. You are vital to us! You are! The effect of which is to suggest deep insecurity  on our part - that we might not be vital to them.

Hmm.

On to the Prime Minister's speech in India:

I come here with a very clear purpose: to show what this new start means for our two countries. I want to take the relationship between India and Britain to the next level. I want to make it stronger, wider, and deeper.

To show how serious I am I have brought with me the biggest visiting delegation of any British Prime Minister in recent years. Members of my Cabinet, our most dynamic business leaders, leaders of industry, social entrepreneurs, civic leaders, figures from our most forward-looking arts institutions and museums, sports men and women, and pioneers of community activism.

Phew! Did anyone ask India if it wanted or needed this sprawling entourage of Busy Brits?

... this country matters to Britain for many reasons beyond your economy too (sic). With over 700 million voters and three million elected representatives at council level, your democracy is a beacon to our world. You have wonderful tradition of democratic secularism; home to dozens of faiths and hundreds of languages, people are free to be Muslim, Hindu or Sikh and to speak Marathi, Punjabi or Tamil. But, at the same time, and without any contradiction, they are all Indian too.

India matters to the world because it is not only a rising power but a responsible power as well...

Lawks - the Mandelson Mistake! Pronouncing on where India fits into the world these days - as if its our natural job to make such pronouncements, and theirs to sit politely and bask in our warm praise. Why should India care if it 'matters' to the UK? Patronising, anyone?

At the height of the industrial revolution in the United States, they said, ‘Go west, young man, in order to find opportunity and fortune.’ For today’s investors and entrepreneurs they should go east.

Another poorly cast paragraph. It seems to say that today's investors and entrepreneurs are where we are, whereas in fact they increasingly are in 'the East' themselves, and doing just fine.

... why should Britain matter to India? I believe our two countries are natural partners; Britain is one of the oldest democracies and India is the world’s largest.

Stop all this 'mattering'! Never say 'I believe'. Let the words themselves bring out your beliefs. And what has comparing the size of our democracies got to do with anything at all?

We have a shared commitment to pluralism and to tolerance; we have deep and close connections amongst our people, with nearly two million people of Indian origin living in the UK. They make an enormous contribution to our country – way out of proportion to their size – in business, in the arts, in sport.

I never like this glorification of ethnic communities as such - it sounds phoney, almost as if it nervously has to be said lest someone accuse you of being racist in expecting them not to make such a wonderful contribution. And what about the bad eggs in their midst?

India and Britain also share so much culturally; whether it’s watching Shari Kahn, eating the same food, speaking the same language, and of course watching the same sport. Many of you in this room will have grown up revering and watching Kapil Dev; I did the same in Britain watching Ian Botham. And Sachin Tendulkar, the Little Master, is so talented that wherever you are from, you cannot help but admire as he hits another century.

Aaargh. How bad a passage is that? The hapless speechwriter ran out of intelligent things to say so slumped into curry and cricket. Raaaacist!

We come at this from different angles. The Indian story is well-known. There is still a huge challenge but on any measure India is on its way, a rising economic power. On any measure, India is on an upward trajectory.

Help - the Mandelson Mistake comes back. Don't tell other people how well they're doing. Especially in a former colony, it sounds like proud teacher patting a diligent pupil on the head.

We in Britain are determined to work even harder to earn our living: attracting more foreign investment to our shores, making more things for the world again, selling ourselves to the world with more vigour than ever. I’m not ashamed to say that’s one of the reasons why I’m here today.

Look how defensive that sounds. All those feeble comparatives:

• work even harder
• attract more foreign investment
• make more things for the world again
• more vigour than ever

Here, more = less. It sounds too striving, too keen to make a point, too anxious.

Tomorrow I’m going to be talking to Prime Minister Singh about how we can work together to develop and deploy new and renewable energy sources, in particular to reach some of India’s poorest communities. If we get this right, it will be a triple win: clean energy, electricity brought to poorest people, new jobs and growth. And it’s precisely the sort of cooperation we need as we move forward in this relationship...

We must be the ones to act and we must act together. Together Britain and India can do the work that is needed. Together our partnership can benefit the world. So together, let us build this new relationship that can meet the scale of our great ambitions together

This passage illustrates what I don't like about this breathless, hyperactive, self-absorbed style of speechwriting. The PM seems to pronounce all sorts of things about what the UK and India could and should be doing together before he's talked to the Indian opposite number to see what he suggests and wants.

Maybe the Indians don't want to work with us to 'do the work that is needed', to benefit the world' in 'partnership'. They certainly seemed happy enough to ignore us in the Climate Summit endgame:

Obama sitting down with the Brazilian, Chinese, Indian and South African leaders to hammer out something or other among themselves, far from the madding crowd of NGOs and all the other leaders.

Thus it came about in spasm of post-modern irony that a small self-proclaimed group of countries defined the main outcome on behalf of everyone else, with the European Unionists (collectively the third biggest CO2 emitter) left outside. Ditto Russia, left holding its cute little red reset button handed over by Hillary Clinton. And Indonesia, a huge emitter. 

The progressive-Left symbolism of this is magnificent: no Dead White Men (especially those sanctimonious Europeans) spoiling the photo-shot!

We decide - Dead White Men pay!

In short, well done the Prime Minister for showing British energy and purpose. But not so well done in how messages are being transmitted. The basic tone as served up by the new squeaky-clean speechwriters is over-keen and unconvincingly over-confident: Hullo, I am your new best friend!

Plus it's characteristic of the speechwriting work of people who know a lot about the UK and political spin here, but next to nothing about Foreigners. It's far too much on Transmit, not Receive. Where are the following thoughts:

• I'm relatively new to this top-level international game. But I do know about the UK's national strengths and comparative advantage
• I know that we have interests. So do you. We traditionally agree on some things. We also disagree on some things. Let's talk
• I see areas where the existing relationship might be enhanced. But before plunging in to all that, I'm here to listen.
• I want to hear for myself your leaders' views, to talk quietly with them about where we might take things forward

Keep a lot more back. Cultivate some mystery. Imply that in some areas we'll be totally inflexible and/or drive a very hard bargain.

That is the oblique and efficient way to compliment your hosts - to hint that you relish disagreeing with them in some areas, because they - like you - are tough too.

Above all, the new government's speechwriters need to stop talking in this febrile paternalistic Mandelsonian way about other countries' successes and achievements.

Because in these days of commercially-minded diplomacy, it's none of our business.

My piece at the Independent on the outcome of the Ejup Ganic trial in London provokes the usual flurry of comments:

Mr Crawford is one of the morons that manipulated both US and UK foreign policy towards Bosnia in the 1990s. As an officer in the NATO force that arrived in Bosnia in 1995 I can say, unequivocally, the Bosnian muslims were just as much criminals as their Serbian and Croatian counterparts. It is time to start punishing their leadership as well. The Ganic story is not over.

What about those poor conscripts who have been burnt down by
thugs who call themselves ,,Bosnian Army,,? Do they deserve justice?No?And why? Because,they were Serbs.How unfortunate. How much did you get paid for your ,,opinion,,? Lunch? Shame on you!

Appalling! His excellency, the former ambassador Crawford (to Serbia) reminds Serbia that it should shut up because that is the script handed to it by the International Community. Serbia is guilty by definition, so the accusations of war crimes that Serbia may have against others are not to be considered (Ex turpi causa non oritur actio)! Talk about specious syllogisms! 

Mr Charles Crawford is a man of honor and integrity. SHame on you for attacking him.

Some background.

The Independent asked for 400 words. I sent them some 500. They condensed that down to 330 without sending me a final version. So key nuances which went some way at least to tackling points made in the critical comments were lost.

Such is Journalism.

In case anyone is still interested, here is what I think is the full judgement.

The judge said this:

There is nothing within the request which would bring the conduct alleging issuing a command to attack a military convoy within the meaning of a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions 1949. However there is a reference to an Ambulance within the convoy and the request alleges that Dr Ganic expressly ordered an attack upon the Ambulance within the convoy. To that limited extent I am satisfied that the conduct alleges an extradition offence.

I am not satisfied that the rest of the convoy had any right to protection or that the soldiers in the 30 vehicles were prisoners of war.

Without having heard the evidence presented it is hard to say why he reached this conclusion. But it is clear from the video footage of the Dobrovoljacka St shootings that the JNA convoy was leaving Sarajevo under some sort of UN-brokered ceasefire agreement.

Is there really no case to answer that it is a breach of the laws at war to attack a convoy in such circumstances? Apart from the wider policy issues, this finding directly contradicts the testimony of a British expert on the whole story whom the judge praised for his accuracy.

The Serbia side does not appear to have found any satisfactory answer to the Sarajevo/BH side's arguments that Serbia offered to let the Ganic extradition request lapse in exchange for political support for Serbia Srebrenica Declaration. The judge reasonably gives significant weight to this in support of his wider concern that Serbia's application was in one way or the other 'politically' motivated.

The judge took evidence from various notable people on that point including from Dr Schwarz-Shilling (sic and Lord Ashdown), former High Representatives in Sarajevo. Both asserted that the extradition request "is about politics rather than justice". Since neither of them have lived in Belgrade and both have seen the BH issue mainly from the vantage-point of Sarajevo, their evidence on this point should have been dismissed on the grounds of irrelevance.

Lord Ashdown even linked the extradition request to the date of the opening statement by Radovan Karadzic at ICTY, a linkage so footling that the judge explicitly dismissed it.

The judge was improperly dismissive of the role of the Belgrade war crimes courts and seemed to accept as true various tendentious generalisations about Serbia and Serb views put forward by Noel Malcolm and others.

These statements persuaded him that Serbia's application should be barred by Section 81(a) and (b) of the Extradition Act 2003 on the grounds that the request had been made "for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing him on account of his race, religion, nationality and political opinions". This in my view is a far-reaching and obnoxious finding, based upon noisy assertions rather than hard facts.

All in all, a powerful but not especially coherent and convincing judgement. That said, in the circumstances it probably was correct enough.

It looks as if the Serbia side had not prepared its case re launching the extradition request and then thought through how best to handle the extradition hearing. It did poorly in presenting witnesses to rebut the openly 'political' case put forward by the Bosnia side. And by attempting some behind-the-scenes deal with Sarajevo while the matter proceeded in the UK courts, Belgrade foolishly laid itself open to a charge that its 'real' intentions were 'political' rather than legal/justice focused.

To be 100% clear for the record.

I am NOT saying or suggesting that war crimes against Serbs should not be prosecuted. I pressed hard for that to happen when UK Ambassador both in Sarajevo and Belgrade.

Nor am I saying that because of Srebrenica/Mladic Serbia is disqualified from running war crimes trials in Belgrade, or from putting in extradition requests such as this one.

Nor do I believe that Belgrade is unable to run a fair trial of non-Serbs. I do think that keeping fair is a difficult problem for all the local war crimes processes in former Yugoslavia:

The ICTY is not the whole story. Special courts for “lesser” war crimes have been set up in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia. These important trials are little acknowledged elsewhere in Europe. As British ambassador in Belgrade, I hosted a Kosovo family in Belgrade to give evidence in one of the first trials, involving alleged war crimes by Serbs in Kosovo. They said they had been treated honorably by the Serbian authorities.

The core problem with these trials is that each ethnic community concerned likes to see a conviction of someone from another community who brutalized their fellow ethnic cousins. But they hate it when “their” court is expected to put on trial one of “their” people. They hate it even more when a court elsewhere in the region looks to go lightly on someone from “its” community. Why, cry Serbs, has the Bosnian legal system for nearly 20 years done next to nothing about the 1992 Dobrovoljacka Street killings?

The reality is that every community in the former Yugoslavia sees itself as a victim of something or other. And a central part of being a victim is that you never get justice. So local politicians who believe in pushing the war-crimes agenda face an uphill task -- where are the votes in doing so?

To make it even more difficult, the Serbian government is (as the Amnesty woman at the “Storm” screening rightly pointed out) undermined when other European countries won’t respect Belgrade’s warrants to arrest people indicted in Serbia on war-crimes charges. It makes no sense for the European Union to insist that the region run these trials to high international standards and then not respect local efforts to do that.

BUT...but...

The hard fact of it is that there is a nasty, neo-national socialist tendency in Serbia which flourished under Milosevic, and that those poisonous attitudes infect the way the Serbian elite presents itself. (Similar neo-national socialist tendencies of course are alive and well among Croats, Albanians/Kosovars and Bosniacs/Muslims, a key point lost on some of the supposedly expert senior witnesses presented by the defence at the Ganic trial.)

Serbia's internal struggles continue over what Serbia and Serbs represent both to the world and to themselves.

And that was what ultimately undermined Serbia's case in London; in form and substance it just wasn't convincing.

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.

The European Stability Initiative do lots of good solid analytical/policy work.

Have a look at this ingenious proposal for resolving the absurd problem of Greek opposition to Macedonia's name:

How can this conundrum be resolved? It can be done through a constitutional amendment in Skopje that changes the name of the country today, allowing Athens to support the start of accession talks later this year, but that also foresees that the change will only enter into force on the day Macedonia actually joins the EU.

This effectively 'solves' the problem in principle in a way the Greeks should accept, but brings in the solution down the road on Macedonia's EU accession, giving Macedonia the necessary guarantees.

Clever. Mutually reinforcing but asynchronous (ass-'n'-chronic?) incentives towards good behaviour.

And read this one on the constitutional mysteries of Belgium, suggesting that the puny (in comparison) constitutional mysteries of Bosnia and Herzegovina should not be an obstacle to BH's EU membership. See eg Belgium's Constitution:

Article 1
Belgium is a federal State composed of Communities and Regions.

Article 2
Belgium is composed of three Communities: The French Community, the Flemish Community and the German-speaking Community.

Article 3
Belgium is composed of three regions: The Walloon Region, the Flemish Region and the Brussels Region.

Article 4
Belgium has four linguistic regions: The French-speaking region, the Dutch-speaking region, the bilingual region of Brussels-Capital and the German-speaking region. (…)

(Depending on whether the language in which the Constitution is written is French, Dutch or German, the respective Community and Regions are mentioned first.)

Phew.

I was chatting to a senior oil executive the other day (as one does), and I asked how that vast multinational corporation ran its top speech-writing function.

"Oh,we have the usual - a team of young speechwriters, which is what you need these days."

Really? Why do you need young speech-writers?

What books have they read? What hard decisions have they ever had to take? What pain have they suffered? Where have they been? What encounters with senior foreign people have they had - do they know just how to pitch things right?

What experience do they bring to the job, other than the doubtful one of being 'young'?

Today I heard about Peter Mandelson in India from someone who had watched him in action. His visit came soon after the dreadful performance of David Miliband who insulted his much older Indian counterpart by being over-matey with him during their private meeting.

Peter Mandelson by contrast (I was told) insulted on a much bigger and public scale.

He addressed a large gathering of business people at an event also attended by several senior Indian politicians. In his random Nu Labour way, he made a flaccid speech about globalisation, including passages saying just how well India was doing as an 'emerging economy'. He then left the event to move on to 'another engagement'.

I think that this must be the speech concerned:

For a couple of years up until about the middle of last year there was a debate going on in the financial services sector and in the financial media over the extent to which the emerging economies - including India, of course - had ‘decoupled’ from the developed world.

Have India, China and the other emerging economies achieved enough momentum economically to fundamentally break the link between their economic destiny and ours in the EU and the US?

... I welcome the fact that the Indian government remains so committed to liberalization of its financial, legal and accountancy sectors, which will be an important contributor to attracting the foreign investment it wants for its large infrastructure projects.

The Indian knowledge economy has ambitions to cater for a global market. The expansion of Indian manufacturing, which the government rightly sees as central to defining India’s future place in global value chains, will be built on the further opening up of the Indian market to industrial imports.

This sort of thing is in fact very hard to draft well. See especially the absurd and unwise phrase "I welcome ..."

How does one say anything much about someone else's country at such an event without somehow seeming to be assuming to oneself the role of loftily pronouncing on the good marks and not so good marks, like a cargo cult schoolteacher?

Here the ignorant and jejune speechwriter obviously failed to get it right, a high-profile blunder all the more embarrassing for the UK as it came immediately after D Miliband's fiasco.

After P Mandelson had departed, a senior Indian speaker addressed the throng and had them in stitches laughing at Mandelson's patronising style and hollow substance:

"We look at the UK and see it as a sub-merging economy!"

Maybe there should be a new rule.

No politician should have a speech-writer younger than s/he is.

Just think of all those mountains of money and time wasted on so-called diversity training, when simple reminders about Good Manners would have been far more effective.

Let's see if David Cameron can get things back on track.

Here.

Be shocked, as the Truth is revealed.

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.

Here is an interesting account from Devil's Knife of his participation in a public discussion on Freedom and all that.

I can imagine that his account of the end of Friendly Societies had some people bemused, but it is an interesting story:

As in other things where the state starts to provide a service, they crowded out the Friendly Societies. After all, if you were a relatively poor manual worker, you could not spare your three shillings per annum to the Friendly Society and the three shillings that the government was taking directly from your pay.

And so the Friendly Societies all but vanished, along with the communities they nurtured. And with them went the libertarian model of welfare—of people getting together as a voluntary collective in order to look after themselves. And so the model of state as mater and pater—the state in loco parentis, with all the intrusive hideousness that concept has spawned—was started...

It's the actions of regular people that are the most significant, serious, and worthy of respect, and they don't deserve to be treated like dolls when, in reality, the only truly and moral libertarian proposition is that they should be masters of themselves.

They did so in the past, and their aspirations were crushed by corporate whores and political shills: and in removing the ability of people to organise themselves, these evil people also removed the desire for them to try.

It is this that has led to our "broken society"—the cynical ambitions of the vested interests, backed up by the monopoly of violence that a corrupt and venal state willingly brought to bear upon its people.

Hmm.

If I am forced to work for someone against my will, that form of oppression is called slavery.

Slavery is a priori Bad, for various reasons:

• it creates a relationship of arbitrary pseudo-superiority imposed by violencce
• it belittles the slave - what sort of life is worth living in enforced servitude to someone else?
• it degrades the moral sense of the slave-master - why take responsibility for anything when you can beat a slave into doing the work?

Hence the famous line (emphasis added) of Satre in the preface to Frantz Fanon's furious attack on the psychology of colonialism, Wretched of the Earth:

The rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity. For in the first days of the revolt you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man; the survivor, for the first time, feels a national soil under his foot...

Of course, it is one thing for the slave to use violence to free himself/herself. That requires strong nerves and, perhaps, a willingness to die in the attempt.

But maybe it is even harder for someone to resist the temptation to want to be a slave-owner - to free oneself from the very wish to live at the expense of others.

As described in this peerless line - the far other side of Sartre's insight:

The legal processes surrounding the attempt by Belgrade to get former BH Presidency member Ejup Ganic extradited from London to Serbia to face war crimes charges rumble on.

The latest hearing has ended. According to the Sarajevo media, judgement is expected on 27 July.

Needless to say, media reports of the detailed legal issues at stake have been fitful. Some attention has focused on the various claims made by the Ganic team:

• that Serbia's application was flawed on its face or substantively
• that it has no substantive merit and/or presents no evidence which has not been presented in other courts and dismissed as inadequate
• that Ganic can not expect a fair trial in Belgrade

Lawyers representing Serbia have replied:

• that there is enough evidence to launch a substantive prosecution in Belgrade
• and that the Hague Tribunal and other courts are cooperating well with the war crimes courts in Belgrade, and indeed congratulating Belgrade on its work in this difficult area - a fair trial will be assured

My barrister training back in the mists of time taught me one thing: to look at the merits of the case in hand.

The point here (as far as I can see - I may be wrong) is that this is not a case about war crimes. It is about extradition law.

The London courts are not expected or even empowered under the relevant law and guidlelines to delve far into the substance of the allegations against Mr Ganic.

They are dealing with allegations made by state A and against a citizen of state B. Their task is primarily to ascertain whether as a matter of law state A (here Serbia) has met the standards required for Mr Ganic to be transferred to Belgrade.

In terms of where the matter stands procedurally, the Home Office guidelines for cases involving Category 2 territories (which both Serbia and Bosnia are) suggest that we have just had the 'extradition hearing'.

This is interesting (emphasis added):

Some countries are not required to provide prima facie evidence in support of their request for extradition. These countries are (as of 1 January 2007):

Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Liechtenstein, Macedonia FYR, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Russian Federation, Serbia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States of America.

Then there's this:

The judge must satisfy himself that the request meets the requirements of the 2003 Act, including dual criminality and where appropriate, prima facie evidence of guilt; and that none of the bars to extradition apply (the rule against double jeopardy; extraneous considerations; passage of time or hostage-taking considerations).

Finally, he is required to decide whether the person’s extradition would be compatible with the convention rights within the meaning of the Human Rights Act 1998.

If he decides all of these questions in the affirmative, he must send the case to the Secretary of State for the latter’s decision whether the person is to be extradited. Otherwise, he must discharge the person.

In other words, Serbia does not have to clear too high a legal hurdle on the substance of its extradition request, since Serbia (like Bosnia and Herzegovina) is among the countries whose word and processes are deemed by English law to be respectable enough not to merit deeper investigation.

If the judge decides in favour of extradition, the case goes to the Secretary of State, but only for further consideration under three headings. The Secretary of State is not to look at the wider merits of the issue:

Secretary of State

Where a case is sent to the Secretary of State she (sic) must consider whether surrender is prohibited because:

1. the person could face the death penalty: This is an absolute prohibition unless the Secretary of State receives an adequate written assurance from the requesting state that the death penalty will not be imposed, or will not be carried out, if imposed
2. there are no speciality arrangements with the requesting country: The condition of “speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences in respect of which the person is extradited (except in certain limited circumstances)
3. the person was earlier extradited to the UK: this might require the Secretary of State to obtain the consent of the earlier extraditing country, before the person can be extradited on to the requesting state...

If the Secretary of State does find that surrender is prohibited, she must order the discharge of the person. If none of the three prohibitions apply, or appropriate assurances have been given, the Secretary of State must order the person to be extradited.

In the Ganic case the three rather technical prohibitions applied at the political level do not (I assume) apply. So if the Secretary of State is in due course presented with a ruling from the judge confirming Ganic's extradition to Serbia, on the face of it that ruling will have to be upheld.

If the Secretary of State does order extradition Ganic can appeal, just as Serbia can appeal against a decision in favour of Ganic by either the judge or the Secretary of State.

And who knows, maybe wily lawyers on either side will come up with other proceedings (eg based on UK or EU Human Rights norms) to add new complications.

In short, plenty of legal juice - and juicy fees - remain to be squeezed before Mr Ganic very finally gets on a plane bound for either Belgrade.

Or Sarajevo. 

Most issues boil down to a simple number of questions:

• what's the problem?
• what's at stake for the various sides arguing about it?
• is any given outcome likely to be seen by all concerned as both fair (enough) and sustainable?

And above all:

• who decides?

Many key international disputes (Israel/Palestine, Kashmir, Kosovo and so on) are about land: who lives on it, who has the best claim to live on it, where does one claim stops and someone else's claim start, etc. And, above all: who decides?

At the Dayton peace negotiations for Bosnia in 1995, the Bosnian participants were all mightily impressed by American computerised animation sequences which allowed them to zoom up and down and over the valleys and uplands of Bosnia in vivid detail. For the first time ever Bosnian leaders could see what sort of land lay where, which helped them work out new internal administrative and other boundaries. The local issues at stake (some of which had been feuded about for centuries) could literally be seen in a completely new way.

Which brings us to Google Maps, and the way that being able to see and present geographical issues in a new way both helps solve problems - and generates new ones.

Not least because the core question - who decides? - now can drift away from leaders sitting in a smoke-filled room haggling over topographical detail to the world's masses, who may turn out to have some strong views on what belongs to whom - and how places are named:

What results is an irony. The digital culture that encourages the inclusion of multiple names for a single feature on a map is the same digital culture that has encouraged hundreds of thousands of Iranians to voice their discontent. The very medium incites nationalism, yet also frustrates it.

It all points back to a simple question: What is Google? Is it a repository for all of our mutually exclusive claims, or is it a higher power to which we appeal? It cannot be both, and yet we seem to treat it as both.

This tension may only heighten going forward. “In a world where mapmaking is cheap and anyone can do it,” Goodchild says, “you would eventually expect things to become more and more local.” In such a future, either we will reconcile ourselves to the lack of a central arbiter, or the conflicts will be all over the map. 

Better? Worse? Just ... different? 

At the least more democratic, therefore more confusing - and perhaps potentially more turbulent?

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.

Are we about to see a major 'spy swap'?

"Why waste time on all those tedious legal processes and prisons? We get our spies back, and so do you."

Hard for me at least to see why the Russians would want to do this unless the illegals/sleepers rounded up in the USA were likely to spill so many operational beans during their looming long years on trial and then in prison that it is worth Moscow eating great slabs of humble pie to end the agony asap.

Maybe the Americans likewise feel that in fact so many KGB/SVR beans have been spilled already that they can afford to be magnanimous.

However, look at the world from the point of view of the hapless Russian spies.

They have been living agreeable and comfortable lives in leafy US suburbs. Now they face abrupt repatriation to Russia, where they will be regarded as failures and losers for ever.

Plus they face sustained and stressful interrogations from the SVR as the Russian agencies try to find out where it all went wrong - and what they have confessed about Russian operations and methodology.

Gulp. Political asylum bid, anyone?

The more you look at it, the more this looks like a five-star triumph for the Americans in general and the FBI in particular.

Fascinating interview with Clay Shirky at the Guardian website, where all sorts of issues dealing with the impact of the Internet (especially on old-style media outlets such as newspapers and TV) are covered elegantly.

Examples:

When we talk about newspapers, we talk about them being critical for informing the public; we never say they're critical for informing their customers. We assume that the value of the news ramifies outwards from the readership to society as a whole. OK, I buy that.

But what Murdoch is signing up to do is to prevent that value from escaping. He wants to only inform his customers, he doesn't want his stories to be shared and circulated widely. In fact, his ability to charge for the paywall is going to come down to his ability to lock the public out of the conversation convened by the Times...

If we took the loopiest, most moonbeam-addled Californian utopian internet bullshit, and held it up against the most cynical, realpolitik-inflected scepticism, the Californian bullshit would still be a better predictor of the future. Which is to say that, if in 1994 you'd wanted to understand what our lives would be like right now, you'd still be better off reading a single copy of Wired magazine published in that year than all of the sceptical literature published ever since.

And on the nasty comments sent to the Guardian's website:

... anonymity makes people behave more meanly.

What I think is going to happen there is we are slowly going to set up islands of civil discourse. There's no way to make the internet not anonymous – and if there was, the most enthusiastic consumers of that technology would be Iranian and Chinese and Burmese governments.

But there are ways of saying, while you're here, use your real identity. We need to set up the social norms which say in this space you need to use your real names, or some well-known handle.

Terrific. Read it all.

Belgium emits the usual confidence that the UK even under the Conservatives will be absorbed into EU processes ... nicely:

Belgian negotiators are convinced that Mr Cameron's hard line opposition to giving more sovereignty up to the EU, a pledge written into his coalition government's agreement, will be sacrificed in the interests of pragmatism.

The senior source observed that no EU agreements would ever be possible if all European leaders stuck to the "totality" of their election manifestoes.

"It is impossible to have compromise with total programmes," he said.

Pragmatism. There's a word.

Meanwhile back in Europe-as-it-really-is, have a look at this excellent piece over at Transconflict looking at the way Belgiam is creaking at the seams, with separatist elements cleverly using EU iconography and language to advance their cause.

Note especially the idea of 'rational nationalism':

The N-VA has managed to make people forget the old, vague, romantic and not particularly mobilizing notion of full Flemish independence and reframe its nationalism as a moderate political demand for autonomy. The party employed a number of metaphors to communicate this message.

“We don’t want a revolution, just evolution”, said N-VA leader Bart De Wever repeatedly. We do not want to split Belgium, we will just let it “evaporate”, was another slogan...

... But the idea that more nationalism is needed, and not less, to unblock the political debates between language groups at the federal level has worked extremely well as an electoral slogan ...

“Rational” Flemish nationalism was thus presented as an antidote for the confusion of Belgian “politics as usual” and as a discourse of clean efficiency, not one of exclusion or lack of solidarity across language groups...

Are the Flemish N-VA and Milorad Dodik in Republika Srpska by some chance related?

And if Belgium itself as it currently exists is being challenged to this extent, what legitimacy do Belgium's leaders have in expecting the UK to fall into line?

Just asking.

Brian Micklethwait asks a pertinent and subversive question.

If we know which Euro currency notes are issued by which country, why not start insisting to be paid only in notes issued by countries which are unlikely to default?

... supposing lots of people do know this, or get to know it, does it not provide a mechanism by means of which mere people might hasten the collapse of the more dubious EUrozone economies, by demanding, when being paid in actual money, to be paid only in Euros printed by the undubious countries?

Perhaps the answer might go: but making such judgments would be, in EUrope, illegal. Maybe so, but that won't stop a black market making minute comparisons between differently lettered Euros, nor will it stop tourists in other parts of the world, planning their EUropean trips, demanding, once they hear such stories, to receive only the kinds of Euros that they would like.

They could, for instance, refuse to accept the wrong kind of Euros, or, if given a mixture of good Euros and bad Euros, sort out the good from the bad and swap the bad ones back for pounds, or dollars, or whatever.

The wrong kinds of Euro notes, from the dubious countries, could soon be treated exactly as if they were forgeries, could they not? The big difference being that these forgeries will be easier to spot...

Wikipedia tells us that we can indeed ascertain which country has issued which notes:

Unlike euro coins, euro notes do not have a national side indicating which country issued them (which is not necessarily where they were printed). This information is instead encoded within the first character of each note's serial number.

The first character of the serial number is a letter which uniquely identifies the country that issues the note.

Thus X denotes Germany, U France and so on. Greece as it happens is Y.

Scope for mischief-making here?

Not much, according to numerous sagacious commenters including Tim Worstall:

... the cash euro is such a tiny part of the money supply across the EU zone. Electronic euros are vastly more important and there is no differentiation between them.

So there.