The 'Reality' (as I see it) is that the much vaunted EU Solidarity requires certain minimal levels of discipline by all sides. No-one has ever wanted to talk about this too openly: it's all too pointed and embarrassing, since to talk about the mutual obligations of Solidarity is money-grubbing and lacking in trust. We're all Europeans, right? So what's the problem?
There is a lot more to be said for giving intellectual leadership, embracing the proposition that the time has come to look long and hard at the way the European Union is now set up. As I have previously argued, the iron laws of physics show us the fatal weakness of the European Union: it bulks up mass and reduces velocity.
Sooner or later that debate has to happen. Surely it is better to have it in some sort of controlled way with the UK using its detachment from the Eurozone debacle to define and lead the debate, rather than as a result of pell-mell collapse?
Needless to say, as soon as the British Prime Minister makes a public call for profound EU treaty revision, the shriek from Brussels (and Paris) will replicate the horrible banshee wail of the Nazgul as Mount Doom started to tumble.
"If more than a handful of British citizens look to have been involved in a 'serious incident' (Note: defined at a very low level, eg a motorway car pile-up with say five deaths) the Ambassador personally is expected to drop everything (CAP reform, Climate Change, Terrorism) and go straight to the scene."
"Is not there something wrong here? Namely a complete loss of proportion?Hundreds of thousands of British people travel in different parts of the world every day. Just by the forces of Bad Luck a tiny number will hit trouble, of whom a small proportion alas will get killed or injured.
Of those, a proportion will have suffered because they themselves messed up in one way or the other (not least ignoring FCO warnings).
Of these, some of them or their relatives will rush to whinge to the media about the FCO support they received, merely to assuage their own incompetence or guilt.
That's how it is."
As always countries share consular responsibilities on an ad hoc basis. Here the Foreign Secretary tells the European Union not to mission creep its way into this policy/operational area, although one might ask quite why this stern warning makes sense: if we coordinate so many other areas of policy work with EU partners, why not this one?
For us consular services will always remain a national responsibility. Within the European Union, there is no role for EU institutions in defining the consular assistance that Member States should provide to their citizens, or in providing frontline consular assistance. These are matters for which national governments are accountable to their Parliaments and we will oppose EU competence creep in this area."
However, he might have been firmer on the subject of people who rush to the media to make high-profile complaints which the media lovingly endorse. Yes. some complaints will be justified, although they need to be set against the many letters of praise and gratitude. But others will be ridiculous and annoying, frothing up private unreasonableness to make a stupid selfish noise.
We need courageous people, who will travel to disaster areas, comfort the victims of violent crime and comb hospitals and morgues when our nationals are injured or killed overseas.
So just as it is right to try to keep HQ up to date, Embassies also need to remember that HQ usually won't be that interested in anything which significantly changes the 'narrative' unless it is dramatic enough to catch the headlines in the HQ country.
Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not.") described a thorny British problem that parallels one we have in the U.S.
Money quote(s):
"The issue here is not any claim that MI6/HMG engaged in torture. Rather it is that MI6/HMG are said to have been 'complicit' in torture in Libya of certain Libyans by certain other Libyans. Which raises the question: what does complicity mean?"
Let's see where he goes with this.
"(M)aximalists insist that even to possess information which is suspected as having come from torture amounts to 'complicity'. That position, as the House of Lords found in 2005, is incorrect as a matter of law (and common sense)" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)
Not that this finding carries any water in the U.S., but one hopes that the U.S. Supreme Court would reason as well as the House of Lords.
"The problem here is that any secret 'rendition' by us or even a contribution to secret rendition by others is likely to have been endorsed by Ministers, either specifically or as a general rule. So to single out one civil servant for litigation is mischievous if not malevolent.
Second, the whole case turns on the idea that 'complicity' can be stretched far beyond any immediate link to maltreatment. Any abuse or torture was not committed by HMG or its officials. Is it really fair to make us legally responsible for horrors committed by others far away?
Even if you think that it is reasonable to do so on the moral level, you need to draw a line somewhere and say that the actions alleged were too 'remote' to amount to complicity. Under what principle should the line be drawn in specific cases? What balancing factors should be taken into account?" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)
British civil (or foreign) servants are as unlikely as our own to go "rogue" and try to "Lone Ranger" this sort of thing. They like a policy, preferably written, that delimits what their authority, and liability, is.
"This nasty, bleak, lonely policy and moral frontier was where Mark Allen and his colleagues were operating. If the way is opened to sue them for outcomes which were far from ideal if not awful, who is going to be ready to do this sort of fundamentally important work?
The issue here is simple. Not what the 'right' choice is when you are dealing with a regime like Gaddafi's. There isn't one.
Rather it is 'who decides?'.
We seem to be ending up in the absurd position that sanctimonious lawyers and unelected judges far from the operational and policy realities of such questions are seen as more 'responsible' than elected politicians and civil servants who are elected to do our dirty work while operating to arguably the highest standards of public probity in human history.
Yes, judges have the benefit of detachment. And yes, Ministers and officials can get so wrapped up in what they are doing that serious errors get made. But this is one where the best people to judge are voters, not lawyers."
Our own courts, operating under our unitary written Constitution, have taken some pains over the years to differentiate between the political and judicial spheres of authority, ceding that some things are not for courts to decide, but are the province of executives and legislators.
1/31
Money quote(s):
"The best chance for some sort of orderly outcome is to divide the Eurozone into two new currencies (Euro 1 - based on the deep logic of the old Hanseatic League which did well for 402 years! - and Euro 2), letting those countries which need a devaluation boost join Euro 2. If Germany heads Euro 1 and France Euro 2, the Franco-German axis can have a fine new job."
It reminds me of the Cold War story of some national leader or another saying he liked Germany so much he wanted two of them.
"What do we Europeans basically want? To get richer, live nicely and not fight.
There is no reason why this should not be achieved through a network of several smaller regional European Unions with customised levels of integration and mutually reinforcing basic trading and security relationships. This arrangement would also make further enlargement much easier - Turkey might become the core of a new Regional Union.
All the expensive and annoying central bureaucracy could be scaled back or even abolished - farewell, European Parliament. Legitimacy and public accountability within each Regional Union would soar, as the governing arrangements would be much less remote.
Above all such a scheme would not be brittle, subject to horrible institutional contortions as one sprawling Union tries to accommodate quite different needs, policies and cultures."
Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not.") borrowed extensively from a Wall Street Journal piece.
His own comment(s):
"Apart from Belgium which ceased to exist long ago, no EU member state really wants to be subject to German intrusive control over its finances."
&
"Read the whole thing. Then run out and buy tinned food while the shops still operate."
9/20
Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not.") shared some excerpts from his piece in Commentator.
Money quote(s):
"Once upon a time world leaders met only rarely if at all. They maintained their dignity if not power precisely by not meeting.
Now EU leaders are meeting and talking almost every month in one way or the other. This (for now) has the effect of making wars in Europe a lot less likely."
Not that, Balkans and other "Bloody Borders" of Islam aside, that's been all that likely lately.
"There is nonetheless a downside. Which is that Trust reasserts itself in a peculiarly personal way. Private tiffs can spill over into public disagreements, and vice versa."
"And lo! ‘Dialogue’ diminishes. Trust declines. Emails start to get no replies, phone-calls aren’t taken. Differences start to count for more than what people have in common. Those who have money start to
bark out instructions to those who are hoping for yet more cheap loans. The whole mood shifts for the worse, defaulting to petulant
defensiveness..."
"The problem for the European Union is that it has very little legal or political room for manoeuvre for tackling the Eurozone crisis."
The EU is designed for ratcheting forward, into even closer integration and transnationalism. It's not designed for course corrections or reversals.
"... the mighty elite brains who got us into this mess will come up with an even better plan, but then implement it with even less public scrutiny and direct accountability than now exists. To do that they
may have to start taking serious legal short-cuts, to the point of side-stepping or ignoring key national laws and EU treaty constraints."
"Insofar as it means anything it sounds like a coup d’etat, or more precisely coup d’etats.
I might be prepared to sign away some of my own autonomy and my own little slice of my country’s autonomy in return for a wider economic package which makes sense, but only if I get to take part in a
proper debate about the options. Which, given what is at stake in current circumstances, means a referendum"
Which can be held again and again until a correct result is reached.
Money quote(s):
"From good if over-optimistic or even naive intentions you can end up in a hopeless place, where no good move is available. This is why the eurozone problem is so difficult for our top policy-makers."
Bonus quote:
"(A) Scary Thought about FCO consular work: what would HMG do if Greece's money system crashed during peak holiday season, leaving a million Brits stranded there with cash machines not working?
The FCO mind boggles."
CAA earnestly hopes someone or several someones back in the (U.S.) Bureau of Consular Affairs (i.e., the CA "mother ship") is "thinking the unthinkable" about the Eurozone and doing a little bit of contingency planning.
11/4
Money quote(s):
"(T)the Wikileaks document dump exists in a category of its own.
The material is so powerful precisely because it blows away Assange’s banal anti-Americanism. Yes, it’s horribly embarrassing for Washington that all these cables have leaked. Confidences have been ruined. Sources endangered. In terms of writing style the cables often err on the dense and overlong side.
However, far from exposing the dark side of American/Western policies they show as never before the strengths and values of the Western Anglosphere diplomatic method. The documents uncover mile after mile of sensible, balanced, practical, timely and reasonable analysis and comment by American diplomats, often with amusing extra insights and personal touches..." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)
Which is nice of him to have said. One tries, after all.
"The UK has of its own free will (at least as expressed through Parliament when ratifying the Lisbon Treaty) accepted EU voting rules which allow this to happen, just as the Treaty also provides a procedure to enable a Member State to leave the Union and get back all its sovereignty once again.
Nonetheless, as the eurozone crisis gathers momentum, the existential question of sovereignty is coming back to the fore even in placid, postmodern Europe. What claims, if any, do (say) Greeks have on (say) German resources and hard work by virtue of EU ‘solidarity’? What claims do eurozone members have on (say) the UK, smugly watching the disarray from across the Channel? Tricky."
These are not exactly idle questions nowadays.
Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("This website makes available to the general public interesting episodes and insights from Charles Crawford's eventful diplomatic career, and aims to explain in a open-minded, reasonable way how diplomacy works in practice.") tells you more of what you need to understand about diplomatic realities and engagement.
Money quote(s):
"Over at Commentator is my latest piece on UK engagement with Libya, in which I argue that what happened in recent years was principled, smart and mainly effective."
The following is a short passage from the longer excerpt he provided.
"there are only two basic choices available to democracies when it comes to dealing with odious regimes: Isolation, or Engagement. And that both can have perverse consequences, because it is impossible to deal with perverse regimes without some perverse outcomes"
Pithy, and to the point.
"(T)aking for granted that a 'Western' democratic system with a strong legal system is just 'better' than a cruel torturing dictatorship. What should the democracy do about the dictatorship?
One option is to do nothing. Faraway wicked foreigners oppress each other - what's new?
That option is in fact quite often used, even if there is a busy pretence of 'doing something'. Saudi Arabia is the classic example of a system which in most respects imposes odious unfair apartheid-like restrictions on its citizens, and which we studiously treat as a 'factor of stability'. Communist China used to be far worse, murdering millions. As did the USSR.
In all these cases the hard fact that these systems are powerful, ruthless and/or rich compels a certain caution. But does the fact that we 'tolerate' (say) the Saudi system demolish any claim by us to moral superiority? Double standards, they shriek.
No. Any good policy has to be realistic as well as consistent. If you can't stop all killers, it's right to stop those you can stop. To that extent there is solid intellectual and moral territory between 'double standards' and 'no standards'." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)
You can only do what you can do; which doesn't mean you can't do anything, just that you can't do everything.
"The default position of Western democracies these days is that change should be 'peaceful'. The implication of this position (never discussed) is that enslaved people are better off if their slave-drivers reform slavery gradually, rather than get abruptly toppled even at the cost of many human lives. Slave-drivers need dialogue! A lot of dubious moral philosophy lurking behind that proposition.
What if we think that there are possibilities for more or less peaceful change? Egypt in some ways is a good current example. NB South Africa is always presented as a triumph for peaceful change but of course wasn't.
Libya might have been too, had the Gaddafi elite not reverted to stupidity instead of using its new improved relations with Western democracies to negotiate ." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)
We tend to forget, at a distance of more than two centuries, just how bloody our own two revolutions (if you count the American Civil War as a second revolution, the one that liberated the rest of us) were. For the British, their bloody revolutions are even more distant, with less dramatic (to us) conclusions.
"In each individual case the options range far and wide, as does the prospect of getting allies and building successful coalitions for change.
Let's not forget too that Western political leaders' main focus is what their voters want. And voters (with rare exceptions) do not put changing the ways of revolting foreign regimes far up their priorities list. Or much taxpayers' money to be spent on the problem."
Some voters. Others are quite willing for their government to very meddlesome, with the treasure and blood coming from their fellow citizens.
"So in the real world of foreign policy it makes no sense to take a stark 'no compromise' position of substance with dictatorships. They exist, they have UN and other votes, they can export trouble, they probably have Ambassadors in London. Your aircraft may need to fly over their territory, or they may agree with you on various international technical issues. It's complicated.
You almost always end up with some form of 'engagement'. But the fact of matter-of-fact exchanges and opportunistically looking for areas to build some common ground is not the same thing as having a policy of Engagement aimed at deliberately using a range of options (openly or otherwise) to bring out reforms." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)
In the real world, you make compromises. You make the best ones you can, but they're still compromises. Americans were cautioned early in their history against going abroad in search of dragons needing slaying.
Which doesn't mean you don't ever take fire and branch overseas to put an end to some odious regime which takes the ill-considered trouble of making themselves your enemy, just that you don't go looking for trouble.
(Which doesn't exactly jibe with this new-fangled "responsibility to protect" doctrine begin shopped around currently.)
"My point today is simple. British foreign policy and leadership can make positive changes in unpropitious foreign situations. But simply wanting to make a difference does not get results. Making that happen requires a powerful combination of strong policy determination, operational nimbleness and fine professional technique, an area where the FCO obviously declined under Labour. Plus some money." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)
Airbrush out the specifically British elements in that last and you've got some bood advice worthy of wide application by a democracy seeking to use its diplomatic strengths wisely and justly.
Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("interesting episodes and insights from Charles Crawford's eventful diplomatic career, and aims to explain in a open-minded, reasonable way how diplomacy works in practice") takes us from the general to the middling specific.
Money quote(s):
"In most if not all situations there is a spectrum of policy outcome options, ranging from Utterly Awful to Deliriously Wonderful. Politicians and officials know that they really don't want the former and are unlikely to get the latter, so they settle for a range of options somewhere in the middle.
The thing to understand is that within that range of options (which usually is all about balancing risks and short-term v longer-term likely upsides/downsides of different choices) reasonable people might disagree on where the 'right' choice is, but also agree that another point in that range is in itself a reasonable choice, all things considered." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)
Politics, it is said, is the art of the possible. I first remember reading that in Heinlein's "Podkayne of Mars." The definition goes double for diplomacy.
"Anyway, all ICTY indictees have been taken to The Hague to face justice. The whole process has been staggeringly expensive and in many ways deeply unsatisfactory.
Yet through ICTY the facts of the former Yugoslavia conflict have been aired and argued about in stunning detail. If anything the unfairness of the process lies in the fact that it was too narrow: many senior Bosniacs and Croats with a case to answer - including Izetbegovic and Tudjman themselves - were never called upon to explain themselves and answer serious accusations against them.
Still. Rough justice better than no justice?"
Yes. Still, another Briton (than the good Amb. Crawford) once said: "Justice delayed, is justice denied."
Money quote(s):
"(I)f you want to be paid to do a job, do the job as best you can (which is not always easy). If you have real qualms about the wisdom or morality of what you are told to do, go and get another job. Foreign Policy moves on, with you or without you."
It wasn't that long ago that I'd hear rumblings, from prospective FSO candidates, about their disagreements with the Bush administration's foreign policies, and about their moral qualms about it and how they'd have to resign in protest.
Generally, my advice to such is to maybe see about getting that job before deciding to resign in protest.
U.S. foreign service officers, and our British counter-parts, do not, by and large, make or set our nation's foreign policies. We carry it out, we communicate it, we implement it, but except at the very highest levels, we have Damn-all to say about what it's going to be on any given day.
FSOs do (or can) have some influence. We develop personal expertise in foreign areas and regions, obscure languages, personal contacts. We communicate, coming and going, what we learn and know to our superiors at post and, in our reporting, to Washington, D.C. And, until Wikileaks caused that conduit to dry up, our reporting cables could be accessed and read by analysts and policy-makers across the U.S. national security, defense, and intelligence communities.
So my advice to actual FSOs (not those wannabees in high dudgeon) is to make your reporting opportunities count. But tell the truth. Tell what you know and how you know it. Tell what you believe and why you believe it. Tell what you surmise and both its relevance and how you came to your conclusions. But above all tell the truth, not what you'd like to be true (though the Heavens fall).
"What's odd in fact is how few diplomats ever feel their bodily nerves a-rebelling against their instructions. Are diplomats insensate, wicked creatures little more than slaves whose servitude comes with better than average accommodation and lots of dull receptions?
Or is it that they know that as part of the way the world works and always will work there need to be ways for messages to be sent frankly between countries and leaders, even (especially?) when things get tough and unpleasant? A dirty job sometimes, but someone has to do it.
I report. You decide."
Remember the definition of a diplomat as an honorable man sent abroad to lie for his country? That honorable man retains his honor by never knowingly sending lies back to his country.
Policy-makers are going to make policy. It's what they do. And as frustrating as it sometimes is for intelligence analysts and for diplomats, your job is to serve as a conduit for information, adding whatever value you can along the way.
Money quote(s):
" Do the Chinese/Russians/N Koreans think that a key aim of negotiation is to 'reach agreement'?
Hell no. They want to WIN, or failing that win as much as possible. Negotiation and 'agreement' are simply possible methods to get there.
So is another outcome - negotiations crashing in failure - that shows steely resolve, as the Poles this very week have been keen to demonstrate within the EU.
In other words, very often a negotiation is not about what it says it is about. On the surface it is about EU Emissions Targets, or Global Climate Change, or new World Trade regimes. In substance it is more likely to be about who decides what, this time round and on into the future." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)
Sometimes I wonder if U.S. diplomacy suffers from an internal, systemic flaw our negotiations must result in some, er, result. That in some fashion our diplomat's next annual evaluation simply must include a successful treaty or something.
And that for our political leadership the motivation is even stronger to get some agreement, any agreement.
Just once I'd like to see a U.S. diplomat publicly receive an award, a medal even, for refusing to settle for a bad deal.
"Most negotiations are all about one thing: who in fact is weaker?"
How one measures weakness doesn't matter at that point, the negotiation will settle who is the weaker negotiator.
"The whole point of Moscow's time-honoured diplomatic negotiating style is to project a sense of depersonalised inexorable doom for anyone or anything which gets in the way of whatever Moscow currently wants.
This can be countered, of course, by hanging in there very tough: some of it is bluff, and Russian diplomacy can be as inept as everyone else's. But the very fact that the Russians set about their business in this way helps frame issues and likely outcomes on their terms and projects toughness/determination. A handy way to start." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)
Again, sometimes you need to walk away from the table in order to win.
"(T)he reason why Carrots and Sticks work (or don't) in diplomacy has little to do with their 'objective' size and plausibility.
It's all much more 'subjective'. It's about how the person with the carrots/stick is seen by the supposed target, and even more about how both the carrot-sticker and the target perceive themselves and what they believe the other one believes about the problem, the balance of forces and how this situation plays into other situations."
See above: negotiations will hinge on who is the better negotiator. (And I make no great shakes about being much of a negotiator myself.) Of course, holding a strong hand makes up for a lot.
Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("aims to explain in a open-minded, reasonable way how diplomacy works in practice") lifted an excellent passage worth reading.
Money quote(s):
"Pure foolishness. And therefore all the more prevalent these days."
Charles Crawford explains about non-MTS ("Muddle Through Somehow") events.
Money quote(s):
"For far too long we all have got used to dealing with a sizeable group of miserable dictatorships and autocracies, some relatively benign and/or rich, others not. Even when truly appalling things happened, we looked away."
"Part of it goes right back to the depths of the Cold War and European decolonisation in Africa. Some sort of psychological/political reaction against European rule was more or less expected if not inevitable (and for Cold War leftists, highly desirable). The Soviet Union piled in, offering these newly liberated territories an ideological 'anti-imperialist' approach to the 'West' plus arms sales and the control-freak blandishments of central planning.
And it worked. Western/European liberal ideas which had quite respectable roots across North Africa were more or less wiped out in favour of a motley mish-mash of repressive national socialism and pan-Arab 'nationalism'."
This was a much wider phenomenon not limited to North Africa or the Near East, but extending to the whole of the "Non-Aligned Movement."
"(D)uring the Cold War we got used to making the best of dictatorships in all sorts of places. Unfortunately, when the Cold War ended we quailed at the thought of bringing the Arabs to have a hard look at themselves. We came up with no idea of a reforming partnership with the Arab world's misgovernments."
By then, things like OPEC and Arab terrorism had come into their own and many governments rightly feared rocking those boats.
"(T)he costs and benefits of policies compound up over time. Compounding stupidity dragging on for decades produces fearsome negativities, not least the public debt crisis threatening the credibility of the EU and USA alike.
The Middle East's compounding stupidities have led to a momumentally wretched outcome now."
And we ain't seen nothin' yet.
"It surely is better to do more or less honest business deals with dictatorships, as the very act of engaging with the professional western world gradually (OK, very gradually and perhaps at the risk of helping these villains stay in power) creates a new requirement rippling out into the local system for better training, accountability, due process, and so on. Constructive engagement and all that.
Perhaps the most pernicious aspect of the sheer longevity of these decadent Arab regimes is that it reinforced a quasi-colonialist quasi-racist idea that 'Arabs can't do democracy'.
In my 27 years in the FCO I don't recall hearing a single expert on the Middle East talking about how the region might become substantively more democratic. Planning papers on the issue were inconceivable and unwritten."
Constructive engagement is a seductive idea. We do it with un-free societies the world over, from China throughout the whole of the developing world. It might even work, perhaps, in the long run, if nothing else interrupts it.
(But something almost always happens to interrupt it.)
"Not only did Western governments suck up to 'Arab' dictatorships for far too long. Everyone did - Right, Left and Centre!
Above all, so did their own people. For the best part of fifty years tens of millions of Arabs have passively accepted brutal, unaccountable regimes, sub-optimal living standards, a desert of intellectual poverty, reduced choice and freedom. That's not our fault. It's theirs."
&
"It looks as if the Arabs are finally waking up - and realising in a rage what has been done to them by their own fatalism"
