We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately

Europe and Russia are in a codependent relationship. West European powers in Brussels are playing the role of a codependent spouse, denying injuries to the children and believing that somehow they can manipulate things toward a positive outcome while ignoring outright attacks on Members of the EU family. Russia plays the role of the abusive partner in this very real drama.

Imagine if Russian interests (whether government or mafia based) shut down the computer systems of the UK or U.S. government, and all the banks and financial firms in London or New York, cutting them off from the financial world.  Imagine further that the cyber attacks were extended to the emergency services, aiming to cripple the police and ambulance services.  At the same time, imagine that Russia blockaded a major pipeline supplying oil to Germany, and imposed a boycott on agricultural exports from France.  And imagine if the car of a Swedish Ambassador was attacked by supporters of President Putin. Indeed, all this is happening to EU and NATO Members at the moment.  Only the names have been changed.  Except the Swedish ambassador. That really did happen. The other victims are new Members of the European Union.  They are Poles, Estonians, and Lithuanians. The EU is being tested on the foreign policy front.  It is being tested and it is failing miserably.  This proves the case for a stronger European executive (president, foreign minister, etc) for, to quote Benjamin Franklin “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Maybe the Eurocrats in Brussels also need a refresher in history. Quite simply, Russia wants to neuter the East Europeans again.  Germany has -- one hopes unwittingly -- again been a party to this process, with its complicity in Russia’s effort to isolate them politically and economically. Witness evolving German energy policy in the region. As West Europeans seem to have a short historical memory, I will provide a quick historical recap here.

To understand Russia’s diplomatic trouble with Central and Eastern Europe, one has to look at it through the lens of history -- the history of Russia's past imperial adventures in the Baltics.  The closest parallel I can think of is Japan’s continued problems with China, Taiwan, Korea, and much of Southeast Asia.  Japan was a brutal imperial power, slaughtering hundreds of thousand of civilians as it aimed to subjugate populations and build an East Asian empire.  Yet it still has not faced up to its role as an aggressor.  It teaches in schools that it was a victim in World War II, it still denies well-documented war crimes, and suffers from repeated gaffes by political leaders with a penchant to cause riots in Seoul and Beijing.  Similarly, Russia’s view of its own 20th Century history is at odds with the memories of many countries that Russia stepped on during the 20th Century as it chased imperial ambitions. Russia was both victim and aggressor in World War II. Yet it only remembers half of this experience. Judging by Japan’s experience, Russia’s problems with the European Union may run for decades unless its view of its own history is revised. Russia is acting like post-Imperial Japan, quick to remember its role as victim but with no sense of guilt about its own aggression.

The European preliminaries that led to World War II included the Soviet Russian absorption of the Baltic States, with the complicity of Nazi Germany.  Indeed Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia started as allies.  On the basis of a non-aggression pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), they divided up Central and Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, and the East Europeans emerged from the hellish consequences of this German-Russian gamesmanship only in the 1990s.  This mirrored an earlier absorption of Poland by the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian Empires in the 18th Century.  In the 20th Century repeat of this carving up of Central Europe, both Germany and Russia were brutal imperial masters.  After the war, Germany took responsibility for its actions, and has served admirably at the center of the European Experiment (the EC/EU) since.  Russia, on the other hand, still resents losing territory it had seized when it worked in concert with Nazi Germany to divide Europe.  After the war Soviet Russia was allowed to keep the parts of Poland it occupied in 1939, annexing them to the Soviet Union. (They are now part of Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania). Indeed Stalin moved all borders West at the end of the war.  This historical episode colors the conflicting views on current Russian claims that they should be viewed as liberators by Estonia.  The Estonians (and the Baltics in general) remember that independence was first lost when the Soviet Russians made a deal with the Nazis and then invaded. Similarly, Poland remembers that it was the Russians who massacred tens of thousands of Poles in the Katyn forest.  (Gorbachev finally admitted to the massacre only in 1989.) The Russian Army also halted its advance on Warsaw to allow the Wehrmacht time to finish killing off the Polish Home Army (55,000 Polish defenders died during the delay) so that they could install a Communist government – waiting 66 days for before they moved back into Warsaw – an occupation that really only ended in the 1990s. The Poles also remember that they were left behind the Iron Curtain when the war ended.

So what should Europe do?  In theory, the EU represents a deliberate, collective break from a past colored by centuries of European civil war.  To be an effective brake on repeated history, it needs to stand together to fight collective tendencies to repeat history.  This means the EU15 (and Germany in particular) need to overcome their collective penchant to engage in appeasement, selling out Central and Eastern Europeans to outside bullies.  The cyber attack is state sanctioned (if not sponsored) terrorism.  If these were UK banks that were being targeted, or French or German trade sanctions, Brussels would be up in arms.  If all EU citizens have equal rights, a higher profile protection of its Eastern Members is called for. Russia needs help fighting its own historical deamons. The EU is acting as an enabler. Turning off electronic bank transfers across the Russian border might catch Russia’s attention. Withdrawing all European Union ambassadors, collectively, for consultation, also seems appropriate.  Holding joint summits seems inappropriate to me. It is like giving your abusive spouse more money for his next round of binge drinking. If this continues, eventually it will be German and British Banks, Austrian and Italian energy, and demands of a more military and territorial nature.

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Further reading
(1) NATO experts investigate 'well-organised' cyber attacks on Estonia.
(2) the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
(3) Tough love vs. Enabling of an Abusive Family Member
(4) Moscow had a hand in Estonia riots, cyber-attacks: experts
(5) Druzhba: The not-so-friendly Russian oil pipeline
(6) Estonia calls for EU help on Russia embassy siege
(7) EU protests over Russian attacks on ambassadors
(8) ‘E-stonia’ Accuses Russia of Computer Attacks
(9) Russian response in meat row "insufficient", EU says.
(10)Enabling and Codependency.

As long as we are talking about corruption...

The European sharks smell blood and are circling. Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank, as of this writing has just received further backing from the Bush Administration. This is possibly a signal that they want him to stand tall as they push him out of the administration's sinking lifeboat. The problem, technically, is the cloud of corruption surrounding the President of the World Bank. This is somewhat problematic, as the World Bank is the OECD's anti-corruption missionary.

Someone has to carry the anti-corruption flag, as neither the Europeans, nor the Americans, are up to it. Indeed, as long as we are discussing corruption, it seems to me we should bring up some European cases to balance the scales. For example, can someone explain to me why German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder is not in prison? At the end of his term as Chancellor, he negotiated a gas pipline deal with the Russians that, in essence, turned over a bit more of Europe's collective energy security to Russia. He made security concessions to the Russians while representing his country at the negotiating table. According to the International Energy Agency, "the Northern Pipeline will make Germany even more dependent on Russia in terms of gas supplies." Schroeder's government even gave a €1billion guarantee to Gazprom. As a reward, when he retired he switched sides at the table, assuming chairmanship of Nord Stream. This looks to me like conflict of interest. It certainly seems as bad as many things the Bush Administration has done -- like Cheney's handling of the U.S. energy industry's interests. Then again Cheney is not in jail either. However, I am not convinced the Bush Administration deliberately sold U.S. security for profit. Rather it was collateral damage. In Schroeder's case, he quite simply sold German (and European) energy security interests to the Russians, and retired into a high-salaried job working for the other side. In a country obsessed with investigating corporate corruption, I am baffled as to how this one has stayed out of the courts. If the Germans won't do it, maybe the Poles could put him in jail. Yes, a German sold Polish security to the Russians (again...)

Another, more current question, relates to British bribery. Britain belongs to the OECD, and has signed onto the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. In December, the Serious Fraud Office in Britain closed an inquiry into rather obvious allegations that BAE had paid substantial bribes linked to sales in Saudi Arabia. The Blair government pressed for closure of the investigation (something that surely involved Blair himself) because the investigation "risked jeopardizing relations with the Saudis." In other words, notwithstanding treaty obligations against corruption, when it comes to British defense exports to the Middle East, corruption is ok. This is not over. Since Swiss bank accounts were used to pay the bribes, the Swiss are investigating. The U.S. Congress is also investigating, and may use the issue to block further BAE expansion into the U.S. defense market. In addition, while the Saudi arms deal, known as al-Yamamah and worth an estimated £40 billion, stretched over many years, there are new allegations involving BAE and Saab (yes, even the squeaky clean the Swedes are now caught up in corruption scandals) sales of Griepen fighters. In this case prosecutors from Austria, Britain, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Switzerland are all working on the investigation. So here is a case where a British company, BAE, is having problems with its moral image (if not its behavior -- a decision for the courts). And in this case the British Prime Minister has apparently intervened to extricate the company from a corruption investigation. It has not helped national security, as the company will be punished in OECD markets for its behavior in the Middle East.

And while we are at it, in addition to Swedes (Saab), the British Prime Minister, and the former German Chancellor, we can add the former Presidents Chirac of France and Berlusconi of Italy, who both avoided criminal prosecution for corruption by virture of the office they held.

This whole epidose is steeped in irony. In retrospect it is clearly ironic that the Republicans, under the Clinton Administration, felt free to go after President Clinton for what was clearly personal behavior problems. This was somehow reprehensible. Under such a standard, it is ironic that the Bush Whitehouse characterizes the apparent rule-breaking of Wolfowitz as somehow ok. If you remember the spectacle of an impeachment surrounding a sexual peccadillo, it is hard to know how to take it when Press Secretary Tony Snow says Wolfowitz "made mistakes," but shouldn't be fired. It is also hard to know how to take it when the European pot calls the American kettle black. Lewis Carrol would approve.

Further reading

1. The OECD Anti-Bribery Convention
2.Swiss confirm BAE inquiry
3.Schroeder's Gazprom pipeline job provokes storm
4.Schroeder Govt Guaranteed Credit for Russia’s Gazprom, Report Confirmed
5. International Energy Agency Speaks Out Against Russia’s Baltic Gas Pipeline
6. Chirac after the presidency
7. Italian PM's fraud trial resumes
8. Today's Idiom = "The Pot Calling The Kettle Black"
9.Through the Looking Glass
10.Wolfowitz barricades self in World Bank office.
11. The Daily Show spin on the Wolfowitz scandal

Endnotes:

1/ "What sort of things do you remember best!" Alice ventured to ask.

"Oh, things that happened the week after next," the Queen replied in a careless tone. "For instance, now," she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster on her finger as she spoke, "there's the King's messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all."

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass: Chapter 5 "Wood and Water", M. F. Mansfield & A. Wessels: New York 1899 .