Turquía, entre dos fuegos

Por Jesús A. Núñez Villaverde, codirector del Instituto de Estudios sobre Conflictos y Acción Humanitaria (EL PAÍS, 30/07/08):

En mitad de un fuego cruzado que se reaviva por momentos, la vida política de Turquía parece acelerarse a un ritmo que suscita una creciente preocupación por su estabilidad y evolución. El mes de julio comenzaba con el alegato final del fiscal jefe del Tribunal Constitucional contra el partido gobernante -lo que puede desembocar en su inmediata ilegalización- y con una operación policial que llevó a la detención de 25 significados prohombres de la milicia, la prensa y la economía turcas, aparentemente implicados en un intento de golpe de Estado. Termina ahora con el doble atentado terrorista de Estambul, precedido del bombardeo aéreo contra zonas kurdas. Demasiadas malas noticias para un Gobierno y una sociedad que siguen apostando por la reforma de su anquilosado sistema político y que aún continúan aspirando a formar parte del exclusivista club comunitario.

La primera referencia mencionada acapara desde hace meses la agenda nacional turca. Una formación política, el Partido Justicia y Desarrollo (AKP), que lidera el Gobierno desde 2002 y que acaba de revalidar su poder con un amplio respaldo popular (2007), se ve acosada por una confluencia de actores empeñados en preservar a toda costa el legado del padre fundador de la Turquía moderna, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Los interesados (en una confusa mezcla en la que proliferan militares y empresarios) en mantener un status quo formalmente laico y modernizador que sirve a sus privilegios acusan al AKP de tener un programa oculto que pretende arrojar por el precipicio al país y a su historia moderna. Olvidan que ya hace tiempo que quedó claro que el modelo kemalista no resuelve los problemas de los 70 millones de turcos que aspiran a una vida mejor. También ignoran que es precisamente este partido, aunque todavía le queden asignaturas pendientes por aprobar, el que ha llevado a cabo las más profundas reformas sociales, políticas y económicas de los últimos setenta años, intentando adaptar a Turquía al mundo de hoy y posibilitando que la puerta de Bruselas pueda abrirse algún día.

Por el contrario, estos sectores prefieren aferrarse al mantra de la “guerra contra el terror”, que percibe al islam como una amenaza frontal, sin pararse a pensar ni en los fracasos acumulados por ellos mismos, ni en la nítida apuesta que han hecho los votantes turcos por la opción que hoy lideran Abdulla Gül y Recep Tayyip Erdogan. No se trata tanto de idealizar a quienes se definen a sí mismos como conservadores islámicos (a la manera de la democracia cristiana europea), como de constatar que cuentan con mayor apoyo social que ningún otro grupo, que hasta ahora han dado sobra-

das muestras de aceptar el juego democrático y que tienen una decidida voluntad por atender a las necesidades del conjunto de la población.

Es bastante probable que el proceso de ilegalización en marcha termine con la suspensión del partido gobernante y la prohibición de ejercer cargos públicos a sus principales líderes durante cinco años. También lo es que ese mismo partido aparezca pronto con otro nombre y que adelante las elecciones para intentar, convertidos sus dirigentes para la ocasión en candidatos independientes, revalidar nuevamente el mandato popular. En esas condiciones, el rumbo de confrontación directa con el AKP por el que han optado los que siguen anclados en sus privilegios (que utilizan el modelo kemalista como escudo protector que apenas esconde su falta de voluntad para aceptar cualquier reforma sustancial que cuestione su centralidad en la vida nacional) no es bueno para Turquía ni para la estabilidad en la zona.

En paralelo a este proceso, la operación policial (con unos 6.000 efectivos movilizados) que ha llevado a la detención, entre otros, de dos generales (retirados), el redactor jefe del diario Cumhuriyet y el presidente de la Cámara de Comercio de Ankara, añade más leña al fuego. Algunos intentan presentar lo que se ha venido en llamar el caso Ergenekon como una venganza del AKP contra quienes quieren ilegalizarlo, olvidando tal vez que lo ocurrido responde a una iniciativa del sistema judicial (precisamente el mismo que está promoviendo la ilegalización del partido gobernante). Para otros, por el contrario, se trata de la guinda que corona un pastel netamente golpista, demasiado habitual por desgracia en la historia turca. No hace falta remontarse a la tradición de unas fuerzas armadas autoinvestidas del papel de garantes últimos de la laicidad kemalista (como si no fuesen, igualmente, un actor económico de primer nivel y un coto de prerrogativas sin igual en la sociedad turca); basta con repasar estos últimos cinco años para rastrear la sombra de la duda razonable sobre su implicación en diferentes intentos de subvertir el orden legal y evitar su pérdida de protagonismo.

Tras intentos de golpe como los denominados Sarikiz y Ayisigi, ahora Ergenekon planteaba algo más ambicioso, buscando justificar el golpe como respuesta a actos de violencia extrema cometidos por sus mismos promotores. El plan comenzó a quebrarse a partir de las detenciones efectuadas en Estambul el 12 de junio de 2007 y las filtraciones del diario personal del general Özden Örnek. Ahora se ha llegado a la imputación directa de pertenencia a banda terrorista de la mayoría de los detenidos (quedan pendientes, seguramente por poco tiempo, los dos generales mencionados).

Para quienes observamos desde la Unión Europea el muy delicado proceso que se viene desarrollando en Turquía, interesa desprenderse de algunos estereotipos para interpretar correctamente lo que allí sucede. El principal de ellos es el que nos lleva a pensar que, siempre y en todo lugar, laicismo es sinónimo de modernidad y progresismo y que, por el contrario, religión lo es de retroceso y error. En Turquía, como en general en el resto del mundo musulmán, la historia de las últimas décadas nos obliga a concluir que los laicos (sean monárquicos o republicanos) que ocupan el poder en la práctica totalidad de estos países no son precisamente los mejores defensores de la democracia y el Estado de derecho. Puede que Erdogan y sus correligionarios no sean la solución ideal para los problemas turcos, pero menos dudas ofrece saber que quienes se envuelven en la bandera alzada un día por Atatürk no están dispuestos a renunciar a un modelo que les garantiza prebendas y poder originalmente ilimitado.

Mientras tanto, Turquía se aleja de la Unión Europea, sumida en problemas con suficiente calado como para desestabilizar su futuro, y algunos, con París en primer término, aprovechan inmediatamente para marcar distancias con quien nunca han querido ver dentro del club. ¿Dónde están los mensajes de Bruselas o de alguno de los Veintisiete en apoyo a un Gobierno legal y a un país que nos interesa, y mucho, incorporar a nuestro espacio comunitario?

¿Es casual la contrapropaganda europea?

Por José Luis González Vallvé, director de la Representación de la Comisión Europea en España (ABC, 30/07/08):

Últimamente las iniciativas europeas suelen desatar un coro casi unánime de descalificaciones. Comenzó con la propuesta sobre biocombustibles e inmediatamente cayó sobre la Unión Europea (UE) la culpa de la crisis alimentaria mundial. De nada sirvieron argumentos como que el arroz, no utilizado como biocombustible, era el que más había subido de precio, o que sólo se les destinaba el 1 por ciento de la superficie cultivada en Europa, ignorando la causa fundamental: 1.500 millones de personas son nuevos consumidores, y el objetivo: paliar la esclavitud energética europea.

Siguió con el límite de trabajo semanal a 60 horas. Tampoco sirvió mencionar que no se trata de aumentar la jornada laboral, sino de armonizar, poniendo un tope en aquellos países y ocupaciones donde no lo había, y que los Estados continuarían con sus límites; pues nada, se da por muerto el solidario modelo social europeo, que para sí quisieran los 5.500 millones de seres humanos que no tienen la fortuna de vivir en Europa.

Continúa con la propuesta sobre inmigración: la UE quiere acabar con el drama del tráfico de seres humanos, ordenar y armonizar para una única política europea sin empeorar políticas nacionales, nuevo rasgado de vestiduras. Hasta se ha llegado a decir en una TV que la propuesta incluía un toque de queda para los inmigrantes a partir de las 9 y media.

En todo caso, para intentar armonizar las diferentes sensibilidades políticas, el Tratado de Lisboa prevé el control de los parlamentos nacionales sobre estas iniciativas.

También se cuestiona la ampliación europea: pero la Europa libre de 1945 tenía 1,8 millones de Km2 y 260 millones de habitantes, hoy la UE tiene 4,3 millones de Km2 y 490 millones de habitantes, ha ganado el 239 por ciento de superficie y el 100 por ciento de población, pacífica y democráticamente; en sesenta años se ha pasado de tener una guerra cada veinte años con millones de víctimas, a como mucho discutir del precio de la remolacha, aunque algunos expertos en comunicación dicen que la paz no vende, ¡si Kant les oyera! En el antiguo lenguaje la UE ha ganado la guerra fría y en el nuevo lenguaje, el modelo europeo se extiende por el convencimiento personal, y es la mayor fábrica, la única, de democracia del mundo, llevándola a más de 100 millones de personas, con lo difícil que es llevarla a una isla de 11 millones, y sin viejas disputas ideológicas, se trataba simplemente de Libertad No o Libertad Sí. La UE aprovechó la breve oportunidad histórica que se presentó, pues en la actualidad puede que hubiera sido mucho más complicado.

Y últimamente también se critica la iniciativa sobre el Mediterráneo que comenzó en Barcelona, 270 millones de habitantes con todos los problemas: desarrollo, inmigración, paz, democracia, agua, energía, cambio climático; España: 22.300 euros de renta per cápita, Marruecos: 1.708 euros. Desequilibrio: 1 a 13, el mayor del mundo exceptuando la frontera entre las dos Coreas. ¿No resulta obligado y pertinente intentar corregir ese desequilibrio?

¿Es casual esta contra propaganda europea?

La UE es una novedad histórica que supera viejos clichés, arcaicas exégesis ideológicas y demás paleo-análisis; estamos, si lo queremos y lo construimos, ante una evolución de la especie política que requiere un cambio de actitud, recordando lo que nos sugiere Gödel, el amigo de Einstein, los dos europeos, en su Teorema de la Incompletitud: Ningún sistema consistente se puede usar para demostrarse a sí mismo.
De forma que el factor común pudiera ser la resistencia de los que no pueden ni quieren explicar su evolución hacia una nueva especie política, los anclados en el sistema, entre otros:

Los anclados estratégicamente en lo global: por cierto, en el No irlandés al tratado de Lisboa han coincidido los ultra nacionalistas y un millonario norteamericano-irlandés.

Los anclados ideológicamente con sus orejeras: izquierda/derecha, empeñados en que fuera de ellas no hay vida ni esperanza, cuando una de las virtudes de la UE es corregir los excesos de los radicalismos ideológicos.

Los anclados políticamente aferrados a su ansia antinatural de ligar seres humanos a territorios, culturas y lenguas, cuando la persona ansía libertad individual en un ámbito global.

Los anclados intelectualmente que aún discuten si es tratado o constitución, cuando no quiere ser ni una cosa ni la otra, sin que eso sea negativo, tampoco vale el arsenal conceptual existente, se trata de convivir proviniendo de muy distintas sensibilidades.

La UE, como nueva especie política, podría ser un ámbito más libre y ventilado de valores compartidos, un nuevo modelo funcional, visto que el actual desde el verano del 2007 no funciona, y desde luego un nuevo modelo ético, especialmente en cuanto a las relaciones en el sistema social y de éste con el sistema natural, y donde el ser humano sea el rey, protagonizando la definición y desarrollo del modelo, lo que requiere un enorme esfuerzo de comunicación, pedagogía y participación, integrando personas convencidas y no al viejo estilo del «contrato social», para que sea un compromiso personal y solidario.

La UE se construye en tiempo histórico y no estamos habituados a construir como protagonistas democráticos una nueva realidad política trascendente que tiene una duración temporal superior a la de la generación humana. Ello puede impacientarnos, porque desearíamos que, en el plazo de nuestras existencias individuales, Europa estuviese ya terminada, pero Europa está en obras, lo que tiene algunos inconvenientes pero la enorme ventaja de diseñarla y construirla a nuestro gusto y para las futuras generaciones. Ya un 60 ó 70 por ciento de nuestras vidas se orienta en común; es claro, por ejemplo, que la UE no va a bajar los precios del petróleo de repente, pero como buen comprador, pagador y tenedor de una sólida moneda, estaría en mejores condiciones de negociar unitariamente en el mundo que no a través de muchas compañías y 27 Estados.

Un mundo de 6.000 millones de habitantes donde sólo 2.500 viven en democracia, 2.000 pueden llevar una vida digna, y donde los 500 millones de europeos tenemos el mejor modelo político, social y medioambiental, el 8 por ciento de privilegiados del mundo, lo que nos impone dos deberes básicos: intentar sostenerlo y extenderlo al resto del mundo.

De ahí que resulte grotesco el que líderes enfrascados en peleas de barrio, incapaces de dar de comer a sus pueblos aún nadando en la abundancia, y mucho menos, de darles democracia, derechos y dignidad, disparen demagógicamente sobre Europa, aprovechando nuestra bendita libertad de expresión, mientras ellos amordazan todo lo que osa criticarles.

Pretendiendo dar lecciones, cuando en sus países, pasar una frontera, cuando está abierta, es una lamentable experiencia de abuso de poder sobre derechos humanos y dignidad de la persona, lejísimos de disponer de una sola moneda y un sólo pasaporte, aunque tengan la misma lengua, como sí han hecho las orgullosas naciones europeas, renunciando a aspectos esenciales de su soberanía nacional en la UE.

La UE tiene los aranceles más bajos para importaciones del tercer mundo, aunque haya que seguir avanzando en el comercio justo, y es la principal donante de ayuda humanitaria, aunque haya líderes que justifican la caricatura de «dinero de los pobres de los países ricos para los ricos de los países pobres», con sus elecciones amañadas y sus abusos, mientras sus pobres ciudadanos quieren llegar a Europa, aunque sea caminando miles de kilómetros, jugándose la vida, escapando de sus infiernos.

Europa se construye en el arte de lo posible, siguiendo el método científico de prueba y error, incorporando las mejores prácticas; sería una casualidad que siempre saliera perfecta a la primera, pero, ojalá, en el futuro, no haya que arrepentirse de no haberla construido entre todos, por la resistencia de los anclados, pues, en un mundo complejo y globalizado, lo que parece indudable y lo prueba el que tantos quieran venir y nadie quiera irse, es que el modelo de vida que nos estamos dando y nos queremos dar los europeos es, desde la perspectiva del ser humano, y a salvo de viejos sermones, el mejor de los posibles.

Alimentos y desabastecimiento

Por Joan Caball, coordinador nacional de la Unió de Pagesos de Catalunya (EL PERIÓDICO, 30/07/08):

El problema del abastecimiento de alimentos a escala global no es nuevo, pero empeora. Y parece que, de momento, los organismos internacionales que dicen ocuparse de ello, algunos esporádicamente, no han logrado frenar el aumento del número de personas que pasan hambre en el mundo, en su mayoría agricultores. Pese a que la FAO se encuentra hoy cerca del objetivo de reducir a la mitad su proporción –el porcentaje de personas desnutridas–, en realidad el nú- mero total crece. Además, el encarecimiento del precio de los alimentos básicos tiende a agravar este desastre, puesto que se prevé que unos 100 millones de personas pasen a formar parte del colectivo de los que pasan hambre en el mundo.

En este contexto, la declaración de intenciones que los líderes del G-8 regalaron al mundo el pasado 8 de julio es un claro exponente de la inopia y la carencia de respuesta de los gobiernos de los países más ricos ante un problema que se agrava.

El G-8 se limita a repetir el cuento neoliberal según el cual hace falta liberalizar aún más el mercado agroalimentario para terminar con el hambre en el mundo. Este cuento sería algo aburrido si no fuera porque la gravedad del problema reclama que la sociedad civil, consciente de ello, denuncie, denunciemos, lo que es una falsedad manifiesta: que la intención del G-8 cuando pide que la OMC liberalice más aún el mercado agroalimentario internacional sea paliar el hambre en el mundo.

Este fragmento del cuento, repetido una y mil veces, no puede convertirse en verdad, puesto que el G-8 olvida mencionar que ha sido la tendencia liberalizadora la que nos ha llevado a la situación actual de desabastecimiento a nivel global. Me remito al informe que la FAO publicó en el 2004: “Durante las últimas décadas, un puñado de corporaciones transnacionales, integradas verticalmente, han ganado un creciente control sobre el comercio, la elaboración y la venta mundial de alimentos”. Este escenario tiene graves repercusiones en la seguridad alimentaria de millones de personas, como, por ejemplo, “los pequeños agricultores y trabajadores sin tierra que conforman el grueso de la población con hambre crónica en el mundo”. “Para estas personas, la globalización de las industrias de la alimentación y la expansión de la gran distribución presentan tanto una oportunidad de acceder a nuevos mercados como un importante riesgo de aumentar la marginación e incluso de extremar su pobreza”, concluía la FAO en su informe de ese año.

LLEGADOS al 2008, todas las evidencias indican que la concentración de la producción y la distribución se agravan, con la consecuente degradación de las condiciones de vida de los agricultores de los países de la periferia. Sus mercados locales se desmantelan y se quedan desprovistos a causa de modelos productivos ajenos que abonan el campo a los abusos comerciales de las grandes multinacionales de la industria y la distribución alimentaria monopolística. Mientras, las 30 mayores cadenas de supermercados del mundo acumulan más de un tercio de las ventas de alimentos. Es necesario recordar que Catalunya no queda fuera de esta dinámica, puesto que cuatro cadenas aglutinan el 50% de la superficie comercial y del volumen de ventas del sector cotidiano. Además, el subdesarrollo rural en los países de la periferia, es decir, la carencia de carreteras, puertos, telecomunicaciones y una infraestructura adecuada impide a sus agricultores participar de un comercio internacional monopolizado por las grandes corporaciones.

Por lo tanto, ahora que el problema del hambre se agrava, ¿cómo tenemos que entender la “magnanimidad” con la que el G-8 nos presenta la receta de la liberalización, mientras propicia la tendencia a la concentración del mercado agroalimentario?

Cuando el G-8 delega en la ronda de la OMC, también sabe que ha sido este organismo el que ha actuado en la dirección contraria a la de propiciar una regulación de los mercados agroalimentarios que los haga más justos y equitativos a nivel global. Más bien los países más ricos han usado el sector agrario como moneda de cambio en beneficio de los intereses comerciales globales de otros sectores y de la concentración de los alimentos en manos de las multinacionales.

FRENTE A un modelo de distribución irracional y monopolístico que ha logrado el desabastecimiento de buena parte de la población mundial, la Unió de Pagesos de Catalunya ya formuló en su día que debe buscarse una alternativa al actual funcionamiento del comercio internacional de alimentos. Y no es otra que la de la soberanía alimentaria, que persigue, entre otros objetivos, primar la producción agrícola local para alimentar y proveer a la población; el acceso del campesinado y de los sin tierra a la tierra, al agua, las semillas y los créditos; unos precios ligados a los costes de producción; la participación de los pueblos en la definición de la política agraria, así como el reconocimiento de los derechos de las agricultoras que tienen una función esencial en la producción agraria y la alimentación. En definitiva, el derecho del campesinado a producir alimentos y a recibir un precio justo y el derecho de los consumidores a decidir qué quieren consumir, cómo y quién lo produce.

Unidentified Flying Threats

By Nick Pope, the author of Open Skies, Closed Minds. He is in charge of U.F.O. investigations for the British Ministry of Defense from 1991 to 1994 (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 29/07/08):

On the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2006, pilots and airport employees at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago saw a disc-like object hovering over the tarmac for several minutes. Because nothing was tracked on radar, the Federal Aviation Administration did not investigate. Yet radar is not a reliable detector of all aircraft. Stealth planes are designed to be invisible to radar, and many radar systems filter out signals not matching the normal characteristics of aircraft. Did it really make sense to entirely ignore the observations of several witnesses?

A healthy skepticism about extraterrestrial space travelers leads people to disregard U.F.O. sightings without a moment’s thought. But in the United States, this translates into overdependence on radar data and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft — a weakness that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to engage in espionage against the United States.

The American government has not investigated U.F.O. sightings since 1969, when the Air Force ended Project Blue Book, an effort to scientifically analyze all sightings to see if any posed a threat to national security. Britain and France, in contrast, continue to investigate U.F.O. sightings, because of concerns that some sightings might be attributable to foreign military aircraft breaching their airspace, or to foreign space-based systems of interest to the intelligence community.

Most of the incidents investigated in Britain have been easily explained as misidentifications of stars and planets, aircraft lights, satellites and meteors, but some cases have raised national security or air safety issues.

On Dec. 26, 1980, for instance, several witnesses at two American Air Force bases in England reported seeing a U.F.O. land. An examination of the site turned up indentations in the ground and a level of radiation in the area that was significantly higher than ordinary. More witnesses at the same base reported the U.F.O. again on subsequent nights. The deputy base commander reported that the aircraft aimed light beams into the most highly sensitive area of the base — a clear security breach.

On March 30 and 31, 1993, there was a wave of U.F.O. sightings over Britain. One witness described a triangular-shaped craft that flew slowly over an air force base before accelerating away to the horizon in an instant, many times faster than a jet. The British military reported, “There would seem to be some evidence on this occasion that an unidentified object (or objects) of unknown origin was operating over the U.K.”

On April 23, 2007, a commercial airline pilot and some of his passengers reported a huge cigar-shaped U.F.O. — the pilot estimated it to be a mile wide — near the Channel Islands. At the time, air traffic controllers reported to the pilot that radar picked up something, but that it was “unknown traffic.”

In addition, there have been several incidents of near misses between U.F.O.s and known aircraft — enough to prompt the Ministry of Defense and the British Civil Aviation Authority to advise pilots, if they encounter anything, “not to maneuver, other than to place the object astern, if possible.”

The United States is no less vulnerable than Britain and France to threats to security and air safety. The United States Air Force or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should reopen investigations of U.F.O. phenomena. It would not imply that the country has suddenly started believing in little green men. It would simply recognize the possibility that radar alone cannot always tell us what’s out there.

Technicians in the workshop of double standards

By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 29/07/08):

Sudan’s ambassador to the UN, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, offered an arresting description of the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor during testy exchanges at the security council this week. Luis Moreno-Ocampo had unfairly singled out the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir by accusing him of genocide, Abdalhaleem said, adding: “He is a screwdriver in the workshop of double standards.”

Sudan’s politicians and diplomats have had a lot of other things to say, more or less angry, since Moreno-Ocampo, using highly emotive language, asked the ICC earlier this month to formally indict Bashir for war crimes allegedly committed in Darfur. Foremost among them is the assertion that the court, all of whose current cases concern African countries, is visiting two-faced “white man’s justice” on Khartoum.

Yet to the surprise of many observers, neither a feared violent backlash against UN troops and western aid workers in Sudan nor intensified fighting between government forces and Darfurian rebel factions has materialised. Instead Bashir has launched an intense campaign of regional and international diplomacy to stop Moreno-Ocampo in his tracks.

Abdalhaleem’s screwdriver remark came as South Africa and Libya, with the tacit backing of Russia and China, threatened to delay renewal of the mandate for UN and African Union peacekeepers in Darfur unless the security council suspended the case against Bashir. Under article 16 of the ICC’s founding statute, the council can halt prosecutions for a year at a time if it wishes.

With the peacekeeping mandate due to expire on Thursday and the US and Britain trying to keep the two issues separate, the argument in New York looks likely to continue down to the wire. Meanwhile, Sudanese attempts to forge united resistance to the ICC’s action continue apace.

Both the African Union and the Arab League, accepting the “insult to Africa” argument, have called for an ICC delay after heavy lobbying by Khartoum. Both organisations expressed concern that Bashir’s indictment, if confirmed in The Hague, might seriously destabilise Sudan. Bashir was a principal architect of the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement. If he is removed, it is suggested, the north-south conflict could reignite, as it nearly did in Abyei in May.

Some African leaders – Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is one – harbour an additional worry: that the Bashir case could prove a precedent with implications for themselves. Others, more respectable, such as Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi, pragmatically point out that a peace accord in northern Uganda has been delayed by an ICC arrest warrant for a key participant, Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony. The same could happen in Darfur.

Kenya’s president Mwai Kibaki argues, meanwhile, that western countries and activist groups simply do not understand the Darfur’s complex clan conflicts and exaggerate the extent of Khartoum’s control over them. Five years after the violence in Darfur peaked, there is a growing body of evidence to support that view.

Bashir has also been busily securing his home base since the ICC targeted him, building defensive alliances with former political foes and promising a new peace plan for Darfur, which he briefly visited at the weekend. Khartoum has suddenly resumed diplomatic relations with neighbouring Chad, with which it threatened to go to war earlier this year. And Abdel Basit Sabderat, the justice minister, is talking about holding Darfur war crimes trials in Sudan’s own courts.

Sabderat said that he has invited legal experts from the UN and other bodies to evaluate the country’s legal system. He even seemed to suggest that the humanitarian affairs minister, Ahmed Haroun, and Ali Kushayb, a militia leader, indicted by the ICC for war crimes last year, could face investigation and trial at home. Sudan has refused to surrender the pair to the international court.

Observers say these shifts are attributable to the pressure placed on Bashir by the ICC’s action and that he knows his diplomatic charm offensive cannot shield him indefinitely. The beckoning solution, therefore, is improved cooperation by Khartoum on ending the emergency in Darfur and on other issues in return for the security council freezing the case against Bashir.

Although the US reportedly opposes such a crude quid pro quo, it could provide a way out for all sides. If the west pushes too hard, the fragile prospect of free, fully democratic presidential elections scheduled for next year could be dashed. So could north-south cooperation. More than that, Bashir could in desperation resort to the violent tactics he has so far eschewed.

Letting Bashir off the hook would undoubtedly be seen as a blow to the cause of internationally administered justice. But among the technicians in the workshop of double standards, it might just be thought preferable to yet another war in Africa.

Europa: ¿unión o desunión?

Por Gabriel Tortella, catedrático emérito en la Universidad de Alcalá (EL PAÍS, 29/07/08):

El veto irlandés al Tratado de Lisboa, no por temido menos esperado, fue un jarro de agua fría en las ardientes ilusiones de los europeístas entusiastas (entre los que me incluyo). Llovieron, tras el jarro, denuestos y reproches: que si los irlandeses son unos ingratos, que si su Gobierno es incompetente, que si no quieren Europa que se vayan, que a votar otra vez hasta que salga sí, etcétera. Ninguna de estas alegaciones carece totalmente de fundamento, pero son, en realidad, cuestiones accesorias: los irlandeses votaron dentro de la más estricta legalidad europea y si su no se convierte en un veto es porque la legislación de la Unión así lo quiere. En efecto, el no de un miembro se convierte en veto porque para la ratificación de los tratados europeos se exige la unanimidad. Si se requiriese una simple mayoría, la negativa irlandesa tendría mucho menor importancia. Por tanto, es Europa entera la principal culpable de esta situación; parece un poco inconsecuente proclamar el libre derecho de voto y de veto, y luego enfadarse con los votantes si se convierten en vetantes.

Esta regla de la unanimidad se deriva de una contradicción básica del alma europea: queremos estar unidos pero sin perder las prerrogativas nacionales. Por tanto, los tratados no puedan imponerse a ningún país si no quiere aceptarlos. Pero, claro, no se puede repicar y andar en la procesión: o soberanía europea o soberanía nacional. Las dos cosas a la vez son imposibles. Hasta ahora, Europa, pese a las muchas proclamaciones grandilocuentes y los fuertes golpes de pecho, no ha querido renunciar a las soberanías nacionales. El veto irlandés es una consecuencia, pero no la única, ni mucho menos, de esta contradicción: otras son el caos y la inoperancia de la política exterior, la confusión y las vacilaciones en la política de inmigración, las dificultades para llegar a un mercado verdaderamente unificado por las diferencias en las políticas fiscales y otras, etcétera.

Esta insistencia en preservar la soberanía nacional (aunque parcialmente, porque en materias económicas, como la monetaria o la arancelaria, los países sí han renunciado a ella) se debe a la inercia histórica: franceses y británicos, sobre todo, se resisten a perder los privilegios de soberanía que tanta gloria les produjeron en el pasado. Los ingleses retienen su soberanía monetaria; los franceses, en aras de su independencia, vetaron (con los holandeses) la proyectada Constitución Europea de la que el Tratado de Lisboa, torpedeado por Irlanda, era un remiendo. Por el principio del agravio comparativo, si franceses y británicos se aferran a su soberanía, los demás no vamos a ser menos. Y así andamos: lamentando no estar más unidos, pero no queriendo renunciar a nuestra independencia.

¿Por qué somos así los europeos? ¿Por qué no somos como los norteamericanos, que constituyeron una unión federal y parecen tener pocos problemas de esta índole? La respuesta es sencilla: demasiada historia. Si a las sinfonías de Mozart les podía reprochar (apócrifamente) el emperador José II que tenían “demasiadas notas”, a la discordante sinfonía europea se le puede achacar un exceso de historia. Las tradiciones nacionales están muy arraigadas; las naciones que hoy forman la Unión han sido las principales protagonistas de la historia universal durante muchos siglos, y parece natural que se resistan a diluirse en un ente supranacional. Por otra parte, incluso las entidades políticas con poca o ninguna tradición nacional se resisten a renunciar a sus privilegios, como se demuestra hoy todos los días en España y se demostró en el nacimiento de los Estados Unidos de América, que fue bastante accidentado y violentamente debatido. Y la historia nos muestra tantos otros casos de desunión entre asociados, desde la antigua Grecia hasta los Balcanes de hoy, pasando por el Imperio Austro-Húngaro y un largo etcétera, que no se puede ser excesivamente optimista con respecto al futuro de nuestra Unión Europea.

Pero también hay razones para el optimismo: la historia frecuentemente ha tratado bien a Europa; si bien hay una larga tradición de desunión, también la hay de unidad desde Roma y luego Carlomagno. Pero la verdadera conciencia europea se forja con la Ilustración, hace nada menos que tres siglos. La Europa moderna nace en el intelecto de unos cuantos genios del siglo XVIII, en particular de Emmanuel Kant. El mensaje de los ilustrados ha ido calando muy gradual, pero también muy profundamente. Sobre ese sustrato de europeísmo ilustrado, los pueblos de este continente han acostumbrado a unirse, aun sacrificando su preciosa independencia, ante las dificultades exteriores. La propia Unión (ayer Comunidad) Europea nació tras la catástrofe de la II Guerra Mundial y ante la presión o amenaza ejercida por las superpotencias soviética y norteamericana. La unidad monetaria se fraguó ante el fiasco de la devaluación unilateral del dólar por Nixon en 1971. La crisis de 1992 aceleró la integración económica.

Ojalá los embates de la presente crisis opinable influyan en la opinión europea y se tome por fin la decisión de eliminar el obstáculo que representa la regla de la unanimidad. Dejaríamos el repique y avanzaría la procesión.

Ética para la crisis (I)

Por Demetrio Loperena Rota, catedrático de Derecho Administrativo (EL CORREO DIGITAL, 29/07/08):

Creo que puede confirmarse que la mano invisible, si alguna vez existió, se ha convertido en una zarpa del diablo. Esa zarpa hace que nuestra solidaridad emocional o instintiva sea neutralizada por una inteligencia inmoral que orienta nuestras capacidades hacia una egolatría suicida para una especie como la nuestra que sólo es capaz de vivir en sociedad. Efectivamente estamos en crisis, especialmente de acuerdo con su etimología griega, estamos en período de estudio y decisión. Una crisis como la que afrontamos se mide por guarismos econométricos y ellos representan situaciones de personas humanas que han de ser consideradas tanto individual como colectivamente.

La crisis es estructural, sin duda, y se ubica en el seno de la globalización económica. Por ello resulta anacrónico exhibir recetas de antaño como congelación salarial, flexibilización del mercado laboral, contención del gasto público y rebajas impositivas. Medidas nacionales no neutralizan problemas globales.

Veamos someramente algunos problemas estructurales que debemos resolver.

Falta de gobierno en la economía

Es patético el resultado de la reciente cumbre del G-8. Al margen de ese cómico acuerdo de reducir las emisiones de efecto invernadero a la mitad para el 2050 (ya no quedará casi qué quemar), lo verdaderamente conmovedor es que no saben cómo gobernar la economía globalizada. Creo que a efectos analíticos es acientífico e inútil ver la simple defensa de algunos intereses sectoriales o nacionales en los acuerdos de estas últimas reuniones del G-8. El asunto es más preocupante que eso, tácitamente están transmitiendo que no existe instrumental puesto a punto para gobernar la economía. Porque, recordemos, que la economía libre de mercado sólo ha funcionado en Estados fuertes que orientaban sus resultados hacia la satisfacción de los intereses generales. La globalización económica está ayuna de autoridades y mecanismos que la orienten hacia la satisfacción de las necesidades de todos los habitantes del planeta. No gobierna el FMI, ni el BM, ni la OMC, ni la ONU ni el G-8. No gobierna nadie. Gobernar significa tomar decisiones justas y ejecutarlas. Hoy ello no es posible y la economía acéfala está produciendo graves sufrimientos a miles de millones de seres humanos. Hay que institucionalizar el gobierno de la economía global, es urgente. Y aquí también habrá que pensar global y actuar local. No vale proteger una economía nacional sin considerar que lo que pasa fuera puede neutralizar todas las medidas que interiormente se tomen. Hay otra opción, la vuelta a las economías nacionales. La descarto por imposible en estos momentos.

Desajustes financieros

Hace miles de años que la economía tuvo un cambio revolucionario: el trueque se sustituye por el pago con dinero. El dinero representaba la riqueza. Poco a poco el dinero tuvo sus representaciones de segundo grado, y de tercero…hasta llegar a una situación como la actual en la que los saltos de la representación no se corresponden con la riqueza real del mundo. Todos sabemos que los guarismos aritméticos archivados en los ordenadores de las entidades financieras no representan la riqueza real. También parecemos presas de algo que no podemos controlar o reformular. Pero también sabemos que jugamos con números que sólo representan parcialmente la realidad; estamos ante una ruleta rusa con más de una bala en la recámara. De nuevo un problema estructural que genera sufrimiento a miles de millones de personas.

La crisis alimentaria

Nuestra especie está acostumbrada a las hambrunas. La Historia está jalonada por eventos de esta naturaleza. Pero en la actualidad, cuando podemos saber que las reservas de alimentos son suficientes para satisfacer a toda la población del planeta, y al mismo tiempo mueren de hambre más personas que nunca, es porque estamos mal organizados: la economía globalizada sin gobierno sólo permite una vida apetecible a una minoría de la población. Los principios éticos deben quedar supraordenados a los instrumentos. Y en la medida en que ya no sirvan en política internacional deben ser sustituidos éstos últimos. Quiero decir, por ejemplo, que el derecho a la vida no es una opción civilizatoria o instrumental, mientras que los Estados soberanos sí y deben adaptarse a la globalización de modo que todos los ciudadanos de cada circunscripción administrativa del planeta tengan satisfechas sus necesidades básicas.

En esta materia de la alimentación existen debates persistentes basados en realidades parciales. Así, se propone la supresión de la agricultura subvencionada en los países ricos. Y de esto se derivaría un crecimiento de la exportación de alimentos de los países pobres a los ricos que les sacaría de su indigencia. Mucha fe hay que tener para creer que los pequeños campesinos de los países pobres puedan abandonar su miseria alimentando a opulentos. Antes al contrario, con toda seguridad se desplazarían a esos países nuestras multinacionales de la alimentación y los beneficios se guardarían (ya lo están haciendo) en nuestros propios bancos.

Por otro lado, hay un concepto, generalmente aceptado, al que se denomina seguridad o soberanía alimentaria. Este criterio que comparto exige que cada comunidad pueda alimentarse dependiendo lo mínimo posible del transporte y, por tanto, de la energía que para ello es necesaria. Esto exige, por supuesto, que en los países ricos la agricultura esté subvencionada. ¿Dónde está la inmoralidad? Hemos arruinado la agricultura de los países pobres ofreciendo alimentos a precios inferiores al de coste, bajo la cláusula del libre comercio. Haití está pasando hambre porque sus agricultores no podrían competir con los precios norteamericanos, viéndose obligados a abandonar la agricultura y pasando a depender íntegramente de la producción exterior que en adelante tendrán que pagar al precio que desea el vendedor. Otra vez sufrimiento general. El dumping alimentario contra los más pobres. En efecto, es inmoral comerciar en el exterior con alimentos subvencionados en el interior. No podemos seguir arruinando los sistemas alimentarios de los países pobres. Incluso, para los que carezcan de ética alguna, los flujos migratorios son desestabilizadores de nuestras todavía opulentas sociedades.

Aquí aceptamos sin sonrojo a exiliados políticos por violaciones del derecho de libertad de pensamiento y expulsamos a los que los que son privados del derecho a la alimentación, siendo este último de mayor necesidad. La prolongación de la inmoralidad tiene efectos prácticos sobre sus activistas más conspicuos y es que acaba volviéndose contra sus propios intereses.

Emergencia ¿en Italia o en África?

Por Jesús López-Medel, abogado del Estado. Expresidente de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos, Democracia y Ayuda Humanitaria de la Asamblea de la OSCE (EL PERIÓDICO, 29/07/08):

Es muy expresivo que el Gobierno italiano haya declarado la situación de emergencia en el país como consecuencia de la persistencia de la llegada de inmigrantes procedentes de África. Aseguro, querido lector, que he tenido que leer dos veces el titular de la noticia para saber si la declaración de emergencia es para proteger a los italianos o acaso se refiere a quienes viven en condiciones tales de opulencia y lujo en el continente negro que deciden dar una vuelta para airearse por la Europa civilizada.

Siempre nos quedarán los recuerdos del imperio romano, en el que a los derechos de los cives (ciudadanos) se unía un reconocimiento del derecho de gentes a los procedentes del exterior. Precisamente, el derecho romano concedía ciertas garantías y derechos a los originarios de lugares lejanos. La comentada resolución del Gobierno actual no está en esa dirección. Teóricamente, se supone (pues hay silencio) que tampoco va en la línea de las ideas originarias de la cristiandad, cuya capitalidad oficial está recluida en el Vaticano.

COINCIDIENDO con nuestra fiesta local (y universal) de Santiago, el Gobierno vecino de un país también mediterráneo ha decidido “cerrar Italia” a los invasores que molestan. Esta semana, el asunto se debatirá en el Parlamento, órgano legislativo menos anodino que nuestras cámaras y con un ambiente en el que la pasión por la política se combina a veces con la expresividad genuinamente italiana.

La emergencia declarada en toda Italia supone la suspensión de derechos constitucionales y la posibilidad de sacar el Ejército a la calle. Esto, en los países democráticos de nuestro entorno, solo lo hemos visto en los últimos tiempos para hacer tareas humanitarias ante casos de catástrofes naturales, pero no para la represión de derechos, ni siquiera de quienes no son ciudadanos del imperio. Ahora, en Italia, si la medida fuese (cosa improbable) efectiva, podríamos ver escenas amables en las que las tropas de las valientes legiones italianas se aplicarían con todo el peso de la ley en poner en su lugar –esto es, fuera de nuestra civilización– a aquellos que se atreven a incomodarnos.

Es indudable que todo el mundo (y no solo la España de Zapatero) vive una situación de crisis económica que golpea a todos. Pero, particularmente (¡es la historia de siempre!) a los menos favorecidos. La crisis financiera, pero también la energética y la alimenticia, nos afecta a los del primer mundo. Pero de ahí a declarar la situación de emergencia en todo un país porque durante el año han entrado ilegalmente 10.611 personas, frente a las 5.378 en el mismo periodo del año pasado, va un abismo. Una parte importante de ellas provienen de Somalia y Eritrea, y concentran su llegada en regiones del sur como Calabria o Sicilia, donde ya estaba declarada la situación de emergencia. No obstante, desde el viernes rige en todo el país, incluidas las zonas muy prósperas del norte, en las proximidades de la imaginaria rodilla del atlas que es la vecina Suiza.

Es ciertamente Italia un país muy acogedor, cuyas gentes gozan (incluso más tras el partido de cuartos de la Eurocopa de fútbol) de nuestra simpatía, afecto y admiración. Tierra de genios y también de excelsos cómicos, que se han ocupado de artes escénicas y otras nobles actividades. Sin embargo, este gran cariño no impide que en voz baja (un estilo tan poco hispano e itálico) nos preguntemos si es proporcionada o, por el contrario, muy excesiva la decisión inicial del Gobierno de Roma.

Aunque lo olvidemos a veces, quienes llegan no son sino personas (sí, seres humanos) que huyen de la miseria y la pobreza extrema de sus países. En sus lugares de origen solo pueden encontrar desesperanza. Durante años han estado en sus propios guetos, hasta que la venta del falso glamur que les trasmitían los medios de comunicación de aquí les ha llevado a buscar simplemente una oportunidad para no morirse de hambre y de angustia. Si a nosotros nos golpea la crisis entre otras cosas en el precio de los alimentos básicos, es fácil imaginar cómo para ellos, con unas agriculturas llenas de barreras impuestas desde aquí, es muchísimo más dura la situación.

HA PASADO la época del “papeles para todos”. Nadie defiende ya eso. La mayoría (salvo los extremistas xenófobos) está por reforzar los mecanismos de control e integración, pero no por llegar a extremos que, pretendiendo evitar el efecto llamada, provoquen consecuencias tan ridículas como excesivas y peligrosas. Poco más que una legión de Espartacos dispersos buscando su propia subsistencia no pone en riesgo a todo un Estado. Por ello, este no debe errar las decisiones y sí, por el contrario, intentar coordinarlas con el resto de países de lo que es, hoy, el imperio europeo (con permiso de EEUU).

Pero hay algo que todos podríamos hacer: declarar la situación de emergencia en África por las condiciones de vida de aquel continente. Las cifras escandalosas de millones de muertos solo por hambre deberían golpear nuestras civilizadas conciencias. Así, aunque fuese por egoísmo, invirtiendo en proyectos viables en sus lugares de origen, evitaríamos que nos molesten, y no tendríamos que llegar a los excesos de declarar la emergencia aquí en lugar de hacerlo allá.

The Balkan evasion

By Peter Preston (THE GUARDIAN, 28/07/08):

Boris Tadic is a handsome, charismatic and rather courageous politician. If he belonged to the Labour party, cabinet “loyalists” would be queueing at his door, asking him to knife Mr B in the back. But Tadic already has a job. He is president of Serbia. It is he, and his young, reforming appointees, who tracked down Radovan Karadzic. It is he - the hymn from London, Paris, Berlin, Washington et al last week - who “chose Europe” (not a nationalistic, neo-fascist, sub-communist swamp, with only Moscow for a chum). Which is great: except, will Europe choose him?

Everyone loves a horror story, so the capture of Karadzic, the pursuit of Mladic and the stomach-turning bestiality of Srebrenica can soon be turned into big headlines again. Thus are our continent’s foulest days since 1945 remembered. Oh good! There’s a happy ending. But Serbia has no end in sight yet, no hope of swift closure. For what are our leaders saying once they’ve rejoiced, hailed western values and - in some tortuous way - claimed victory for their beliefs? They’re mumbling.

Let’s say out loud, then, what every chancellery in Europe whispers behind its hands. The European Union project is not complete until membership in the western Balkans is complete. Croatia, virtually every hurdle vaulted, stands on the brink of membership. It has done 95% of the negotiation. It will be ready next year. And now Serbia, at last, may follow on behind. Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and an increasingly fraught Bosnia are waiting in the same line. So, usually unmentioned, is Albania.

None of this is outlandish stuff, nor as vexed and tangled as the Turkish question. On the contrary, it is commonplace in our own Foreign Office. But why the hold-up, why the mumbles and delays? Because, months ago, Croatia got a red light from Brussels. Nothing further could happen until the reforms of the Lisbon treaty were approved all round. Simply grafting another member on to the existing 27 wasn’t administratively sensible. And, because this was a process of logic and diplomacy, nobody was really talking one extra anyway. They were talking seven more, a union of 34.

That - plus Turkey as an increasingly outside bet - will be it for Europe: the practical definition of boundaries and interests formed as we’ve gone along. After Milosevic and Karadzic, no one who’s remotely serious about war, peace or progress believes the Balkans can just be left dangling in a pit of constant evasion. It was Tadic who, with rare drive, just managed to defeat the old forces of isolation (and Russian influence) at the last election. It was Tadic who kept Europe’s frail Kosovo policy - European troops holding the peace on European soil - from collapsing.

But Tadic knows, all too clearly, that he is a means to an end, not an end in himself. Serbia, the biggest and most historically maverick nation in the Balkans, must have a European future, or it will have nothing but trouble. And that’s where the snares, delusions and dislocations begin.

Was Belgrade even mentioned when Dublin voted? Of course not: nobody likes stretching voters so far. Does David Cameron make any Serbian connections when he talks about Britain’s own referendum, when and if? Of course not, unless there’s a Serbian restaurant in Notting Hill. And Glasgow East, inevitably, is a million miles from Balkans West.

Nevertheless, the connections are there. Among the thousands whom Karadzic helped slaughter. Among the rubble of the offices in Belgrade left untouched since Nato jets destroyed them. Emotionally, even, in the posters that plaster Belgrade hoardings. Paul Anka was here: Rihanna will be here. Summer means pop concerts and young people fresh from the Wogan memorial song contest. This isn’t some forgotten spot on the map. This is part of Europe deciding instinctively that it wants to be part of Europe, that Europe is its salvation after too many nightmares. This, when Tadic speaks, is the “vision” thing we all supposedly crave.

What happens next? Serbia, like Bosnia and the rest, moved into the official “waiting room” last year. It has hope bureaucratically locked in (and endorsed by 27 governments). But will there be momentum to match expectation? In particular, will the reasons for enlargement begin to register in the lands where only straight bananas and bent prejudices grow? When I heard Tadic speak a few weeks ago - openly, directly - I found a man who was staking his life and his country on an honest answer to the question that defines him and, in its repercussions, could define us, too. And he didn’t mumble.

China’s new nationalism may require careful negotiation

By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 28/07/08):

In official-speak, it’s about “one world, one dream”. But as the waves of patriotic pride build, next month’s Beijing Olympics are beginning to look like a globally televised, heavily choreographed celebration of advancing, muscular Chinese nationhood. One country, one team.

Using the event to showcase China’s emergence as a potentially dominant world power was always part of the Communist party’s game plan. In this sense, the medals table, which China expects to dominate, is a metaphor for broader international competition for resources and influence.

After centuries of humiliations at western hands, few could fairly deny China a self-glorifying day in the sun. But how to stop Beijing over-egging its nationalist pudding – how to prevent superpower turning to super-arrogance as has happened elsewhere – is the big post-Olympic question.

Speaking at a recent conference in London, Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, voiced concern that China could “go the Bush-Cheney way”, forsaking multilateralism in selfish, unheeding pursuit of perceived national interest.

In a new pamphlet co-authored with Katinka Barysch, Can Europe and China Shape a New World Order? Grant highlights China’s fierce adherence to principles of national sovereignty and non-interference. Its vetoing of western efforts to rein in Zimbabwe’s pariah regime is one recent example of a holdover non-aligned mentality.

Economic and trade tensions with Europe and the US, the environmental impact of its rapid development, authoritarian governance and human rights abuses, and its rapid military build-up are all factors feeding western perceptions, measured in recent polls, that a resurgent China represents “the biggest threat to global stability”.

But Grant and Barysch argue that what American author Robert Kagan predicts will be a future “axis of autocracies” linking China to likeminded unilateralists in Russia and elsewhere in Asia is not inevitable. Beijing was already collaborating with the west on North Korea and Iran, if less so on Sudan and Burma, they said.

An internal debate was under way between “liberal internationalists” and “assertive nationalists” on whether Beijing should jettison its distrust of traditionally western-dominated global bodies.

China could yet swing either way, Grant and Barysch said. And it was up to the European Union to persuade Beijing of the benefits of collaborative multilateralism, using as carrots its markets, its technological advantages and its institutional and governance experience.

Xinning Song, a Chinese academic, was less optimistic about the extent to which Europe could influence China’s future behaviour. He told the conference there were three main problems.

The EU and China don’t know how to deal with each other. China doesn’t understand how the EU institutions work or where the power lies. Secondly, they need to define a working partnership. Thirdly there is lack of mutual public understanding. The uproar in western countries over Tibet and the Olympic torch showed how small events can have a very big impact.

Simon Fraser, director-general for Europe and globalisation at the Foreign Office, said it was plain the EU could not shape a new world order with China, nor should it try, since the US, Russia and India must all have their say. But it was certainly true that “a change in the way the world is organised is happening … economic power is shifting east and political power will follow”.

Enhanced economic integration was the way to minimise the chances of future conflict, Fraser said. But equally, friction over trade, energy and other resources could easily upset the relationship. Given that climate change was now an “existential issue”, China’s role as a test bed for low-carbon models of future development was potentially critical.

This was an area where the EU technological and regulatory expertise could help. Other speakers said only the US could apply decisive leverage to China because of its superpower status but also because, unlike the EU, it has direct strategic and bilateral military, regional and economic relationships with China spanning the Pacific and east Asia.

The EU and US should work together to influence China’s future polices rather than compete for political influence and economic benefits, Song and Fraser suggested. If they did, Beijing would be more likely to accept its responsibilities as a world power operating within international institutions.

Transatlantic collaboration on China, like other issues, cannot be taken for granted – but appears highly desirable. As the Olympics spectacle may soon vividly illustrate, China’s bold new nationalism could, if mishandled or misjudged, morph into an abrasive, new century imperialism with unfathomable consequences.

The Pope vs. the Pill

By John L. Allen Jr., the senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter and the author of The Rise of Benedict XVI (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 27/07/08):

Forty years ago last week, Pope Paul VI provoked the greatest uproar against a papal edict in the long history of the Roman Catholic Church when he reiterated the church’s ban on artificial birth control by issuing the encyclical “Humanae Vitae.” At the time, commentators predicted that not only would the teaching collapse under its own weight, but it might well bring the “monarchical papacy” down with it.

Those forecasts badly underestimated the capacity of the Catholic Church to resist change and to stand its ground.

Down the centuries, Catholics have frequently groused about papal rulings. Usually they channeled that dissent into blithe disobedience, though occasionally a Roman mob would run the Successor of Peter out of town on a rail just to make a point. In 1848, Pope Pius IX was driven into exile by Romans incensed at his refusal to embrace Italy’s unification.

Never before July 25, 1968, however, had opposition been so immediate, so public and so widespread. World-famous theologians called press conferences to rebut the pope’s reasoning. Conferences of Catholic bishops issued statements that all but licensed churchgoers to ignore the encyclical. Pastors openly criticized “Humanae Vitae” from the pulpit.

In a nutshell, “Humanae Vitae” held that the twin functions of marriage — to foster love between the partners and to be open to children — are so closely related as to be inseparable. In practice, that meant a resounding no to the pill.

The encyclical quickly became seen, both in the secular world and in liberal Catholic circles, as the papacy’s Waterloo. It was so out of sync with the hopes and desires of the Catholic rank and file that it simply could not stand.

And in some ways, it didn’t. Today polls show that Catholics, at least in the West, dissent from the teaching on birth control, often by majorities exceeding 80 percent.

But at the official level, Catholicism’s commitment to “Humanae Vitae” is more solid than ever.

During his almost 27-year papacy, John Paul II provided a deeper theoretical basis for traditional Catholic sexual morality through his “theology of the body.” In brief, the late pope’s argument was that human sexuality is an image of the creative love among the three persons of the Trinity, as well as God’s love for humanity. Birth control “changes the language” of sexuality, because it prevents life-giving love.

That’s a claim many Catholics might dispute, but the reading groups and seminars devoted to contemplating John Paul’s “theology of the body” mean that Catholics disposed to defend the church’s teaching now have a more formidable set of resources than they did when Paul VI wrote “Humanae Vitae.”

In addition, three decades of bishops’ appointments by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both unambiguously committed to “Humanae Vitae,” mean that senior leaders in Catholicism these days are far less inclined than they were in 1968 to distance themselves from the ban on birth control, or to soft-pedal it. A striking number of Catholic bishops have recently brought out documents of their own defending “Humanae Vitae.”

Advocates of the encyclical draw assurance from the declining fertility rates across the developed world, especially in Europe. No country in Europe has a fertility rate above 2.1, the number of children each woman needs to have by the end of her child-bearing years to keep a population stable.

Even with increasing immigration, Europe is projected to suffer a population loss in the 21st century that will rival the impact of the Black Death, leading some to talk about the continent’s “demographic suicide.”

Not coincidentally, Europe is also the most secular region of the world, where the use of artificial contraception is utterly unproblematic. Among those committed to Catholic teaching, the obvious question becomes: What more clear proof of the folly of separating sex and child-bearing could one want?

So the future of “Humanae Vitae” as the teaching of the Catholic Church seems secure, even if it will also continue to be the most widely flouted injunction of the church at the level of practice.

The encyclical’s surprising resilience is a reminder that forecasting the Catholic future in moments of crisis is always a dangerous enterprise — a point with relevance to a more recent Catholic predicament. Many critics believe that the church has not yet responded adequately to the recent sex-abuse scandals, leading to predictions that the church will “have to” become more accountable, more participatory and more democratic.

While those steps may appear inevitable today, it seemed unthinkable to many observers 40 years ago that “Humanae Vitae” would still be in vigor well into the 21st century.

Catholicism can and does change, but trying to guess how and when is almost always a fool’s errand.

Genocide’s Epic Hero

By Aleksandar Hemon, the author, most recently, of The Lazarus Project, a novel (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 27/07/08):

On Oct. 14, 1991, Radovan Karadzic spoke at a session of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Parliament, which had been debating a referendum on independence from the rump Yugoslavia. Mr. Karadzic was there to warn the Parliament members against following the Slovenes and Croats, who had broken away earlier that year, down “the highway of hell and suffering.”

He thundered, “Do not think you will not lead Bosnia and Herzegovina into hell and the Muslim people into possible annihilation, as the Muslim people cannot defend themselves in case of war here.” Throughout his tirade, he clutched the lectern edges, as though about to hurl it at his audience, but then let go of it to stab the air with his forefinger at the word “annihilation.” The Bosnian president, Alija Izetbegovic, a Muslim, was visibly distressed.

It was a spectacular, if blood-curdling, performance. Mr. Karadzic, who was arrested last week after 13 years in hiding, was then president of the hard-line nationalist Serbian Democratic Party, which already controlled the parts of Bosnia that had a Serbian majority, but he was not a member of the Parliament, nor did he hold any elective office. His very presence rendered the Parliament weak and unimportant; backed by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People’s Army, he spoke from the position of unimpeachable power over the life and death of the people the Parliament represented.

Watching the news broadcast covering the session, neither my parents nor I could initially comprehend what he meant by “annihilation.” For a moment or two we groped for a milder, less terrifying interpretation — perhaps he meant “historical irrelevance”? For what he was saying was well outside the scope of our middling imagination, well beyond the habits of normalcy we desperately clung to as war loomed over our irrelevant lives.

Then I understood that he was wagging the stick of genocide at the Bosnian Muslims, while the unappetizing carrot was their bare survival. “Don’t make me do it,” he was essentially saying. “I will be at home in the hell I create for you.”

The Parliament eventually decided a referendum was the way to go. It took place in February 1992; the Serbs boycotted it while the majority of Bosnians voted for independence. In March, there were barricades on the streets of Sarajevo and shooting in the mountains surrounding it. In April, Mr. Karadzic’s snipers aimed at a peaceful antiwar demonstration in front of the Parliament building, and two women were killed. On May 2, Sarajevo was cut off from the world and the longest siege in modern history began. By the end of the summer, nearly every front page in the world had published a picture from a Serbian death camp. And so it would go for far too long.

There is little doubt, of course, that Mr. Karadzic would have happily sped down the hell-and-suffering highway regardless of the outcome of the parliamentary session. The annihilation machine was already revving, everything had already been put in place for genocide, whose purpose was not only the destruction and displacement of Bosnian Muslims but also the irreversible unification of the Serbs and their ethnically pure lands into a Greater Serbia. I wondered later why he staged that performance before the Parliament, since peace and coexistence were never a possibility for him. Why did he bother?

The point of that performance, I eventually concluded, was the performance itself. Unbeknownst to most of us interested in peaceful coexistence, the war in Bosnia had already started and Mr. Karadzic was already cast in the role he would perform throughout the war, up until his 1996 ouster from the Serbian political leadership and his subsequent new life on the run. His performance was far less for the beleaguered Bosnian Parliament than for the patriotic Serbs watching the broadcast, ready to embark upon an epic project that would require sacrifice, murder and ethnic cleansing.

Mr. Karadzic was showing to his people that he was a tough and determined leader, yet neither unwise nor unreasonable. He was indicating that war would not be a rash decision on his part, while he was capable of recognizing the inevitable necessity of genocide. If there was a job to be done, he was going to do it unflinchingly and ruthlessly. He was the leader who was going to lead them through the hell of murder to the land where honor and salvation awaited.

The model for Mr. Karadzic’s role as leader was provided by Petar Petrovic Njegos’s epic poem “The Mountain Wreath” (“Gorski vijenac”). Published in 1847, it is deeply embedded in the tradition of Serbian epic poetry and is a foundational text of Serbian cultural nationalism. Set at the end of the 17th century, its central character is Vladika Danilo, the bishop and the sovereign of Montenegro, the only Serbian territory unconquered at the time by the powerful and all-encroaching Ottoman Empire. Vladika Danilo has a problem: some Montenegrin Serbs have converted to Islam. For him, they are the fifth column of the Turks, a people who could never be trusted, a permanent threat to the freedom and sovereignty of the Serbs.

He summons a council to help him determine the solution. He listens to the advice of his bloodthirsty warriors: “Without suffering no song is sung,” one of them says. “Without suffering no saber is forged.” He listens to a delegation of Muslims pleading for peace and coexistence, who are instead offered the chance to save their heads by converting back to “the faith of their forefathers.” He speaks of freedom and the difficult decisions it requires: “The wolf is entitled to a sheep/Much like a tyrant to a feeble man./But to stomp the neck of tyranny/To lead it to the righteous knowledge/ That is man’s most sacred duty.”

In the lines familiar to nearly every Serbian child and adult, Vladika Danilo recognizes that the total, ruthless extermination of the Muslims is the only way: “Let there be endless struggle,” he says. “Let there be what cannot be.” He will lead his people through the hell of murder and onward to honor and salvation: “On the grave flowers will grow/ For a distant future generation.”

Mr. Karadzic was intimately familiar with Serbian epic poetry. A skillful player of the gusle, a single-string fiddle traditionally accompanying the oral performance of epic poems, he clearly understood his role in the light cast by Vladika Danilo. He recognized himself in the martyrdom of leadership; he believed that he was the one to finish the job that Vladika Danilo started; he saw himself as the hero in an epic poem that would be sung by a distant future generation.

Indeed, while in hiding in Belgrade in recent years, Mr. Karadzic frequented a bar where there were weekly gusle-accompanied performances of Serbian epic poetry, where wartime pictures of him and Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serbs’ military leader, proudly hung on the wall. A Belgrade newspaper claimed that on at least one occasion Mr. Karadzic, undercover as a New Age charlatan, recited an epic poem in which he himself featured as the main hero, performing epic feats of extermination.

The tragic, heartbreaking irony of it all is that Mr. Karadzic played out his historical role in less than 10 years. In the flash of his infernal pan hundreds of thousands died, millions were displaced, untold numbers paid in unspeakable pain for his induction into the pantheon of Serbian epic poetry.

Before he became the leader of Bosnian Serbs and after he was forced out by his supporter and fellow nationalist, President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, in the wake of the Dayton peace accord, Mr. Karadzic was a prosaic nobody. A mediocre psychiatrist, a minor poet and a petty embezzler before the war, at the time of his arrest he was a grotesque mountebank. It was only during the war, on a blood-soaked stage, that he could fully develop his inhuman potential. His true and only home was the hell he created for others.

Which is why, after the initial exhilaration, many Bosnians find Mr. Karadzic’s arrest less satisfying than one would expect. Though he might spend the rest of his life in the comfortable dungeons of the Western European prison system, he will live eternally in the verses of decasyllabic meter written by those for whom the demolition of Bosnia was but material for the grand epic poetry of Serbhood.

Bosnians know he should have been booed and run off the stage at the peak of his performance. He should have been seen for what he really was: a thuggish puppet whose head was bloated with delusions of grandeur. He should have let us live outside his epic fantasies. Justice is good, but a peaceful life would have been much better.

Pakistan’s Window of Opportunity

By Rick Barton and Karin von Hippel From the Center for Strategic and International Studies. They are co-directors of the PCR Project at CSIS (THE WASHINGTON POST, 26/07/08):

After eight years of military rule, Pakistanis desperately want their newly elected civilian government to fulfill their country’s promise. Public support will inevitably ebb and flow because of the sudden shift to democratic governance, but the underlying dynamic is positive. The United States should fully encourage the democratic opening during this critical period.

On a recent visit to Pakistan, we discussed these changes with more than 200 political party leaders, police chiefs, judges, clerics, journalists and students. They were animated by the return of a constitutional order, even with all the challenges that accompany it.

Within weeks of taking office after the Feb. 18 elections, the coalition government was already working on an ambitious agenda. This includes a number of reforms, such as trying to reinstate the judges deposed by President Pervez Musharraf and supporting a U.N.-led investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. At the same time, Pakistan is facing several daunting challenges that threaten to derail this fragile course. The economy is slowing. The restoration of unseated judges only represents part of a larger rule of law crisis that could implicate many of Pakistan’s leaders.

Further, pre-election terrorist attacks and the expansion of Pakistan’s Taliban into the North West Frontier Province have increased fears of extremist violence throughout Pakistan. The threat posed by Al Qaeda and other foreign militants, who cross back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan, seems to be on the rise. Analysts have only a rudimentary understanding of these complicated alliances and dynamics (tragically demonstrated on June 11 after a U.S. airstrike killed 11 Pakistani border guards). This type of mistake serves as a stark reminder of the lessons from the 2006 U.S. counter-insurgency manual: an operation that kills five insurgents is counterproductive if collateral damage leads to the recruitment of 50 more insurgents.

With Pakistanis now trying to focus on issues that really matter, how can the U.S. help to consolidate reforms and encourage this nascent democracy?

We endorse a strategic approach, one that requires dramatic changes. The inconsistent, one-dimensional, military-dominated relationship between the United States and Pakistan needs to be more expansive, mutually reinforcing and include realistic agreements. Assistance should focus on three challenges that matter to Pakistan’s people.

First, Pakistan needs fundamental rule-of-law reforms in the legal, penal, police, intelligence and military spheres. Pakistanis’ sense of justice has been undermined at every level. Reforms need to be thorough and targeted. For example, at the top, confidence could be restored by independent public inquiries to investigate controversies that divide Pakistanis, such as official corruption, the Red Mosque siege, and violence in Karachi. Such inquiries could be led by a mix of well-respected Pakistanis and international legal and financial investigators.

Second, Pakistan needs a regional approach to confront violent extremism. Pakistan’s neighbors — notably Afghanistan, India and China — are also interested in “draining the swamp” of extremist militants from the region. The proposed Pakistan-Afghanistan Jirga could be fully endorsed by international partners, so as to develop new means of guarding porous borders, de-radicalizing some militants, restoring traditional systems of justice, and capturing those who have already committed crimes. At the same time, both India and Pakistan are finally experiencing “Kashmir fatigue.” U.S. attention could help broker a lasting deal over the disputed territory.

Third, public investments and assistance must reach more of Pakistan’s 165 million people. Sen. Joseph Biden’s proposal for a $7 billion, multi-year “democracy dividend” aid package captured the imagination of those we spoke with. This bill should be aimed at youth, given that half of the population is less than 20 years of age. Aid for education and health should be tied to Pakistani expenditures, shared with the four provinces and publicly accounted for in Pakistan’s active press.

Now, more than ever before, America needs to ensure that its support addresses the country’s most pressing concerns, in full partnership with the people of Pakistan. Such a strategic approach complies fully with our values and principles, and is an opportunity for the United States as well to fulfill its promise.

This circus of minority sports is a PR triumph for a brutal regime - so far

By Simon Jenkins (THE GUARDIAN, 25/07/08):

Forget the sport. As the Beijing Olympics goes critical for its August 8 opening, the political essence of this bizarre event becomes ever clearer. What is not clear is who will win, China or its critics. It could be a photo-finish.

The International Olympic Committee originally chose China for two reasons: it knew it could rely on the Chinese regime to deliver on its stupefying budget; and it knew China would have a public relations interest in complying with the IOC’s increasingly fantasist self-image.

China wanted the games for different reasons. As a dictatorship, it saw cost and control as no problem. The games would draw favourable world attention to its introverted and curiously insecure oligarchy. As the Xinhua press agency declared at the time of the award, getting the Olympics was “another milestone in China’s rising international status and a historical event in the great renaissance of the Chinese nation”. No nonsense there about sport.

Matters have moved on. China is spending a colossal sum of money, reputedly $40bn, on just a fortnight of sport. The Olympics area of Beijing has been destroyed and rebuilt with stadiums, office blocks and avenues: monuments to the cosmopolitan, modernising zeal of the Chinese communist party. Salivating western architects have lined up for work without a moral qualm. They include, appropriately, the genial son of Albert Speer to do the masterplan.

The message of the torch tour and the “1,000 jogging policemen” was that anything can happen when authority loses control. That will not be repeated. Tibet is virtually inaccessible. Activists of the emergent civil rights movement - concerned with anything from land reform to HIV/Aids - have been thrown into jail. Any domestic criticism has been suppressed, and the signers of a petition demanding “an Olympic spirit” in human rights silenced.

Foreigners have been evicted from the neighbourhood of the Olympic site. The Chinese press remains censored, and woe betide any visiting journalist who steps out of the tightly drawn line. The American network NBC, with exclusive rights to the games, is owned by General Electric, which has extensive commercial interests in China. Spitting has been banned and 100,000 troops brought in to ring the city.

Britain’s IOC member, Sir Craig Reedie, hilariously declared that the IOC’s contract is “with the host city, it does not become involved in politics”. Why then the IOC’s frequent references to human rights? It is all humbug.

Tourists have understandably stayed away. The 119 Olympic five-star hotels are only 78% full, booked almost entirely with games officials financed by some taxpayer somewhere. According to the Beijing authorities, tourist four-star hotels are just 45% full, with overall visitor numbers currently 20% down on the same month last year. Given the number of official visitors, this must mean a total collapse in private tourism.

This should surprise nobody. It is an open secret that both Athens and Sydney did not gain but lost on their tourist account through hosting the Olympics. Normal visitors avoid Olympic cities for fear of crowds. The related downswing in block bookings can take years to return to normal. Australia admitted as much with its subsequent travel slogan, “Where the bloody hell are you?”

People who say the games make money, except for builders and consultants, are talking rubbish. They are the greatest public spending hit on Earth. Nor for nothing are Britain’s Olympics officials taking their bonuses in six-figure salaries, rather than waiting for Lord Coe’s promised “profit”. They are outrageously paying tens of millions of pounds to “cost-cutting” consultants - all beyond the reach of meaningful audit.

The Chinese have shrewdly taken the view that the popularity of the games is not an issue. What matters is the avoidance of nasty incidents broadcast to the world. Hence the clampdown on visas, even for bona fide tourists. If you want to go to China at present, say you work for the BBC, the IOC’s greatest cheerleader, with a reported 150 staff on the junket of their lives. Over three-quarters of the tickets have been allocated to Chinese, to ensure there are no embarrassing empty seats on camera, as there were at Athens four years ago.

At this point in the argument, China can justifiably crow. It has given two fingers to the IOC. It has pressed an army of builders into ensuring it delivers the project on time. It has reneged on its pledge, which the IOC formally announced, that the games would “help the development of human rights in China”. Why should they?

As the China pundit Mark Leonard has pointed out, the undoubted liberalisation of the Chinese economy and lifestyle in recent years has been paralleled by “an increasingly sophisticated control of the public sphere … not western-style democracy but a hi-tech model of deliberative dictatorship”.

But if China is winning the sprints, it has yet to get the marathon in the bag. The spotlight that is planned to bathe Beijing in Olympic glory is not as biddable as in the past. The security operation designed to turn China into a giant television studio is itself receiving adverse publicity.

The political cliche that dictatorship cannot censor every blog, mobile phone and digital camera holds true. China may discourage the world’s public from coming to the games with its visas and repression, but it cannot ensure that no rogue journalists get through, least of all when tens of thousands of them are in town. This is, after all, the media event of the year.

Tibet has already garnered enough global publicity from the Olympics to incur the envy of every oppressed minority. After a decade in which Beijing has won only sycophancy from the world’s political, financial and media community, it is now enduring much hostile comment - and for no other reason than the staging of the games.

For all the nonsense talked of the “Olympic legacy” - usually an unusable out-of-town wilderness - the true legacy of Beijing will be not sporting or architectural but political. The games are essentially of minority sports, which is why the IOC have always built them up as celebrations of world chauvinism, and why China (and now Britain) must be seduced with glory into spending so much money on them.

If electronic communication can ruffle the well-oiled feathers of the communist/IOC apparat, if brave Chinese can defy those who oppress them in the name of world harmony and if journalists can break loose from their freebies and do a proper job, then the decision to go to China might be vindicated. Soft power will have scored a win. We might hear less of the thesis that you can buy off freedom with bread and a $40bn circus.

These are big ifs, but by no means impossible. Whether it needed so much money and effort to reveal the true nature of the Beijing regime to the wider world I cannot say. That question is still open. But it makes me wonder what murky side of Britain may be exposed in the same glare in 2012.

Church, State and History

By Masha Lipman, editor of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Pro et Contra journal who writes a monthly column for The Post (THE WASHINGTON POST, 24/07/08):

The Russian Orthodox Church called on government authorities this month to condemn the Soviet communist regime. It’s odd that the church should think about this now: It’s been two decades since Mikhail Gorbachev initiated an avalanche of public disclosures about the horrors of the gulag and the masterminds of the bloody communist dictatorship — Lenin, Stalin, their accomplices and their followers.

That national journey into history was followed by the collapse of communism and then the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, evolved as a passionate anti-communist and banished the rule of fear and repression that had plagued the nation for seven decades. In the following years, the government and public organizations sought to restore the historical record.

But Russia’s next president, Vladimir Putin, distanced himself from his predecessor’s outlook. During his presidency, anti-communism was strongly played down. Some communist symbols, including Stalin’s national anthem, were brought back, and references to Stalin’s crimes all but disappeared from official discourse. Government rhetoric promoting Russia as a strong state and warning of a hostile Western world seeking to harm the country boosted admiration for Stalin, which never quite died out during the post-communist years, and a general nostalgia for Soviet times.

The church’s anti-communist initiative may serve the interests of the Russian leadership, which appears to look for ways to denounce communism while avoiding raising questions about today’s regime and its association with the communist past.

The interest in a denunciation of communism may have to do with appeals by former Soviet states for an international condemnation of the massacres and other crimes committed on their territories by the Soviet regime. Ukraine, for instance, seeks to hold Russia responsible for the mass famine of its peasants during Stalin’s collectivization. Russian officials may be enraged, but they’re not in a position to say the death toll estimate is false, not least since Russian peasants fell victim to the same villainy. So the trick for Russia would be to admit crimes but not to take the blame for them, lest Ukraine or other nations seek compensation.

The church, the state’s traditional ally, is an appropriate candidate for this mission. Because of its notorious collaboration with the Soviet regime, it has its own reason not to go too deep in denouncing communism. In several statements over the past couple of weeks, a church spokesman urged the government, in very general terms, to honor the memory of victims; to change the names of cities and streets associated with prominent communist figures of the past; to remove “statues of bloody leaders from central squares”; and more. This “de-communization lite” made no mention of Stalin or other perpetrators of the Great Terror, or of the monstrous state security forces that tortured and executed millions on the orders of the Communist Party.

The church’s call for de-communization helps the state further marginalize the public effort led by Memorial, the Russian human rights group that, since the late 1980s, has researched and published information on communist crimes. Unlike the Russian Orthodox Church, Memorial wouldn’t keep denunciations of communism within “reasonable limits.” Little wonder that the church’s anti-communist campaign conveys the impression that the church is the only organization concerned with confronting communist horrors.

Putin’s Kremlin consistently sought to sideline organizations that wouldn’t compromise their autonomy and that pursued agendas that did not conform with the official line. Lately, Memorial may have raised more concerns: As Memorial’s board chairman, Arseny Roginsky, told me, public support for his organization has increased. Backing anti-Stalin initiatives, he explains, may be seen as a mild form of opposition by people who regard overt political activity as risky and pointless. For example, construction of a national memorial to gulag victims is again the subject of public discussion. Gorbachev and other prominent public figures are taking an active role. And Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper that Gorbachev co-owns, has published a series this year devoted to the victims of and participants in the Great Terror.

Interest in the dark side of Soviet history is modest now compared with the nationwide yearning in the late 1980s for the truth about the Soviet regime’s crimes. But it may be enough to make the Kremlin want to preempt or control such interest. If its plan is indeed to enlist the church in a mild anti-communist campaign while marginalizing Memorial, the government has abundant power and resources to do so. Of course, even a limited condemnation of Soviet communism is better than nothing, but these political half-measures cannot supersede a national effort to come to terms with Russia’s history.

The Face of Evil

By Richard Holbrooke, the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Agreement who writes a monthly column for The Post (THE WASHINGTON POST, 23/07/08):

Standing with Slobodan Milosevic on the veranda of a government hunting lodge outside Belgrade, I saw two men in the distance. They got out of their twin Mercedeses and, in the fading light, started toward us. I felt a jolt go through my body; they were unmistakable. Ratko Mladic in combat fatigues, stocky, walking as though through a muddy field; and Radovan Karadzic, taller, wearing a suit, with his wild, but carefully coiffed, shock of white hair.

The capture of Karadzic on Monday took me back to a long night of confrontation, drama and negotiations almost 13 years ago — the only time I ever met him. It was 5 p.m. on Sept. 13, 1995, the height of the war in Bosnia. Finally, after years of weak Western and U.N. response to Serb aggression and ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats in Bosnia, U.S.-led NATO bombing had put the Serbs on the defensive. Our small diplomatic negotiating team — which included then-Lt. Gen. Wesley K. Clark and Christopher Hill (now the senior U.S. envoy to North Korea) — was in Belgrade for the fifth time, trying to end a war that had already taken the lives of nearly 300,000 people.

These three men — Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic — were the primary reason for that war. Mladic and Karadzic had already been indicted as war criminals by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. (Milosevic was not to be indicted until 1999.) As leaders of the breakaway Bosnian Serb movement, they had met with many Western luminaries, including Jimmy Carter.

But, in a change of strategy, the negotiating team had decided to marginalize Karadzic and Mladic and to force Milosevic, as the senior Serb in the region, to take responsibility for the war and the negotiations we hoped would end it. Now Milosevic wanted to bring the two men back into the discussions, probably to take some of the pressure off himself.

We had anticipated this moment and agreed in advance that, while we would never ask to meet with Karadzic and Mladic, if Milosevic offered such a meeting, we would accept — but only once, and only under strict guidelines that would require Milosevic to be responsible for their behavior.

I had told each member of our negotiating team to decide for himself or herself whether to shake hands with the mass murderers. I hated these men for what they had done. Their crimes included, indirectly, the deaths of three of our colleagues — Bob Frasure, Joe Kruzel and Nelson Drew, who had died when the armored personnel carrier they were in plunged down a ravine as we attempted to reach Sarajevo by the only route available, a dangerous dirt road that went through sniper-filled, Serbian-controlled territory.

I did not shake hands, although both Karadzic and Mladic tried to. Some of our team did; others did not. Mladic, not Karadzic, was the dominant figure that evening. He engaged in staring contests with some of our team as we sat across the table. Karadzic was silent at first. He had a large face with heavy jowls, a soft chin and surprisingly gentle eyes. Then, when he heard our demand that the siege of Sarajevo be lifted immediately, he exploded. Rising from the table, the American-educated Karadzic raged in passable English about the “humiliations” his people were suffering. I reminded Milosevic that he had promised that this sort of harangue would not occur. Karadzic responded emotionally that he would call former president Carter, with whom he said he was in touch, and started to leave the table. For the only time that long night, I addressed Karadzic directly, telling him that we worked only for President Bill Clinton and that he could call President Carter if he wished but that we would leave and that the bombing would intensify. Milosevic said something to Karadzic in Serbian; he sat down again, and the meeting got down to business.

After 10 hours, we reached an agreement to lift the siege, after more than three years of war. The next day, we finally were able to fly into the reopened airfield in Sarajevo. The indomitable city was already beginning to come back to life. Two months later the war would end at Dayton, never to resume.

But while the Dayton agreement gave NATO the authority to capture Karadzic and Mladic, an arrest didn’t occur for nearly 13 years. Finally, one of these dreadful murderers has begun the trip to The Hague. It is imperative that Mladic follow Karadzic on this one-way journey.

His capture is all the more important because it was accomplished by Serbian authorities. Serbian President Boris Tadic deserves great credit for this action, especially since his good friend Zoran Djindjic, then prime minister of Serbia, was assassinated in 2003 as a direct result of his courage in arresting Milosevic and sending him to The Hague in 2001. Karadzic’s arrest is no mere historical footnote; it removes from the scene a man who was still undermining peace and progress in the Balkans and whose enthusiastic advocacy of ethnic cleansing merits a special place in history. It also moves Serbia closer to European Union membership.

Karadzic’s capture is another reminder of the value of war crimes tribunals. Even though 12 years-plus is an inexcusably long time, the war crimes indictment kept Karadzic on the run and prevented him from resurfacing. In far-away Khartoum, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was indicted last week by the International Criminal Court, should be paying close attention.

Forget the myth-making. Obama is just what the Middle East needs

By Jonathan Freedland (THE GUARDIAN, 23/07/08):

It’s lucky Barack Obama has people to carry his bags these days, because when he arrived in Israel last night he brought with him a whole lot of baggage. Most of it was packed with negative associations that owe more to urban myth than reality, but that combined to make the Democratic candidate an object of suspicion from the earliest days of his campaign, first among American Jews and then in Israel. The mix of facts, lies and hybrids of the two is now wearily familiar: Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim; he was educated in a madrasa; he has terrorist friends; his former pastor is an Israel-hater and admirer of the anti-Jewish Louis Farrakhan; he was against the war on Iraq, wants to talk to Iran - and will therefore fall to his knees to appease Israel’s enemies.

The Obama camp has worked hard to dump all this cargo, but it has been stubborn to shift. Opinion polls show that US Jewry’s traditional three-to-one backing for the Democrats remains intact, with most supporting Obama. But while the Illinois senator can look forward to a euphoric response in Berlin tomorrow night, and in London and Paris thereafter, Israel is one of the few places where he faces a hostile, or at least uncertain, public. Recent polls have Israelis backing John McCain over Obama, just as they preferred Hillary Clinton a few months back.

The people answering those surveys may well have made up their minds some 18 months ago, when the novice senator told a handful of Iowa voters that “No one is suffering more than the Palestinians”. That single line crystallised the view that Obama, who had once dined with the late Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said, would be chilly to Israel were he ever to reach the White House.

The result is that the Israel-Palestine leg of Obama’s current world tour will be the trickiest, placing him under the closest scrutiny. He will be watched not only by Israelis and Arabs in the region, but by their cheerleaders back home in the US, looking for any misstep, any sign of a new tilt towards one side or the other.

Not that friends of the Palestinians have high hopes for true evenhandedness. They have seen the way Obama has sought to dismantle that earlier image of himself by swearing his granite support for Israel. With some ingenuity, he even recast the soundbite that had got him in such trouble, declaring: “Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognise Israel.”

So a second position has arisen, which holds that, far from ushering in a new approach - one that would see Washington willing to lean on Israel - a President Obama would bend over backwards to prove his pro-Israel credentials. There was no clearer illustration than the speech he gave to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last month, the morning after he had bagged the Democratic nomination. He hymned his admiration for and belief in the Jewish state. He declared: “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel.” And then, though his audience was already on its feet applauding, fully satisfied, he added: “And it must remain undivided.”

With those extra five words, Obama - buddy of Edward Said and bearer of an Arabic middle name - had put himself to the right of the Israeli government. Ever since the failed Camp David talks of 2000, it has been mainstream Israeli thinking that Jerusalem would have to serve as the capital of both Israel and an eventual Palestinian state. Negotiations currently under way between the two sides doubtless take that as read. Yet here was a candidate for president forbidding any such compromise.

Predictably, and in the face of Palestinian outrage, Obama had to row back from the remark, thereby irritating the very pro-Israel forces he had been so eager to please. The end result was to delight the McCain team - who insisted again yesterday that Obama is “frighteningly inexperienced” and woefully naive - but also to confirm the worst fears of the most extreme elements in both the pro-Israel and pro-Palestine camps. It was the Israel-pandering hawk who made the Jerusalem promise - and the Arab-loving appeaser who withdrew it.

Which one of these men is the real Barack Obama? The answer is neither. For one thing, both figures were always holograms, projections from fevered, partisan imaginations. Sure, Obama had expressed sympathy for the Palestinians - but so, if not often, has George W Bush. It didn’t, and doesn’t, make the senator a card-carrying member of Hamas.

Nor do his recent efforts to assure Israel of his support, which will doubtless grow yet more poetic and effusive today, make Obama the soul brother of Binyamin Netanyahu. They are, let’s be clear, part of a broader effort by Obama to tack to the centre, in the time-honoured fashion of all nominees emerging from the internal battle of party primaries. If he has a more centrist position on the Middle East, that’s only because he also has a more centrist position on gun control and corporate taxation.

The less lurid reality is that Obama is a down-the-line US Democrat - and firm support for Israel comes with that territory. On that simple metric, there will be no change. But that does not leave him indistinguishable from McCain. On the contrary, clear differences are there (chiefly on talking to Iran) - and most point in a direction that should be welcomed by those who yearn for Middle East peace.

First, Obama will today show a basic respect for the Palestinians that somehow eluded his Republican opponent: the Democrat will visit Ramallah, which McCain skipped when he came to the region in March. Second, Obama is honest enough to admit that the Israel-Palestine conflict does at least contribute to instability in the region, while McCain sees no source of trouble except “radical Islamic terrorism”.

Above all, Obama promises to do, once more, the work that a US administration alone can do - engaging hands-on, directly and every day, in shepherding the two sides through negotiations and towards peace. Bill Clinton toiled in this way until his last hours in office; Bush, by contrast, steered well clear of the whole messy business until last autumn, when he panicked that he might have no other legacy to point to. Obama has faulted both Clinton and Bush for getting stuck in too late. Yesterday, in Amman, he vowed to roll up his sleeves, “from the minute I’m sworn into office”.

But Obama is sending a signal more powerful than mere words. Accompanying him on this trip is Dennis Ross, the veteran mediator who served both Clinton and Bush’s father. Ross has his critics, but no one doubts his knowledge or experience. “I see him as the diplomatic equivalent of Michael Jordan working the Middle East,” says David Makovsky, a colleague of Ross’s at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which is neutral in all elections. “He has the skill and the finesse.”

With Ross at his side, Obama is signalling that we should forget the myth-making: an Obama presidency will be about active, engaged diplomacy, between Israelis and Palestinians, between Israel and Syria, and beyond. And if anyone doubts that this is what the world desperately needs after the past seven and a half years, then they haven’t been paying attention.

Harvest the Sun — From Space

By O. Glenn Smith, a former manager of science and applications experiments for the International Space Station at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 22/07/08):

As we face $4.50 a gallon gas, we also know that alternative energy sources — coal, oil shale, ethanol, wind and ground-based solar — are either of limited potential, very expensive, require huge energy storage systems or harm the environment. There is, however, one potential future energy source that is environmentally friendly, has essentially unlimited potential and can be cost competitive with any renewable source: space solar power.

Science fiction? Actually, no — the technology already exists. A space solar power system would involve building large solar energy collectors in orbit around the Earth. These panels would collect far more energy than land-based units, which are hampered by weather, low angles of the sun in northern climes and, of course, the darkness of night.

Once collected, the solar energy would be safely beamed to Earth via wireless radio transmission, where it would be received by antennas near cities and other places where large amounts of power are used. The received energy would then be converted to electric power for distribution over the existing grid. Government scientists have projected that the cost of electric power generation from such a system could be as low as 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is within the range of what consumers pay now.

In terms of cost effectiveness, the two stumbling blocks for space solar power have been the expense of launching the collectors and the efficiency of their solar cells. Fortunately, the recent development of thinner, lighter and much higher efficiency solar cells promises to make sending them into space less expensive and return of energy much greater.

Much of the progress has come in the private sector. Companies like Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences, working in conjunction with NASA’s public-private Commercial Orbital Transportation Services initiative, have been developing the capacity for very low cost launchings to the International Space Station. This same technology could be adapted to sending up a solar power satellite system.

Still, because building the first operational space solar power system will be very costly, a practical first step would be to conduct a test using the International Space Station as a “construction shack” to house the astronauts and equipment. The station’s existing solar panels could be used for the demonstration project, and its robotic manipulator arms could assemble the large transmitting antenna. While the station’s location in orbit would permit only intermittent transmission of power back to Earth, a successful test would serve as what scientists call “proof of concept.”

Over the past 15 years, Americans have invested more than $100 billion, directly and indirectly, on the space station and supporting shuttle flights. With an energy crisis deepening, it’s time to begin to develop a huge return on that investment. (And for those who worry that science would lose out to economics, there’s no reason that work on space solar power couldn’t go hand in hand with work toward a manned mission to Mars, advanced propulsion systems and other priorities of the space station.)

In fact, in a time of some skepticism about the utility of our space program, NASA should realize that the American public would be inspired by our astronauts working in space to meet critical energy needs here on Earth.