Author Archives: Alex Harrowell

About Alex Harrowell

Alex Harrowell is a research analyst for a really large consulting firm on AI and semiconductors. His age is immaterial, especially as he can't be bothered to update this bio regularly. He's from Yorkshire, now an economic migrant in London. His specialist subjects are military history, Germany, the telecommunications industry, and networks of all kinds. He would like to point out that it's nothing personal. Writes the Yorkshire Ranter.

Nuclear Diplomacy – Not That Sort

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It’s become a routine part of any foreign trip President Sarkozy takes that he announces the sale of a nuclear power station. On his recent visit to the Middle East, for example, the two keynote announcements from his meetings with the leaders of the UAE involved a) the sale of a nuclear power station and b) the establishment of a French military base. We’ll come to the base later; first, the nuclear, as Harold MacMillan said. Not only that, Sarkozy went on to Saudi Arabia, where he offered them a couple of nuclear power stations. Qatar had also lined one up. He’d already sold a number of them to China, and offered the possibility of one at least to Libya.

Clearly, not only is Areva a major export earner, it’s also an important part of French foreign policy. When we say that Sarko “signed” a contract for a nuclear reactor, what we mean is of course that the agreement was held over so as to be announced when he showed up; this bit him on the backside when the Indians refused to play, arguing that boosting his image was no concern of theirs.

But I would suggest that nuclear technology, as with aircraft and arms sales and even branches of the Louvre, has been restored to the sort of foreign-policy place it held in the 1950s; impress a superpower and win a reactor. That kept going until even Kinshasa University got one; one hopes Sarko doesn’t go quite that far. In this, and many other things, Sarkozy is as neo-Gaullist as they come; this symbiosis of the state, technology, and policy is a core element.

Even if his report on economic growth includes no less than 314 (told you he was like Chirac with too much caffeine) individual propositions, it appears to consist of the creation of some new educational institutions, heavy spending on R&D, pious vows about reducing labour costs, and a nod to Danish social policy. Note that the president of Areva, Anne Lauvergeon, was consulted.

Over New Year, the SNCF brought a gaggle of trains into the Grand Palais for their anniversary celebrations; the centrepiece of this Gaullist techfest was the video of the world speed record set in the spring. A large crowd of sober citizens gathered, as if to view the latest howitzer sometime in the 1910s. Sometimes, progress exists; this is something the French state understands.

So does realpolitik, though; the backstory of the UAE base is that the emirates have been trying to reduce their dependence on the US for some time, especially Abu Dhabi (which dominates the military). As well as asking the Louvre to open a branch, they bought Mirage 2000 aircraft, and now they want an EPR reactor and a French military presence.

A Big Hand for Slovenia!

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Liberation operates a clutch of good blogs; as well as AFOE Satin Pajama nominee Jean Quatremer’s Coulisses de Bruxelles, which everyone knows, there’s also an absolutely cracking blog on French and European national security issues.

They point out here that Slovenia, which took over as holder of the EU presidency on the 1st of January, is militarily the tiniest of states, with a total of 7,349 men in arms, one ship, a dozen Pilatus turboprop planes and 4 Cougar helicopters. It’s got to be one of the few good points about the rotating presidency that it is unrivalled in its ability to distribute power on the international stage to states this small and otherwise unknown.

On the other hand, though, as Secret Defense also points out, the EU is still struggling to put together the promised peacekeeping mission to Chad. The problems are essentially that the member states are not forking out to provide enough support helicopters and tactical transport aircraft to support the force in part of the world with essentially no infrastructure. There is not really a shortage of choppers; even Slovenia has four, right? However, they are one of those assets which is always in short supply; national armies are very unwilling to part with them.

The UK, meanwhile, is faced with a highly helivorous commitment in Afghanistan which has led it to buy Merlins from Denmark and Portugal in order to form another Naval helicopter squadron. It’s hard to see a specifically European solution to this; it certainly seems sensible that countries like Slovenia might contribute cash (as they will soon be a net contributor) rather than maintain a micro-air force, but this is always going to be a hard sell. There’s also an argument that dispersing these capabilities among smaller states means they will be more available for EU tasks; Austria isn’t likely to invade Iraq. What say the comments?

And you thought I was joking…

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Ha. You thought this was an exercise in strategic trolling. Think again; the French Navy’s helicopter carrier Jeanne d’Arc pulled into New York on the 28th for a port call, and to deliver a consignment of books for schools in New Orleans. (French ones, naturally.) Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani’s primary campaign took a misstep when he badly misjudged his core constituency…

«Un sondage montre que 67 % des Américains pensent que le pays est sur la mauvaise voie…», annonce Rudolph Giuliani à une centaine de supporteurs réunis dans un petit restaurant de Hampton, dans le New Hampshire. Costume noir rayé, cravate rouge, l’ex-maire de New York en campagne pour la Maison Blanche balaie d’un regard contrarié la foule trop éparse. «Connaissez-vous un autre pays qui soit plus mal en point que ça ?» «La France !» lance un militant arborant un macaron «Rudy for president», aussitôt approuvé par l’assistance. «Pas du tout !» bondit Giuliani. «Nicolas Sarkozy a écrit un livre excellent sur son programme, qu’il met en œuvre en ce moment», rétorque-t-il à son auditoire un peu confondu.

I’m not sure which is funnier – Giuliani trying to push France as an example to his war-crazed freedom fries base (this is the guy who hired Dan Senor and Norman Podhoretz, mark) or the notion that Sarko is still new, revolutionary or exciting.

I spent enough time on this blog trying to dispel the myth of “Sarkozy, France’s Margaret Thatcher” that iit’s wearying to repeat any of it; but essentially all the media beyond France, and much of it within France, got him completely, embarrassingly wrong. Rather than offering a dramatic ideological break, Sarko is much better understood as a Blair or Berlusconi figure; heavily reliant on a dominant media owner (his own media for Berlusconi; Murdoch’s for Blair; Lagardere and the wave of late-Chirac appointments at France Televisions for Sarkozy), wrapping a fundamentally conservative message in the cult of newness and business style. Security, property prices, and TV.

It’s like Chirac with more caffeine. This is unlikely to change much; the long-awaited ruck with the Left over special pension provisions has resulted in the issue being punted to tripartite negotiations with business and the unions, and the flagship economic policy (introducing mortgage tax relief) was derailed by the courts. Although it’s still theoretically on the agenda, nobody is now expecting a property boom any time soon.

What Sarko is probably worrying about is more that his fiscal boost came before the credit crisis; €15bn of tax cuts that fell precisely the wrong side of the cycle.

The UK’s Toxic Discourse; Miliband and Euro-Defence

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Richard Corbett MEP points to a bizarre feature of British debate on Europe; there is absolutely no certainty as to how anything will be reported or received. David Miliband recently gave a speech at the College of Europe in Bruges in which he stated that it was undesirable that the EU states’ deployable armed forces amounted to less than 100,000 men out of something like two million under arms in total.

(It’s a pity he still won’t answer the damn questions about Iraqi employees.)

The Daily Express, reliably insane under the ownership of porn king Richard Desmond, claimed he had a “project for the Islamification of Europe”. This is because he thinks the single market should eventually include North Africa; apparently the Express has forgotten that it demanded the UK should impose restrictions on the movement of labour, like France and Germany did, when Poland joined the EU.

The Daily Mail thought he was planning a “new EU empire”. The Independent and sometimes the Guardian thought he was diminishing the EU; the Guardian also separately praised the speech, thus scooping the pot for consistency.

What is this accusation of “diminishing” the EU (which Nosemonkey also bought into) based on? Well, it’s not the EU’s defence policy he was criticising, more the fact there isn’t more of one. And the most quoted sentence was that “Europe will be less important in 2050 than it was in 1950” – everyone seems to have read this as Euro-bashing.

However, how could it possibly not be true, given that by then India, China, and probably Brazil will be major world powers? Unless you’re expecting the United States to collapse, the EU will be one among many powers; rather than one of the three world industrial bases Harry Truman spoke of in the 1940s.

Meanwhile, there is real progress being made; when HMS Illustrious does the Royal Navy’s next eastern deployment she may have Italian or Spanish Harrier AV8B aircraft aboard. Granted this tells us more about the ragged state of the British armed forces, but it’s a start; although what the Spanish government will make of the following proposal is anyone’s guess:

The Royal Navy continues to study the idea of making Gibraltar the home of one of the new aircraft carriers.

Plans for a carrier base have been in development for several years. The idea would make Gibraltar home to one of Britain’s two new aircraft carriers along with the support fleet that accompanies it.

The Transition is Over

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“Transition to democracy” was one of the European politics geek’s terms of art ever since 1989; there’s even an AFOE category devoted to transition and accession to the EU. According to Tim Garton Ash, one of his old dissident friends kept a large file of documents under the rubric “TD”; he suggested, wisely, that it ought to have been TC, for “Transition from Communism”. There’s even Transitions Online.

The transition is over. It’s now clear that even the aspiration for it in Russia is dead; the “administrative resources” are now aiming for a one-party Duma. TOL itself is more optimistic; they reckon there is a chance for a significant Communist revival, which would at least mean the opposition was a real, existing political party. However, who can do anything but laugh at the thought of e-voting in Russia? E-voting everywhere else in the world has been bad enough, and its well-publicised fiascos will deaden any criticism of Russia’s version.

It’s the end of an era. Earlier this week, I watched a BBC documentary about the shutdown of the BBC World Service’s programmes in Central and Eastern Europe; a whole microculture of Polish and Bulgarian broadcasters in West London signing off. They, of course, can claim that it’s mission accomplished, especially as the Kazcynski Kidz lost the elections.

The next point to watch here is the fate of the OSCE, and specifically its office of democratic institutions and human rights; Putin has promised to “reform” it. (As you know, Bob, AFOE hates the word “reform”.) It should be pretty clear what “reform” will consist of; a dictators’ club veto on publishing anything critical. This is something that badly wants watching, as I doubt there is much political will in the West to keep it going.

If we want to take the EU as a magnet for democracy, peace, and other good stuff – basic norms of civilised behaviour – ODIHR needs either support, or else to be transferred into the competence of the European Union, safe from post-Soviet vetoes or US fiddling.

Cartoons? I see no cartoons!

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OK, so Denmark’s conservatives are delighted; they won a snap election convincingly. But they are now faced with a probby; a new party has appeared on the scene, and they are considering the desirability of forming a coalition with it.

However, it’s headed by a Palestinian refugee; as the BBC says, a coalition with their far-right friends and this lot might be unstable. Well, yes; the New Alliance’s publicly declared aim is to oppose the DPP’s influence wherever it raises its head. The Guardian memorably described them as a damp squid, but I suspect they didn’t mean a sinisterly intelligent tentacled horror from the deep about to tear the political establishment’s head off.

But, well, another liberal party is much to be welcomed, and there’s something nice about the idea of joining the coalition in order to counterbalance it.

Unintended Consequences

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We can all probably agree that Italy’s fit of xenophobia towards Romanians is pretty bad, but it has had one positive consequence; ITS, the extreme-right/nationalist grouping in the European Parliament whose membership can be summed up as “if you want to make some minority unwelcome and you’re in the minority yourself, you’re welcome here”, has fallen apart after the Great Romania Party, one of its less hopelessly unsuccessful members, unsurprisingly walked out.

I say unsurprisingly because the leader of Italy’s “post-fascists”, Giancarlo Fini, has been going around calling his Romanian allies in ITS “animals”. There was always something fundamentally absurd about a group of parties dedicated to lionising their own nations and decrying others trying to cooperate internationally; it was just a matter of time.

Euroscepticism does not get you elected

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Jamie Kenny and Nosemonkey wonder why Labour is pro-EU. Enlarging on this post a little, I think it’s worth looking at some data. I suspect the data support that post. For example, despite all the bashing, a solid majority supports EU membership and has done consistently over time.

Further, the public does not worry very much about Europe; some 4 per cent according to a recent poll. However, this is historically low; in 1997 that figure stood at 43 per cent, and it was around 25 per cent during William Hague’s ferociously Eurosceptic 2001 election campaign.

But it’s not enough to say that the British simply don’t care, and that Euroscepticism is latent until activated by shouting sufficiently. 1997 was the election when John Major’s campaign ran huge posters of Tony Blair as a poodle on Helmut Kohl’s knee; and it wasn’t a great year for Eurosceptic Tories, was it? Of course there are confounding factors. Euroscepticism in 1997 involved either voting for the proto-UKIP Referendum party or a Conservative party as popular as nuclear waste; probably the issue was buried under the Labour landslide in places.

The principle, however, holds; nobody gets elected in Britain by being Eurosceptic. There are no votes in it; in a sense, Euroscepticism is a luxury. If you are actually struggling for office, you can’t be a true believer in it because you’ll have to take responsibility for it, and anyway, you have more productive things to do; if you have a safe Conservative seat, though, you are set for life and therefore free to spout any old tripe. The costs are minimal, and the benefits in terms of social approval in the kind of circles safe Tory MPs respect, considerable.

The same goes for the Eurosceptic backers, a small group of rich property tycoons (mostly – there are notably few industrialists) who amuse themselves by throwing money at politicians they like. As Winston Churchill said about small countries who insisted on proliferating battleships before the first world war, it is sport to them, it is death to us.

Turkey: Kurds Voting For Christmas?

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Despite having read mountains (appropriately) of reporting on the Turkish-Kurdish-Iraqi crisis, I haven’t read anyone who has tried to answer the big question – why do the PKK seem to be doing everything possible to provoke the Turks into invading Iraq after them?

You’d think this was a pretty vital issue; who wants to be blitzed, after all? Fortunately, Handelsblatt does journalism; Gerd Hoehler reviews the history of the Kurdish movement and concludes that the PKK does indeed want Turkey to hit me as hard as you can. Why? It would set Turkey’s relations with essentially everyone in a state of chaos, it would probably upend the Turkish economy, and it would outrage the Turkish Kurds, to say nothing of all the others.

But it probably wouldn’t achieve strategic-level damage to the PKK; however, Turkey’s slow progress towards the EU and its (much faster) economic development have threatened to do so. The AK got an absolute majority of votes in most of Kurdistan at the last elections. So, the PKK needs an explosion; something that would reverse EU integration, wreck the economy, and whip everyone into a frenzy of rage.

Fortunately, as when this happened in 2003 and 2005, the Turkish government has been very good at moving towards war very slowly indeed and with immense ceremony; thus allowing the pressure to build for a resolution without an actual war. Hoehler, however, reports on a worrying degree of war fever – there’s been a surge of volunteers for the Turkish army, 4,200 in a week, and people are stopping cars on the highway with guns to make the drivers join in singing war songs. That has a nasty sound of August, 1914 about it; this would not be a good moment for losing control.

Is High Euroscepticism running down?

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Has the British tabloid press reached peak rant? Like “peak oil”. The Sun this week claimed that “the Prime Minister turned the Lisbon banquet into a sordid Last Supper for Britain as an independent sovereign country”. Whoo! Some supper. More than ever before, the entire tone of the debate about Europe in the UK seems deranged. But this time out, it also seems to be increasingly recognised that this is so.

In a sense, the whole row has become conventionalised to a degree where it is a mere set of gestures. I recall the debates about the Euro in the late 90s and early 00s, and on the various treaties of the same period, to say nothing of the Maastricht ratification, the daddy of them all. This has had none of the same fire, despite the Sun reaching new heights of linguistic escalation and new depths of journalistic debasement. According to them, the treaty will create a mixed-manned European army and give the European Union (whether the commission or whoever is left unstated) Britain’s seat on the UN Security Council.

Weirdly, no-one ever says what will become of France’s UNSC seat.

The interesting thing, however, is that it’s as if all sides agree that a formal Euro-row is necessary, quite independently of its content. Both the British government, and to quite a large measure the opposition, agree with most of the treaty and the constitution before it. Introducing the national parliaments as a counter-centralising force is welcome to them. So is ending the ridiculous position of a High Representative who formulates and represents EU foreign policy but who leaves the means of carrying it out to an External Affairs Commissioner. Qualified-majority voting on more administrative issues is welcome to the government, and probably welcome to the Conservatives if they were honest about it. Fixing the voting system within the institutions is welcome to everyone. Eurosceptics can hardly oppose the clauses that make the arrangements for a state to quit the Union, can they?

But despite the fact that the government got what it wanted, we have to have these “red lines”; the Tories claim they are spurious. Indeed they are – but they are only there because the Tories badgered the government to have them!

It’s not even as if there is a mighty Eurosceptic groundswell of opinion. The treaty is not popular, but the principle of EU membership commands a good majority – 56 per cent in favour and 38 per cent against. Assuming no great conversion, which is fair enough, you’d expect the don’t knows to break evenly – which suggests that a new referendum would probably replicate the result of 1975. Even so, I find it hard to agree with Clive; having a referendum on EU membership feels too much like having a referendum on dihydrogen monoxide.

But of course that isn’t good enough. One of the depressing things about the Blair years was that what little campaign power the European cause had in Britain was allowed to fall apart.