Author Archives: P O Neill

About P O Neill

is Irish and lives in America.

The road to peace in the Caucasus runs through … Rome?

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It’s no surprise that George Bush is sending Dick Cheney to the Black Sea region next week.  If media accounts are to be believed, and they are plausible, the Cheney faction in the administration had long pushed for a much harder anti-Russian line and may still be advocating more aggressive moves in the coming weeks.  But here is Cheney’s official itinerary —

The Vice President will meet with President Aliyev of Azerbaijan, President Saakashvili of Georgia, President Yushchenko of Ukraine, and President Napolitano and Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy, as well as senior officials of their respective governments. In addition to meetings with foreign leaders, the Vice President will attend and address the Ambrosetti forum entitled, “Intelligence on the World, Europe and Italy” in Lake Como, Italy.

The forum is apparently an Italian-centric mini-Davos but it’s perhaps of interest that no other western European leader is deemed worthy of the Cheney pop-in despite the continuing gravity of the situation.  Or because of the continuing gravity?   One wonders if a new parallel strategic track on Georgia is being opened via Silvio while the main channel continues with Condi’s interactions with France.

Hamlet without the Prince

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In Crawford Texas today for a meeting about the Georgian crisis at George Bush’s home, here’s Condoleezza Rice yet again using an analogy of the Georgian situation with the USSR period —

Now, I think the behavior recently suggests that perhaps Russia has not taken that route [international integration], and either that they have not taken that route or that they would like to have it both ways — that is, that you behave in a 1968 way toward your small neighbors by invading them and, at the same time, you continue to integrate into the political and diplomatic and economic and security structures of the international community. And I think the fact is, you can’t have it both ways.

Perhaps odd here is the equation Russia=USSR and an associated absence of any role for Communism (as it was implemented) in explaining behaviour within the Soviet bloc. It’s an intellectual gap that might escape the notice of politicians but could draw fire from the sort of academic who had written articles with titles like “The Party, the Military, and Decision Authority in the Soviet Union”. And who might such an academic be? Well, an article with that title appeared in World Politics in 1987 under the authorship of a certain C. Rice. The lunacy of academic copyright restrictions makes it impossible to find out more about this intriguing thesis, which apparently is that the Communist party really matters for understanding military decisions from the USSR period. Hopefully a good Sovietologist is around to advise the White House of the problems with transposing that structure to the present situation.

Enough about the war. What do I think of the war?

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It was inevitable: exit stage left the images of death and destruction from Georgia on American television (especially the ones seen frequently on Russia Today), and enter the war’s implications for the Presidential election.  Specifically, this detailed statement from John McCain (with a brief preview from The Politico), showing his sense at vindication at his long-time anti-Russia stance (recall his repeated mockery of Bush’s claimed insights into Putin’s soul and his proposal to expel Russia from the G8).  His most radical proposal is for a NATO peacekeeping force for Georgia (although the phrasing is a little unclear about who would supply the forces) along with NATO membership for Georgia.  If you were trying to find a way to irritate the Russians even more (and understanding this war surely requires some ability to see things from their side), McCain has hit the jackpot.  Whether he’s showing much of his supposed foreign policy nous is another story entirely.

Globalisation meets Bulgaria

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Here’s another little USA extradition headache for an eastern European country, but unlike the Serbian case where it’s a bar fight that turned out very badly, this one is a tiny little slice of the global nature of the current financial crisis.  At issue is the whereabouts of Bulgarian-born Julian Tzolov, whom federal prosecutors would very much like to talk to about his career as a broker at Credit Suisse selling auction rate securities (asset-backed bonds with frequent yield resets) to now aggrieved clients.  The clients apparently thought they were buying bonds backed by student loans but were in fact buying dodgy mortgages, an impression due it seems to the wheeze of adding the description “student loan” to whatever the asset actually was. 

Whatever the outcome, Tzolov provides a good example of why America can seem like an appealing place: he went from arriving in the US in the early 1990s with not much more than high school graduation to his name, to getting a degree in finance (with a bankruptcy in there somewhere), to jetting to Israel to sell these securities to corporate investors.  He even managed what sounds like a trade-up to Morgan Stanley before the feds started sniffing around and his apartment emptied out.   Anyway, the point is that the US may have been the playground of the financial shenanigans, but everyone was getting involved. 

Amazingly, there is a US-Bulgaria extradition treaty all the way back to 1924, and the US Senate is supposed to ratify a new one very soon.  So there will likely be more about the case in the months ahead.

One more headache for Serbia

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The story is explained here.  Short version: 21 year old Miladin Kovacevic, recruited by Binghampton University in western New York state is alleged to have beaten a fellow student to a coma, along with 2 accomplices.  His passport was seized when he was bailed but the Serbian consulate in Manhattan issued him an emergency passport which allowed him to return home, from where the Serbian government says that he can’t be extradited.  However the government seems to acknowledge malpractice in the consulate.  There’s never a good time for a case like this but to have it hanging over the country’s seeming rapprochement with western countries is especially awkward.

The Irish Lisbon revote: in 9 months, 15 months, or never

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Nicolas Sarkozy is going to Dublin for a few hours on Monday.  Going by the Elysee website, his agenda for Barack Obama’s visit on Wednesday is far clearer than for his visit to Ireland.   On what is ostensibly a listening tour to understand the reasons for Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon treaty, the signals are already strong that he is there to urge a second referendum on the Treaty if Ireland wants to continue participate as an equal with the 26 other EU member states.  But the timing of the revote is tricky.  Here is the key answer given by him to the Irish Times (responses to written submitted questions) —

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Pushing the envelope

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It’s getting harder to attach much meaning to G8 theatrics.  After George Bush and Dmitry Medvedev did their smiles for the cameras, it’s been one hot button after another in the US-Russia relationship.  Condi Rice in Europe first to confirm the deal on an anti Photoshopped Iranian missile radar system in the Czech Republic and then on to Tblisi with very sympathetic noises to the Georgians over the tension with Russia via Abkhazia.  And today the White House announces —

The President will welcome President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of the Republic of Kosovo to the White House on July 21, 2008. The President looks forward to meeting with President Sejdiu and Prime Minister Thaci during their first visit to the United States as leaders of an independent Kosovo.

Leaving no doubt about the US willingness to pursue the implications of their recognition of Kosovo.   At what point do US-Russia relations head more in the direction of UK-Russia relations, where the ill-feeling is much more explicit?

Slovakia has a new currency

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Notwithstanding the Lisbon holdup, the European Union today confirmed the capacity of selected aspects of the project to move forward unhindered as the Commission and Council agreed on a January 2009 entry date of Slovakia to the eurozone.  The crown will convert to euros at 30.126 to 1 — which is the current rate, although the Slovak government had pushed for a higher value of the crown to get in one last monetary tightening to combat inflation before the monetary policy tools are gone.   It’s an awkward time to join as the euro could easily become the all-purpose scapegoat for rising inflation, although based on previous experience, Slovak consumers would be well-advised to watch the price conversions extremely closely.  Converting those big number crown prices to smaller number euro prices leaves scope for “rounding up” — a once-off price increase that would be coming on top of existing pressures from oil and food.   Nevertheless, Slovakia’s macroeconomic fundamentals look comfortable (especially compared to e.g. Hungary), leaving the country with an economic profile somewhat like Ireland used to have.   Nostalgia.

Lisbon ratification crisis escalates

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Day 1 of the French presidency of the European Council is off to a bad start.   It now seems that both the Czech Republic and Poland will have constitutional struggles over the treaty, with presidents who had been assumed to have mainly titular powers deciding to exercise their right not to sign approved legislation and therefore prevent ratification.    Also today, Nicolas Sarkozy postponed his visit to Ireland in a couple of weeks which was supposed to be part of the stocktaking of what went wrong.  Whether the postponement (with its unconvincing “heavy schedule” excuse) is a direct reaction to the Polish delay or simply a way of getting out an awkward trip is not clear — but the prospect of the trip with its undertones of pressure to ratify was galvanizing Lisbon opponents in Ireland. 

It’s interesting to recall that a leaked British memo from a few months ago revealed that the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs had always viewed the French presidency of the Council as a potential loose cannon in the ratification process, so perhaps some quiet advice was sent to the Elysee over the last few days along the same lines.  One other trend seems clear: there was an apparent Franco-German gambit that eastern European countries would be sympathetic to the argument that Lisbon is necessary to accommodate any further enlargement of the EU.  So far, they’re not buying.Â