Tag Archives: Europe and the world

The Dutch are going to Afghanistan

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Most of you will have read the news by now, but I need to mention this to complete my earlier post The battle of Wobbly Knee: Dutch troops in Afghanistan. Dutch Parliament voted yesterday, with a substantial majority, to send some 1,200 more troops to Afghanistan. More precisely to the dangerous province of Uruzgan. Only D66, the SP (Socialist Party) and GroenLinks (Green leftist party) voted against, but D66 has already declared it will back the troops regardless. Good on them.

Some 7,500 soldiers will be prepared for reconstruction and stabilisation activities under the umbrella of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force). The first extra troops will be sent in August and the whole operation is slated to be in effect for two years. In the foreign press, on the BBC News site for instance, the extra number of Dutch soldiers to be stationed in Afghanistan is often estimated at 1,400 troops. So far the Dutch press have only mentioned 1,200. To recapitulate: the Dutch ISAF contingent in Afghanistan will be enlarged by 1,200 soldiers coming from a rotating pool of 7,500 (source: the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf). To be continued, for sure.

UPDATE: Salient detail: fraction leader for Democrats 66, Boris Dittrich, just resigned over the Afghanistan debate. Lousewies van der Laan will replace him. Dittrich took responsibility for, and I quote, “political-tactical mistakes”. One of those mistakes was a, later recanted, threat by D66 to let the Dutch Cabinet “fall” if troops were sent to Afghanistan. The reason behind all this manoeuvring? To persuade coalition partner PvdA (Dutch labour party) to vote against. As we know now, that tactic did not work.

Danish Pastry Cooking?

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As the Quartet of would-be Mideast peacemakers meets in huddled session, and as Angela Merkel does some plain talking, another closely related issue is going the rounds today (and this, and this):

“In a demonstration on the West Bank, members of Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatened Danes in the area and told them to leave immediately, the Danish news agency Ritzau reported on Sunday. The demonstrators burned the Danish flag and called on the Palestinian authorities to cut diplomatic ties with Denmark, Ritzau said.”

“Libya has said it is closing its embassy in Denmark in protest against a series of caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.”

“A roadside bomb targeted a joint Danish-Iraqi military patrol near the southern city of Basra on Monday — the first attack on Danish troops since protests against a Danish newspaper for publishing widely criticized caricatures of Islam’s prophet.”

Danish Blogger Claus Vistessen has the story as it is seen from inside Denmark:

Four months ago the Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten posted 12 drawings of the muslim prophet depicting him as they saw him but with a clear provocative bordering to tactless zeal … the most notable drawing was one showing Muhammed, with a turban containing a large bomb.

The cartoons resulted in immediate protests and demonstrations from Muslims in Denmark, but to sum it all up; two very important things happened as a result of the drawings.
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They Started With The Bus Drivers….

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I don’t intend to make this a long post. I think we’ve already explored most of the issues, (and here, and here), but I do feel we need to be vigilant about what is happening on a day to day basis in Iran. This story seems to confirm the general picture I’d been forming:

Clashes erupted between Iran’s State Security Forces and bus drivers and union activists in the Iranian capital Tehran on Saturday after authorities arrested activists in an attempt to prevent a demonstration that had been planned for the day, local residents told Iran Focus.

Agents of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), Iran’s notorious secret police, raided the homes of bus drivers in Tehran in the early hours of the morning, arresting hundreds of bus union activists and in some cases their relatives as well, one resident reported.

Those arrested have been taken to unknown locations.

This is an extremely repressive administration, which seems to be bent on systematically tightening its grip and eliminating all serious opposition. If you want a run-down on the various opinions about what to do about the situation, you could do worse than start here.

Troglodytes Making Waves

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A couple of weeks ago I posted here about how a senior officer in the Spanish army – Lt. Gen. Jose Mena Aguado – had been placed under house arrest for insinuating that the Spanish military might have a responsibility to intervene in defence of the Spanish Constitution if the new Catalan Statute of Autonomy went forward in its present form. Well yesterday news of this seems to have reached the New York Times. Describing the officers in question as troglodytes, the NYT has especially harsh words for the opposition Partido Popular, whose leaders, it should be remembered, described Aguado’s statement as ‘logical’ in the context of what was being proposed:

The response of the center-left government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has been appropriately firm, including the dismissal and arrest of one of the culprits, a senior army general. Regrettably, the center-right Popular Party, the main opposition group, seems more interested in making excuses for the officers than in defending the democratic order in which it has a vital stake.

“Spanish society, Spanish politicians and, for the most part, Spanish military officers have come a long way from that (the Franco) era, moderating their views and deepening their commitment to democratic give-and-take. But the Popular Party has had a hard time getting over its electoral defeat nearly two years ago, days after the terrorist bombings of commuter trains in Madrid. It has never really accepted the democratic legitimacy of that vote. It is time for the Popular Party to move ahead. Spanish democracy needs and deserves vigorous bipartisan support.”

The NYT does arrive rather late on the scene. The Economist had this piece on the 12th January, and the FT this one on the 10th January. Meanwhile, the New York Times story is itself making waves here. The Basque news agency EITB24 covers it here. And all of which on the day in which the Partido Popular has begun collecting signatures for a referendum (in defence of the constitution and) against the the new Statute, a referendum which would itself be, well, guess what, unconstitutional, and on which Josep Piqué, leader of the PP in Catalonia, had to be given a three hour talking-to to convince him not to resign from the party, since, again guess what, he thinks the latest version of the text isn’t at all bad!

A Brief Note…

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from our internal discussions. I recently remarked to Edward that for much of the US government’s foreign policy apparatus, Russia is still Not Europe. This view is a legacy (still) of the Cold War period in which most of the decision-makers and working-level staff were trained and gained experience. It shapes basic reflexes toward Europe and the post-Soviet space, and knowing the background may at some level help outsiders understand this or that about official US approaches. (There are of course many levels of complexity, not least Congressional politics, commercial interests and ethnically based politicking, but this is meant to be a brief note.)
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Chirac goes nuclear: addendum

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This post serves as a small addendum to Edward’s post Not Amused about Chirac’s threat to use nuclear weapons if necessary. This addendum will hopefully broaden and continue the discussion his statements generated. I won’t be talking about the possibility of nuking Iran or other rogue states here, that element has been covered extensively by Edward’s post, especially in the comments section.

As to Chirac’s nuclear threat, yesterday’s Ouest France suggested Chirac made the statement to reaffirm France’s position as a serious player after having lost credibility with the EU constitution referendum. After the non-vote several commentators suggested that France had been demoted to a second-degree country. From Ouest France:

Jacques Chirac entend ainsi montrer qu’il dispose encore d’un atout européen, alors que la France est l’un des deux pays membres responsables de la panne actuelle de l’Union. Au demeurant, plus que par des nécessités stratégiques, le discours de l’île Longue est dicté par la volonté d’un président affaibli d’exercer son autorité jusqu’au terme du quinquennat. En réaffirmant le seul pouvoir que personne ne peut lui ravir : la maîtrise du feu nucléaire.

Short summary/interpretation: Politically weakened Chirac is reminding himself and the French that they still have balls. He is also repositioning France as a first rate power in Europe.

Furthermore, he also used the threat to justify the costly maintenance of France’s nuclear arsenal. By stressing the overhaul of the arsenal, focussing on smaller weapons, he did away with the WMD threat as its sole raison d’être. Smaller nukes on submarines can target terrorists instead of complete nations, hence: ”We still need nukes, but different ones. We are adapting to new circumstances.” Or, if you will: “We can turn Tora Bora into a nuclear wasteland if we want to.”

Another possibly very important thing about Chirac’s speech:

Par ailleurs, le chef de l’Etat élargit la notion d’intérêts vitaux aux « approvisionnements stratégiques » et à la défense des pays alliés. La dépendance énergétique de l’Europe, révélée par la crise gazière entre la Russie et l’Ukraine, explique, pour une part, cette évolution.

France’s vital interests are being extended to include « strategic reserves » and the defence of allied countries. Europe’s energy dependency, as exemplified by the gas crisis between Russia and Ukraine can explain, at least partly, this development. Dear commenters, fire away!

Ukraine: The Tension Continues

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A state-of-friction seems to have gotten a grip on relations between Russia and Ukraine, and it doesn’t look like it is going to go away anytime soon:

“Ukrainian state authorities seized the Yalta lighthouse on January 13 from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, and a Ukrainian student organization is picketing the Russian radar station in Henychesk around the clock since January 15 with tacit approval from Kyiv authorities. The Ukrainian government wants Russia to agree to hand over by February all the 35 coastal installations (outside Sevastopol’s bays) that Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is using since 1997 without a legal basis.”

Meantime as more details of the recent gas deal have emerged, President Yushchenko (with elections looming) stubbornly sticks by the agreement, while his prime minister – Yuriy Yekhanurov – doesn’t seem to agree:

In contrast to the president, Yekhanurov now acknowledges that Kyiv has been blackmailed into signing, and that the agreement is not binding after all. While defending the government’s decision to sign it on January 4 regardless of the flaws, Yekhanurov has begun unveiling some of the agreement’s murky aspects. In a televised interview he recounted some moments of the negotiations in Moscow: “The whole of the pipeline from the Turkmen-Uzbek to the Russian-Ukrainian border is filled by Gazprom’s contractor RosUkrEnergo. We were offered a choice: either this, or [sarcastically] ship gas by train. Thus, we had no choice.

Not Amused

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The Financial Times reports this morning that:

“Jacques Chirac, France’s president, has threatened to use nuclear weapons against any state that supported terrorism against his country or considered using weapons of mass destruction.“.

According to the FT Chirac’s actually words were:

“The leaders of states who use terrorist means against us, as well as those who would consider using, in one way or another, weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would lay themselves open to a firm and adapted response on our part,” he said. “This response could be a conventional one. It could also be of a different kind.”

Now these words were not just any words, and the speech was not just any speech, since as the New York Times indicates, the Élysée Palace explanation is that M. Chirac’s speech reflected changes that had been adopted as part of a routine review of nuclear doctrine, a review which is carried out every five years. So not only is this a policy statement, it was also

the first time that a French president had publicly spelled out the possibility of nuclear retaliation for state-backed terrorism. In the past, France has said nuclear weapons could be used if its “vital interests” were at risk, while deliberately refraining from identifying those interests.

“In French doctrine, nuclear weapons are meant to deter attacks against ‘vital interests,’ to create uncertainty among potential attackers about what these interests could be,” said François Heisbourg, special adviser at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. “But here, things get defined. That’s a change.”

Not only could this change of policy not have come at a more sensitive time in view of what is currently taking place in Iran, it could not, in my opinion have been more barbaric, since (and surely M Chirac must know this) the victims of nuclear attacks are not states, but people, normally innocent ones, and if he doesn’t know this he should try asking the relatives of the former inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hopefully such threats will never be acted on (which doesn’t do anything to rescue the ethical standing of those who issue them), but the more immediate potential economic consequences that upping-the-anti with Iran in this crude fashion could have are outlined both here and here.

The battle of Wobbly Knee: Dutch troops in Afghanistan

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The Netherlands is talking about sending an additional 1,200 troops to Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province. The Dutch already have 540 people working in Afghanistan under the umbrella of the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) peace mission and another 674 under the umbrella of Operation Enduring Freedom. For other Dutch international deployments look here.

Why is it hard for the Dutch to finally make good on a promise their government made back on December 22nd 2005?
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