Russia's Moment

With the Sochi Olympics successfully out of the way, President Vladimir Putin's main worry may likely be Ukraine. And at this particular moment, on Sunday, February 23, 2014, Ukraine is without leadership. The President has disappeared, there is no police, just the Parliament and its Speaker, appointed temporarily to assume presidential authority. Masses are still gathered in the streets of Kiev, still suspicious of any claim to authority, even from Yulia Timoshenko, former prime minister and unsuccessful presidential candidate, just released from prison on their demand.


So what has this confusion got to do with Russia? Not much more than Russia's power position in the world. With Ukraine part of Russia for centuries, Russia was powerful. Without it, so much less. When the Soviet Union fell apart, and Ukraine found itself independent, the expectation was they would soon find their way together again. That did not happen. And without Ukraine, Russia sees itself as so much less than in their former united position. Ukraine, the cradle of Russia.


Estonian politicians I interviewed before their country was accepted to join NATO still said Russia was no threat to them - "not as long as Ukraine stays independent". Other Baltic leaders echoed this view. Without Ukraine, Russia is perhaps a great power, sort of. United with Ukraine, Russia will once more be a superpower. Or so they think.


Leaders of other leading powers think so, too. US policy on Ukraine has been consistently supportive, no matter what. EU policy has been lined up in a similar effort. Both see a tottering giant and struggle to keep it from collapse. Keeping Ukraine afloat is as much about keeping Russia weak as about securing Ukraine's freedom.


If Ukrainians can sort out their troubles and disagreements, chances are they will be okay. But those troubles are not likely to disappear quickly; they have been on display for years and have much to do with the divided nature of their country's identity, but also much to do with a rather chaos-prone political culture. United they stood in the Orange Revolution of 2004, divided they were, nevertheless, soon thereafter when their leaders fell out. United they have been standing in Freedom Square, Maidan, for months until their oppressor fell. Can they stand up to the vacuum that follows?


Russia's possibilities are legion. Deposed president Yanukovich will seek their backing. With Ukraine without leadership, military or manipulative steps need not be drastic to tip the scales once more in the other direction. Watch Russia during the coming weeks! And watch the game between the great powers as well.

Catalonian Games

(This post is no longer relevant, since the Congress of Deputies in Madrid voted a resounding No to the Catalonian proposal on April 8, 2014. I leave it here nevertheless, for whatever interest the details of the proposal might have.)

The Spanish Constitution of 1978 explicitly declares the country is indivisible. That constitution was adopted in a referendum in which more than 80% voted yes, and Catalonians voted more than 90% yes. Times do change.

When I last wrote on Catalonia, its President Artur Mas had just declared that he would not do anything illegal in his quest for independence. Not long after that the Catalonian government made public its proposed questions for a referendum on independence, and announced that it would be held on the 9th of November 2014. The government in Madrid, however, made clear in no uncertain terms there would be no referendum. 

Then, in mid-January 2014, came the next rebellious step from Catalonia. The Parlament in Barcelona decided by a nearly two-thirds majority to ask the Spanish Congress for permission to hold a referendum. 

This request by the Catalonian Parlement has been widely interpreted as a plea to be allowed to vote on independence. But this is not what the proposal says. Anyone who reads the Spanish text will see that it is much more intricately worded than that. The request is framed within a constitutional provision (article 150.2) that enables delegation of extraordinary power to an autonomous community such as Catalonia to undertake exceptional measures for a limited time, in this case a referendum. In the proposal the word "independence" is not mentioned. The stated objective is to allow Catalonians to express their views in a consultative referendum on "the collective political future of Catalonia, taking as its point of departure terms to be agreed with the Government (of Spain)". 

Obviously, independence is not mentioned because it is prohibited by the Spanish Constitution. But then why ask permission for a referendum anyway? I can see a couple of reasons why. 

1. It is the civilized thing to do, what Europe would expect, and what Scotland already did in a similar situation. To refuse to allow a simple advisory expression of popular opinion will be very poorly received outside Spain, and the political battle over Catalonia's future has in large part become a contest over images in international media. Madrid would come out looking exceedingly bad if they refuse.

2. If the request is accepted - along with some kind of (miraculously) negotiated agreement - Catalonia and Madrid might actually come to terms in a way that saves face on both sides, provided the question to be voted upon does not refer to "independence". It is fairly certain that while a Catalonian vote could exceed 50% yes to something phrased akin to independence, it is unlikely to offer a political platform for secession. 

Regardless of all the rhetoric, secession even after a 60% yes vote would be a political non-starter, a project doomed to failure - with Catalonia left outside the EU and with Spain subsequently vetoing its application to become a member of the Union. In my judgment therefore, Artur Mas is already in a dead-end street. A referendum result of about 50% would let him bow out gracefully, and Catalonia could continue in its role as an intransigent region of Spain.

3. It is also possible that the request is simply a political trap, designed specifically to be rejected by Mr. Rajoy. Like practically everyone else, he may brush aside the objection that independence is not mentioned, because (as one can imagine him saying) "everyone knows what the Catalonians want, and this is how they have planned to wangle it out of us". So he and his party will deny the request with his absolute majority in the Congress of Deputies. From the perspective of the independence supporters in Barcelona, such an outcome would be just what they want, and to them politically, utterly insignificant. They would move ahead with their referendum in any case, and the whole thing would simply be a great publicity victory for Catalonia abroad.

But this last possibility will not change the political realities that come after a vote in favor of Catalonian independence. Either Mas gets off the bus at that point, and all will be reasonably well for the great majority of Catalonians - even those who saw their dream crushed. 

Or Artur Mas will charge ahead with an independent Catalonia into the great unknown, with or (if he is fortunate) without Spanish troops at his heels. 

Losers, Parliamentary Democracy and European Fascism

Possibly the most divisive of issues in modern democracy is what to do about the poor and those apparently unable to help themselves. The basic tenet of a modern Western economy is that people are expected to sustain themselves by working. Some people obviously cannot work due to physical disabilities, and so clearly must be supported by a social safety net. Others are unable to secure work for whatever reason. This is the open-ended category of social losers. Still, the original welfare state had a fairly strict definition of who was worthy of support.

The parties that built the welfare state, the Liberals, Socialists and Social Democrats, have always been the champions of losers, but the fulfillment of the welfare state in its original design in the 1960s left these parties suddenly with less of a cause. For a while they survived as the parties of technocrats, the managers of the welfare state, but this was not enough. To stop a slow decline over the past generation or two these parties have persuaded most of the rest of the political spectrum in Europe to expand the definition of those entitled to social support, so that no loser, of whatever kind, is let down. Even nominally conservative parties have been persuaded to join this bandwagon. This change coincided with the great influx of immigration from non-European cultures. The old leftist adage that «it is society's obligation to support those who cannot support themselves» was now applied to a changing kind of society where a large portion of the social support recipients were illiteral immigrants.

Nevertheless, there are always sceptics who ask, who are the losers? Excessively liberal and ill-defined categories of social benefit recipients can create considerable social friction. In some cases these categories appear to be more or less based on a self-declared status. Ordinary citizens react to this state of affairs with anything ranging from mild irritation to political opposition to violent demonstrations. The danger to democracy is that government leaders are not easily able to judge the strength of the reactions, leaving them to simmer over a long time. Here is dangerously fertile ground, not merely for populism, but for fascism.

Fascism feeds on lingering discontent, because such unresolved conditions can lead increasing numbers of people to the conclusion that parliamentary democracy cannot solve society's problems, and that more drastic policies are therefore needed. This is what happened when fascism first emerged in Europe. Today fascist movements are again growing in many parts of Europe, and many analysts are asking themselves why. In my view the answer is near at hand. Many European governments have been calling on their citizens to sacrifice their economic interests for the greater good of their nation, at the same time that little or no improvement seems to come out of it. Just as in the 1920s and 1930s, perceived outsiders (not Jews this time, but gypsies/Roma people, illegal immigrants, drug addicts and “drifters”) are blamed for the bad times, and the government is blamed for coddling them. The situation is superficially similar, yet starkly different in Western and Eastern Europe. In the East, from Greece to Romania to Ukraine and Russia, the problems are unlikely to be solved by simple measures. In Western Europe, however, my view is that if governments could pay some more attention to their citizenry, the danger of fascism can be reduced.

I am fully aware of treading on dangerous ground here, but the issue cannot be shoved under the rug. The Norwegian mass murderer of 2011 tried to justify his actions by pointing to ineffectual immigration policies. While this argument is both disgraceful and disgusting given the context and the many victims, we need to recognize that ordinary citizens in European countries are calling for a tougher policy line on social benefits, crime and cultural issues. Their calls should not go unheeded simply by appealing to our generosity and our disgust of fascism.

¡

EU Immigration Policy: Look Who's Coming to Dinner

Asylum seekers are crowding Europe's borders in escalating and unprecedented numbers. Conflict in Syria and turbulence in  North Africa are the main immediate driving forces, but as we shall see, there are broader forces at work. Vast numbers of people require help. Can Europe provide for them all? Are those arriving also those most in need of help? What should Europeans sacrifice to accommodate the arrivals? Sweden's pensioners have now seen one of their two hot meals per day taken away from them as part of the effort to handle the cost of the influx of immigrants. A banal example, perhaps, but also a stark illustration. 

World poverty is supposedly declining. I find it hard to believe, given the increasing waves of atrocious events that take place in the world around us every day. Though I am not a religious person, I see endless self-gratification - in high places and low, endless greed, and endless grasping for power. So what's new? Check Gregoire de Tours or the decline of the Roman Republic. The most obvious news is that I am getting old, and the world is changing very fast.

The world changes in myriad ways, of course, but the changes need to be recognized above all in their grand - global - patterns. The adage used to be “think globally, act locally” - and maybe it still is. But my first point is that the message from the local level these days is getting garbled – locally. Global thinking is messed up by cultural barriers, increasingly impenetrable. Local action can only have global effects if it can be repeated all around the globe. Now we have to recognize that the “globally thinking” Egyptians who started the Egyptian revolution were only a small minority. The rest of their compatriots are not looking for global values, but for their own parochial ones to be installed. The same is true of the “creationists” of the United States, to take another example, showing how widespread the regression of basic knowledge actually is by now.

Moreover, the West is slowly realizing that its values, enshrined in great declarations of the United Nations (in particular, Human Rights, the Rights of Children, the Rights of Women), are not only being ignored, but actively opposed. Local action has a better foundation if locally anchored. Parochialism wins out. And the parochial is all over the news.

Current affairs used to be about understanding the general through the particular, the news. Of course, we can still make sense of our own local world and what is happening there. But the larger condition the human race is in can less than before be grasped by our paying attention to events of the day, or what happens in particular places. If we want to gain some deeper level of understanding we must therefore try to grasp things on a grander scale, the way we do when we link the ravages of the weather to climate change (with the disaster of the Philippines, November 2013 fresh in our minds as the most compelling current example). Curiously, we are quick to see the connection when it comes to nature, but less so when it has to do with people.

This is my second point. Runaway self-gratification – acts which have become legion and to most of us utterly abhorrent (mass rapes, violent mass demonstrations with killings, religious massacres), needs to be recognized as linked to broader underlying causes: rapid population growth, poverty, illiteracy, information flooding stripped of context. Some of these violent events are said to be justified as a form of retribution for acts of oppression, but the determined vanguard action of masked individuals in many of them shows how easy it is for vandals with a different agenda to take over and redirect a protest. Organized crime infiltrates and profits from these events wherever possible.

Since the 1980s, there has not been much talk about world population growth as a problem. Nevertheless, it is predominantly the effects of this overarching problem we are living with today. It may be too close to us to recognize, but the chief underlying causes that I can see of our present chaotic world is the combined population growth and economic stagnation in parts of the developing world.* Notable also, as a motivating force, is the wide dissemination of electronic images globally, beyond any context understandable to the majority of people exposed to them. Images are captivating and disturbing beyond anything that texts alone can do. Here I believe globalization is a curse as much as it is a blessing.

No wonder a better life in the West – conveyed in electronic images - is seen as THE dream for them to realize. No wonder kind individuals in the West want to help them share that better life; it is "their right". No wonder thousands and thousands of migrants are knocking on Europe's doors, thousands more every year. Unrealistic politicians from all over the EU push well-intentioned immigration policies that are bound to crash against hard realities, just as overloaded migrants' boats founder at the northern shores of the Mediterranean. The available resources are way short.

The profiteering of “helpers” along the way keeps the migrants business at a healthy rate of growth. Organizers of rickety truck transports across the Sahara get richer by the day. Middlemen on the southern Mediterranean shores, peddling rides in boats that should long since have been condemned, see their little fortunes grow. At the end of the line, in Sweden, smart private “consultants” are on hand to help the new arrivals find their way in the jungle of welfare benefits and rules. And believe it or not: the consultants' fees are paid by the generous Swedish government (source: Swedish TV, November 15, 2013).

The migrant clients of this long line of scavengers are not the poorest; they are people who have been able to save up or otherwise mobilize the sizable funds needed to make that long transit to the promised EU-land. Their poorer sisters and brothers have no chance of making the trip.

And the EU and its member states keep pushing their policy of increased immigration. Critics, like myself, are accused of racism and xenophobia.

The solution to the developing world's woes is not to bring all their inhabitants into the Western world. It is certainly not to help their middle class before helping the poorest. The solution is not either to continue the flow of development aid that in Africa has kept corrupt regimes in power – or competing violently for power – since the 1960s.

The solution must be something akin to what Robert Cooper hinted at about a decade ago (http://www.demos.co.uk/files/postmodernstate.pdf?1240939425) when he described the world as divided between a pre-modern, a modern and a postmodern part. The pre-modern world is a collection of failed states. To save them, and us all, one approach he could see was a “new imperialism”, whereby the postmodern Western world conquers the world of warlords and misery. However, he regarded it as unlikely to come about, since bringing order where there is chaos is not very profitable these days.


Robert Cooper is by many regarded as too controversial to touch. Check his analysis. I find it even more convincing today than when I first saw it, since the trends I have described are much more compelling now, and the dangers to the EU of staying on course with immigration without integration are steadily increasing.


Improvement of life in the countries of the migrants' origin is the only way those who need help the most can receive it, and the scavenging industry can be brought to a halt. Those efforts can only be successful if they are handled and fully controlled by the EU member states who bear the cost. The recipient states are unlikely to accept this unless their payoff is considerable (more corruption?). The EU and its member states are unlikely to be so venturesome. We need a recognized EU “immigration crisis” on a much greater scale than the current moderate unpleasantness before even a debate of the requirements for change can get started.

I have little illusion that we shall ever get there.

*Text changed from previous reference to "population explosion", see comments below.

Populism (part II): The United States

In my previous blog I focused on populism in Scandinavia – which also, by the way, is characteristic of how populism works in several countries further south. This time I want to consider US populism.

American populism is a well-known historical fact, in particular from the beginning of the previous century. Populist movements are also quite active in the US today (“Occupy Wall Street”, for example, or the Tea Party). But is the term “populism” recognizable the way it is used in Scandinavia and Northwestern Europe, as a pejorative term, to shame people for “irresponsible” political ideas and behavior? Without really having conducted any closer study of the matter, it seems to me the answer must clearly be no. Why? Because in the US, populism in the European sense is the norm, it is normal politics.

First of all, I believe it can be said that the United States has been structurally “designed”, from the start, all the way back in the late 1700s, to be open to challenges from below. This is not populism defined by what it says, but by how it works.

The British political scientist Margaret Canovan, who has written extensively on populism, notes the initial difficulty faced by anyone approaching the subject because of its indistinct nature. She suggests that we should "... shift our attention from the ideology and policy content of populist movements and concentrate instead on structural considerations. Populism in modern democratic societies is best seen as an appeal to 'the people' against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values of the society.” (*, p. 3.)

In other words, it doesn't matter who is in government or who the populists are (left or right). The point is the opposition raised by populists to the powers that be, those that are "inside the Beltway." In every US election this epithet appears.

This links back to my previous blog about the fear-driven campaigns of established Scandinavian political parties against any political challenge from outside their control, no matter how disorganized. The curious point about the United States in this context is that the powers of government in Washington DC show little or no fear of populism; indeed, the United States has arranged itself constitutionally to be maximally open to popular challenges from below. Let me just point out a few characteristics of the system that embody this quality:

• the US Constitution's design for the House of Representatives, notably its 2-year term – exceptionally short for a major legislature - and single-member districts, qualities which forcefully push the incumbents' attention to the concerns of their constituents;
• the 1^st Amendment to the Constitution, which is probably the strongest instrument protecting freedom of speech existing anywhere in the world;
  
• the 2^nd Amendment protecting the right to organize citizens' militias and hence the citizens' right to bear arms; a veritable implicit “right to revolt”;
  
• the widely shared and strongly held values regarding individual rights and the collective foundation of the constitutional system (“we, the people ...”)
• the deeply inculcated and widespread popular attitudes regarding the people's rights.

All of these structural characteristics function together to make up a political system that takes populist tendencies for granted, and which is unsurprised by novel proposals and “outrageous” ideas steadily being fed into the institutional setup from below. Its size and complexity also mean that very few populist challenges come to anything more than pinpricks against the system, although the Tea Party in recent years has shown that it is possible to wreak havoc with sufficient funding and determination.

In short, this is why the “charge” of “populism” has very little relevance in US public debate, and why at the same time populism in the US is alive and kicking at all hours of the day and night. US grassroots movements are myriad and unstoppably active all over the country.

This is not to say the country is governed by populism, more that it is governed by the “populism” of the North European mindset, the unpredictable and messy kind of politics produced by political actors “out of control” by responsible political parties, and well funded.

In other words, the “noise” emerging every day from the bottom layer of the US political system is vastly greater than in Europe, where political parties always have to be mediators before the tiny squeaks from below can be heard at the top. Indeed, the unpredictable nature of US politics and the steady appearance of ever new 'loonies' on the American political scene is exactly what makes political elites in Northern Europe so nervous about the United States, their major ally. Just imagine one of these characters winning the next presidential election!

With Europe being as much affected by US policies as they are, such fears are far from idle. And they may have something to do with why “populism” is so vehemently opposed whenever it appears in Stockholm or Oslo.

*Margaret Canovan, “Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy”, Political Studies (1999), XLVII, 2-16.

Populism and Ostracism

(NOTE: Revised version. The previous version with an unfinished section on US politics has been withdrawn.)

Populism - a name, a category of politics, sometimes used with positive connotations, sometimes neutrally, but mostly pejoratively. Princeton web defines it as “the political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite”. Basically it has to do with allowing “the voice of the people” to be heard – and heeded - in government. It is a call for power to be given to the great masses, a call made by unorthodox politicians driven by a fundamental dislike, or even hatred, of the elites in power. Populists are those who make the call, but not many of them call themselves populist.

In Latin America successful populist politicians like Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and before them Peron, have become in effect dictators, manipulating their followers into a frenzied kind of support that continues for years. The special character of Latin American societies, with large impoverished masses without education and vast gaps in wealth, makes these countries vulnerable to the rule of demagogues. It can easily occur in other parts of the world where similar conditions obtain. In Europe today we have seen it in Berlusconi's Italy, and in Lukashenko's Belarus. In Asia, Thailand's Thaksin Shinawatra is a clear example. But populism in power has not usually been a Western-industrialized phenomenon.

What concerns me here is not successful populism, but the use of populism in political manipulation, as it is found in Scandinavia. The tendency of this region is that political elites defend their position by ostracizing people and ideas they fear or don't like, using the label “populist”. And this is effective, a banishment from the "good society" as strong as the old Greek method. Many Scandinavians are actually intimidated to refrain from voicing their true views.

Politics in Northern Europe – and in particular in Norway - is tightly fixed to the center. Therefore, when the recent Norwegian elections were won by the conservative right, international media paid much attention to what was called Norwegian right-wing populism, in part because of the mass killer who in 2011 went on a rampage taking over 70 lives in the name of right-wing, quasi-nazi ideas. Inevitably, his actions have been linked by some to the party closest to his deranged ideas, the liberal/right-wing Progress Party, which is currently about to enter the government in coalition with the Conservatives. There is no basis for such a link.

The Progress Party is sharply critical of the dominant social democracy, with high taxes, heavy bureaucracy and a very liberal immigration policy. For 30 years the Progress Party has polled around 15% of the votes, but always been kept out of government coalitions – until now. Clearly, the appeal of the Progress Party among the voters is a threat to the mainstream parties. So the latter have gone for the ostracizing option, the populist bogeyman, to defend their position. 

The populist bogeyman is nothing new in Nordic politics, he has been around for a long time. While in US politics populism has more of a positive ring to it (which actually protects the loonies), in Norway and Sweden when “populism” is used in public discourse it is routinely framed as a threat to public health, or worse, marking dangerously popular ideas, such as tax cuts and other opportunistic causes likely to endanger the Scandinavian welfare state. Many call these parties xenophobic or racist for their critical view of liberal immigration policies. Since 2009 the Norwegian Progress Party for the first time has a Swedish fellow party of similar views, the Sweden Democrats. The media in these two countries have spared no ink in smearing these parties' views, which would hardly be called extremist in other countries. In Denmark, by contrast, critical views of welfare and immigration are much more widely held than in Sweden and Norway.

Consider, in Denmark, the following view of immigration offered by a well-known party: “It will do nobody any good that Denmark receives more foreigners than society can absorb. It will do nobody any good that unemployed immigrants are allowed to walk around without anything to do – and it will do nobody any good that we, out of misunderstood kindness, allow values like freedom, equality and democracy to be undermined.” (Translation: OFK.) Says who? Right-wingers? No, the Danish Socialist People's Party, to the left of the Social Democrats.

In Norway, we find roughly the same view held by the right wing Progress Party: “Norwegian immigration policy must take as its starting point that demands are made on immigrants who come to settle here. Participation in the work force, in language courses, and showing respect for Norwegian law are central elements in a successful policy of integration. Equal treatment of Norwegians and immigrants is decisive for the prevention of conflicts, which means that special arrangements for immigrants must be terminated.” (Trans.: OFK) Racist? Xenophobic? 

Indeed, there is a gap in Nordic political culture between Denmark to the south and its two northerly sisters. While keeping “populist” parties out of the circle of clean-nosed politics has been a common project of all centrist and center-left parties in Norway and Sweden, Denmark is a different story. Here a succession of populist parties have had a strong minority position since the 1970s. The frank Danish manner of speaking is shocking to the refined ears of more northerly politicians, who would never condone a socialist party having an immigration policy like the one just quoted. Hence the slight pariah-stamp on Danish politics as seen from Sweden or Norway, where everybody is supposed to be a social democrat at heart. 

It is perhaps time for the nervous social democrats of the center-left in these countries to recognize that in the forgotten everyday politics behind the scenes, nobody has come from more populist roots than the labor movements. Ultimately, I would hope, Scandinavian political elites can find the courage to admit the legitimacy of all of "the people" - regardless of what opinions they hold.

Catalonian Independence Day: Can Artur Mas be Tamed?*

As a citizen of Norway, a country that won its independence by seceding unilaterally in 1905 (from Sweden), how can I not be rooting for Catalonian independence? The background stories are largely the same. A militarily imposed union. Attempts to make the union work within a democratic framework. Economic grievances. A distinct language. Both Catalonia and Norway have had these experiences. (For more background on Catalonia and independence, see my blogs in October 2012 and May 2013.)


Still, Catalonia and Norway are different. Just for one crucial thing, popular support was vastly stronger in Norway in 1905 than it is in Catalonia today. In Norway the referendum held on the issue of independence was decided by a whopping 99,95% in favor. In Catalonia the most positive result expected would appear to be around 60%, possibly less. To end up with a minority against independence as large as 40% would make the whole project politically a dead duck.


This is not what you heard on Catalonia Day 11 September – la Diada Nacional de Catalunya. A human chain of hundreds of thousands of Catalonian nationalists, holding hands, symbolically linked their hopes and demands for freedom, in an event said to be inspired by the way the Baltic populations marked their demands for freedom from Soviet oppression in 1989.


As someone who spent some time in the Baltics back in those days, I can only say the comparison is vastly overblown and indeed grotesque. The Balts were under totalitarian oppression, not allowed to use their own languages, not allowed freedom of expression, not allowed the ordinary Western democratic freedoms that Catalonia along with the rest of Spain has enjoyed since 1975. 

As if to top it off with a transition from the grotesque to the farcical, Latvia's Prime Minister Dombrovsksis on this occasion makes a statement of Baltic support for the "hypothetical" case of Catalonian independence, and Spain's Minister of Foreign Affairs Margallo declares Catalonia has a point and should be treated more leniently. Not exactly Mariano Rajoy's week, as the stolid Prime Minister of Spain was preparing his belated response to the circus.

During the past six months the Catalonian leadership semed to have been brought to its senses by Madrid's low key policy of private persuasion and constitutional pressure, along with the straits of Catalonia's economic hardship. But Artur Mas is not so easily tamed. The President of Catalonia, who rode high a year ago on nationalist sentiment, peaking with an immodest declaration of sovereignty by the Catalonian parliament in January 2013, conceded to private talks with Premier Rajoy in the spring.


Those talks have recently been resumed in the summer of 2013. They initially appeared to have a beneficial effect, when on September 5, President Mas declared that the promised referendum on independence, previously scheduled for 2014 regardless, is now only going to be held if it can be done «legally». If it cannot be held legally, it will be postponed until the next scheduled Catalonian elections of 2016, Mas said, and will then be designated as a plebiscite on independence. 


By the time Independence day came along the following week, Mr. Mas had changed his mind again. Mas now insists he still intends to have the referendum in 2014. 


Prime Minister Rajoy, trying to manage this process from Madrid, has just given his public response in a letter to the Catalonian president on September 14. Dialogue is the only way, he says. No direct comment is given on the desired referendum, though implicitly it is rejected again.

Mr Rajoy is not wrong to insist on respect for the Spanish constitution, but he disregards the urgent need for a long-term overhaul of the constitutional structure of Spain. Catalonia's crisis is a chance to effect a change covering all of Spain's autonomous regions («states»), not just Catalonia. No doubt about it, a constitutional revision in the direction of federalism would be a good thing for a country that already is a de-facto federation. The Socialist Party (PSOE) now has made federalism part of its program. So far Rajoy has refused to let his Partido Popular open up for even a debate on these issues. His most recent letter to Mas indicates he is not about to change his mind. 


We need an end to Rajoy's stasis, and to Mas's slippery shifts, to put us beyond the current fiscal, financial and administrative mess of the Catalonian circus. Had there been a clearcut response in Catalonian public opinion, this case could have been much simpler.

(*Revised September 16 from the first version of September 10.)

Demilitarize Gibraltar, Ceuta and Melilla!

Why does a NATO ally, the UK, insist on keeping a military base on the territory of another NATO ally, Spain, against the latter's will? And why does Spain insist on doing the same in two locations in its neighboring country Morocco? The visit of a UK naval vessel, the HMS Westminster, in Gibraltar at the height of a diplomatic storm only a week ago recalled ridiculous associations with 19th century gunboat diplomacy.

Gibraltar, Ceuta and Melilla - tiny, militarized colonial enclaves - all are, in equal measure, historical anomalies that should be done away with - the sooner the better. They serve no purpose other than to aggravate local relations and maintain needless animosities across artificial borders. It is hard not to see all the involved parties in the wrong here. Of course, there is money involved, in particular in the case of Gibraltar.

Also, these supposed geopolitical strong points watch over the Straits of Gibraltar, but the strategic significance of the Straits is not what it used to be. There are no longer any guns in place with the range to cover the passage. The passing merchant ships are hardly fewer or smaller than before, nor are the naval vessels. But securing the freedom of passage there has very little to do with who controls the enclaves. The NATO navies are in command. In such a case the US navy will be in the vanguard jointly with Britain and Spain and NATO allies Portugal and France, among others.

There are parallels which suggest demilitarization. At the approaches to St Petersburg, the Åland Islands have since 1800 successively been under Swedish, Russian and Finnish sovereignty. A strong fort in the islands, Bomarsund, built by Russia in the 1830s, was subsequently destroyed by Britain and France during the Crimean War. In 1856 the islands were demilitarized after Britain and France had defeated Russia in the Crimean War. The islands were once more occupied and remilitarized by Russia in 1916, then again demilitarized after World War I. Today the Åland Islands are demilitarized and have extensive autonomy under Finnish sovereignty, including a favorable special tax status under the EU.

Another parallel is Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic that the Soviet Union claimed after World War II. Svalbard was at that time already governed by an international treaty (1925) which limited Norwegian sovereignty and demilitarized the islands. The Norwegian government dismissed the Soviet claim in 1947 and normal relations ensued in which the USSR developed a considerable mining activity. When Norway joined NATO in 1949 Svalbard remained outside the deal. During the Cold War the US remained highly suspicious of Soviet intentions in Svalbard - the Soviet manpower there seemed much greater than required by the mining activity. Thus, during the 1980s the US was claimed by some to have been prepared to undertake a preventive attack to throw the Russians out, in which case Norway would just have been left dangling. Be that as it may, the demilitarized status of Svalbard has remained intact and - like Åland - answers many difficult questions before they can be raised.

Hence, demilitarization is a live option that should be examined more realistically in these three cases. Raise it in an ad hoc multilateral forum. Join that move to the introduction of a wide-ranging autonomy in each locality, and sovereignty loses its sensitivity. If a local parliament can run the “country” pretty much as they please, the question of national sovereignty becomes moot.

You don't believe me? Let them try it.

Remember Helmut Kohl, Mr Rajoy?

The former German Chancellor retired from his post as party chairman in 2000. He did so after serious allegations were confirmed in the press in increasing detail that he and his conservative party CDU/CSU had been receiving large amounts of illegal money. The contributions came primarily from sources in German business and industry.

Since he was not in office when the scandal peaked, his exit may appear to have been less onerous than had he been obliged to step down as head of the German Government. Still, Mr Kohl was honorary chairman of his party and was a highly respected politician not only in Germany, but in Europe as a whole. He did the right thing and retired, making way for Angela Merkel to succeed him as party chairman.

Considering the evident facts of your situation, Mr Rajoy, it seems you are in a very similar tight spot and should take Mr. Kohl as your example. Indeed, the alleged facts in your case date exactly from the period when Mr. Kohl was struggling to keep the news hounds at bay. But either you would not, at the time, believe the German stories about the recipient of the Prince of Asturias prize of 1996, or you may simply have thought it would be easier for you to get away with it in the lax atmosphere of Spanish politics.

Well, the Spanish public is not so forgiving any more, as you may perhaps have noticed. Your conservative party's former treasurer, Mr. Barçenas, cannot be left alone carrying the burden of this case. He received the money from the industrialists, duly noted the amounts and how they were subsequently doled out in monthly sums to yourself and other members of the Aznar government of the Partido Popular.

Political corruption may be widespread in Spain, and not only in Spain, but that does not make it okay. Mr. Rajoy, it is time for you to go.

Between Theocracy and Democracy: Egypt in Transition*

Most of us would probably prefer to see their elected leaders sit out their term or being ousted in formally correct ways. That was my first reaction to what happened in Egypt last week. We have also, most of us, at times been governed by useless leaders who should never have been elected. But most industrialized governing systems have survived somehow intact, and so have we, their citizens. A seasoned democracy like, say, France, has not succumbed under its many incompetent presidents. Other countries have had their fair share of the same. That experience is part of what democracy is all about, which makes the opposition to the coup in Egypt easy to understand. 

To me, the intervention seemed hasty. At the same time, it must be recognized that Egypt, to say the least, is not a sturdy democracy. Indeed, as democracies go, Egypt is a momentously fragile case. But that is perhaps also another reason why a coup should be a last resort. What keeps Western critique in the aftermath from being more harsh is, I suspect, the fact that the intervention was (evidently) forewarned to the West and actively sought and supported by respected Egyptian leaders like Mohammad El Baradei. One would have liked to see him chosen under more legitimate circumstances.

Furthermore, if the ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi had had a hum of what he was into from the day he was elected, he might have fared better, maybe even still have been in power. While the challenges would perhaps have been too great for any mortal human, this man came to his office without any outstanding record or relevant experience to build on, whether in politics or administration. Morsi's one outstanding advantage was that he had been elected by more than half the electorate. He clung to that single qualification with such tenacity that it apparently kept him from looking squarely at the problems he had in front of him. He seems not to have listened to advice from outside his own narrow Brotherhood circle. He was deeply mistrustful of the remaining officials from Mubarak's days, and they were many in that huge administration of Egypt's governance - not just military and police, but judges and other educated officials who ran the state and kept it from collapsing - sort of. Even at the very low levels of the administration Morsi appears to have had a hard time getting accepted. They later turned out to be dead set against his rule in any case (see below). While several attempts were made by top opposition people during June to get him to make a move to stabilize the situation, apparently he would not take that route. He was the elected president, and he would decide, on his own.

From the start there had been two huge complexities of widely differing character facing Mr. Morsi - on the one hand the enormous problems of Egyptian daily life (bread, water, electricity etc); on the other, the deep political divisions of the population that had elected him. Only by making some headway on solving the first and at the same time bridge-building to overcome the second, could he have avoided the backlash that came with the military coup / intervention which put him out of office after just a year.

Morsi opted for solving his political survival the only way he saw how - by pandering to the islamist party and its ideological allies that had put him into power. That was a dangerous road to take, because it nourished the natural expectations of his religious brethren. For a democratically elected religious movement it is very tempting to make its victory permanent. A minor constitutional change would see to that. Egypt was not yet a theocracy, but the danger was clearly there. That anticipation, in turn, also triggered the military intervention.

Whoever now takes over faces the same challenges as Mr. Morsi did from his entry in 2012 to his exit a year later. The lack of bread, clean water and predictable government for 80 million people must come before the issues of sharia law. The religious concerns of Egyptians (and Tunisians, Libyans, Syrians, ...) must be set aside, simply put. 

Solving practical issues will be the only way to contain the frustrations repeatedly vented in the religious fury of Egyptians upon the Copts and other minority sects. And it will be the only way to make Egypt and the Middle East a governable part of the wider world of the 21st century.

ADDENDUM

The New York Times this morning (July 10) brought the story of the 'miraculous' recovery of the Egyptian system for delivery of gasoline and electricity, just in time for the opening of Ramadan. Police were suddenly patrolling in the streets after months of being nearly invisible. Suddenly the shortages were gone, overnight.

This is more indicative of a conspiracy against Mr. Morsi while he was still in power, than a demonstration of his incompetence, says one of the Egyptians interviewed by the NYT. I agree. The sudden correction of systemic failures makes the military intervention last week even more obviously a coup, indeed, the culmination of a months-long subversive campaign against the elected leadership. The Egyptian system has shown itself open to a degree of manipulation that is instructive to all of us. It also will bring self-criticism to the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies for their naive belief in a democratic system. So much the worse for the hopes of some degree of democracy in Egypt.

Egyptian governance, for which democracy was a gamble from the start in 2011, is now on its way to making a more fundamental choice: abandoning the Islamic democracy of 2012 as an experiment which could not deliver on basic needs - and angle instead for a pragmatic kind of limited democracy, which delivers the goods, but doesn't respond to the ideological demands of the Islamist part of the population.

Barring a future descent into chaos and civil war of the Syrian kind, and having gone through the experience of the last two years, Egypt now seems much less likely than before to become anything resembling a Western liberal system. What is needed is not a system of the kind that prioritizes political participation, but one that favors the production of real change.

*(Events in Egypts have obviously moved on later, back to another military dictatorship.)

OECD Stumbles Into the Immigration Debate

In a major study published last week, the OECD has concluded that the costs and contributions of immigrants in most OECD member countries sum to a net positive outcome. That is to say, that in most OECD countries the benefits of taxes, v.a.t. and other payments by immigrants into the economy amount to more than the cost of pensions, child care and other elements of social welfare that immigrants receive.

This encouraging message hides the less comforting truth that the data the study uses to reach its conclusions does not distinguish between the countries of origin of the immigrants. They are merely classified as either “native-born” or “foreign-born”. However, it so happens that the countries of immigrants' origin tend to be of basically two rather different kinds: 1) countries more or less similar to the receiving country, e.g., immigration to European countries from other European countries; 2) immigration from non-OECD (mostly third world) countries. 

It is well known that immigrants from the first group have come to find work and are usually qualified for it, hence are overwhelmingly contributors to their host country. Large numbers of immigrants from the second category are poorly qualified for the labor markets of OECD countries, even though many have come for work or economic betterment, and so represent mostly costs. 

Hence, the OECD is misleading and confusing the debate about immigration policy by treating European (or: “industrialized world”) immigrants and third world immigrants as if they were comparable units. The report occasionally refers to the lack of separate data for third world immigrants as a technical statistical problem, but I have little doubt that with the use of a little more imagination this problem could have been solved. As it is we now have a 400-page study with lots of superficially relevant statistics, but less of the incisive analysis that this problem requires.

A policy that regards country of origin as immaterial is bound to overlook the challenge of insufficient resources in the receiving countries, and of injustice to the remaining (non-emi/immigrating) third world population who stay at home. This debate is of course continually being suffocated by the stereotypical charges of racism, exclusivism, anti-islamism etc. With the OECD now so generously helping out, there seems to be no way out, only further rounds of irrelevant talk, in this “benevolent” circus of immigration debate.

See: http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/social-issues-migration-health/international-migration-outlook-2013_migr_outlook-2013-en

Secession - in Catalonia and Elsewhere

The lure of secession is evidently more common these days than some of us might have thought. Texas has for some time been fuming with the secessionist sentiment of 125 000 citizens seeking to escape the oppression of President Obama. All told 47 states of the US have since last year petitioned the Federal Government to be allowed to secede, probably all in reality on Obama-related grounds, though the formal reasons given may be different. The petitions have all been rejected, but were evidently taken seriously by the White House, which responded (briefly summarized) that the question of secession was settled in the United States Constitution (1789) and again with the Civil War 150 years ago. Democracy obviates any call for secession, according to the White House.

Generally, unilateral secession is not regarded as permissible whether by international law or by most other legal systems. Curious exceptions have been found, though.

Restrictive views of secession are held in most countries, but most neurotically in quasi-democracies or countries that are major holders of real-estate like Russia and China. Even  Spain, though a democracy, is in this very restrictive class. In these countries the threat of secession is guarded against with great determination and harsh constitutional clauses. The Soviet Union in its day had a remarkably liberal constitution which guaranteed all member republics the right to secede. Only, (surprise!) it wasn't true. The only Soviet republics allowed to secede were the three Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (forcibly annexed in 1940) who managed to pocket Moscow's concession four months before the USSR collapsed in December 1991. 

Others were less fortunate. That same year Slovenia discovered the gravity of its decision to secede when it promptly found itself at war with Yugoslavia, its old mother country. All the other Yugoslav republics met a similar fate when they followed Slovenia's lead, and Yugoslavia predictably disappeared from the map. When Catalonia had a similar idea last year, there were ominous rumblings heard in the Spanish military (see my blog last October).

So what should be required for a part of a country to reasonably and legitimately be allowed to secede and seek recognition as a sovereign country on its own? Canada and its province Quebec have been through more iterations of this issue than most other countries and their experience offer some instructive ideas on how to think. A workable procedure according to international law would include a negotiated path to a referendum and a process in which both populations concerned agree on every step along the way. If they cannot agree, there will be no secession. The legal basis of the process would have to be within the constitutional framework of the country from which a region wants to secede. Next to Canada, the best current example of this kind of a cool approach to such a hotly disputed issue is the case of Scotland, where a referendum will be held in 2014. When the Scots found that their rules of "devolution", or self-government, did not allow them to call a referendum on their own, they appealed to the United Kingdom government to grant them that right on this particular occasion, and the appeal was granted - on specific, tight but not contested, conditions.

In Catalonia, you may have noticed something happening almost every week since the euphoria of independence broke headlines in September of last year. And still, nothing much has really happened after all. The government of conservative CiU's Artur Mas, who lost his former majority in the November elections and resumed power with the uncertain support of radical ERC, was formed chiefly on the premise that a referendum on independence was to be held before the end of 2014. Euphoria last fall meant "Independence now!". The attraction at that time of a possibly separate EU membership for Catalonia - much written up in the Catalonian press and encouraged by similar feelings in Scotland - may have been a spur to extra enthusiasm. That was ultimately quashed by the EU's Barroso, who offered the stark message that a unit seceding from a current member will not be regarded as part of the EU any more, but will have to reapply for membership, kewing up at the end of the line. In spite of this, Catalonia's early euphoria peaked with a resounding declaration in January of not merely 'the right to decide', but of Catalonian sovereignty as well, voted by a clear majority (though less than two-thirds) of the Catalonian Parlament.

Later, the mood in Catalonia appears to have shifted to a slightly more sober reflection. Critics called for moderation and negotiation. Catalonian President Mas and Spain's Premier Rajoy met, and a process of talks behind the scenes got underway. In April there was a minor shock when Spain's Constitutional Court ordered a temporary suspension of the January declaration and whatever steps the Catalonian government was taking to act upon it until a more definite decision could be rendered by the Court. Reflection, by early summer 2013, means, apparently, "we have a right to voice our opinion" and "... maybe we should discuss this."

But the recognition that Spain's Constitution of 1978 does not allow such referenda has only come quite late. As in the UK, special legislation needs to be enacted for a referendum of this sort to be conducted. This has not been evident judging from the statements of Catalonia's President, Mr. Mas. Others around him apparently have more sense. In a glimpse from the submerged talks in Madrid the CiU's spokesman in the Spanish Congress stated yesterday that he was convinced the Government of Rajoy would come around to allowing the Constitution's clause for exceptional legislation to be employed to allow a referendum, the way it was done for Scotland in the United Kingdom. He may be wrong, but the path is there towards compromise.

If so, the prospects of an orderly process in Catalonia are better than they have been in a long time.

Krugman, Reinhart-Rogoff, and Austerity

The recent debate surrounding the studies by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff of public deficits and economic growth shows how alert academic critique can make a strong research finding fizzle down to a somewhat interesting footnote. By now we know that it does not matter a whole lot whether a country's public debt level exceeds 95% of its GDP. (I must add my own footnote here, see below at the *) Yet I am amazed at the level of influence initially ascribed to the 2009 Reinhart-Rogoff study, advocating austerity, until it was challenged. The US is a country where politicians – and conservative politicians in particular - are not exactly enamored of intellectuals. Somehow the claims of a scholarly article are said to have inspired the whole Republican stance in the congressional budget fights over the past half-decade. I find this overblown, and as Krugman suggests (April 29), there may be more to the story than just one academic article. But I am still puzzled by his conclusion that one side has won the debate.

Austerity, in Krugman's view, is simply wrong; stimulus is right. Still, I wonder what these terms mean, or more precisely, what they have meant in the public debates over the past four-five years. What is austerity? Strictly speaking it should be cutting or avoiding unfinanced spending; reducing public deficits. Yet this is not necessarily what all the rage in the streets of Europe has been about.

In Greece, austerity has meant people could no longer retire at 52, but had to wait until their early 60s like most other Europeans. It has meant stopping the payment of (public) pensions to thousands of people long dead. It has meant stopping the payment to persons unknown of salaries for government jobs held by nobody. It has meant reducing the salaries and pensions of public servants who have been living well above the medium standard of EU citizens elsewhere. It has meant Greeks suddenly had to begin paying taxes (- horrors! -) like ordinary people do everywhere else in the industrialized world.

In all Mediterranean EU countries, I have been hoping that austerity also should lead to fewer limos for elected officials, and no more life-long salaries for departed politicians, but I am not sure we're there yet. In Spain austerity means everybody now has to pay a certain (minor) share of the cost of their medication and of the cost of their medial treatment – like most people in northern EU countries have been doing for years. Austerity in Spain also has deprived people of free nosejobs and other cosmetic surgery, which has left me shocked.

Now, admittedly, the most sensitive part of austerity in Spain is that which is linked to unemployment. Austerity has reduced the number of government jobs in Spain. It has also opened the door for private companies to fire people they no longer need. So unemployment has increased.

While the first of these measures (cutting government jobs) is a must for a country dangerously in debt, it is not clear to me that Spain is really in that situation. The question is more what kinds of jobs are being cut. My impression from public offices in Spain like the mail service, public health centers and the public documentation services is that their slow-moving, impolite and haughty employees have no idea how privileged they are when compared to their colleagues in northern EU countries. Public money should - and can – simply be better spent.

As for private sector jobs, no company can survive a downturn without being able to lay off unneeded employees. These kinds of lay-offs for longer-term employees are now gradually becoming legalized in Spain, so there is no wonder unemployment increases. It will stay that way until the hoped-for upturn comes along.

In short, the debate about austerity in Europe, at least, has been confused by a lack of clarity as to what is meant by austerity. To me austerity should mean being strict about the kind of public spending one allows (and on that I continue to insist), but not requiring necessarily that there be no deficit in the budget. Deficits in the EU, at least, have to be limited, as required in the eurozone, otherwise euro countries will have to continue being bailed out by their neighbors. For this reason I see managing the public deficit as a macroeconomic task that cannot just be ignored in the name of the stimulus. It is an EU-member government's overarching responsibility.

Which again means we are in the hands of the politicians. Given the quality of politicians these days – whether in Europe or the US – we can only pray.

* Now that Reinhart and Rogoff have published their corrected figures, their original claim seems to hold up. A 1% difference separates growth in countries indebted above 90% of GDP (lower growth) from countries with a lower indebtedness (higher growth).

After Syria

The past two years the news out of Syria have been so dismal that I have not been able to face it, even in the minimal sense of writing about it. One reason: There can be no quibble about what the great powers have decided to do - they are wisely staying out of the fray. All of them. Their motives may differ considerably. But in such a situation there is nothing much anybody can do from the outside. This is another reason why there is not much to say - it only proves the old, tough lesson that a people must gain its freedom - and preserve it - on its own. 

Libya may have proven the opposite, acording to some. That is to say, that the West saved Libya from the Gaddafi clan. The Nato intervention was fairly clearcut, to me an action as legitimate and well-founded as anybody might wish. Beyond that, I believe Libya was sufficiently chaotic to prove nothing about such matters. There were interventions from a number of different parties, actors, or sides, whatever you prefer to call them. Some were invited. Others not. There was strong action from inside. Nevertheless, the main thing in Libya was - and is - that there was no real inner core, no cohesive group big and strong enough to gather a force transcending the clans and tribes, which is why the instability continues. Is it much different elsewhere in the Middle East?

The collapse of the Arab spring should not be over-interpreted. Granted, Tunisia has advanced farther along the way, yet has its own troubles. Egypt even more so. There can be little doubt that attitudes inculcated by Islam is the main source. As long as no strong voice is courageous enough to take whatever there is of humanity in Islam and merge it with some sense of moderation, the Middle East mess will continue, and be even worse than it was before Tunisia took to the streets and Mubarak fell. One strong, courageous voice can do much. We have not heard that voice yet.

So where is the glimmer of hope in all this?

Most of the governments of the Middle East are against Assad. Still, they cannot do much more about it than the great powers. Except prepare their own nation for a better fate. In the meantime, we can all watch - as we no doubt are doing - while Assad and Syria self-destruct. The only further hope I can see is the lesson that Syria must be the last Arab nation to go to the dogs like this. Those dogs, unfortunately, are home bred. 

My Anti-Russian Bias

Is Russia a bunch of good guys manipulated by a bad guy? Or is it more complicated than that? Let's start at the simple level. Why is it that I get this feeling of uneasiness whenever a Russian crosses my path? I tell myself it's silly, there is no rational reason for this, but it keeps recurring. Worse, too often my suspicions are confirmed. Let me give you an example.

In my neighborhood, many houses are just for vacation use, owners are absent for long periods, and neighbors often use their parking spaces. So it happened one day a year or two ago that a Russian-registered car, a nice new BMW X6 SUV, turns up in this absent neighbor's car port. “Good going”, I thought, “Russians doing well and establishing themselves in our area. - Still,” I thought, “what a long drive!” But after a couple of weeks, as I'd been walking my dog past the Russian car every day, it occurred to me I hadn't seen any Russians, and the car hadn't moved, it was just sitting there gathering dust, more by the day. A month goes by, two months, no change, just more dust. So finally I ask the German lady in the next house if she knows who owns the car. “Someone I know,” she says vaguely, and leaves me standing there. The next day the car is gone; I've never seen it since. (It may be added that, as far as I know, there are no Russians living in our neighborhood, only other expatriates and the odd Spaniard, including this surly lady friend of the BMW “owner's”. She now has an E-minus in my book.)

There has been a steady stream of emigrants from Russia in recent years. Not merely to the Greek-orthodox EU tax haven Cyprus (where they tend to bunch up), but also to the US and Canada and parts of Western Europe (Britain, France, Spain, and Greece among them). Of course, retirees seek the sun more than anything. And they are welcome in the south, bringing their money to the wobbling Mediterranean economies. But then there is this curious fact about them: most of the recent Russian arrivals seem to be young swingers, not exactly retirement age. And they are always well supplied with cash. A local businessman tells me he has more and more Russian customers - “--- they pay cash for everything, leafing their bills out of big wads of money,” he says. “And they gladly pay everything in advance.”

I am curious as to how it is that these young folks are not back home in Russia helping Mr. Putin run his (their?) country – or simply working at an ordinary job in the roaring raw materials economy of the beloved Motherland, instead of working at shipping money out of it. In the new post-Cold War international environment in which Russians are free to do things they never could before, they have a few favorite activities: foreign investment (often in somewhat odd activities); bank accounts abroad; freewheeling spending as they travel. Western financial commentators are drawn by the money flow to pay attention to such facts, less to asking where all this money comes from. I can only guess.

During a year I spent in Paris 1997-98 I always passed a Russian restaurant on my way to and from work, a small bistro elegantly decorated, attractively lit. During that year I never once saw a guest in that place, except for a Christmas party. Obviously it was part of a money-laundering scheme. Of course, this is just anecdotal. Yet, somehow I believe repeated random examples are to some extent indicative of a larger phenomenon. Russian business abroad is in no small measure about money-laundering.

Of course, I am biased. Because, if you lift your glance from the personal-anecdotal to a broader view of international politics, Russia is doing well, back in positions of power, rebuilding its influence after the soviet breakdown. In its own eyes, if not in those of others, Russia is playing the role of a great power the way Russians always wanted and felt entitled to. The once powerful soviet military – which turned out to be a potemkin village of rusting equipment - is now being restored to a more usable (Russian) version of its former glory. The export of raw materials is obviously what pays for this, but that extractive business is also what Putin is using to bait his trading partners into long-term relationships of supply and dependency.

Diplomacy is a central part of this offensive. In the old days, Soviet negotiators were hard to beat, brought up as chess players, able to sit for hours and hours without a break, and - according to a Norwegian Russia expert of that period - without saying a word either, if that was required. In Russian, he said, the expression of approval was “steel ass”.

Today, with international law less beholden to power plays, Russian negotiating skills and steel asses are less productive. Also, Putin's government has little patience for negotiations. The priority is for Russian gas and oil exports to get to their markets without delay, and especially without the delays of dealing with transit countries for pipelines or transshipment. Trouble-making intermediaries (such as, especially, Belarus) have been cut out without mercy. Old gas and oil pipelines from soviet times have been carefully rerouted to escape bothersome transit partners like Latvia, Belarus, Poland and Estonia. Oil shipments through Latvia were quickly done away with when the Latvians faced down angry Russian expat pensioners in Riga in 1997-98. By an incredibly rapid effort the Russians built several large new oil transshipment terminals near St Petersburg. After those started operating from 2001, the Latvians were left sitting there with nothing to show for their previous precious asset, the old soviet era oil terminal at Ventspils, once the biggest on the Baltic.

The subsequent project to build a gas pipeline along the seabed of the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany (“Nord Stream”) was a stroke of geopolitical genius – all the intermediaries, potentially 3-5 bothersome governments, were swept aside at one go. Who could object to such a convenient routing scheme? Of course, the neighbors did their best. When the Russians asked permission (as they legally had to) for their pipeline to cross the others' maritime exclusive economic zones, the neighbors pulled out all the stops, throwing up legal objections to the best of their ability. But if this “harassment” of the Russians had some success, it was only passing. Eventually the Russians tackled the obstacles, one by one. After that, when the pipeline had been built, there was no longer anything to protest.

Elsewhere, there are projects for Russian oil, and especially gas, moving both westward and eastward, in several gigantic projects. Gas exports to China have been under negotiation for a number of years, and the first major Russian oil pipeline to China has been operating since 2011. (China is not self-supplied with oil and gas.) To the west, the South Stream project towards southwest Europe is a copy of the Nord Stream pipeline, similarly stretching across the ocean floor, in this case the Black Sea. The project is a competitor to the simultaneous (non-Russian) Nabucco pipeline project, offering gas to Europe from Azerbaijan piped via Turkey and Bulgaria. In geopolitical perspective, Russia seeks to tie the EU to Russia for the long term, while Nabucco is designed to relieve the EU of such Russian dependency.

These projects show that Russian policymakers have learned something important from the failures of the Soviet system: Economic ties don't have to be kept in place by military means; in fact, things work much better without the clumsy tools of violence; economics has its own incentives and its own sanctions.

Still, behind all of these projects is the same old geopolitical thinking. Geopolitics is a Russian favorite worldview, an idea that makes sense to them, more than to most other nations, except perhaps the Chinese, who seem lately to have discovered it too. Power is linked to territorial control, in whatever way you can achieve it. Russia discovers, now that the receding Arctic ice is opening a new, shorter sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, there are new geopolitical advantages becoming available to them all around. The Northern sea route drastically shortens the maritime connection between Europe and East Asia. Also, of necessity it passes close to the Russian coast all the way from Northern Norway to the Bering Strait, close enough to check or block transits on demand. The same goes for the Trans-Siberian Railway, now functioning as a major cargo link between east and west.

Of course, you and I would never think about trade in terms of control and blocking potential. But if you think the Russians don't, you should think again. The thing is, it's not just the blessed little father in the Kremlin who does all the geopolitical thinking and scheming. It's a major bureaucratic undertaking. And it's everyman's pipe dream. We are not talking democracy here, it's not as if the State Duma invents these schemes based on popular opinion of geopolicy. Rather, the public – minus the still vigorous anti-Putin opposition (bless them) – are the cheering spectators, loving every minute of the carousel ride Mr. Putin offers them.

What Russian democracy under Boris Yeltsin never achieved, a stable economy and regular payment of pensions, has been achieved by Vladimir Putin, not because Mr. Putin is more honest, but because he understands the risk of not performing on these scores. Besides, he has much more efficient control of the cleptocracy centered in the FSB that runs his regime than Mr. Yeltsin had of the cleptocracy that ran his.

So much for the country that many of us had high hopes for in 1990 or thereabouts. We have learned, not just from the Russian case but from others even more complex, the dangers of thinking a deep culture of governance can be turned around just by a snap of the fingers (say, an election), or just by helping them throw off existing fetters.

The deep culture of voluntary authoritarian government is well chained and anchored wherever it's found, and it is widely spread around the globe. Hence, my anti-Russian bias is misdirected; it is too narrow. But Russia is a heck of an example of things that are wrong in the world. So I suspect my anti-Russian bias - like Russia itself - won't change in the foreseeable future.

Myths – just myths?

I dislike myths, or more correctly: I dislike stories that people call myths. I distrust them. You might laugh at that and say, "That's their point!" Well, listen up. They used to fascinate me. Now I've had enough.

Here's where I started in my innocent youth: A myth was a legend or story, usually of the distant past, that nobody was able to prove or disprove, though many may have believed in it, but it did not matter in practice whether it was true or not. Like the legend of Atlantis.

Those simple days are gone. Today things are different. Now myths are tools of manipulation - pedagogical, rhetorical or political. Notice first that when someone uses the word myth, it always implies that the user believes – indeed, claims to know - that the idea referred to is false. “Let me tell you a famous story that's actually false.” When one of my colleagues in the social sciences promises to expose a myth, it is either an easy task using relevant and previously unknown data, or (as I usually suspect) something he or she is not really sure of, like “the myth of nations”.

This is where the manipulation comes in. The word myth carries an unstated premise - and promise - that its secret separates a knowing minority from the illiterate mob. By learning, and accepting, the story the listener joins a select in-group. Some of these stories mark significant boundaries in public debate, ultimate borders to cross or not to cross. Do you believe in the (myth of the) holocaust that eradicated Jews and other minorities during World War II? Do you believe in the (myth of) evolution? Do you believe in (the myth of) global warming? Gradually, by accepting some stories as truth and rejecting others you take on a certain personal profile. And so a myth to you is the truth to someone else.

It shouldn't be like that. Myths have lost something along the way. Over time, the core idea of a myth has lost one of its basic criteria, namely the lack of proof. A myth is a story that could just as easily be true as false, because there is no proof. Instead, these days a myth can be any idea one does not like, but which large numbers of people seem to take seriously. Or it is an idea someone wants to expose as false, whether or not it really is false.

Myths should be kept separate from superstitions. Superstitions are provable falsehoods, ideas known to be false that people nevertheless believe in, like horoscopes, “evil eyes”, ghosts, or - in certain African countries - the idea that sexual intercourse with an infant can make a grown man immune to AIDS.

Still, some of the common uses of “myth” are innocent and even useful. The New York Times writes (Jan 31, 2013) about “myths about obesity and weight loss”. According to the writer, these stories (here labelled myths) are “... misinformation pretending to be fact ...”. Not a bad definition, but it should be superstition, not myth. We are talking about misinformation whose falsity can be proven. Exposing it is a useful and important exercise.

Data will debunk superstitions, but as long as there are no data, we have … myths. Let's leave it at that.