High Five!

While I am in a mildly effusive mood (and by effusive, I mean in the writing sense, rather than gleeful. The effusive of effluent rather than the effusive of ebullient. If that makes any sense. I suspect not, but a lovely turn of phrase), I thought I would share something that happened today. We are holding a bilateral conference with a smaller nation that is proving to be somewhat of a nightmare (I say this like this is a rarity, they always are). The other side are being little help, and have turned what was going to be a substantive thing into potentially something less. I am not surprised, as it looked that way to me from the beginning, but still, it is mildly bothersome.

This whole thing has been a nuisance. It is turning out to be tough to get anyone from our side there, as they are ultimately a relatively small place (and we are discovering there is no one at any of the major diplomatic departments that actually knows the topic). This has also (naturally) impacted the audience we are getting. One of my colleagues who has been helping has also been sending out invitations that I would not consider appealing (if she reads this, and recognizes who she is, I apologize. I am immensely grateful that she accepted to do this). Now the senior scholar is getting his knickers in a twist about it (he has traditionally got a bit of a bug in his ear about one of the subjects of discussion), but this is problematic as he is subsequently not helping with the actual thing. The Bosses boss got involved as it turned out that the very distinguished elder statesman who we have involved was confused about his role on the agenda. That was a fun meeting to be in. Now people are vaguely concerned and I have a growing sense of impending doom. While I have passed this on to a colleague to run, all the senior people keep coming to me as though it was my conference, which makes me feel all the more paranoid about it going right. But having passed it on to her, I have only a cursory knowledge of what is actually going on. Something of a nightmare for someone with my jumpy disposition. Anyhoo – I have another conference to freak out about myself now – so I am off to do that.

But I almost forgot the real reason I was writing about this. As if to cap off what smells of being a doomed conference, my boss asked me about it this morning and I told him we were great. He went to high five and we completely missed each other. Very auspicious.

Pictures!

So, dear readers, I have now discovered how to add pictures to this blog thing. What better way to start than with this charming cover of the New York Post from today. I am just waiting to see footage of Bush dancing on Mr. Zarqawi’s grave. A particularly depressing thing is the fact that everyone keeps saying that there is going to be another uptick in the violence. No positive news whatsoever. On an interesting Iraq side note, I heard an interesting report that the Haditha incident is not in fact getting much wind in Iraq itself, where people are so “surrounded by death” that they don’t notice these atrocities. Pretty depressing situation.

Rien de nouveau

Pretentious title in retrospect. Oh well. Nothing really to add today, but in the interests of staying regular, I have decided to add something, even though it will turn out to be nothing, but please rest assured that the rest of it will be better punctuated than this.

Am still at work late, trying to puzzle through a paper on China, that the more I work on, the more I realize that I am uniquely badly suited to do. Not only do I not know the subject, but it is horrendously large and one that I can barely grasp myself. And there are many others out there who know it better than me. Bugger.

And as if this wasn’t enough, I finally reviewed some things that I had asked some of our interns to bind in time for a meeting early tomorrow morning and have discovered that they are done in a rather slip-shod manner. Turns out they didn’t know what I meant for them to do. So, I thought I would try to do it again, but no cover sheets left, and I cannot find any in any of the cupboards. Have to wait for supply room master to emerge tomorrow, though I suspect that he will tell me he has none left. So will have to take one home and stop off in Staples (copyright or whatever) on my way in tomorrow. Champion. Anyhoo – back to deciphering China.

Travels 1

So I must apologize for my extended radio silence. I had a busy May with two trips to Europa – one a frenetic work thing, and the other an all expenses paid ten day junket.

The work one was horribly hectic. Up early every day (in a cold sweat at around 5ish), and went to bed late every night (drinking overpriced drinks at the tacky “Rocks Bar” complete with imported American cabaret singer – but we were so isolated I had no choice). Particularly awkward moments included when our the Boss’s Boss referred to one of our Teutonic hosts as “Übergruppenfüher,” which we later discovered was a title reserved only for the SS, and later at another dinner when he compared Auschwitz to a certain current American prison camp. Some of our American friends at the meal looked like someone had taken a dump on their plate (maybe not the most eloquent turn of phrase that I have ever used – but very appropriate, trust me).

Another comical moment that occurs to me was when I was waiting around in the VIP lounge at the airport to greet our guests (I got to play concierge for the entire trip – I cannot tell you how old this trick got). A couple of our guests were sitting around waiting for their bags to be recovered (the service at the airport was extraordinary – not only did they literally meet you off the plane, they then brought you to a private lounge where you waited while someone got your bags, processed your outbound ticket and did all the customs parts that you would normally need to do) and were discussing their respective trips over. The American guest mentioned he had flown through Paris – the European talking to him was intrigued that there were no direct flights between Paris and Washington, and the American responded that he had had to do something in Paris for a few hours (the reason for the stopover was that I was trying to cut costs and put him on an indirect flight. Please see an earlier post on March 14th for more on that charming story). He made a rather pointed glare at me as he said this to the Euro.

[I am actually adding this later, as it occurred to me in the read-through – but the European in this story thought it would be a good idea to bring with him his two year old son and wife (the wife was older before you say anything). The child was not in the least a pain. It added to the serious atmosphere having him crying/bawling/screaming in the corner.]

[As another p.s. (if you will), later on that same day – in fact little after this conversation – Paris Hilton showed up and was hanging around the VIP lounge. I gawked suitably.]

Otherwise, it was an interesting experience. Went down Hitler’s bunker, and saw some pretty extraordinary views of the Bavarian Alps. A disconcerting side point is that all of the staff at the hotel were blonde – kinda creepy after a week and you realize that you have only seen blue eyes, blonde hair, and white skin (the token cabaret singer was the only person that could be described as non-caucasian – a creepy fact I’ll grant you).

The second trip was far more relaxing on my part – in terms that I did not have to organize it at all and simply had to show up. This was a trip organized to try to improve German-American relations that brought together a group of young Germans and Americans to travel around together to discuss transatlantic relations and specifically German-American relations. As a person usually organizing these things, this was a hugely liberating experience, as I could actually ask questions and contribute to the conversation (whether I did or not is a whole other matter). We were dragged from Berlin (where we met with people at the Chancellery, the Bundestag, and the Ministry of Defense), to the Multinational Corps North East base in Szczecin, to Brussels where we had meetings with people from DG External Relations and a dinner with the Hanns Seidel Foundation (for those who care, this is the CSU affiliate foundation, so you can guess as to how reasonable their politics are), then onto Bonn, with a brief stopover for a day to Cologne.

Now that I have given you the breakneck account of where I went, some detail as to what happened there. First, I should clarify that every meal was a protein-fest with sausage, meat, more sausage, and some swine thrown on top for good measure. Not a salad or piece of fresh fruit in site. This was all of course washed down with pints of light but filling German (or Belgian for our brief stop-over there) beer. And of course, it being asparagus season, white asparagus (even to the point of serving us asparagus ice cream at one point, which was surprisingly good).

The Berlin portion was interesting and relatively painless. The people we met were all relatively reasonable, except for a guy who was brought in as a stand in at the last minute, while he is a respected expert (in some people’s minds) he sounded as partisan and dense in person as he had in the past on paper. Still, it was good to have that perspective. It was also interesting to see which of my American colleagues really bought into him. I will go into substantive detail about the whole trip once I decide exactly what I am going to try to write as a result of it.

The culmination of the Berlin visit was a stopover in a military base in Potsdam. The officer who was meant to greet us was called away so we were briefed by a junior officer who had been commanded to carry this order out a few minutes before and a second in command of the base to answer our questions whose grasp of the situation was less than impressive.

Anyway, onto Szczecin (my first trip into Eastern Europe so I was excited). Once there, we were settled into the Radisson (it proved to be the nicest hotel on our trip – an amusing fact given the lack of character in any of the rest of the city which seemed to be a mass of large flavorless cement blocks. Well, I exaggerate, there were some nice places on the waterfront – but my point is really that we were in East Europe and this is where we found our nicest hotel).

After a day at the Multinational HQ, we were given free reign of the town. One of our American guests decided to run with this idea and was apparently lost first by the group he was with, and then by the German who had managed to track him down. Finally, our German friend gave up on trying to find him to take him back to the hotel, and came back to discover the gentleman vomiting out of a cab. He promptly didn’t make it to the bus the next morning and acted rather sheepish for the rest of trip. He was absolutely mortified and kept apologizing to our military hosts who were suitably moody about this. Others developed some theories about what happened to him that I won’t go into here.

At this point, I am going to leave it for today. It grows late, I should go to the gym, and then home. More tomorrow maybe. The Brussels segment in particular is going to be real fun.

New EU State must unite against Putin

So i got something into the European Voice (a Brussels-centric newspaper that few will have heard of) - sadly, their wordage requirement means that they sliced it down somewhat, and lost a lot of the subtlety that i was trying for. Oh well, its another line on my cv....enjoy!

European Voice

Vol. 12 No. 21 : 1 June 2006
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New EU states must unite against Putin

By Raff

Many greeted Angela Merkel's election as a turning point in EU relations, both internally and with the outside world.

The new German chancellor had the outlook of an Atlanticist and showed herself keen to emphasise that the EU was a Europe of 25. During last year's precarious EU budget talks she was credited with ensuring that smaller member states - previously frozen out of the EU decision-making process by the Schröder-Chirac axis - were consulted.

But six months into her term the only major policy shift has come in Germany's new American viewpoint. All other relations have remained much the same. The severing of the personal link between Gerhard Schröder and Russian President Vladimir Putin produced only a slight chilling of relations with Russia and above all there was not the hoped for repudiation of the gas pipeline deal Angela Merkel's predecessor signed just before leaving office.

Instead, to the horror of Poland and the Baltic states, she has pushed forward in supporting the controversial pipeline (controversial in that it purposely circumvents them), declaring it a matter of German national interest.

While unsurprising, the decision reflects the broader European predicament about Russia: the need to be supportive of smaller member states versus the realpolitik of having to secure energy supplies. Similarly, Russia has to be kept onside over global security issues such as Iran and nuclear proliferation, but Russian actions in its immediate periphery - on Europe's borders - are often at odds with international democratic norms.

The EU's response to these twin quandaries has, thus far, been muddled. If national energy interests cannot be overridden, a greater effort could be made to achieve some sort of baseline consensus on Russia.

It should also be noted that the EU has more leverage with Russia than it appears to realise. Reports in Italy earlier this year of shortfalls in Russian gas supplies highlighted the need for investment in Russia's energy infrastructure.

Most steps taken so far appear only to have inflamed Russian nationalism and strengthened Vladimir Putin's hand.

What is needed is a basic pan-European consensus. Unfortunately, there are few major European leaders left who are comfortable enough in their positions to be able to take the lead.

But the Baltics and other central and east European member states have profound interests in influencing overall EU policy towards Russia. Were they able to start to develop detailed proposals among themselves which took account of energy concerns, they might at least start a debate on what direction EU-Russian relations should take. At the same time, larger member states could make more concerted efforts to reduce their dependency on Russian hydrocarbons.

Ultimately, Russia is able to act as it does because it has perfected a divide- and-rule strategy towards the EU. European leaders either feel beholden for energy reasons, or are simply too occupied with domestic issues to even begin to address Russian actions.

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has already taken a leadership role in criticising developments in Russia. Central and eastern European states should take advantage of this support to start to wrench European policy away from its current wavering.