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The Madness of Macron

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From emptywheel: As the United States slow-walks its way towards a potential Trump re-election on November, Emmanuel Macron decided to accelerate the process of marching towards fascism by calling a snap election. Quinn Norton offers this post of how insanely stupid the decision was.

France, EU Elections, and The Rise of The Far Right in Europe

Ah… Europe, the old world. It’s the home of castles, wines, fairy tales, and ridiculous politics.

The first thing to realize is that the EU is structured like a kind of parliamentarian democracy turducken. Each of the countries in the block have their own constitutions, some presidential to various degrees, but most with parliamentary systems. However, they all send representatives and leaders to the European Union level, which is sometimes more power than member states, but usually less. The EU can tell its member states to do things, but then leaders like Hungary’s Orban can shoot back with the proverbial “You and whose army?” and just go on wrecking Hungarian democracy, kissing up to Putin, and trying to kill his gays.

Europe is notoriously old, but Europe as a political entity is so young as to be still forming in some ways, and so Europeans aren’t used to caring about it. The pattern of voter care is reversed from the United States. People vote like they mean it in their own local contexts, but when it comes to the federal EU level, fewer people show up and they trash vote more. They vote as if it doesn’t matter, because many of them don’t think it does. As a result, voting at the EU level has attracted more political extremes at times than the more well-funded and attention grabbing local national elections do.

Still, EU elections can be, and often are, bellwethers, and they rightfully worry national leaders and parties. After the recent EU elections, the most worried leader was France’s Macron, whose party lost these European elections to Rassemblement National, or National Rally.  RN won 30 seats, about a third of what was up for grabs. A third may not sound great to someone used to a two party system, but the next on the list was 13 seats. They wiped the floor with every other party, including Macron’s Renaissance party. It was not a good look for anyone who doesn’t like literal fascism, Macron included.

May First In Paris is never a party for the President.

So Emmanuel Macron, president of a whole-ass country, threw a temper tantrum and tossed out the entire government, dismissed his parliament and declared there would be elections three weeks later. Yes, that’s a thing the French president can do. If you’re thinking that’s not a great constitutional power for a president to have, you’re right! But if you’re also in the country that has the Electoral College and the filibuster, you might not be in a position to judge too harshly.

Voting in France is a two round run-off system in most cases. Many candidates run in the first round on a Sunday, and are narrowed to (almost always) two options in the second round of voting, which always comes the Sunday a week later. That first Sunday vote is four days from now.

There’s no direct vote for the Prime Minister in the French system, the French electorate vote for local candidates with specific party affiliations. The Prime Minister is usually chosen by the majority party in Parliament, and the President, who is ideally of the same party, does the official appointing them bit. (Presidential elections are separate, and in most cases occur several weeks apart from legislative elections.)

When everything is going to shit, there’s no obvious majority and no clear winners, the president can end up “co-habiting” with a Prime Minister he doesn’t like, or more importantly, share a party affiliation with. This situation is broadly similar to when the President of the United States doesn’t have either the House or Senate on his side. Getting shit done can be almost impossible. (However the government can’t just shut down, that’s a stupidity unique to the good ol’ US of A.)

Then there’s the people he’s most likely to be “co-habiting” with,by all accounts: France’s most popular party right now, the Rassemblement National.

The National Rally is France’s far right party, started by Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972 as The National Front as extreme right wing. It was the real deal, too — not just anti-immigration, Le Pen ended up in legal trouble for Holocaust denial, was anti-Europe, and openly racist. He also probably did war crimes in Algeria. He was eventually ousted by his own daughter, Marine Le Pen, who leads the party to this day. She is a much more palatable version of her dad, and more willing to soften her tone and react to the political environment. She keeps a weather eye on France and Europe in general. Marine Le Pen eased the RN’s anti-Europe position after Brexit, and jettisoned any public criticism of Jewish people. In fact, she said Israel “must be permitted to eradicate Hamas” because someone needs to be getting killed to make the RN happy, and probably someone brown. The Le Pens, just a charming family all around.

The official president of the National Rally is political fetus Jordan Bardella, a good-looking 28 year old who hasn’t been alive long enough to have pissed anyone off, and dated within the Le Pen clan. He is apparently comfortable enough living with Marine Le Pen’s hand up his ass, working him like a ventriloquist’s dummy. He can speak in complete sentences, and manage to not sound like Daddy Le Pen, even when he’s making the same points about North Africans. Nobody else in French political life is ever supposed to get close to the RN, and even have a term for this policy – it is the Cordon Sanitaire (sanitary cordon) of French political life.

This political crisis, like all political crises is a creature of the national legal regime. France is in its 5th republic, which was established by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, well after, but in response to, WW2. Make no mistake; de Gaulle was almost as authoritarian as the people he fought. He wanted to be a king, or at least have some French king-style powers — and those powers persisted into the Fifth French Republic. France has been dealing with a stupid array of presidential powers ever since. There was nothing stopping Macron from throwing the country into complete turmoil because he didn’t like the European election results. (Fun fact, if he doesn’t like the result of these upcoming elections, he can do it all again a year later! Stupid but true!)

Macron hasn’t been popular for years, and it often feels like that’s why he got into the game, so it’s not surprising that he’s acting like a angry, tired toddler. It is, however, inconvenient and disruptive to have one of the more powerful countries in Europe, with its fingerprints all over the world, existing in a political temper tantrum. Europe is worried, the international community confused, and France itself is losing its shit.

No one knows what will happen in 4 days. It’s so bad that the left wing seems to have gotten its shit together and built a coalition almost overnight, something the French Left have seemed incapable of in recent years. La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed in English, has managed to slide into second place despite the fact that they’re known mostly for infighting and running the same terrible geriatric candidate no one wants for more than a decade. (That candidate, Melenchon, has even stepped back for this election. I assume someone is holding his tiny dog hostage.)

BFMTV Screenshot The doors of the (French) Republicans’ headquarters after the party head locked himself in.

Les Republicans, the party that both figuratively and literally maps to the Republicans in the US has fallen into total chaos after one of its leaders decided he would join up with the fascist/racist National Rally. He broke the cordon sanitaire the French parties had kept for decades with the National Rally by approaching them for an alliance. Other Republicans didn’t agree, and hadn’t had a clue what he was up to.

The result was hilarious levels of public infighting, including the now fascist-curious Les Republicans leader locking himself in their headquarters and refusing to come out. He ended up getting physically rousted out by others in his party after they found another key to the building, all of which was televised live on French TV. Then he went to a judge to get put back in charge of his party, because Les Republicans is a group of lawmakers so bad at their job they didn’t notice their own party bylaws wouldn’t let them depose a leader that was cozying up to the fascist Right.

It’s a total clown car of French politics, but despite all the outrages coming from parliamentarians, it’s still Macron’s clown car, and he’s still driving it off a cliff.

The Hollow King

Macron always fashioned himself as a kind of republican king of France. I suspect he was tempted by the job of president in the first place by the position being similar to America’s imperial presidency, which undoubtedly influenced de Gaulle’s 5th Republic.

In this way, Macron imagines he is walking in the footsteps of de Gaulle, but without anything near de Gaulle’s political competence. Yes, Macron has a lot of powers. Like the American president he’s pretty untouchable on international policy and relations. This, again, is the classic de Gaulle borrowing from the Americans, with a few cleaned up legal principles. For instance, American presidents often have a terrible time trying to get treaties ratified back home. They go make promises, like Wilson did at the end of World War One when he tried to start the League of Nations (a precursor to the UN). But then they can’t get their own Senators to keep the promises. De Gaulle made sure that’s a lot easier in the 5th Republic than the US Constitution. The president can just ratify treaties himself. But Macron can be hog-tied on domestic policy if he doesn’t have parliament on his side.

And boy, does he ever not have the French Parliament on his side.

When he was still a new shiny good-looking boy in 2017, Macron claimed the mantle of mature centrist. Then he immediately ruined it by trying to slyly claim the the French crown. Yes, that one — the one that got so many heads chopped off. He said that “In French politics, this absence is… a King, a King whom, fundamentally, I don’t think the French people wanted dead.” Despite them being rather famously murdery toward monarchs, Macron seemed to see the French Revolutions more like a series of very violent toddler melt downs than political moments that changed both France and the world. He went on: “the Revolution dug a deep emotional abyss… French democracy does not manage to fill this void.”

A common sight at Parisian protests, this lovely painting portrays Macron as Louis the 16th, head as yet attached.

If this 18th century king-shaped void does somehow exist in the French collective consciousness, he certainly didn’t manage to fill it either. But in trying to, he’s driven a whole-ass country into a ditch. France’s finances are a mess, its politics are on fire, and Macron is whining that there might be a civil war, without a hint of self-awareness about who might be responsible for crashing the country. He is still waiting, petulant and scolding, to be coronated for his wisdom, while his beloved Center falls apart. He did a terrible job, and feels sorry for himself because his terrible decisions have had real consequences.

Macron is disappointed in France for not being inert. For being a country and a people who have desires, opinions, and conflicts that go beyond neoliberal financial stability.

He is, and has remained, a true centrist, through and through.

By their own definitions, centrists are a funny lot. Because they define themselves as being in the middle, their philosophy is ruled by everyone else. To be a loyal centrist means believing things only relative to what others believe, believing in nothing at all, because that could anchor you closer to one side or the other. It’s a kind of palatable political nihilism, the most sociopathic of political positions. There’s no theory or action of centrism; it seeks to be inert. Its meaning is defined by all of those around it, triangulating to be between principles, but never in danger of having any principles. Centrists like to imagine they are grown ups, when in fact they are hollow men, heads filled with straw. Macron could perhaps be the king of centrists, saying anything and sounding like nothing more than rats’ feet over broken glass.

So, what happens to France? And consequently, the rest of Europe as well?

I suspect the rightward turn will continue for two reasons: first, people get conservative when they’re scared, and the world is very scary right now. The other reason is generational. Most of the kids today are the first generation since the 20th century wars who have no one in their lives that lived under authoritarian rule, or experienced fascism first hand.

For Europe’s recent generations, (with the exception of Spain) Nazis are abstractions, fascism is a theory. Most didn’t grow up with relatives who fled or fought in wars. Fascism just looks like order and safety and power, an attractive alternative to the chaos and uncertainty of climate change and wars. Fascism promises someone will take care of you. As long as you don’t challenge the order of things, no one will challenge you. Difficult people will disappear, what you want will be given to you. You can watch all the football you like, 24 hours a day.

When things go wrong, there will always be someone else, not you, to blame. In a world of floods and fires and wars and mass migration, fascism looks like a solution — a little freedom (and usually someone else’s freedom at that) for a lot of security. If you’ve never lived under authoritarians, or known anyone who did, the pitch can sound pretty good.

The French Right offer security and homogeneity to the French people. The Left promise diversity, freedom, and a lot of work. Macron has nothing to offer his people. And so, disappointed in the people he has failed, he’s trashing France.

Whatever the election results, France is in trouble. Whither go the fates of France and Germany, much of the EU will likely follow.

The Mass Migrations Caused by WWI

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The text for the next posts is Chapter 9 of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins Of Totalitarianism, titled “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man”. It’s a short chapter, 37 pages, and can be read as a stand-alone essay. I didn’t discuss it in my series on the book, partly because I didn’t think about its relevance to our current situation. I did remember her discussion of the Rights of Man; and rights are the subject of the current series.

Pre-WWI context

The book focuses on Europe, and ignores much of the rest of the world. The first chapters discuss anti-Semitism and imperialism. Both cover the period from the mid-19th Century and the early 20th. During that time most of Europe coalesced into one of two types of states, nation-states and empires, with the boundaries created by the 1815 Treaty of Vienna as a starting point..

Western Europe was mostly organized into nation-states. Here’s the Wikipedia definition:

A nation-state is a political unit where the state, a centralized political organization ruling over a population within a territory, and the nation, a community based on a common identity, are congruent.

The term “common identity” means roughly cultural homogeneity, so I use the term cultural group instead of nationality. The term nation-state itself isn’t widely used today, perhaps because there aren’t many, if any, today.

The other form, empire, included Austria-Hungary; the Czarist Empire; and, thought it’s not wholly in Europe, the Ottoman Empire. Each of these included a large number of culturally dissimilar groups, including different language groups. Many of these groups had at one time lived in their own Nation-States, including, for example, Poland and Ukraine. Cultural groups in these empires did not have national sovereignty, and often were mixed in with other groups or jammed up against others without formal borders. Ancient animosities persisted for generations. We can see it in recent history, as the break-up of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia after the fall of the Soviet Union.

WWI and its aftermath

Arendt describes the impact of World War I as an explosion. I usually think of WWI as a trench warfare stalemate between the English and French and later the Americans against the Germans, but across the European continent and into what we now call the Middle East, there were battles among all of the smaller cultural groups, and destruction aimed at revenge for ancient, if not forgotten, insults. Among the larger groups on the move were Armenians facing genocide by the flailing Ottoman Empire, Poles, Ukrainians, Balkans, the list is endless, and that’s just in Central and Southern Europe. Many Germans lived in the outskirts of the Austria-Hungary Empire, and they were forced out or ran for their lives. And, of course, Jews across the continent were assaulted and expelled.

The war ended in 1918, and the struggle to reorganize European states began. The basic idea was to create nation-states for the large populations, giving them defined borders and international recognition. This animated map gives an idea of the major changes in Europe. One group of people in each successor state was put in charge, and the other large minorities were assumed to somehow participate in the government, as, for example, the Slovaks in Czechoslovakia.

The enormous numbers of migrants were to be protected by the Minority Treaties, which all the new nations except Czechoslovakia signed. These offered some protection, enforceable by the League of Nations. That didn’t happen. The choice faced by the migrants was to assimilate, or to be treated as stateless people. Naturally, many didn’t like that choice.

There were two groups of stateless people: those whose nations had disappeared, like the people formerly in the Austria-Hungary Empire, and those who could not return to their homelands because they’d be murdered, like the Armenians. The Jews fell into both camps.

The entire approach was, in Arendt’s word, “preposterous”. The outcome was obvious. The minorities and stateless peoples were horribly mistreated by the dominant group. At best the minorities were forcibly assimilated, their own culture lost. At worst they were preyed on by an unchecked police force and their new neighbors. The demands of cultural groups, many of which had never controlled their own states, for self-determination were frustrated. This project was doomed, as was the whole idea of a viable nation-state for every aspiring national group.

Ultimately, the interests of nationality dominated the states across Europe. Law itself became subordinate to the demands of dominant nationalistic cultural groups. And the odd part is that across Europe about this time, the idea of self-determination for these cultural groups was gaining ground.

The Rights Of Man

The concept of the Rights Of Man springs from the American Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, a document of the French Revolution.  The idea is that from birth all men are equal before the state, all are entitled to certain rights, including life and liberty, and participation in self-government. This last is critical: the state exists to insure the Rights of Man to all. As Jefferson put it: “… to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”.

The Rights of Man is a lovely sentiment. But it turns out that the second part is crucial: there are no Rights of Man without a state that can and will enforce them. High-minded principles are useless in the face of a marauding police force.

Discussion

Several of the books I’ve been writing about here, and reading but not writing about, provide evidence that in-group/out-group hostility has roots in our evolution. For example, Michael Tomasello in The Evolution of Agency says that socially normative agency, the kind he attributes to human beings, is tied to the community of which our ancestors were members. Tomasello says that individual humans can’t survive on their own, that they must belong to a group for survival. He attributes this to the inter-group struggle for scarce resources.

Even if this were true for our ancient ancestors, it doesn’t explain the hatreds we see today. Conflicts over religion, national origin, racial differences, aren’t about resources or physical needs. They’re purely abstract, purely created by us humans. Of course it matters to the rich and powerful. But why would it matter to an IT professional or a goat farmer?

What difference does it make to me who you worship or whether you worship anyone or anything? Why would it matter if long ago some Armenian Hatfield got cross-ways with some Turkish McCoy? Why does some Dublin Catholic boy care who some Derry girl worships or how? Name an inter-group conflict and ask what its basis is. It’s not going to be about whether there’s a tree with ripe fruit or a river full of fish. It’s going to be some mental construct.

It seems to me there’s a deeper issue here. If you were to go to Beijing or Delhi or Harare or Buenos Aires and pick a pair of twenty-somethings, I bet you could plop them down in Pittsburg or Mexico City and except for language you wouldn’t notice them as you walked by. They’d have no problem finding food they liked, and they might even learn to love brats or pork in molé sauce.

Killing people over abstract ideas is stupid and pointless. Worse, it’s going to make it impossible to solve the worldwide problems we’ve created with climate breakdown. Right now, there’s pressure on the poor in equatorial regions to move to more temperate climates. Some of the pressure is grotesque governments, some is hunger, some is massive climate change. Think what will happen when the gulf stream stops. The pressure will be the other way, people from the north will want to move south. These problems aren’t solvable if we don’t grow up as a species. These are real problems, not the fake culture war gibberish spouted by the right wing, not abstract ideas about the proper way to worship the proper Deity.

Minority Report: Ukraine as Bugbear

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[NB: Note the byline; I began writing this as one of my Minority Report pieces; it’s been in my Work In Progress folder for nearly two years, and an unfinished draft here at emptywheel for 18 months. I left off work on it well before the final Special Counsel’s Report was published. This post’s content has become more relevant even if it’s not entirely complete, needing more meat in some areas, and now requiring the last two-plus years of fossil fuel-related developments and events related to the U.S.-Ukraine-Russia triangle after the 2016 U.S. general election. /~Rayne]

This post looks at the possibility that the hacking of U.S. election system and events affecting the election’s outcome are part of a much larger picture — one in which NATO figures large, and the future of energy figures even larger.

One could attribute Russian attempts at hacking and influencing the 2016 general election to retaliation for the CIA’s involvement in Ukraine, or to a personal vendetta against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with regard to Ukraine ahead of the Maidan revolt, or to rousing anti-Putin sentiment in Russia:

… Five years ago, he blamed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square. “She set the tone for some of our actors in the country and gave the signal,” Putin said. “They heard this and, with the support of the U.S. State Department, began active work.” (No evidence was provided for the accusation.) …

But after looking at the mission and history of NATO, the integral role of natural gas to Europe’s industry and continuity, Ukraine’s role as a conduit for Russian gas to European states, one might come to a very different conclusion.

Especially given the death of Alexander Litvinenko on UK soil by radioactive poisoning and the downing of Malaysian Air flight 17, a passenger plane carrying passengers who lived across several NATO countries.

Has the U.S. been asked to provide protection to European NATO members’ supply of fossil fuels transiting Ukraine? Has the U.S. been asked during the last two administrations to push back on Russia because of incursions related to energy?

What makes Ukraine so different from Belarus, Georgia, Lithuania, and Moldova, which also have pipelines carrying Russian gas and experienced price disputes — is it the percentage of energy supplied to EU states crossing Ukraine in comparison? Of these four countries, only Lithuania is a NATO member.

How does tiny Montenegro, the newest NATO member state, fit into this picture?

NATO

In 1949, twelve North American and European countries signed a treaty creating an intergovernmental military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). They pledged a collective system of mutual defense against external forces attacking any one or all of its member states. The alliance has grown over the years to 29 nation-states with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, North Macedonia and Ukraine having expressed interest in joining. Each member state commits to spending at least 2% of its GDP on defense spending to support the organization’s mission.

It’s critical to note NATO members agreed under the treaty’s Article V that an ‘armed’ attack against any member in North America or Europe would be considered an attack against all of them. Response to an attack upon a NATO member does not require armed or military force. Over time, threats to NATO states were not limited to armed attacks; they were economic in the case of fuel pipeline shutdowns.

In the digital age, what is an armed attack, especially if both sides call it “cyber warfare” or “information warfare”?

FOSSIL FUELS

Like the U.S., Europe has been entirely too reliant on fossil fuels. It has been far too lax in governance when it comes to resulting pollution let alone political and economic volatility related to fossil fuel use. Volkswagen’s Dieselgate scandal and the EU’s slow response to VW’s fraud and resulting air pollution offer a perfect example.

While Europe has made substantive headway to reduce fossil fuels and replace them with alternatives — Germany, for example, drew 30% of its energy from non-fossil fuel alternatives in 2014 — until the EU has completely eliminated fossil fuels including natural gas it will be vulnerable to pressure by Russia and other fossil fuel-rich countries. It has been too easy for Russia to threaten the EU and Ukraine alike by simply throttling the flow of natural gas through Ukraine’s major pipelines originating in Russia.

But this is not the only front; the “long war” (pdf) across the middle east and northern Africa is also driven by competition for fossil fuels. So, too, is much of the instability in South and central America, and increasingly in North America as the population rejects fracking, shale extraction, and related pipeline installation.

There is only one true solution to socio-economic volatility caused by fossil fuels: development and implementation of alternative energy resources which are not reliant on extraction, nor limited tightly by resource location (ex: cobalt (from DRC), lithium (South America), uranium (Australia, Canada, others)). The amount we have spent on warfare to preserve fossil fuel’s status quo would have paid for this many times over, and we might have had better education and health care along with it. NATO’s EU states could not be threatened by the loss of natural gas from Russia if it could rely entirely on renewable alternatives produced inside the EU.

Magnitsky Act and retaliation

One other key question arises from this timeline. In addition to all the other tension and conflicts between the U.S. and its NATO allies and Russia, note the passage of  the U.S. Magnitsky Act  of 2012 and the Russians’ corresponding retaliatory sanction which stopped all further adoptions of Russian children by U.S. parents. If the adoption issue is itself a retaliatory sanction and reversing or changing this Russian sanction requires changing or lifting the U.S. Magnitsky Act, didn’t Donnie Jr.’s June 9 talk during the campaign season with Natalia Veselnitskaya about resuming adoptions under a Trump presidency mean Donnie Jr. conspired or negotiated with a foreign government in a dispute with the U.S. — a violation of the Logan Act? Wasn’t the issue of adoptions merely cover — a coded alternative term — for negotiating Magnitsky Act and other Russian sanctions prior to the election?

Timeline: NATO and Ukraine

1949 — North Atlantic Treaty signed.

1982-1984 — Urengoy-Uzhgorod-Germany pipeline constructed; it provides transcontinental transport of gas from Western Siberia to Western Europe. The Reagan administration did not support this pipeline, preventing U.S. companies from selling construction materials to the Soviets partly in protest against the Soviets’ policies toward Poland and partly due to the perceive imbalance of trade the pipeline would create in Europe’s energy market. European countries did not respect the U.S.’ boycott of the pipeline, resulting in sanctions against some European companies.

15-DEC-1983 — A fire broke out at a compressor station in Urengoy, USSR in western Siberia. Construction of the pipeline was still underway. (Cause of the fire not clear from available resources.)

1985 — Vladimir Putin was stationed by KGB to Dresden — located north of the western end of the Uzhgorod-Waidhaus pipeline — after Urengoy-Uzhgorod-Germany pipeline began operation.

19-NOV-1990 — Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was signed, setting limits of weaponry between North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact states.

26-DEC-1991 —  USSR was dissolved; the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) formed in its wake from some of the former Soviet Union’s members. The  Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania elected not to join CIS.

1992-1994 — Russia suspended natural gas to Ukraine for non-payment several times over the course of two years.

XX-SEP-1993 — (into November 1994) Ukrainian companies diverted natural gas from pipelines several times. The reasons for the diversions are not clear; was gas diverted in lieu of transit tariffs, topping off reserves, or due to local shortages?

XX-SEP-1993 — Russia’s Boris Yeltsin offered a deal to Ukraine’s Leonid Kravchuck: Ukrainian debts would be forgiven in exchange for control of the Black Sea Fleet and Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal. The deal is scrapped after negative feedback from Ukrainian politicians. (pdf, pg 19)

XX-MAR-1994 — Tentative agreement made that Russia could acquire a 51% state in the Ukraine pipeline system.

1995 — Early in the year, Russia and Ukraine agreed to form a joint venture, Gaztransit, which would operate pipeline system in exchange for write down of Ukraine debt to Russia.

XX-NOV-1995 — Ukraine’s parliament banned privatization of oil and gas assets. The agreement for Gaztransit was never implemented nor was debt forgiven.

1997 — Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland were invited to join NATO.

1998 — A new contract between Gazprom and Naftohaz was written linking gas prices and transit tariffs but did not resolve pre-existing gas debts. Later the same year, Gazprom claimed Ukraine diverted gas and owed USD$2.8 billion, suspending oil and gas exports to Ukraine for 1999.

1999 — Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland became NATO members (pdf).

2000 — Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleh Dubyna acknowledged that 7-8 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas were diverted from pipelines before export that year. (pdf, pg 22)

04-OCT-2001 — 2001 Transit Agreement signed, settling the debt between Ukraine and Russia. (pdf, pg 22)

2002 — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania were invited to join NATO.

2004 — (April?) Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania became members.

XX-JUL-2004 — Ukraine’s debt of USD$1.25 billion for gas was settled with Gazprom and NAK Naftogaz. Ukraine may have been importing more gas from Turkmenistan.

22-NOV-2004 — Orange Revolution began.

23-JAN-2005 — Orange Revolution ended; Ukraine was one of three Commonwealth of Independent States to experience a “color revolution” between 2003-2005.

24-JAN-2005 – Yulia Tymoshenko takes office as Ukraine’s 10th prime minister; she is a proponent of Ukraine joining the EU and NATO.

08-SEP-2005 – President Viktor Yushchenko fires Tymoshenko and her government; observers believe this is political trumpery targeting Tymoshenko.

01-NOV-2006 — Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive PO-210 and died a few weeks later on 23-NOV. Litvinenko met former KGB members Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun at the Millennium Hotel in London’s Grosvenor Square where it is believed he drank tea containing the poison. Multiple byzantine theories about Litvinenko’s death arose.

28/29-NOV-2006 — Energy security was a key topic at NATO’s Riga, Latvia summit. Efforts aimed at a bilateral discussion with Vladimir Putin on the topic of energy security during this summit fell through. From RFERL on the joint summit declaration:

The Riga summit declaration breaks new ground with a reference to energy, saying the alliance recognizes its security can be affected “by the disruption of the flow of vital resources.” NATO undertakes to study the risks and identify areas where it could “add value” to its members’ relevant security interests.

07-MAY-2007 — Urengoy-Uzhgorod-Germany pipeline exploded near Boyarka in central Ukraine, just west of Kyiv/Kiev. Gazprom said the 30-meter break in pipe would not cause a disruption in gas delivery.

22-MAY-2007 — UK determined Andrei Lugovoy should be charged and tried for Litvinenko’s murder, then asked Russia to extradite Lugovoy in relation to Litvinenko’s death.

05-JUL-2007 — Russia refused to extradite Lugovoy due to the terms of its constitution. This perceived lack of cooperation may have discouraged relations between UK and Russia.

02-OCT-2007 — ‘Gazprom may cut gas to Ukraine‘ due to debt of USD$1.3B

08-OCT-2007 — ‘Ukraine settles Russian gas row‘

18-DEC-2007 — Yulia Tymoshenko takes office as Ukraine’s 13th prime minister.

05-JAN-2008 — ‘Gazprom threatens Ukraine gas cut‘; Gazprom said it would throttle gas on 11-JAN if USD$1.5B still not paid.

12-FEB-2008 — ‘Russian, Ukraine gas deal averts crisis’ reported after Putin and Yuschenko announce an agreement in which Ukraine would pay for Nov-Dec 2007 gas and USD$179.5/1000cm would be maintained through 2008. They also announced the formation of new energy intermediary companies as a JV between Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftohaz.

04-APR-2008 — Accession of Croatia and Albania addressed at Bucharest summit in April. NATO pledges Georgia and Ukraine will someday become members but are not invited to this summit. Czech Republic agrees to the installation of a U.S. missile defense radar tracking system. Installation of 10 interceptor missiles in Poland remains in negotiation.

18-AUG-2008 — Georgia exited the Commonwealth of Independent States as a result of the five-day Russo-Georgian War in early August.

XX-APR-2009 — Croatia and Albania become NATO members.

27-JUN-2010 — Illegals Program spy ring broken with arrest of 10 Russian spies including Anna Chapman.

09-JUL-2010 — All 10 Illegals Program spies arrested in US were swapped in Vienna for four Russian nationals. Two other spies had left the US before they could be arrested.

XX-OCT-2011 — Litvinenko’s widow Marina won the right to an coroner’s inquest in London; the inquest is delayed repeatedly. She insisted her deceased husband had worked with UK’s MI6 after fleeing to the UK in 2000.

24-FEB-2012 — ‘Russia threatens Ukraine over gas‘ after a shortfall of gas to EU through Ukraine during a severe cold snap. It’s not clear what caused the shortfall; Russia may try to run around Ukraine by way of the South Stream pipeline to avoid future disruptions blamed on Ukraine’s state oil and gas company, Naftogaz Ukrainy. The conflict could be a head fake to mask Gasprom’s inability to respond to rapid short-term uptick in gas demand in Europe.

19-JUL-2012 — Magnitsky Act was introduced in  the House.

14-DEC-2012 — President Obama signed the Magnitsky Act into law.

XX-MAY-2013 — (into JUL-2013) Coroner decided a public inquiry into Litvinenko’s death would be better than an inquest. Ministers rule out the request for an inquiry.

11-FEB-2014 — UK’s High Court rules Home Office in the wrong to decided against a public inquiry into Litvinenko’s death.

18/23-FEB-2014 — Protests erupt in the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Maidan Square) in Kyiv.

01-MAR-2014 — Russia’s parliament approved the use of troops in Ukraine.

01-APR-2014 — (Related/unrelated?) Russia’s GLONASS satellite location system is offline beginning at midnight and not fully back up for 12 hours. No initial cause reported though some months later the outage its blamed on software update.

14-MAY-2014 — An alleged terrorist attack blamed for a gas pipeline explosion near Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.

17-JUN-2014 — Urengoy-Uzhgorod-Germany pipeline exploded near Poltave in central Ukraine, located ~240 miles northwest of Donetsk and ~210 miles southeast of Kyiv/Kiev.

17-JUL-2014 —  Malaysia Air flight MH17 downed over eastern Ukraine by a missile.

01-DEC-2014 —  Vladimir Putin cancels the South Stream pipeline project running from Russia through the Black Sea to northern Bulgaria. (Recall Bulgaria became a NATO member in 2004.)

01-DEC-2014 —  Gazprom signed signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Turkish BOTAŞ for construction of a new gas pipeline running beneath the Black Sea from Russia to the Turkey-Greece border. Part of the deal includes providing Russia gas to Turkey with the rest shipping to the European market.

26-JAN-2015 — Evgeny Buryakov was arrested for acting as an unregistered foreign agent and conspiracy; his counterparts Victor Podobnyy and Igor Sporychev had already fled the country.

27-JAN-2015 — A public inquest began into the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

21-JAN-2016 — UK public inquest into the death of Alexander Litvinenko concluded it was an FSB operation likely approved by Putin.

11-MAR-2016 — Evgeny Buryakov pleaded guilty to begin a 30-month sentence.

28-MAR-2016 — Paul Manafort joins the Trump campaign.

06-JUN-2016 — Donnie Trump Jr. meets with Russian attorney Nataliya Veselnitskaya ostensibly to discuss Russia’s ban on adoptions of Russian children by Americans.

10/18-JUL-2016 — In the run up to Trump’s nomination at the Republican National Convention, the Republican Party’s platform on Ukraine was ‘softened’; the final wording said the U.S. would provide “appropriate assistance” to Ukraine and “greater coordination with NATO defense planning” instead of “lethal” assistance. The wording was changed to coordinate with Trump’s position, in contrast with that of the original proposed by an RNC delegate.

There’s No [Easy] Exit

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Not an European scholar or sage. Have tried to pay attention to the Brexit question across the pond, but unsure how well I have done so. Generally, however, it has struck me that, given real problems either way for the Brits, the best choice was to stay in the EU.

Really, there was a definitive majority to join then, so what is the plan now?

Tell me why the secrets have disappeared
cover up the traces of wasted years,
the traces of wasted years
…
build it up
alibies for the damned
hide away
don’t ever reveal your plan.

So, what is the plan now for the always diminished, but oh so egotistically adventurous Brits, given they are woefully short on empire and hegemonic power? Oh so much like the terminally behind the queue United States?

Isn’t that a lesson the US ought not heed? If not decades ago, maybe finally now?

The UK may be leaving the collective, but do they really have an exit plan? The number of modalities in which they simply cannot have a great and immediate plan are too number to plow through.

There is no easy exit. Despite the vote in the UK. Germany and France make it clear this is not easy.

Lock it up,
standing behind closed doors
give it up,
no hiding place anymore

The value of the British pound and stock prices in Asia plummeted as financial markets absorbed the news.

I don’t know how it is going to be in the UK going forward. But if the vote is what it looks, the Brexit has definitively occurred, the only question now is what happens.

On the whole, pretty scary proposition, and the effort to get there seems much like the brain dead Trumpian movement afoot here in the States; i.e. shortsighted, uninformed and stupid. Hope I am wrong.

But here we all are, on both sides of the pond, looking inordinately stupid and shortsighted.

The world is being consumed by Trumpalos and Juggalos.

There is no exit.

[If you don’t know this band in the video featured, you should. They are The Angels, and this song is perfectly prescient for today even if from long ago.]

No Straight Talk, Only Posturing Between US, Iran on Strait of Hormuz

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8yG5G2Kwt0[/youtube]

Iran’s threats to close the Strait of Hormuz are getting a lot of play in the press the past few days. As the ten days of naval war games for Iran that began on Saturday have continued, Iran’s bluster has gotten stronger, as have the US responses.

Ironically, Iran’s stated purpose when it began the war games included the desire to “convey a message of peace and friendship to regional countries” and yet, as can be seen in the video here, Iranian authorities are now saying that should their ability to export oil be curtailed through sanctions put in place by the US and European allies, they would close down the Strait of Hormuz, preventing exports by other countries in the region.

The impact of a real closure would be huge. Many of the numbers involved can be gleaned from this Bloomberg article published this morning. Iran’s oil exports amount to 3.6 million barrels a day, which means Iran only accounts for 23% of the 15.5 million barrels a day that pass through the Strait. It is believed that Saudi Arabia could produce an extra 2.5 million barrels a day in the event of sanctions halting Iran’s supply, and up to 200,000 more barrels a day could come from other countries in the region, so about 75% of Iran’s output probably could be replaced quickly.

However, with the Strait closed, the entire 15.5 million barrels a day could be disrupted. There is a pipeline being built by the United Arab Emirates that the Bloomberg article says will be ready “soon” and could bypass the Strait with 1.4 to 1.8 million barrels a day, but this would be only a very small fraction of the lost supply.

Even though such a closure would be seen as a direct response to the US and its European allies, the impact on China should not be overlooked. The CIA world factbook informs us that the US imports 10.3 million barrels a day and the EU imports 8.6 million, but China is next in line at 4.8 million barrels a day.  How would China respond to such a huge disruption of their supply, especially if it comes about through a series of disagreements where they have not been included in the discourse? Read more →