2015-11-25 Europe is in the throes of fundamental transformation.

Certainly, this is not the top down transformation experienced in the 1990s.

This is crisis engendered transformation, where what is not done is as important as what is done in the reshaping of Europe.

The Eurozone crisis raises fundamental questions about the way ahead on core financial issues, not just with regard to the single currency.

The continuing economic crisis does not provide significant room for maneuver to deal with the broader Euro management set of challenges.

Then the outpouring of refuges from the Eastern Mediterranean into Europe, placing sever strain on social, economic and political systems already struggling with broader identity issues.

Then the power projection of ISIS into the heart of France has raised fundamental questions about security in the Euro-Med zone and with it questions of the broader European security and defense issues.

An activist Russia, engaged on virtual every European borderland, and forging innovative ways to engage to get its interests met, is a key force reshaping the strategic landscape.

And with a U.S. preoccupied with domestic issues and a cautious President whose approach to become President is being overcome by the events of his Administration, pressure is on for key European states to shape national perspectives to protect interests and at the same time restructure significantly what European institutions are all about, other than collecting a common tax for the benefit of Brussels bureaucrats.

Today the EUObserver published an op ed by Angelos Chryssogelos which highlights the EU’s crisis within the crisis.

Excerpts from the article follow but the full article can be found and read here:

https://euobserver.com/opinion/131233

With Europe currently absorbed by the refugee crisis and, after the Paris attacks, its security implications, the Eurozone crisis, once considered an ‘existential threat’ to the EU, suddenly feels remote.

The EU’s capacity to respond effectively to the migration emergency in the coming months, however, is heavily conditioned by the legacy of the Eurozone crisis.

There are three parallels between the Eurozone and the migration crises: the hybrid nature of European governance structures that are little prepared to face up to major external challenges; the preeminence of Germany as a key player; and the important role of a peripheral country – Greece – as a conduit for an external challenge that is becoming an internal crisis.

These issues will determine whether and how the EU will overcome the refugee crisis.

They are also, all the same, the areas in which the EU’s capacities have been most stretched by the Eurozone crisis.

First, much as the Eurozone, Schengen reflects the willingness of EU member-states to cooperate in an area that touches upon the core of national sovereignty (border control), but without fully delegating decision-making and legislative and regulatory initiatives to a supranational agency (like the Commission in ‘first pillar’ policies).

While the involvement of the Commission can be significant, political impetus requires intergovernmental agreement while effective implementation relies on national policies, in border control as much as macroeconomic policy.

This makes both structures slow in responding to external challenges….

The Greek Epicenter

Since 2010, Greece had largely been the epicenter of attention.

While the EU was focusing on the Greek economy, however, the groundwork for the refugee crisis was being laid.

The new radical leftist Syriza government allowed free passage for refugees and migrants through Greek soil, as they moved from Turkey to Europe in the first half of 2015.

Much as in financial matters, Greece was the crack in the edifice that allowed an external crisis to flood the EU.

Just like in Eurozone politics, the long-term viability and attractiveness of the European project will be under stress in the following months as the capacity of the EU to keep its zone of free internal movement and common protection of external borders intact is tested.

Again, Greece may be the crucial test of Europe’s credibility. Ironically, the radical leftist ideology of Tsipras and his government makes them an amenable partner to moderates like Merkel and the Commission in the refugee issue.

Tsipras has been willing to collaborate with the EU on this issue, probably expecting rewards in the question of the Greek debt. This expectation presupposes that the tone in the EU will continue to be given by the moderates.

Schengen zone

This, however, is doubtful after the Paris attacks. At the same time, with the EU’s refugee relocation scheme ineffectual and the states of the Western Balkans erecting fences along their borders, the capacity of the EU to offer relief is rapidly lagging behind the still huge daily inflows of refugees to Greek islands.

Greece may soon realise that, instead of contemplating relaxing its economic terms in exchange for Greece’s cooperation in the refugee question, the EU (or at least some European politicians) will begin contemplating an expulsion of Greece from Schengen as the most effective (and cheaper) way to safeguard freedom of movement in Europe.

The governance deficits of the Greek polity and the imperfect integration in the area of border protection may very soon make the discussion about the EU’s territorial integrity and the irreversibility of European integration flare up again.

The above does not mean that the EU will necessarily fail to survive the refugee crisis.

As with the Eurozone, a combination of skillful diplomacy, purposeful leadership (particularly by Germany) and a sense of urgency may yet allow collaborative solutions to emerge.

Yet there is no reason to expect this to be a smooth process.

Instead, much will depend on the political capital that national governments across Europe still have at their disposal in order to push through compromises with their respective publics.

The long shadow of five years of painstaking Eurozone crisis management will make this a tougher challenge than any the EU has ever faced.

Angelos Chryssogelos is a research fellow at the Hellenic Observatory of the LSE and an Academy associate fellow at the Europe Programme of Chatham House.

2015-11-23 By Kenneth Maxwell

Last week, the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, released a digital text of a newly discovered poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, first published in London anonymously in 1811.  Shelley was 18 years old at the time.

The poem was long lost. It has now been made public for the first time in over 200 years.

Shelley attacks the “rank corruption” of the ruling class in a fiery denunciation of war and oppression, the abuse of the press, and dysfunctional political institutions.  

All of which reminded me of an Brazilian carnival lyric I heard in 1965, the year I first arrived in Brazil: “Rio de Janeiro:/My joy and my delight!/By day I have no water/By night I have no light.”

By 1967 I was living in a small apartment on the top floor of a building at the corner of the Rua Figueiredo de Magalhaes and the Avenida Nossa Senhora da Copacabana. Torrential rain and mudslides washed away part of the highway between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

We suffered for weeks of power outages. I had to walk up the stairs each evening since the power supply to the city was very intermittent and the lift was not working.

What struck me at the time was the total lack of reaction and empathy from the Brazilian authorities at the loss of lives, homes, and livelihoods by those affected by this truly natural disaster, including an acquaintance of mine, who was killed when the bus he was traveling on to Sao Paulo was swept away in a mud slide.

I thought this indifference was attributable at the time to the military regime.

But almost 50 years later in the response of the political class in Brazil to disaster seems to have changed very little.

It took the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, a week before she flew over Minas Gerais in a helicopter to observe from on high the consequences of the dam disaster in Mariana.

It was a belated gesture oddly reminiscent of George W Bush when he flew in his presidential jet over New Orleans, devastated by hurricane Katrina,  on his way back to Washington after a weekend spent at his ranch in Texas.

What Dilma Rousseff saw from on high was the result of the tidal wave of mud and debris from the two breached dams of the Germano iron ore mine, which unleashed 50 million cubic meters of sludge and iron mine waste, causing a huge ecological disaster, which destroyed the village of Bento Rodrigues below the dams.

Nine people were killed and nineteen are missing.

Widespread ecological damage has been caused down stream along the river systems of Minas Gerais and into the state of  Espirito Santo, and eventually out into the coastal waters off shore where the Rio Doce reaches the Atlantic Ocean.

“Rio Doce” is an ironic name in the circumstances. It literally means “fresh water river” in English.

Samarco, which operates the Germano iron ore mine, is jointly owned by Anglo-Australian multinational BHP Billiton and Brazilian multinational mining company Vale.

BHP shares shed 9% of their value and Vale shed 9% in New York last week.

Samarco produced 30m tons of iron ore pellets per year.

This represents 3% of BHP and 5% of Vale’s production.

Vale was privatized by the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1997, though the Brazilian government retains  “golden shares.”

BHP Billiton has expressed more concern with the disaster than has the Brazilian government. 

It is a company which stresses “sustainability, integrity, and accountability” as its guiding principals. The collapsed dams in Brazil will test these commitments to the full. The concern will be much more than loss of money and reputation.

Dilma was the minister of mines and energy. She was a great promoter of dams in the Amazon, projects much criticized by environmentalists. Dilma is originally from Minas Gerais.

But her initial lack of reaction to the humble victims of the disaster in her home state is only too familiar.

It is a blot, nevertheless, not only on her, but on the whole lack of democratic accountability, sensitivity, and responsibility, which still characterizes the Brazilian political class.

And it should also be remembered that her principal political rival, Senator Aecio Neves, was after all, also the governor of Minas Gerais for two terms.

Percy Bessey Shelly’s “a poetical essay on the existing state of things” was an execrating view of the political dysfunction of early 19th century England.

His title unfortunately could equally well apply today to “the existing state of things” in Brazil.

According to a story by Frik Els published on November 16, 2015:

Vale (NYSE:VALE) said on Monday that it would take several years for Brazil’s Doce river to recover following a deadly tailings dam burst at an iron ore mine it jointly owns with BHP Billiton (LON:BHP, ASX:BHP). 

In an update Friday, BHP revealed that mine tailings—a mix of water, iron and other waste materials such as silica — extended 440 kilometres (273 miles) downstream into a neighbouring state through remote mountain valleys from the mine site in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. The accident left nine people dead and 15 are still missing and 11 communities affected. 

BHP in a separate conference call on Monday said 600 people who have lost their homes have been put in hotels while rental properties are being considered.  The operator of the mine, a standalone company called Samarco, ceased work immediately when the Germano dam was breached. The company’s mining licence has now been suspended and all workers put on paid leave. 

According to Brazilian state and federal authorities Samarco on Monday had agreed to pay a “preliminary” 1 billion reais (around $260 million) to cover the cleanup costs which could run into billions of dollars and compensation claims. The two mining giants have already been fined $66 million by the Brazilian government and Vale said on Monday costs and fines have alreadyexceeded insurance against civil damages. 

BHP  also said it will be conducting a review of  two other South American joint ventures with a similar structure to Samarco. According to a transcripts the Anglo-Australian giant will look into restructuring the Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia owned equally with Anglo American and Glencore. 

Another joint venture with Glencore, Antamina, Peru’s biggest copper and zinc mine, will also come under scrutiny. BHP and Glencore each have 33.7% stakes with Canada’s Teck Resources holding 22.5% and Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi 10%. BHP could consider moving to a structure typical in the oil business where operation is left to a party separate from the owners. 

2015-11-23 By Richard Weitz

Second Line of Defense had the opportunity to attend this year’s 12th annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, where more than one hundred foreign and Russian participants heard President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials and various international experts discussed recent international developments.

Some of the prominent foreign guests included Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, former Czech President Vaclav Klaus, and several ex-Western ambassadors to Russia.

Unsurprisingly, the other Russian government speakers at this week-long conference in late October did not substantially differ in their remarks from those of President Putin, In turn, Putin’s comments this year did not vary in theme from those the Russian president delivered in previous years, though some details were new to address the Russian military intervention in Syria and other recent developments.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/copy/50548

Revealingly, Putin described “The global information space” as a battlefield in which views and interpretations are “aggressively imposed on people [and] certain facts are either concealed or manipulated” with enemy imagery common.

Alluding to Western governments, Putin said that, “The authorities in countries that seemed to have always appealed to such values as freedom of speech and the free dissemination of information … are now trying to prevent the spreading of objective information and any opinion that differs from their own.”

In this light, Putin and other Russian government officials use the Valdai Conference and other fora to engage in this information battle.

According to Putin, history shows that peace requires “securing and maintaining” a balance of power, whereas striving for “unilateral domination” lead to international conflict, arms races, and war.

In Moscow’s view, the current international system is unbalanced due to the superior power of the United States, which allegedly has sought to exploit the Soviet Union’s collapse and other developments to expand U.S. power and influence throughout the world in partnership with a few favored allies.

In this characterization, U.S. policies have tried to maintain this favorable balance by preventing the rise of potentially balancing power blocs and forcing foreign governments to follow Washington’s leadership or suffer U.S. efforts to replace them with more pliable regimes.

Putin sees this supposed U.S. strategy as unsuccessful.

He and other Russian government representatives say that U.S. leaders exaggerated their post-Cold War preeminence and, though able to undermining existing global institutions, have proven unable to erect effective security architecture in its place.

Though they tried to remake the world by imposing global rules more favorable to Washington, U.S. policies have mostly produced disorder and instability, to everyone’s detriment, including that of the United States.

Washington will allegedly “use force on any pretext, even just to remind the world who is boss here, without giving a thought about the legitimacy of the use of force and its consequences [and] without solving problems, but only multiplying them.”

At Sochi, Putin reaffirmed his controversial view that the Soviet Union’s collapse represented one of the world’s great tragedies because the disintegration forced millions of Russians to live in a foreign country without their consent (“the Russian people became the world’s biggest divided nation”) and by degrading their socioeconomic and geopolitical status. He also indicated that another regrettable consequence was that the collapse opened the former Soviet states to Western interference in their internal affairs.

Putin blamed the West, especially the United States, for the resulting crises in the region, most recently in Ukraine, which the Russian president saw as a U.S.-led “coup d’état”, Western bankrolling of the regime’s opponents, and the disregard for the country’s constitution and legitimate government as spurring a popular revolt in eastern Ukraine against the new government.

Recalling some of his derogatory remarks about Kazakhstan, Putin warned that further Western interference would be “completely unacceptable in the post-Soviet region, where, to be frank, many former Soviet republics do not yet have traditions of statehood and have not yet developed stable political systems.”

Putin was explicit in including Russian in this category.

“The United States has a law [whose] goal is democratisation of the Russian Federation. Just imagine if we were to write into Russian law that our goal is to democratise the United States, though in principle we could do this,” citing cases when the winner of the most popular votes in a U.S. presidential election failed to capture enough electoral votes to gain a majority in the electoral college, due to what Putin termed a defect in the U.S. Constitution.

According to Putin, the United States cannot succeed in promoting its version of liberal democracy since it has features unique to the American experience.

U.S. visions and values may appeal to Americans, but trying to impose them on other civilizations heedless of national traditions or the right of national sovereignty invariably produces a counter reaction, sometimes a militaristic one in the form of terrorism.

Rather than acknowledge their country’s many defects and show more humility in their actions and modesty in their goals, U.S. leaders, according to Putin, simply adopt a “double standard” that skirts around the defects of the United States and the regimes Washington controls but highlights the faults of Russia and other regimes that Washington dislikes.

Putin attempted to exploit what he saw as gaps between the opinions and values of Americans and those of foreign audiences. This line of argument has made some progress in the case of China and in some developing countries, but now the focus of the Russian information campaign has shifted towards Europe.

For example, Putin expressed understanding for those Europeans alarmed by foreign immigration by enumerating the burdens of the refugees on the receiving countries, including the financial costs of integrating them, and how their presence can provoke “a massive uncontrolled shocking clash of different lifestyles… growing nationalism and intolerance… [and] a permanent conflict in society.”

As several recent Second Line of Defense  articles have shown, the Russian line of argument has gained some support in the European media and some social sectors.

The growing convergence in the Russia and French perspectives regarding Syria is especially noteworthy.

Editor’s Note: What follows is a response by President Putin to a question about Syria.

Question: Mr President, how can you be sure that Russia’s military operation in Syria will not worsen the situation? What is your personal vision of the peaceful process and peaceful settlement in this country? Will Russia accept Syria’s partition? Do you think President Assad should resign?

Vladimir Putin: How effective will our operations in Syria be?

How can I give a certain answer to such questions? The only thing that is certain is an insurance policy.

We are acting in accordance with our convictions and with the norms of international law. We hope that coordinated action between our strike aircraft and the other military systems being used, coordinated with the Syrian army’s offensive, will produce positive results. I believe and our military also think that results have already been achieved.

Is this enough to be able to say that we have defeated terrorism in Syria? No, big efforts are still needed before we will be able to make such an assertion. A lot of work is still needed, and let me stress that this must be joint work.

We do not want to start finger-pointing now, but let me say nonetheless that over the nearly 18 months that a US-led coalition has been carrying out airstrikes, with more than 11 countries taking part and more than 500 strikes against various targets, there is no result yet, and this is a clear fact.

What result can we speak of if the terrorists have reinforced their presence in Syria and Iraq, dug in deeper in the territory they had already taken, and expanded their presence? In this sense, it seems to me that our colleagues have not achieved any effective results as yet.

The first operations between our armed forces and the Syrian armed forces have produced results, but this is not enough. It would be wonderful if we united forces, everyone who genuinely wants to fight terrorism, if all the region’s countries and the outside powers, including the United States, came together on this. In essence, this is just what we proposed.

We proposed that a military delegation come to Moscow first, and then I said that we were ready to send a high-level political delegation headed by Russia’s Prime Minister to discuss political questions. But our proposal was given a refusal.

True, our American colleagues did then provide explanations at the ministerial level, saying that there had been some misunderstanding and that the road is open, that we can take this road and should think about how to unite our efforts.

Now, the foreign ministers of the USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey will meet. I think that other countries in the region should join this process too, countries whose involvement is essential if we want to settle this issue. I am thinking of Iran, primarily. We have already said this many times before.

But it is a start at this stage to have the foreign ministers meet to discuss things.

As for our Iranian partners, we are in close contact with them on this matter, and Iran makes its own significant contribution to a settlement.

On the question of Syria’s partition, I think this would be the worst-case scenario. It is an unacceptable option because it would not help to resolve the conflict but would instead only serve to increase and prolong it. This would become a permanent conflict. If Syria were partitioned into separate territories, they would inevitably fight between themselves without end and nothing positive would come out of this.

On the matter of whether al-Assad should go or not,

I have said many times already that I think it wrong to even ask this question. How can we ask and decide from outside whether this or that country’s leader should stay or go.

This is a matter for the Syrian people to decide. Let me add though that we must be certain that government is formed on the basis of transparent democratic procedures.

We can talk of having some kind of international monitoring of these procedures, including election procedures, but this must be objective monitoring, and most importantly, it must not have a bias in favour of any one country or group of countries.

Finally, on how we see the political process, let me give a general outline now, but let me say at the same time that it is the Syrians themselves who must formulate this process, its principles and final goals, what they want and how they will achieve it.

By the Syrians themselves, I am referring to the lawful government and the opposition forces.

Of course, we take the view that the root causes of the conflict in Syria are not just the fight against terrorism and terrorist attacks, though terrorist aggression is clear and the terrorists are simply taking advantage of Syria’s internal difficulties.

We need to separate the terrorist threat from the internal political problems.

Certainly, the Syrian government must establish working contact with those opposition forces that are ready for dialogue. I understood from my meeting with President al-Assad the day before that he is ready for such dialogue.