Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

To follow up a little on the piece below, it seems the US under Obama is keen to direct NATO policy towards re-engagement with Russia. Work in this regard had already begun with an informal meeting of the NATO-Russia Council. As its foreign ministers met today , with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in attendance for the first time, the alliance pledged to recommence the work of the Council on a formal basis. Predictably there were differences of opinion, and Clinton described a ‘vigorous discussion’ on Russia. But what is particularly significant is that the Americans are no longer aligned with the more belligerent anti-Russian voices. Indeed the US joined Germany, traditionally less frosty in its relationship with Moscow, and tabled a motion calling for Russia to become, “equal partners in areas of common interest”. Predictably David Miliband struck a less conciliatory note. But if the temperature of Russia-NATO relations begins to cool he will be forced to temper his anti...

German Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck (I’m afraid I can’t manage an umlaut) has rather neatly summed up the efficacy of Alistair Darling’s VAT cut. "Are you really going to buy a DVD player because it now costs £39.10 instead of £39.90? All this will do is raise Britain's debt to a level that will take a generation to work off." 100% correct. The cut is an expensive expedient which will do very little to stimulate spending.

Taking its cue from European Union foreign ministers , Nato has agreed to limited reengagement with Russia . The decision represents a victory for those European states which favour a less belligerent approach to their eastern neighbour and a defeat for ‘new Cold War’ hawks in Washington. Germany and France have reiterated their determination that no shortcuts to Nato membership should be available to Georgia or Ukraine. In the States, the meeting, which took place in Brussels between Nato foreign ministers, is being spun rather differently . By this interpretation, the US government, represented by Condoleeza Rice, has agreed to reengagement only on condition that work continues to prepare Georgia and Ukraine’s route to membership. The Germans and French now insist that the two aspirant members must fully complete the MAP process, reversing the position they assumed at the Bucharest conference earlier this year. War in South Ossetia exemplified the danger associated with subsumin...

The Soviet and Nazi regimes both committed atrocities during their occupations of Lithuania. During nearly 50 years of Soviet rule, 74,500 people died or disappeared, due to summary executions, whilst in prison or during deportations. The Nazis occupied Lithuania for three years and killed 240,000 people, 200,000 of whom were Jews. Jonathan Steele examines why then Vilnius’ Museum of Genocide Victims is focussed only on the Soviet crimes and why this pattern is repeated in terms of public remembrance throughout Lithuania’s capital. Steele concludes that anger about recent Soviet occupations, “blocks discussion of Nazi mass murder and the fact that too many Lithuanians eagerly supported it”.

George Bush’s insistence ahead of the NATO summit in Bucharest that Georgia and Ukraine should be set on the road to full membership exposes the train of thought which is souring relations between Russia, America and other western states following the American line. The attitude is not simply that Russia’s foreign policy concerns are not legitimate. Effectively the way the US is acting denies that Russia has any legitimate foreign policy concerns at all. To advance this military alliance, historically hostile to the USSR, in a way that will encircle Russia and penetrate deep into the country’s sphere of influence undermines Russia’s interests without a shadow of a doubt. If Russia were to enter a military alliance with Canada and Mexico would the US remain unconcerned because the Kremlin insisted the alliance was not a threat to the US? The US may maintain that expansion does not pose a threat to Russia, but ask the states which are poised to join why exactly they wish to join th...

I was watching the local news earlier in the week and it covered a story about an aggrieved woman who was being evicted from her house to enable an extension to the runway at Derry City Airport. She tearfully explained the extent of the injustice which had been dealt her; casting around for a comparison for her predicament, she cited one of a series of religious wars fought throughout Europe in the mid seventeenth century. “It’s just like Cromwell” she proclaimed. This woman is not atypical and nor did it seem likely that she was a scholar of that period of history. In Northern Ireland it seems fairly unexceptional for someone to invoke a perceived hurt from 350 years previous to exemplify the unfairness of a local spat over compulsory purchase. Bearing this in mind, it is questionable whether we really need a museum to pour over the details and complexities of our recent Troubles. That said, not all the ideas being floated by the Healing Through Remembering group actually in...

Today marks the 18th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Guardian reports via Der Spiegel that more than 1 in 5 Germans would welcome its reinstatement. 90% of Germans from the old GDR believe that the East German state afforded greater social protection than the current unified German state. This ambivalence to the Wall’s demise may seem bemusing and even shocking to those of us who remember its destruction as an epoch defining event. Its fall seemed to symbolise more than any other single event, the failure of the communist system, the demise of the Soviet Empire and the triumph of western values of freedom and democracy. The survey’s findings seem more shocking still because they pertain to Germany; a state which to external observers has recovered from the legacy of two world wars and 40 years of division, to take its place as a modern industrial powerhouse at the heart of the European project. How can modern Germans look back with nostalgia at a Stalinist basket...