Power Play: Instrumentalising Georgia; Constructing Russia

The latest outbreak of violence in the Caucasus has left thousands dead, thousands more displaced and plunged the people of the region into terrifying uncertainty amidst talk of a ‘new cold war’. Deconstructing the trite simplifications and ideological rhetoric in order to understand the conflict and its fall out requires us to examine the geopolitical and historical hinterlands of the conflict, as well as the Western construction of Russia and Russians. By Benjamin Tallis

Long before its forces crossed the nominal border of South Ossetia, Russia’s response to the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali was condemned in the West as the action of an aggressive bully, violating international law and the etiquette of the world’s elite clubs. In light of the Iraq debacle, the American and British appeal to principle in their condemnation of Russia’s military action in Georgia is a little like a pair of wolves, their wool-tangled teeth still dripping with blood, telling the fox to stay out of the henhouse.

New World Disorder or New World’s Order?
The collapse of the Soviet Union sparked a scramble for territory, influence and resources, with independence and collective identity claims coming thick and fast. Nasty, brutal, although mercifully short conflicts erupted along ethnic and political dividing lines that had been kept in the deep freeze of history by the overriding imperatives of Soviet unity. Breakaway republics in Moldova (Transnistria) and Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia) retained defacto independence and the soviet successor states found themselves not only dealing with ‘Frozen Conflicts’, but also caught in the international crossfire over energy resources, strategic influence and security provision in the post-cold war world.

At the time, the West was focused on the bloody conflicts Europe’s Balkan backyard which provided a mawkish re-living of Europe’s holocaust nightmares as the post-modern security architecture collapsed under the weight of its own ineffectiveness. The belated, US-led military action allowed Europeans and Americans to exorcise these demons and believe that they had ‘done the right thing’ and learn particular lessons about power and intervention. As Canadian academic and politician Michael Ignatieff put it,

“We intervened not only to save others, but to save ourselves, or rather an image of ourselves as defenders of universal decencies. We wanted to show that the West ‘meant’ something.” (Ignatieff quoted by David Chandler)

The unmandated intervention in Kosovo and the push for its independence by America and its allies violated international law (The NATO war against Yugoslavia only received retrospective endorsement and independence violated Security Council Resolution 1244 which guaranteed the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia with regard to Kosovo and later applied to Serbia & Montenegro and finally to Serbia), which all too often remains little more than a convenient and disposable, mask for power. Crucially, the West also effectively told Russia that it did not belong at the top table of international decision making. Despite the talk of human rights and self-determination, all sides learned that power remains the deciding factor in international relations.

Guns and Roses
Georgia followed an unexceptional post-soviet path under former Soviet foreign minister Edvard Shevernadze. A collapse in living standards was followed by economic recovery marked by massive inequality, grinding poverty, cronyism, corruption and the prevalence of organised crime. The independence claims of its separatist regions took a back seat to the division of the spoils of transition, while allowing for patriotic posturing, with the presence of Russian ‘peacekeeping’ forces acting as a deterrent to Georgian irredentism.

The situation changed dramatically following Shevardnardze’s attempt to rig an election in late 2003. With Western support, the protestors showed that they had learned the lessons from the Serbian overthrow of Milosevic and developed the demonstrations into the Rose Revolution , with the young, English speaking, Harvard-trained lawyer Mikheil Saakashvilli at its head. With the situation in Iraq worsening, this provided a much needed showcase for the US project to spread democracy-lite throughout the world. The US also irresponsibly encouraged Georgia to push for early NATO membership, which only fuelled Saakashvilli’s hubristic antagonism of Russia.

The optimism of the Rose Revolution soon gave way to allegations of improper conduct, authoritarianism and corruption, which came against a backdrop of rapidly deteriorating relations with Russia and continued economic hardship. Having imposed martial law in response to anti-government demonstrations, Saakashvilli won a snap election in January 2008, although with a massively reduced majority, leaving him in need of a unifying second term project. This need led him to massively miscalculate both the Russian response to an incursion into Ossetia and his support in the West.


Friends, Foes & Faux Friends
It should now be clear to Georgians that despite the lofty rhetoric that met their Rose Revolution, for the West they are little more than a pawn in the greater game, a well positioned fly in Russia’s ointment. Tragically for the Georgians’, their misadventure has only furthered Russia’s drive to force its way back onto the top table of international affairs, putting them in the position of being instrumentalised by both sides.

EU accession is a distant prospect and the idea of NATO membership (and protection under the article 5 mutual defence clause), now seems vaguely ridiculous. Can we really imagine the combined forces of Europe and North America riding to the rescue of the Georgians, with the potential to provoke a full-scale conflict with Russia in its own back yard. The irony of Bernard Kouchner, the high priest of interventionism calling on Russia to halt their military action exposes the West’s rules – legitimate interventions are only those that the US, NATO or the EU can put a stop to.

How to lose friends and alienate peoples
It would seem that America is determined to go back-to-the-future and recreate Russia as nemesis, playing on long-learned fears and nostalgia for old certainties, in the vein of the Straussian political philosophy (particularly its need for enemies) that has underpinned so much of the neo-con project. The diffuse, lurking threat of Al Qaeda may no longer be seen as sufficient for these ends and recasting Russia in the role of ‘Evil Empire’ provides an easily identifiable potential menace. This project has been made easier by the Russians’ clumsy attempts to re-assert themselves on the world stage as they stumbled out of the chaos of the Yeltsin years. Intimidation of former Soviet Republics, politically motivated murders, aggressive energy policy and the imposition of a new Russian corporatism in place of Western style turbo-capitalism have all served to fan the flames of Russophobia.

While these concerns are legitimate, the Western media’s coverage of these issues, and the current conflict, has been notable for its anti-Russian bias. Typically, on the first night of the conflict the BBC showed speeches from Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev and Georgian leader Saakashvilli. Medvedev’s appearance was restricted to a translated one-liner boiling down to “we will find those responsible and they will be punished”, while Saakashvilli, speaking in English, was given much lengthier airtime as he pleaded his case in front of a carefully positioned EU flag. Writing in The Guardian, David Clarke described Russia as a bully wreaking havoc, while in Canada’s Globe & Mail, John O’Sullivan asked us to consider whether Russia is morphing into another USSR.

This long-standing media positioning had the effect of casting Russia in the role of a calculating bully, smarting over its lost empire, while the West’s ally du jour is seen as a noble, plucky and innocent victim appealing to the right of self determination. Consequently the image of Russia as a wild, unknowable and ungovernable place, populated by gangsters and unstable, hard-drinking serfs crying out to be ruled by a strong leader is a common one in much of the Western public perception. Our leaders have done little to dispel this image as it allows their conduct in relation to Russia to come under far less intense scrutiny.

Constructing Russia as an enemy makes it much harder to engage in a mutually beneficial way, with Western policy makers vacillating between aggression and fear. If we are to really make the world safer and avoid the kind of tragedy that has befallen the peoples of Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia, then we need a genuinely collective approach to security, which seeks to include rather than demonise. Only in this way can legal norms and values be prioritised over the exercise of power, with genuine human security taking precedence over the power games of elites and vested interests. The first step towards this is to hold our own leaders to account for the crashing hypocrisy they have displayed in dealing with this conflict. A reasonable second step would be to demand a more balanced view from our media.

Originally published on e-politik.de on 18/09/2008

Black Arts

The sculpture "Entropa" by the Czech artist David Cerny – and the furore it has caused – remind us of the power of good political art.



David Cerny is no stranger to controversy, although previously this has remained relatively local. Whether painting a Russian memorial tank pink as a send off to departing soviet soldiers or decorating the futuristic Prague TV Tower with faceless, climbing babies, Cerny has been one of Czech art’s most prominent provocateurs. Now, having duped the Czech government that has recently taken over the presidency of the EU, he has generated a trans-European controversy which has enraged officials and energised the often soporific corridors of the EU.

Playing on the Czech word for Europe (Evropa) and the concept of Entropy, David Cernywas supposed to be co-ordinating a government funded project bringing together artists from each of the 27 EU member states to mark the Czech presidency. Playing on the EU slogan of ‘United in Diversity’, each country is presented as a snap-out piece from a self-assembly Europe kit, with the artists riffing on national stereotypes and prejudices. This elicited mixed reactions, with some praising the candour of the piece, while others objected that it merely reinforced prejudices and played up to cheap notions of each member state. However, when it became apparent that, despite the carefully composed biographies, websites and other props, the artists were actually fictional creations and the whole process had been engineered by Cerny and his team, the sparks really started to fly.

Discussing identities
Prague TV tower with Cerny's babiesThe Czech deputy PM for European affairs, Alexandr Vondra, was ‘unpleasantly surprised’, while the Bulgarians summoned the Czech ambassador to explain why an officially sanctioned art piece had chosen a Turkish toilet to symbolise their country.

Entropa brilliantly raises many issues which urgently need discussing in the European context, ranging from identity to image management and the simulative façade of politics as well as foregrounding the role of art itself in an age of commodification and official patronage. Why was it risqué but ultimately acceptable for artists to poke fun at their own country, but not for a foreigner to do it? What happens when the yawning gap between the European dream and the reality of the Euro-everyday is exposed? Where is the space for artistic creativity and independence, when contemporary art is so often valued only in monetary terms and revolutionary artists have all too often morphed into decorators for the rich?

Like much good contemporary art, Cerny asks us to question ascribed identities, from the national stereotypes so playfully presented, to the carefully honed harmony of the EU, which rings hollow when compared to its helplessness on the international stage.
That Cerny had to lie to the Czech government to bring this project to fruition exposes a disturbing trend – art and artists are all too often instrumentalised to the purposes of others, becoming as AnArchitektur put it (when describing architects) monkeys dancing while those with the money call the tune.

Czechs as balances: a history of satire
Given the overly marketised state of the art world, it is no wonder that much of the more interesting work being done at the moment comes from ‘subsidy artists’ who survive on grants from governments and foundations. However, while each of the donating institutions has its own goals and ambitions, it is clear that for really good art to be created, it cannot be subjugated to serving as legitimation for others. The Czech government clearly wanted to have something tangible to mark the clearest possible indication of their reintegration into the European mainstream. They got it, but not in the way they expected.

Far from being embarrassed, the Czechs can point to this as the latest episode in a subversive tradition that takes in the Good Soldier Svejk, the (imaginary) national hero Jara Cimrman, the protagonists of the novels of Kundera and Hrabal and in recent times, many of the younger artists working in Prague. Mocking Prague’s pretensions to be an Olympic city, while social issues go unaddressed, the Guma Guar collective produced posters of notorious criminals declaring ‘We are all on the national team’, hijacking the official slogan to great effect. Guma Guar also courted controversy by making work masquerading as that of the much loathed national gallery director Milan Knizak, foreshadowing Cerny’s deception. The Stohoven group inserted footage of a nuclear explosion into a weather forecast and Katerina Seda has produced wonderfully warm antidotes to contempory alienation and atomisation.

Artistic independence and free speech

Metalmorphosis by David CernyThe work of Cerny and these young artists stands for artistic independence, free thinking and free speech, as well as thumbing its nose at the EU’s carefully constructed version of Europe and Europeanness. One might therefore imagine that, although he and Cerny have history, the notoriously eurosceptic Czech President Vaclav Klaus would approve of this piece. However, Cerny doesn’t let his compatriot off the hook, making Klaus and some of his more notorious pronouncements the focus of the Czech puzzle piece. “Let the head of state have his say! He’s not just a skier but a great guy!”

Klaus’s opposition to all things EU has meant that the government has worked hard to keep him out of the limelight, while Prime Minister Topolanek and Deputy PM Vondra present the ‘acceptable’ face of Czech Euro-subservience. Cerny has therefore managed to strike another blow against the careful presentation and image management which is so often one of the biggest obstacles to understanding and engaging with contemporary politics. The gap between the EU’s image and reality needs to be addressed if the Union is to properly represent its peoples and act on the world stage as a legitimate and effective force for good.

The Czechs are enduring a baptism of fire in their first stab at the EU presidency, with Gaza and Gazprom plaguing their carefully prepared plans. They should look to their slogan – “Europe without barriers” – for inspiration and thank David Cerny for investing this with real meaning.

A copy of the full version of the Entropa project, complete with images of each country and false artists' biogs is available on request. Leave a comment or email me

Originally published on www.e-politik.de on 29/01/2009

The Blame Game

To see the real source of corruption, look in the mirror


A specter is haunting Central Europe — the specter of corruption. Graft, bribery, patronage and cronyism remain among the most significant challenges facing the Czech Republic.

We are widely considered one of the success stories of the transition from communism to capitalism, with consistent GDP growth and generally rising standards of living. But we continue to lag behind in dealing with corruption, which has the potential to undermine the good work that has been done and limit future economic growth and societal progress.

Corruption distorts all sectors of life. In this country, money that could be spent productively is instead used to grease the wheels, to buy access to doctors, to secure places at universities or win public contracts.

As the anti-corruption nonprofit group Transparency International has explained so well, corruption is disproportionate in its effects: It hits the poorest the hardest. So, anyone concerned with social justice should also be concerned about tackling corruption.Successive governments, including the current one, give solemn promises to deal with corruption. Yet the problem persists.

The European Union and the World Bank, among other international institutions, continue to zero in on the Czechs’ apparent inability to deal with this issue. Transparency International, as reported recently in The Prague Post, places the Czech Republic among the European Union’s most corrupt nations, closer in standards to Bosnia than to Denmark.

What is to be done?
Common wisdom is that the best strategy hinges on reducing the role and influence of government.Czech officials have certainly passed laudable initiatives to reduce bureaucratic red tape and simplify legislation, while simultaneously increasing oversight on public officials and bringing in tougher penalties for those caught in the act. And the pending privatization of Czech Airlines (ČSA) and Prague’s Ruzyně Airport, along with massive reforms of the healthcare and pension systems, seem to hold the promise of reducing opportunities for corruption.

This logic underpins anti-corruption efforts around the world. Professor Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University and an adviser to the Bosnian government puts it this way: “Shrinking the size of the government down to almost zero … is the only way to get rid of corruption. Have no government officials, and a minimum state.”
It sounds extreme. Yet, particularly in former communist countries, corruption seems endemic to the political process.

Author and activist Naomi Klein talks about this in her meticulously researched book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein notes that wherever the transition from communism to capitalism encounters problems, those problems are based on corruption. While countries move toward privatization, deregulation and a free market, economic shock therapists always blame a “culture of corruption” for derailing their reform programs.

It may well be true that there is a historical hangover from the communist period, when the only way to get what you needed was to subvert and bypass the system, effectively creating parallel mechanisms reliant on corruption and favoritism.
But while this may have established a baseline of corruption, transitions in post-communist countries have set new benchmarks.

President Václav Klaus’ “Turnpike,” the much heralded straight road from Husák to Thatcher, was the transition route chosen by Czech elites. They headed directly down this road, ignoring speed limits and exhortations to drive carefully.

This period of “nomenklatura capitalism” and the emergence of a new gilded class of oligarchs gave rise to a series of scandals, with Harvard Capital Consulting and IPB Bank being only the most well-known examples. This way of doing business was actively encouraged at the time, with transition economies attempting to harness what economist Anders Aslund memorably called “the temptations of capitalism.” Klein and others contend that corruption is not an obstacle to this style of capitalism, but has been an inherent part of it, from Russia to Chile, Indonesia to Poland.

But it is not enough to raise our hands, shrug our shoulders and lay the all-encompassing, obfuscatory blanket of corruption over everything that goes wrong. There are other forces at work, unleashed deliberately to pursue particular agendas.
For example, given the private sector’s previous history, we should think twice in the future about transferring assets there. The high frequency of large-scale scandals in the business world in recent years offers ample demonstration that companies will often push as far into grey areas as possible to secure an advantage in the increasingly competitive global market. This means stretching regulatory provisions and disclosure requirements to the limit and, on occasion, flat-out deception and lying.

We have already seen what happened in companies from Enron and Worldcom to Ahold and Deutsche Post. After a scapegoat was identified, a feeding frenzy for the assets of the disgraced company ensued and executives and spokespeople appeared on the nightly news, wringing their hands and promising to do better next time. Backward-looking legislation addressed the scams that were uncovered. But those measures never look ahead, anticipating the ruses that profitability and accelerating growth will require.

Does it have to be like this? Consider the examples of the Nordic countries, which despite having relatively large state sectors and no shortage of money to tempt officials (especially when we consider Norwegian oil wealth), rank among the best performers in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
The difference in the Nordic situation is that the governments responsible for large state sectors are accountable to more engaged populations, and by a media not content to feast on a diet of continual scandal and soap-opera politics. By contrast, in this country it seems that the government is never held to account and forced to deliver on its promises. The public apparently doesn’t want to get involved in politics, and the media drags everything down to a level that can be easily understood on the surface but draws a veil over the real arenas of power.

Ultimately, apathy is the real specter haunting Central Europe, not corruption.
Only by overcoming this ennui can we reverse the corruption that has beset our politics and engineer a return to accountable government. Only by reconstituting our public and political lives can we expect to be able to regain control over the decisions that affect us.

This article was originally published in The Prague Post on 16/07/2008

Kings for a Day

The EU presidency is seen as a crowning achievement for Czech democracy, but the tectonic plates of geopolitics are shifting


The Czech Republic is poised to crown its European re-integration by taking on the presidency of the European Union. However, even as the Czechs take this symbolically momentous step, it seems the game has changed, and the Czech Republic may again find itself outflanked by the resurgent forces of history.

The presidency of the EU entails setting agendas for EU meetings and chairing discussions and negotiations. In practice, this allows the holder of the presidency to emphasize its particular concerns and to try pushing the union in a new direction. A positive example is the exposure given to the plight of East Timor during the 2000 Portuguese presidency, which highlighted the intolerable occupation of its former colony. This resulted in greater EU pressure on Indonesia and eventual independence for the Timorese people.

The depth and breadth of each of the themes of the Czech presidency — especially in the midst of the present economic and security uncertainties — would test the bureaucracy of any state. So, how will a midsize European country with a relatively young democracy cope with the internal machination of the EU and the external challenges during its time in the hot seat?

Although the EU prides itself on being a postmodern, post-power organization — with Luxembourg having the same voting power as Germany on many issues — there is still a tendency for the big boys to get their own way. The newer members of the exclusive club have also, on occasion, found themselves marginalized by the coherent (and somewhat inflexible) shared vision of more established states. The Czech government and civil service will work in close cooperation with the European Commission but must be careful not to let their own priorities be obscured by the onward march of unilinear Euro-visionary history.

The stated priorities for the Czech presidency come under the general slogan of “Europe without barriers” and include working toward a competitive and open Europe, sustainable and secure energy, a budget for Europe’s future, Europe as a global partner and a secure and free Europe.

A competitive and open Europe
This priority is intended to reinvigorate the movement toward the single market. This means removing remaining barriers to the free movement of capital, goods, services and labor, as well as eliminating the barriers retained toward new member states, plus making progress on the Lisbon agenda — which aimed to make the EU the world’s most competitive, knowledge-based economy. The Czech government has also explicitly stated that it intends to push for enhanced trade liberalization with external trading partners. However, with the liberal free trade model increasingly under attack — because of the world economic crisis and by resurgent worker and people’s rights movements — this may not only be easier said than done, but may not have the support of much of the European populace.

Sustainable and secure energy
The European Security Strategy identifies critical resources — such as oil and gas — as potential flash points for future conflicts. The Czechs, along with other Central Europeans, are all too aware of this, reliant as they are on Russian hydrocarbons. Having previously seen the taps turned off, the Czechs and the EU are keen to avoid a situation where Russian power makes others powerless through through their monopoly supplier position.

This seemingly laudable quest for “energy security” raises many important issues for the EU and the way that it conducts business. As was clear during the recent Georgia crisis, the EU’s relationship with Russia is characterized as much by impotence as by antagonism and internal division. The reflexive Russo-phobia on the part of many of the newer member states certainly does not help this trend, although the unilateral deal making of Germany and others is equally damaging in the EU’s quest to maximize leverage with the biggest fixer of its fossil fetish. However, as much as this reflects the EU’s inability to get its act together, it also illustrates the crass way in which the collective West disdainfully treats Russia’s assertions that it has a place at the top table of international politics. In these regards, the Czech presidency will need to be as mindful of the ambitions of certain EU states to reassert themselves as deal makers and power brokers on the world stage.

A budget for Europe’s future
The EU’s current budgetary fudge runs until 2013, and the Czech presidency wants to begin work on reaching a better settlement for the next budgetary period. This is a noble endeavor when one considers the Gordian knot of budgetary strands, including agricultural, regional and structural funding, not to mention the ideas for enhanced cooperation in justice and home affairs and the stated preference of the presidency preparation team for an intensified European Neighborhood Policy. Further perpetuating Czech difficulties is the current economic environment. The politics of economic choice have not been so prominent in a generation, and questions of state redistribution and subsidy, as well as the efficacy of free markets, are genuinely back on the table. This budget is likely to descend into trench warfare pitting commission ideologues against populist nationalists.

Europe as a global partner
EU foreign policy has been a traditional focus of presidential tenures, with most policy elites seeing it as key to expanding the EU’s global clout. The Czech Republic has identified three areas of focus: trans-Atlantic relations, the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe. As good Euro-Atlantic citizens, it is not surprising that the Czechs have chosen to focus on cooperation between the EU and NATO. Despite overlapping membership between the two organizations and the many practical agreements in place, significant differences remain. The issue of NATO expansion illustrates rifts between politicians in Washington and Brussels. In terms of practical issues, there is still much to be done with regard to interoperability within NATO itself, let alone between it and the EU. However, the real challenges remain political and strategic rather than military and tactical. Czech collaboration with the missile-defense shadow in Central Europe only heightens the complexity of their task in this field.

The Czechs will push for further integration and accession for countries of the Western Balkans. With the prospective drawdown of peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, against a backdrop of political fear and loathing there and in Kosovo, to say nothing of infighting among the international community, this region may unfortunately again become a focal point for Europe. Enlargement has been the most successful foreign policy in the EU’s history, the carrot of membership being sufficient for it to get its way abroad. This has taken a few hits of late, with doubts about process and methods compounded by a decreasing appetite for further enlargement. Hence, we see that in certain countries commitments have already been made for fast-tracking (Croatia), while others are farmed off into the European Neighborhood Policy. The Czechs cannot feasibly solve this on their watch, but initiating a more open and realistic dialogue, which recognizes the more pertinent critiques of the enlargement and neighborhood policies, would be welcome.

A secure and free Europe
The Czechs have identified the build-up in freedom, security and justice as one of the most dynamic areas of cooperation within the EU. They are keen to push this — to get further support for their own modernization of law enforcement and participation in the Schengen system and to be seen as full partners, not unreliable Eastern neighbors. However, this approach inevitably prioritizes security over freedom. It is worth remembering here that the taking down of formal borders has been accompanied by the increase of checks carried out by random patrols. The idea that borders have become filtration systems for sorting the useful wheat from the “unproductive chaff” is unacceptable in the context of the global income and opportunity disparities that drive much migration. The Czech presidency should strive to ensure that Schengen and increased law-enforcement cooperation are not allowed to become disguised mechanisms for detecting, detaining and deporting “surplus humanity.” Proposed measures — such as immigration policies targeting skilled labor and the creation of an electronic network of national judicial records — should be supplemented by public information campaigns to ensure that increased powers are accompanied by enhanced accountability from citizens, civil society and the media.

Royal ascent or democratic dialogue?
The Czech Republic’s priorities for the presidency run the gamut of difficult issues that the EU and its member states currently face. This is to be saluted, as Czechs have not ducked the big questions, although in a challenging environment they may have bitten off more than they can chew. It is imperative that, as well as delivering an administratively efficient presidency, the Czechs make their voices heard, while recognizing the inadequacies of current EU thinking and policy in each of these areas. Six months is too short a time to address the issues outlined above, but it is sufficient to build a platform for further and better debate, both behind closed doors and in the public arena. In this way, the Czech Republic could be remembered for a presidency that supports further democratization of the EU, rather than the reinforcement of a top-down elitist project.

Originally Published in The Prague Post on 17/12/2008

Debt of Gratitude: The Meaning of ‘No!’ in Irish

Why an Irish “No!” does not mean “No.”

Amid the whooping of campaigners and the sound of jaws dropping around the chancelleries and boardrooms of Europe, the returning officer delivered the verdict that should never have come. Despite the warnings, the thinly veiled threats, and attempts at blackmail, the Irish electorate rejected the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty in a vote of 54 to 46 percent. In practice this gave the no campaign a majority of more than 100,000 on a turnout of more than 1.5 million.

This unexpected rejection has triggered a wave of panic amongst EU and national political elites, with politicians and commentators falling over themselves to proclaim the dangers of rejecting Europe and seeking to brand this as anything other than a rejection of the Lisbon Treaty itself. The furore in the aftermath of the vote and the differing reactions to it are illustrative of the machinations of power within the EU and its member states and raise many larger issues, which are of significance to us all.

Phoenix from the Flames
The Lisbon Treaty came into being as a result of the hard won compromise, driven by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, which enabled the EU to salvage something from the wreckage of the EU Constitution which was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. The treaty, like its more grandly titled predecessor, sought to restructure and reinvigorate the EU’s institutions and streamline its decision-making processes. It was hoped that this would enable the EU to function better, giving it the appropriate tools to manage its affairs with 27 members, rather than struggling to cope with its existing institutions and rules, many of which had been designed when it had six members.

The key provisions of the treaty included the creation of a permanent president of the EU council, serving for two and a half years, rather than the current system of rotating six-month presidencies among the member states; the creation of a position equivalent to that of a Foreign Minister or Secretary of State, that would combine the roles currently filled by “High Representative” Javier Solana and the Directorate General for External Relations, Commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner, in the Council and the Commission respectively; and harmonising all the EU’s previous treaties (Rome, Maastricht, etc.) into one, thus creating a simpler and more transparent foundation for the working of the Union.

The Lisbon Treaty aimed to provide greater legitimacy for the EU by giving a more substantial role to the European Parliament as well as to the parliaments of member states. Crucial elements also included the enshrining of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in EU law and the removal of national vetoes in several areas, to speed up decision-making. Crucially, the treaty needed to be approved unanimously, requiring all 27 EU member states to ratify it through their own national mechanisms. Ireland is the only country in the Union where this process legally requires that a referendum be held.

None of this seems like earth-shatteringly controversial stuff, rather, just bureaucratic tidying, so what happened to make the Irish vote “No!” so decisively?

Hostage to their own fortune
Before the referendum, many commentators and politicians had focused on, or taken comfort in, the idea that Ireland, as one the countries perceived to have benefited most from membership of the European Union, should not reject the treaty. Commentators in The Independent (UK) and The Globe & Mail (Canada) focused on the more than 30 billion Euros that the Irish have received in subsidies, the emergence of Ireland from the UK’s shadow and the way that Ireland has taken a place on the world stage, supposedly as a result of its EU membership. The Financial Times (UK) summed up these arguments when it stated that:

‘It seems extraordinary that the Irish could be so apparently ungrateful.’

The Irish referendum has shown that, despite the best efforts of the Euro elite, bribery is not always enough to get your way, even when it is combined with bullying. The French Foreign Minister Bernhard Kouchner, founder of Medicins sans Frontieres and no stranger to trying to bend other countries’ governments to his will warned darkly that the Irish would be the “first victims” if they voted no.

Both during the campaign and in the aftermath of the “No!” vote, attempts have been made to portray the “No!” campaign as an unholy alliance of nutjobs and fundamentalists of one kind or another. As the acclaimed novelist Colm Toibin put it when writing in The Guardian, “The Lisbon Treaty was a gift for every crank in Ireland.” The UK’s former Europe Minister, Denis MacShane, chose to play on British fears and prejudices by emphasising the role of Sinn Fein (for long the political wing of the IRA) and the Socialist Workers Party.

In many of Europe’s corridors of power, the immediate reaction to the result was to pretend that it hadn’t happened and essentially did not matter. Commission President José Manuel Baroso insisted that the ratification process should continue in the countries that had not yet rubber stamped the treaty, including the Czech Republic. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier stated: “We’re sticking firmly to our goal of putting this treaty into effect.”

However, as the scale of the rejection became clear, and with growing acceptance that this result may have been repeated had other countries held referendums, a different approach began to emerge.

Imitating the reaction of Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg and an ardent federalist, to the French and Dutch “no” votes in 2005, it became paramount to state that the Irish had rejected many things, but not the treaty itself.

A Guardian editorial noted that the Irish government “allowed the Lisbon treaty to become a hostage to general public discontent,” implying that the recent upheavals in Irish domestic politics and dissatisfaction with the Irish political elite were to blame for the “no” vote, rather than the content of the treaty itself. This is the same tune that was played after the French “no” vote in 2005.

Further echoes of the last EU train wreck can be heard in another set of arguments that has tried to brand the Irish voter, described by one commentator as “any clown with a pen,” as incapable of understanding the treaty and the “No!” vote as being an endorsement of their own ignorance. The Financial Times combined these two points, arguing that:

“Putting the Treaty to such a plebiscite is absurd, [since many Irish voters] will vote ‘No’ simply because they do not understand the Treaty [and] others want to register a protest against the political establishment that is all on the ‘Yes’ side.”


Smearing the “No!” Campaign
The British commentator and former Blair confidante Will Hutton went further, alleging that the “No!” campaign was based on lies and that the treaty actually went a long way to addressing voters’ concerns. Surely if this was the case then the “Yes” campaign, backed by all four major Irish political parties and the bulk of the mainstream media, should have been able to expose the lies and set the record straight. That they were unable to do this reveals two key points.

Firstly, it should be noted that the treaty – almost 300 pages of dense Brusselese – was not an easy document to sell and even Irish PM Brian Cowen admitted he had not read it all. This certainly did leave aspects of the treaty open to interpretation and to speculation on issues such as abortion, conscription to any future European army, and tax harmonisation. While the treaty did not deal with these issues directly and Ireland, along with the UK, had already obtained ‘opt-outs’ on many parts of the treaty, these issues were given potency by the new arrangements on voting rights.

The loss of the right of veto on many issues, along with other trends in European governance, thrust the role of the EU’s smaller member states into the spotlight. It was this issue that gave credence to the more far-fetched, often exaggerated concerns expressed above. Whereas Ireland would not have been affected in those areas for now, nothing would prevent them from coming to pass in future. It was no longer good enough for the Irish political elite to hope that, in the words of Valery Giscard D’Estaing (former French President and architect of the failed Constitution),

“Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly.”

Secondly, there are many underlying concerns about the grey areas in the treaty, many of which relate to another agreement signed in Lisbon: the EU’s Lisbon Agenda for making itself the most competitive economic area in the world by 2010. In practice, this has come to mean a move away from the social Europe favoured by many across the EU towards a neo-liberal free trade zone. Left wing commentator Seumas Milne put it best when he said that the Irish government had been

“…unable to explain how the loss of vetoes, opening of health and education to competition, and undermining of workers' pay and conditions could be a good thing.”

Under the guise of administrative efficiency, the treaty does centralise more power in the Commission and the Council, while giving token additional powers to the European and national parliaments and further blurring the lines of accountability and responsibility. Crucially, the primacy of the freedom of markets, rather than the protection of people, is the defining ethos of the text, despite the inclusion of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Should the treaty ever come into force, governments around Europe will feel increasing pressure to liberalise markets and privatise what remains of their increasingly hollowed-out state sectors. Transport and energy markets are also to be prised open, while workers’ right to strike would be further curtailed.

No to Lisbon does not mean No to Europe
Another tactic of the reflexively pro EU and pro-business elite has been to try to paint the nay-sayers as xenophobic Eurosceptics, opposed in general to the idea of an integrated Europe, or to make them out to be reactionary hicks. However, in reality, while the broad “Church of the No!” campaign undoubtedly included some shrill and hardly progressive voices, the majority of its constituent parts went out of their way to point out that they are actually pro-European. They are simply for a different vision of Europe than the one set forth in the treaty.

While this may be hard to stomach for the neo-liberal visionaries in the Commission, it is the start of a reinvigorated campaign for a people’s Europe rather than a corporate Europe. This could also mark the beginning of the end of elitist efforts to impose Europe from the top-down, rather than making Europe from the bottom up.

A further key question raised by the “no” vote, with direct significance for the Czech Republic, concerns the type of democracy exercised within the EU. It has been repeated in many places that the votes of 1.5 million, with just over half against, should not derail a project that has been approved by the elected governments of hundreds of millions of people, including large countries such as Germany, France, and Spain. While it intuitively makes sense to say that if a majority of Europeans, spoken for by elected representatives, are in favour of the Treaty, then it should go ahead, this takes no account of the source of the EU’s legitimacy and goes against its own premise of being a post-power political organisation.

The EU gains its own legitimacy from the trust that most people still have in their nation states. It then provides a forum for these states, secure in their own identities, to transcend these and to cooperate on issues of mutual importance. As the former British diplomat and current advisor to Solana, Robert Cooper, points out in his book, The Breaking of Nations, the EU has always prided itself on its post-modern, post-power conception . If we have reached a point where the big countries, notably in this instance Germany and France, are effectively saying that this or that country does not count, and we can ride on without them, it changes the whole conception of the Union itself.

President Václav Klaus clearly does not agree with this point of view. After the vote, he stated that:

“The Lisbon Treaty project ended today with the decision of the Irish voters and its ratification cannot be continued.”

Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Alexandr Vondra agreed, describing the Franco-German pressure as inappropriate. So, rather than the Irish owing the EU a debt of gratitude for their advancement since becoming members, it is we, European citizens and residents, who are in debt to Irish voters for having given European democracy a shot in the arm and for derailing this elitist train.