Author Archives: markdowe1

European Union, Government, Russia, Ukraine, United States

Russia’s strong-arm tactics…

Intro: Russian threats in Ukraine and beyond are rising. Its tactics are crude, but the broader ramifications are starting to become clearer

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President Putin is attempting to operate with tactical deftness in Ukraine, but much of his approach amounts to strategic folly. Events have spiralled this week culminating in several people who have died and many more injured. Tensions in the east of the country have risen sharply.

Putin’s irredentist aggression, masked in a way that deceives no one, is being played up well in the Russian heartland. The wider international impact of his actions, though, should be a concern to Russians, and not dismissed in a flippant way as was done earlier this week by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Mr Lavrov poo-pooed the importance of Russia’s exclusion from the G8, but for a country with a wilting economy and serious depreciation of its currency, as well as a chronic problem with low self-esteem, the loss of G8 membership will be a major blow to the nation’s prestige. What came next was the crude bullying of Ukraine via Gazprom. This has merely reinforced the long-established opinion of Russia being a crude and tyrannical state whose declared adherence to democracy and free trade is nothing more than a sham.

The most plausible analysis of events to date is that, having successfully shorn Ukraine of Crimea, Mr Putin is now bent on doing the same to the eastern parts where there are large numbers of Russian speakers and where strong cultural and historical ties exist with Mother Russia.

Despite the denials, it also seems likely that Russian agents led the storming of police stations and government buildings. As they melted away, in fear of being openly identified, pro-Russian gunmen followed them in. It is quite clear, too, that armed gangs opposed to the Ukrainian government in Kiev are now in charge of these buildings.

For Olexander Turchynov, the interim Ukrainian president, this is a terrifying crisis that seems ready to escalate at any moment. Having already used the country’s armed forces to evict some of the pro-Russian gangs from government buildings, actions which led to nine Russian soldiers being killed, Mr Putin has the very excuse he needs to send in his Russian forces under the pretext of ‘protecting pro-Russian civilians’.

Vladimir Putin may be on the brink of restoring the Russian empire. This may invoke questions over what may happen in the Baltic States and other breakaway countries that forged links with Europe after the fall and demise of the former Soviet Union. Mr Putin is emboldened by the rise of his new and emerging Russian Federation and will want to see those breakaway countries brought back under his autocratic control. Any attempt to do so, however, will be at the cost of driving his country into a diplomatic corner.

The United States is being forced to rethink on why it may have to continue being the world’s policeman, a position it has long wanted to relinquish. Russia’s most dependable ally, China, always nervous and tense when geopolitical questions of territorial integrity arise, looks askance at Mr Putin’s rough handling of Ukraine, as was reflected in its abstention of a UN Security Council vote held in March. Germany, too, long lulled into a state of quasi-pacifism by Russia’s post-Soviet peace plan, has been rudely awakened.

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It has been apt to ask, what is the Russian President’s game? The unrest in eastern Ukraine has been portrayed by the Kremlin as an autonomous phenomenon – an upsurge of nationalistic and patriotic feeling among embattled ethnic Russians who long for the protection of the Motherland against what they see as a neo-nationalist regime in Kiev. It seems true that the initial impulse came from locals acting without Russia’s direct involvement, although it has become clear that, just as in Crimea, many of the pro-Russian ‘separatists’ are not just taking their orders from Moscow, but are very probably Russian troops in thin disguise who themselves are orchestrating events in many areas of eastern Ukraine.

Unlike with how developments unfurled in Crimea, the Ukrainian government is in no mood to sit quietly by and watch a repeat in many of its eastern towns. Its efforts earlier this week to reclaim control of official government buildings seized by pro-Russian forces has already led to bloodshed. It is becoming increasingly difficult to see, however, where and how a line can be drawn between what some may say are ‘anti-terrorist operations’, as against others who purport a state of open war.

The question moreover, then, is what does Mr Putin really hope to gain from his continuing excursions. His annexation of Crimea may have been illegal, but it seems to have been grudgingly accepted by the international community as a fait accompli. Not satisfied with merely banking that gain, he has continued to provoke and by doing everything in his power to destabilise Ukraine. Along with threats to cut off vital energy supplies, Putin has further violated its sovereignty by supporting and orchestrating civil unrest within its borders. Maybe he thinks he is able to snip off further pieces of territory at will, or by freely setting up more autonomous enclaves on his borders where Russia’s writ can be massaged as it sees fit.

It is becoming harder to see how further violence, chaos and economic turmoil can be avoided. The only person who can calm the situation is Mr Putin himself – but really he seems in no mood to be backing down.

In many respects, the crisis in Ukraine has marked Mr Putin as not acting from strength but weakness. We may argue that he is acting and resembling a stance similar to that of Slobodan Milosevic, whose reckless attempt to turn the former socialist and collapsing Yugoslavia into a Serbian super-state was instigated by the fact that the basis of his power had already crumbled. This was a desperate bid by Milosevic to secure a new foundation and powerbase for his Communist Party. Then, Europe stood idly by and watched it happen.

Mr Putin’s power is not under quite the same threat in the same way, but Russia is a nation that is in steep decline, as was Yugoslavia. The lesson from the Yugoslav tragedy, surely, is that the West should hardly go easy on continued Russian aggression in Ukraine.

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The Geneva meeting of the so-called ‘big four’ which met on Thursday to discuss the Ukraine crisis was convened against a far from promising backdrop. As the US Secretary of State, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Ukraine’s interim Foreign Minister and the EU’s foreign policy chief were settling down for business, the unabated row over whether armed separatists in eastern cities (such as Donetsk) were special forces operatives from over the border showed no sign of letting up. To agitate matters further, Vladimir Putin freely acknowledged that his troops had been in Crimea ahead of its pre-annexation referendum, and announced during a 4-hour phone-in that ‘he very much hoped’ not to have to exercise his country’s ‘right to use military force’ in eastern Ukraine, too.

Given that, only pessimism was expected by the time the protagonists in Geneva took to their post-conference podia in the afternoon. Contrary to expectations, though, the mood was lifted as the list of agreements came thick and fast. The parties agreed that all sides must refrain from the use of violence, with a proviso that all armed groups must give up their weapons, and all occupied government buildings must be vacated forthwith. An amnesty has been guaranteed for protestors for all but capital crimes.

Part of the agreement also includes measures which will help to restore order and stamp out a further rise in divisiveness, racism and anti-Semitism. Monitors from OSCE (the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe), who are already in the country, will expand their operations to assist the interim government in Ukraine to regain control. In a rather precarious new spirit of unity, Europe, the US and Russia will also provide extra monitors.

Kiev’s interim government has also committed to a ‘comprehensive and inclusive’ process for constitutional change. This will mean canvassing opinion across all regions of the country, and by ensuring the inclusive participation of all social groups and political parties.

The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, described the efforts as a ‘good day’s work’. As Ukraine was sliding dangerously towards civil war, the stand-off between Russia and the West was alarmingly reminiscent of the Cold War. But with a turn of fate that has unexpectedly delivered an agreement on common ground, one which surpasses even that which the most optimistic had predicted, does raise a real possibility that the crisis will be brought to an end.

The agreement looks good and a peaceable solution is much craved for. Yet, despite restraint from Kiev, scuffles between the authorities and pro-Russian protesters have been on the rise in recent days. With tensions running high and many armed groups moving around at will, the risk of disturbance remains.

To effectively implement the agreement, much will depend on Russia. Whilst Mr Lavrov has convincingly called for a cessation of violence, it remains to be seen whether Moscow will make good on its promise by withdrawing its clandestine support for the militants. Kiev, too, will have to act equally quickly if its pledges of inclusivity and reform are to prove sufficiently convincing to many of Ukraine’s opponents – of which there are many, both within and outside the country.

The situation in Ukraine is a complex matter. All sides have legitimate concerns, and the Geneva talks have made a good start in attempting to address them. The test, however, will come in the days and weeks ahead. Evidence of progress will be needed; otherwise this week’s agreements will be powerless to stop the chaos from continuing.

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Britain, European Union, Foreign Affairs, Government, Russia, Society, Ukraine, United States

Ukraine: Any further acts of Russian aggression must be dealt with by the West…

FEARS OF AN ESCALATION IN UKRAINE

The warning by John Kerry, US Secretary of State, that Russia is actively seeking to destabilise yet more of Ukraine – with a view to staging another Crimea-style military intervention – increases significantly the prospects of a deeper escalation inside the country. Mr Kerry has directly accused the Kremlin of using provocateurs and undercover agents to encourage pro-Russian activists to seize control of key cities in the eastern part of the country. This is a view equally shared by William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, who claims the latest flare-up in violence bears ‘all the hallmarks of a Russian strategy to destabilise Ukraine’.

Given the evidence, these warnings need to be taken seriously. Pro-Moscow activists have attempted to occupy government buildings in eastern cities such as Donetsk, Kharkiv and Lugansk. Similar tactics were employed by Moscow in the build-up to last month’s illegal annexation of Crimea. It is also known that the FSB, Russia’s overseas intelligence service, is active in the region, with its agents encouraging ethnic Russians to revolt against the Ukrainian government. The interpretation by Secretary of State Kerry is that Vladimir Putin is no doubt seeking to lay the foundations for a broader intervention aimed at annexing more of Ukraine’s territory.

The West needs to make clear that it will not tolerate any further occupation of European soil by the Kremlin. The seizing of Crimea led to a fairly limited response from the US and EU, through the targeting of assets of a small group of government officials and oligarchs, due to accusations that they had orchestrated the operation. Any further acts of aggression, however, by Moscow towards its vulnerable neighbour should result in Western powers implementing a broad range of sanctions and penalties. That would not only inflict severe damage on the Russian economy, but deepen Moscow’s status as an international pariah.

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Arts, Books, Legal, Society

Book Review: ‘The Collini Case’

Intro: Fabrizio Collini is a hard working, quiet and respectable man. Until the day he visits one of Berlin’s most luxurious hotels and kills an innocent man in cold blood. A murder. A murderer. No motive

ONE

IT was routine during the Second World War that both Germans and the Allies shot civilians in reprisal for attacks on their armed forces. One would be alarmed to think that a ratio could even be set at which such killings could be deemed legitimate. Yet, in 1941, Hitler set the bar at 100 civilians per soldier. Indifference aside, one would be tempted to ask how high is too high?

It is this question which fundamentally plagued the defence of an Italian man, Fabeizio Collini, some sixty years later. The Collini Case, by Ferdinand von Schirach, is based upon that historical trial.

Since the Nazi regime ended in cataclysmic defeat, like many of his generation, and some contemporaries even with a comparable heredity, von Schirach (born in 1964) is, not surprisingly, still dealing with the fall-out. That seems implicitly written into this philosophical legal thriller.

Collini, a very large man, purports to be a journalist. He walks into a luxury hotel suite in Berlin and murders Hans Meyer, the old man he has arranged to interview. Located near the Brandenburg Gate, he repeatedly shoots him from behind, and stamps his skull until it no longer resembles a skull. Collini sits in the hotel lobby and waits to be arrested by the police. Von Schirach describes the killing and post mortem with an entirely appropriate, but eerie economy and use of words.

Collini admits he did it, but the motive for doing so is unapparent. He refuses to say why he committed murder, and indeed says next to nothing.

A young and recently graduated defence lawyer, named Caspar Leinen, is assigned the case. It is his first, but it seems hopeless. His client refuses to say anything, except that he is not interested in being defended. Leinen discovers that the murdered man was a rich industrialist, who was also the grandfather of Leinen’s closest school friend, Philipp, who is now dead, killed in a car crash. Leinen used to spend holidays on the Meyer’s country estate, and fell in love with Philipp’s sister, Johanna. She insists he can’t defend this monster who had murdered her grandfather, the benign old man with whom Casper used to play chess. Leinen considers withdrawing from the case given the conflict of interest that arises, but is deterred from doing so after a conversation with a famous and highly respected defence lawyer, Mattinger, who made his name by successfully defending members of the Baader-Meinhof terrorists, and was a strong believer and advocate of the constitutional state (founded on law). Leinen is convinced and commits himself to Collini’s defence. As it happened, Mattinger becomes recruited by the Meyers Corporation as an accessory prosecutor, and becomes Leinen’s main opponent in the trial.

TWO

WERE it not for the fact that the trial had to be unexpectedly interrupted due to the illness of one of the judges, the case would have been briskly concluded and Leinen would have lost. Instead, he has an extra ten days to pursue a line of inquiry that, if successful, might well mean Collini being discharged.

All at once, the novel becomes a meditation on the law, a discussion of the difference between judicial guilt and moral culpability. Von Schirach’s characteristically spare prose could have been written with an icicle. He uses fewer adjectives than the opening by-line to this novel by Hemingway, resolutely refusing to impose emotions on the reader. Although the spectre of the Nazi past broods over this book, it is not about then, but now. In an article in Der Spiegel, written a few years ago when the book was first published in German, von Schirach maintained that he was more interested in the present than of the generations before him. In the author’s own words The Collini Case is a ‘book about the crimes committed in our state, about vengeance, guilt and the things we continue to fail at even today.’

Nevertheless, we cannot detach that the things we do today have a history. The law in any country is a complex historical document and the past it embeds continually reaches out its cold fingers to touch the present. A note at the end of the book informs the reader that this novel was a point of reference for a public inquiry into the mark left on the German Ministry of Justice by the Nazi past.

The impact of the novel’s 180 or so pages, in which not a word is wasted, is far greater than any legal thriller treble its size. The importance of the ideas contained within the narrative, combined with the meticulous unemotional prose, provides the reader with a book that is both fascinating and moving.

THREE

THE CASE draws upon the Statute of Limitations, but the existence of that law raises a philosophical point which von Schirach doesn’t really address: to what extent do we remain responsible for acts committed long ago? Is a man in his seventies like Hans Meyer the same person in his twenties? Statutes of limitations, which are found in most European legal codes (but not in ours) recognise that liability for even terrible crimes may expire.

The novel is written in a dry, flat style, but it is extremely persuasive. The trial scenes are excellent and well-thought through, and von Schirach confronts the question of the limitations of the law by inviting us to ask what justice is. Mattinger tells Leiten that ‘judges can’t decide according to what seems politically correct. If Meyer acted correctly by the standards of the time, we can’t blame him for it today.’ Leiten disagrees, believing that we can judge the past because ‘we’ve made progress.’ Mattinger says this opinion is an expression of the ‘zeitgeist’: ‘I believe in the laws and you believe in society. We’ll see who turns out to be right.’

It would take a dull reader of this tense and taut book not to ponder over the questions being asked: are we entitled to judge the past? If so, how far back should that extend? The Collini Case is disturbing precisely because there is no conclusive answer to be given. Even with Collini, who has acted with certainty, ends by saying ‘sorry for everything’. Yet, he accompanies this apology to Casper Leinen with a photograph which asserts that his act of revenge was indeed just. The reader may agree, while remaining aware of the implications of going beyond the law to rectify the failures, or apparent failure, of the Law and the legal system.

The German legal system of the mid twentieth-century was often described as being knotty, tangled and convoluted, perhaps because many of its secrets stemmed directly from the War. Or, maybe, because the contemporary German legal system is so dramatically unlike that which exists in Britain, one could easily find oneself forgetting that Collini’s trial is set in the twenty-first century.

As a character, Leinen would seem more at home in the 1930s. The reader could qualify this through his daily routine which, to all intent and purposes, is fairly grey and timeless. His legal colleagues may speak in court of the zeitgeist, but that zeitgeist is rarely on show in this novel. For Leinen, for the prosecutor Mattinger – and conceivably too for von Schirach, himself a prominent German defence attorney – the reader may deduce or feel inclined to think that the long hours spent in chambers has precluded their full immersion in society. It is this lack and deficiency which contributes to the oppressive, grey mood that weighs down on the pages of this book.

The narrative isn’t a comfortable story, but it is an important one. It is well documented that von Schirach’s late grandfather, Baldur, was the Reich Youth Leader of the Nazi Party, sentenced to 20 years imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials. The Collini Case clearly resonates on a personal, but also on a more universal human level. Like the central hall of the law court itself, with the allegorical figures and lofty walls and high ceilings which overawe Leiden, which make him feel small relative to the law, the reader is likely to find him or herself surprisingly sucked into the perturbations of justice unfurled in this case.

Like the best murder and crime fiction novels, The Collini Case has a twist to it. The reader is left to think given the legal arguments that are presented from either side. Ferdinand von Schirach has a family history that lends a particular poignancy to this brief and compelling novel.

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