No second Orange Revolution in sight. Sunday’s Ukrainian presidential election has been held in accordance to democratic standards. The EU Observer reports:
“This has been a well-administered and truly competitive election offering voters a clear choice,” the head of the ODIHR mission, veteran Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, who last year wrote a major EU report on the Russia-Georgia war, said.
A statement by EU High Representative Catherine Ashton praises the election:
“I welcome the completion of the second round of voting in the Ukrainian presidential elections and the positive assessment given to the process by the OSCE/ODIHR-led International Election Observation Mission.
The generally calm atmosphere in which the elections were conducted, the open campaign in the media and the fact that the electorate were provided with a genuine choice represent important achievements in Ukraine’s democratic development.
I should in particular like to congratulate the people of Ukraine for the high turn out in both rounds of the elections and the strong commitment demonstrated to the democratic process.
The European Union remains committed to deepening the relationship with Ukraine and supporting it in implementing its reform agenda. It looks forward to working with the new President to this end”
According to the EU Observer, this assessment makes it much harder for Tymoshenko to challenge the results:
“She [Ms Tymoshenko] has lost a key resource. She can’t rely on the opinion of external observers to back her side any more,” an EU official told this website.
The NY Times sees no indication for mass protests:
Kiev was calm on Monday, and there was no indication that the kind of mass street protests that broke out with the Orange Revolution would occur this week. Ms. Tymoshenko refused to concede the race, despite appeals for her to do so by Mr. Yanukovich and European election monitors. She was uncharacteristically quiet and did not make any public remarks, canceling two news conferences. Given Mr. Yanukovich’s edge, it may be difficult for her to dispute the results.
The article quotes an observer:
“Some say the Orange Revolution has failed — I say no,” said Matyas Eorsi, head of the observer delegation in Ukraine from the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly. “Thanks to the Orange Revolution, democratic elections in Ukraine are now a reality.”
Anne Applebaum comments in the Washington Post:
The most striking thing about this Ukrainian presidential election is that we genuinely did not know who would win. By contrast, the only mystery about Russian elections is the question of why they bother to hold them at all, since the winner is known long in advance. Six years after the Orange Revolution, Ukrainian political culture remains open, unpredictable and interesting.
The test now, of course, is whether Yanukovych will respect those who elected him, and ensure that democratic elections continue into the future.
France selling warship to Russia, Gates voices concerns. The BBC reports:
France has agreed to sell Russia an advanced warship and is considering a request from Moscow for three others, French defence officials say. It would be the first arms deal of its kind between Russia and a Nato member. It remains unclear when or where the 23,000-tonne Mistral class warship will be built. The deal, which would increase Russia’s capacity to launch amphibious offensives, will alarm ex-Soviet states such as Georgia, analysts say. (…) French President Nicolas Sarkozy had approved the sale of one Mistral, but Moscow naval officials had then asked for a further three ships, said Jacques de Lajugie of the French arms agency DGA. The deal has not yet been signed. With an estimated cost of up to 500 million euros, the Mistral is an assault ship that can carry troops, helicopters and armoured vehicles. Russia has reportedly been keen to buy the 980ft (299m) ship from France to modernise an ageing armoury.
According to the NY Times,
US Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told French officials Monday that he was concerned about their plans to sell Mistral-class amphibious assault ships to Russia, although there is little if anything the United States could do to block the deal, officials said. (…) The weapons deal has raised alarm in capitals across formerly Soviet territory — in particular in the republic of Georgia, which fought a war with Russia and sees the vessels as a threat that could be based in the Black Sea off its shores. The maritime Baltic states, also former Soviet republics, have sought information from France about what weapons and advanced technology would be included.
But Mr. Morin emphasized that the cold war was long over, and that Russia is a changed nation. He said that if Moscow is to be viewed as a partner in global stability, then there should be no objections to the French sale. “We can’t have a double discourse of saying they are partners and then talking about relations with Russia as if it were pre-1991,” Mr. Morin said. He acknowledged however, that “scars” of the Soviet era are still present in some nations of eastern and central Europe.
The Economist’s Charlemagne has some background: here.
Europe without leadership. On Thursday, EU leaders meet in Brussels for a summit. The Guardian’s Ian Traynor writes about the mood:
The first EU summit under Van Rompuy’s stewardship sees Europe slumped in a mood of unusually persistent gloom. Van Rompuy, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and the rest are in charge of a Europe engulfed by a sense of defeatism and decline and exhausted by nine long years of trying to construct a new European regime. The reasons for the ennui are clear. According to senior officials, analysts, and diplomats in Brussels, Paris, London and Berlin, Europe suddenly seems to matter a lot less in the world. Additionally, its leaders appear unsure of how to tackle their single currency’s biggest ever crisis, and are engaged in petty power struggles and point-scoring over how to use the EU’s new rulebook – the Lisbon treaty. “There are a lot of blame games,” said a senior European diplomat. “A lot of handwringing and bitching. No one is coming through to lead. It’s not a pretty picture at all and it looks pathetic to the rest of the world.”
According to Traynor, the Lisbon Treaty has not (yet) fulfilled expectations:
The treaty came into force in December and is supposed to cure Europe’s malaise by streamlining decision-taking, simplifying procedures, boosting common foreign policy, and supplying strong and coherent leadership. It is early days, but the new regime has started not with a bang but with a whimper. Where there was to be coherence, there is confusion. Where there was to be clear leadership, there are turf wars and rival presidents.
Obama announced last week he was too busy for a slated summit with the Europeans in Madrid in May. When Mongolia’s leader, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, visited Brussels last week he was nonplussed by the plethora of “European presidents” whom protocol prescribed he must meet (there are currently four).
The US state department made plain that one reason for Obama’s absence is that, under Lisbon, it was not clear with whom the Americans should be dealing. Matthias Matthijs, a Washington-based academic who is visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bologna Centre, said the post-Lisbon fiasco over who is in charge may take a year to sort out. “There is a sense in Washington that Europe needs to get its act together,” he said. “It’s another missed opportunity for Europe. They do not have anyone to put on the world stage.”
That person is supposed to be Van Rompuy or Catherine Ashton, the new EU foreign policy chief also created by the Lisbon treaty. But no one appears to have told the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who took on the rotating six-month presidency of the EU last month determined not to forfeit any of its perks and privileges to Van Rompuy who, under the Lisbon terms, chairs all summits of EU leaders.
At the root of the malaise is the fact that capitals are unwilling to give up influence — and not capable to exert leadership, Traynor says:
Increasingly in Europe, particularly as a result of the Lisbon treaty and the uninspiring choice of Van Rompuy and Ashton as the EU’s summit and foreign policy chiefs, power lies in national capitals. Diplomats and analysts complain that those national leaders are not up to the task of pooling authority and projecting power effectively on the world stage – another purported aim of the Lisbon regime.
Of the figures who matter most, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has been invisible since winning a second term last autumn. Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi raises only smirks. Gordon Brown is credited with trying hard on the world financial crisis but is seen as a lame duck, while it is feared across the EU that David Cameron and William Hague, by contrast, will conspire to subvert rather than project European leadership. The sole figure to command respect for his political will and energy is Nicolas Sarkozy of France. But he is also viewed warily as too mercurial. (…)
According to French political philosopher Pierre Manent, Europe is a fair-weather union which “vanishes into the horizon” in a crisis. “We only look to Europe when everything is going well,” while the “outside world views the EU as a union of decadent imperialists who make a virtue of their powerlessness,” he said in a recent lecture.
How to deal with assertive China? The ECFR’s Mark Leonard says that “liberal powers” need to develop a common strategy in order to preserve “the bias towards liberal values in the international system”:
Until recently, Western capitals hoped that integrating China into global institutions would encourage Beijing to identify its interests with the preservation of the international system. If we do not open the exiting order to Chinese participation, they said, China will try to overthrow it and develop an alternative order of its own. But seen from Beijing, there has never been a binary choice. China has always sought to take advantage of the economic advantages existing order while protecting its own room for manoeuvre. Rather than being transformed by global institutions, China’s sophisticated multilateral diplomacy is changing the global order itself. (…)
Western policy has not caught up with changes in Beijing. (…) While we need to engage China on areas of shared interest, it is time for western governments to adopt a more assertive approach; one which might preserve the bias towards liberal values in the international system. Rather than asking ‘how can we encourage China to be more liberal?’ we need to ask another question: ‘how can we make the liberal order China-proof?’
The first step is ending the “something for nothing approach” of unconditional integration. If we open our markets to China or invite it into global institutions, western engagement needs to be reciprocated with concrete Chinese actions.
Secondly, liberal powers such as the EU and US need to get much better at acting in concert and breaking up illiberal coalitions in international institutions. (…)
Thirdly, western countries need to focus more diplomatic energy on integrating “swing states” as members of the liberal coalition – India, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil – and willingness to provide expanded economic, technological, and trade advantages within the liberal bloc.
Transatlantic unity on Iran. Ahead of the expected mass protests in Iran on 11 February, a EU-US statement calls on Tehran to respect human rights (link). Here’s the text:
The European Union and the United States condemn the continuing human rights violations in Iran since the June 12 election. The large scale detentions and mass trials, the threatened execution of protestors, the intimidation of family members of those detained and the continuing denial to its citizens of the right to peaceful expression are contrary to human rights norms.
Our concerns are based on our commitment to universal respect for human rights. We are particularly concerned by the potential for further violence and repression during the coming days, especially around the anniversary of the Islamic Republic’s founding on 11 February. We call on the Government of Iran to live up to its international human rights obligations, to end its abuses against its own people, to hold accountable those who have committed the abuses and to release those who are exercising their rights.
EP to confirm EC. Today the European Parliament will — finally – vote on the new Commission. The EU Observer reports:
The new European Commission team is set to win a confidence vote in parliament on Tuesday (9 February) after a three month delay and a prolonged period of infighting between the EU’s two main institutions. The 27-member college, headed for a second time running by Portugal’s centre-right Jose Manuel Barroso, looks certain to achieve the majority needed at the early afternoon vote to finally allow it to take up office for the next five years. The vote will put an end to a virtual paralysis in Brussels politics since the June European elections, which kicked off a very public dispute between Mr Barroso’s mainly conservative supporters and his vocal left-wing and green critics. (…)
Over the eight month saga, which has seen Mr Barroso first preoccupied with his re-election and then unable to do much because his institution was in caretaker status, the EU has continued to suffer the fallout from the financial and economic crisis but has lacked clear leadership to deal with it. Meanwhile, critics of the parliament’s behaviour during this period suggest MEPs were less motivated by principles but rather by one upmanship among political groups or between parliament and the commission.
Read today on Global Europe: Strategic advantage. David Miliband is the EU’s best friend in Britain / Letter from London, by Daniel Korski, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
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