Fukuyama in the Financial Times: History/My Story

In the FT Francis Fukuyama has pointed out a few tough truths that he assumes both candidates in the US election have taken onboard: namely that ‘the past two US administrations could assume American hegemony in both economics and security. The next administration cannot’; and that the task of the next Administration will be ‘to gracefully manage an adversely shifting global power balance and significantly diminished US influence.’

Ah, 'gracefully'… and so the sun sets (and the blood dries) on the US imperium. All empires must perish, by overstretch if not stagnation: I have had my 'issues' with the American version, though I prefer it still to any of the rival candidates now vying for succession.
Of course Fukuyama has got Russia on his mind and argues that the US were too brusque and bumptious through those early post-Cold War years when the Russian Bear was mangy and down on its knees. He clearly reckons Iraq as an irredeemable disaster, because he says that ‘one of the chief ways that US power has been diminished in this decade is in its moral credibility.’ And he’s also one of those who wants to throw the Nato Kosovo action back at Britain and the US too, for setting ‘an unhappy precedent of legitimising separatism.’ (But being separated from people who want you dead is a powerful driver. All I can say is that it’s all very well for wonks and scholars to favour the why-can’t-you-all-just-stick-together? option.)
Still, Fukuyama also manages to squeeze in the call-me-civilised qualifier (‘I do not want to be seen as apologising for Moscow’s behaviour… That Russian feelings of resentment are understandable does not make them morally right.’) And I daresay the strongest point he has is that the push for Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine does look like nothing but an American game, and only Angela Merkel seems to have the seriousness to make this understood.
BTW why should one pay attention to Fukuyama? Not sure. But then, you know, this guy once forecast the End of History - a bold call, albeit completely wrong and wronger every day. Still, with such a brass neck maybe there’s a chance that one day he’ll call it right.

Saw the BBC News today, oh boy...

On BBC2's Newsnight earlier Kirsty Wark succeeded in giving George Bush’s edgy press secretary Dana Perino a much stiffer and ruder talking-to than she handed out to the seasoned (male) charge d’affaire of the Russian Embassy in London. Manners and predispositions, I guess... As part of the same lead item Newsnight gobsmackingly gave airspace to some young Russian twerp of a journalist, in a shiny jacket and shinier t-shirt, who tried to sound a lot bigger than he looks in dismissing the views of the British government as Washington’s poodle, etc, yawn.
Miliband did well today. The Telegraph reports his saying that "the sight of Russian tanks in a neighbouring country on the 40th anniversary of the crushing of the Prague Spring has shown that the temptations of power politics remain." But check out the Telegraph readers’ posted comments (scroll down) if you want to get yourself massively dispirited: thin streaks of would-be testicular contempt for Miliband and ‘Bliar’-‘Nu’ Labour/pseudo-sophisticated hatred for the faltering US imperium/veiled admiration for far-flung Russian ‘toughness’.
Cameron has applauded Miliband for going to the Ukraine but tried to up the ante in talking to BBC News: "I think the only language a bully understands is when somebody stands up and says, 'Look, what you've done is wrong...' Prime ministerial, do you think? Sky News further report him as saying “Having Russia as member of the G8 at a time when her troops are still on the sovereign soil of another country I think is inappropriate.”
The 10 O’Clock BBC News decided to follow David Davis and 'shadow immigration minister' Damian Green in giving Neighbourhood Wardens a hard time, soberly repeating the Tory allegations of ‘cheap policing’, with a slight implication of the advancing horrors of the so-called surveillance state. The focus seemed entirely upon the punitive potential of wardens, not on their value to those local people who might know them as individuals, trust them and welcome them. Personally I have observed these Wardens to be of plenty good use to the deprived wards of Scotswood and Benwell in West Newcastle. (One Stewart Carse from Co Durham was the Warden the BBC hit upon to make his case in less than ten seconds.) Online I see the BBC reporting Damian Green to the effect that ‘the government should be freeing up regular police to tackle serious crime.’ Okay then, if you’re running on a law and order auction, you Tories, I look forward to your bids.

Having cast doubt on the government’s concern for our ailing urban 'communities', the 10 O’Clock News then offered some plaintive noises about people who invested in buy-to-rent barely-built second properties in Spain – now suffering from the catastrophe in the building trade which has followed the credit crunch as night follows day. For sure, I hope these punters get out of the hole they dug for themselves, just for their own sakes, but honestly, how many of us – in turning on the nightly national/world news at a time of geopolitical turmoil, only to hear about such essentially private misfortune – could give an effing toss?

Russia, and a fresh fight for the anti-imperialists

Having lured Georgia’s foolish President into a little war he couldn’t afford, Russia are now playing Stage II of this great game and recognising the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, with its plucky 70,000 populace. ‘If you hate us’, Russia says (in effect) to the UN, the US and EU, ‘we’re glad, and we don’t care. What are you going to do about it?’ Well, I hear Bush is sending Vice-President Cheney to the region, so that will doubtless raise the tone of the debate…
You will have seen/heard that Russia currently does have some really angry is-anyone-listening?-type Western apologists, who didn’t like the Kosovo war of 1999 and didn’t think Milosevic was unusually despicable, and do think that NATO sewed dragon’s teeth with that military action. An FT leader makes what I think is a (perhaps ‘the’) salient distinction: “The Abkhaz and Ossetian populations have not been threatened with anything remotely approaching “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” by the Georgians. If anything, the danger is in the other direction, with ethnic Georgians fleeing both regions to escape the Russians and the Russian-armed secessionists.”
As the FT suggests, this flawed and dishonest logic of Russia’s might yet bite her back or otherwise embarrass her, encoraging “the restive republics of the north Caucasus, such as Ingushetia and Dagestan, as well as Chechnya, to determine their own destiny.” As books by Bob Woodward and Alistair Campbell have shown us, it was over his attempted crushing of Chechnya that Putin really reached out to the Western powers, in search of common cause against what he called as an Islamic menace; then after 9/11 Putin shook his head, reckoned he’d told ‘em so, and decided to focus his efforts entirely on never having to seek common cause with anyone ever again. As Christopher Hitchens writes in Slate, “overt Russian imperialism is back, after a very short absence from the scene, and it is no more amiable or benign from the many toxic resentments it acquired during its period of decline and impotence and eclipse.” Any statesman who quite fancies being a hated pariah - would indeed wear such status like a crown - is a tough opponent to weather.