Diplomacy & Crisis News

The full scale of the devastation caused by Tropical Cyclone Idai in south-west Africa is becoming clearer, the UN said on Tuesday, warning that the emergency “is getting bigger by the hour”.

This week in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, over one thousand people, including high level government delegations and representatives from the private sector and civil society, will gather for the Second High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation, or BAPA+40.

Human Rights Council-appointed investigators urged Israel on Monday to revise its military rules of engagement, shortly before the one-year anniversary of the start of mass demonstrations at the country’s border fence with Gaza, that have left hundreds of Palestinians dead and thousands more injured. 

Despite the relatively peaceful passage of December’s presidential election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the UN Special Representative to the country told the Security Council she “remained concerned” over developments in the east, where dozens of armed groups continue to operate.

The United Nations recorded a total of 259 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) during 2018, according to the latest report by Secretary-General António Guterres presented to the General Assembly. Although the figures rose compared with the previous two years, the report shows increased awareness among UN and UN-related staff, and improved and harmonized reporting tools across the Organization.

Although the drive to reach gender equality has picked up speed, and diversity initiatives have been put into place in companies and organizations, a significant level of resistance and backlash remains, according to a leading UN business group.

Au début des années 80, la cinquième génération de systèmes informatiques n'était encore qu'un concept. Il faudra trois ans pour que la compétition technologique s'engage réellement : le temps pour les Japonais, partis les premiers, d'assimiler les dernières technologies venues de l'Ouest, pour les (...) / Armement, Informatique, Technologie - 1985/09

Pour certains, la chose est simple : on est pour les victimes, ou on est pour les délinquants. Ce sont comme deux espèces différentes, et leurs intérêts sont radicalement opposés. Si l'on veut protéger les victimes, et en particulier toutes les victimes potentielles, il faut être impitoyable pour les (...) / Sécurité, Justice - 1985/01

Lorsqu'il déclare que « jamais dans notre pays le consensus sur l'Europe n'a été aussi grand », le président de la République parle comme ce professeur qui, dans un récent débat sur la défense, arguait du consensus des Français en soulignant qu'aucun parti n'exige notre retrait de l'« alliance ». « Ce (...) / Intégration régionale, France, Économie, Idées, Politique - 1979/06

> > S’abonner à Politique étrangère < <

Nous sommes dans une société de la communication, c'est vrai, mais il fait savoir qu'il existe des sociétés où il n'y a pas de communication ; celle-ci ne commence d'exister que dans les sociétés où quelque chose est radicalement perdu. Une généalogie de la communication nous apprendrait qu'elle commence (...) / Communication, Idées, Information, Médias, Société - 1978/07

Following the recent terror in Kashmir, will Hindus be forced out of every area in the Indian subcontinent that presently has a Muslim majority?  

Last week, a grenade blew up in Kashmir, injuring 18 people.  This incident occurred after a Pakistani Islamist terror group murdered 40 Indian soldiers in the disputed region, which both Pakistan and India have fought over for decades.  Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani Islamist terror group, took responsibility for both attacks.  In the wake of these two incidents, what is one of the most picturesque and colorful regions of India is now suffering gravely.  However, this beautiful region of India was not always so bloody. 

In the past, there were no radical Islamism in Kashmir and Hindus were the majority in the area.  At that time, Kashmir was peaceful.  But since the beginning of the first millennium, radical Islam started to dominate in the region.  With the rise of radical Islam in Kashmir, Hindus were raped, murdered and forcefully converted to Islam.  Due to this reality, only 1.84% of Kashmir is Hindu today.  In light of this, one must ponder, do Hindus have a future in any of the Muslim lands in the Indian subcontinent following the rise of radical Islam in the area? 

Shipan Kumer Basu, President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, proclaimed: “No one is paying attention to the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh.  The torture of Hindus there began in the early 20th century.  Under the British, thousands of Hindus were murdered in a riot in Dhaka.  10,000 Hindus were massacred in 1946 in Noakhali.  Numerous Hindu women were raped as well while others were forcefully converted to Islam.  At that time, Hindus started to flee the area for India.”

“Later on, during the Liberation War in 1971, Pakistani soldiers massacred Hindus and raped their women en masse,” he added.  “More and more Hindus proceeded to flee to India.  Since then, the Hindus of Bangladesh continue to flee for the murder, rape and forceful conversion of Hindus never came to an end.”  In fact, within the past year, 107 Hindus were murdered, 25 Hindu women were raped and 235 Hindu temples were vandalized in Bangladesh. 

The persecution of Hindus does not occur in a vacuum.  The oppression experienced by the Hindu minority begins with incitement in the educational system.  In a school textbook titled “Islamic Religion and Ethics,” which was issued by the Bangladeshi government, Hindus are portrayed as liars, property embezzlers, and even worse than animals.  According to Basu, over the past few years, Hefazat-e-Islam has been demanding that the government remove all stories, poems, essays and plays written by Hindus and other non-Muslim writers from the school curriculum.  He noted that subsequently, such writings were partially removed from secondary school books. 

Mendi Safadi, who heads the Safadi Center for International Diplomacy, Research, Public Relations and Human Rights, proclaimed: “This approach displays more than anything the radical Islam of Sheikh Hasina’s government, a policy which encourages and fosters early childhood terror.  This is the kind of terrorism that the international community needs to untie and fight against, an ideology that begins in the schools and mosques of radical governments like Bangladesh.”    Safadi’s statement is backed up by the head of the Workers Party, Rashed Khan Menon, who noted that Sheikh Hasina has sown the seeds of fundamentalism by partnering together with Hefazat e-Islam.    

The plight of Hindus in Pakistan is even worse.   Recently, Pakistan’s Punjab Information and Culture Minister Fayyazul Hassan Chohan described Hindus as “cow urine drinking people.” It is true that Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan did sack that minister over his remarks.  Furthermore, he did order a probe into an attack upon a Hindu temple within the country.   However, at the same time, he also continues to support the Blasphemy Law, which is often used as a weapon against Hindus, Christians and other minorities in Pakistan. 

For example, in one case sited by the Pakistan Christian Post, a 14-year-old minority girl was raped, abducted and forcefully converted to Islam.  She was forced to marry one of her captors as well.  Her father fought hard to get her back and managed to do so.  However, under the Pakistani legal system, in retaliation, he could face blasphemy charges if his daughter ever chose to return to the religion of her ancestors.   Under Pakistani law, one must have four male witnesses to prove any crime.  This law permits the rape, robbery and murder of minorities within Pakistan with impunity.  And should India be forced entirely from the Kashmir region, these are the kind of atrocities that the Hindus remaining in Kashmir can expect. 

And sadly, under the Sheikh Hasina government, Bangladesh is heading in that direction of Pakistan too.  As Safadi noted, “Every time, we see more crimes against minorities, restrictions on freedom, etc.”  He insists that this must happen or else Bangladesh will become just another Pakistan or Kashmir, a place where Hindus won’t be granted the right to live. 

And as Hindus are forced out of more and more Muslim majority countries in the Indian subcontinent, the radical Muslims become emboldened to take even more.  According to the Indian media, there are plans by the Indian Muslim Congress Party to have Muslim only hospitals and to have free electricity for mosques and churches but not Hindu and Sikh places of worship.  There are also reports that they have a manifesto which seeks to give preference to Muslims over Hindus for employment and educational opportunities.  In fact, they reportedly give financial incentives to Muslim students only.

Safadi noted that for a hospital to give medical treatment to Muslims but not Hindus, Christians and Sikhs is a clear example of apartheid: “We have passed on this data to the EU Parliament and the US Congress.  Now is the time for the world to unite against the seeds of terror planted by the Bangladeshi government and to impose economic sanctions against the Sheikh Hasina government.”

The post Op-Ed: Do Hindus in Bangladesh, Kashmir and Pakistan have a future? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Pendant toute la période de « guerre froide », les stratèges américains considéraient implicitement que la supériorité militaire se définissait en termes de puissance de feu, de mobilité et d'autres facteurs technologiques. Ce postulat valait également pour la lutte contre-insurrectionnelle. Toutefois, (...) / Asie, États-Unis (affaires extérieures), Armée, Colonialisme, Culture, Impérialisme, Science, Société - 1975/02

« Venez vieillir en Suède ! », tel pourrait être le slogan d'un bureau d'immigration pour personnes âgées, s'il en existait. En Suède, la vieillesse n'est pas un naufrage. Les retraités sont les enfants chéris de la politique sociale. Sur le plan matériel, les vieillards suédois sont sans doute les (...) / Protection sociale, Société, Suède, Retraites - 1971/08

Le président équatorien Lenín Moreno vient de proclamer le retrait de son pays de l'Union des nations sud-américaines (Unasur). Cette organisation régionale, dont le siège se trouve dans la capitale équatorienne Quito (à l'endroit même où passe la ligne de l'équateur), a été forgée à l'initiative de (...) / Amérique du Sud, Équateur, Histoire, Mutation, Politique, Relations internationales, Coopération internationale - La valise diplomatique

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L’article « Après l’Europe ? » a été écrit par Dominique David, alors professeur à l’École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr et chargé de mission auprès du directeur de l’Ifri, dans le numéro 1/1994 de Politique étrangère.

Cela s’est, en réalité, su assez vite : nous avons changé de monde. Sommes-nous sûrs d’être entrés pour autant dans un monde nouveau, unique ? L’Europe a changé, voilà cinq ans, de soubassement pour la première fois depuis la glaciation de la guerre froide. Mais plusieurs mutations se sont succédé depuis 1989. Peut-être entrons-nous dans une autre ère, dépassant déjà ce que nous pensions être notre avenir. L’architecture nouvelle de l’Europe, nous l’avions, Français, imaginée à partir de deux idées : les problèmes européens seraient de plus en plus renvoyés aux Européens eux- mêmes ; et ils seraient résolus par un montage complexe d’institutions, à dominante européenne. Ainsi dessinait-on la carte d’une Europe à la fois diverse et unitaire, se définissant enfin elle-même. L’année 1993 a fait voler en éclats cette architecture avant même qu’elle ne sorte de terre.

L’énigme russe

Les résultats des élections du 12 décembre 1993 nous contraignent à regarder de face une Russie surtout traitée jusqu’ici à coup d’espoirs ou de recettes. Ce que nous savons de l’avenir russe tient en peu de mots. A court terme, il n’y a que très peu de chances que le plus vaste pays du monde se stabilise politiquement et entreprenne son redressement selon nos propres normes. Qu’on s’en réjouisse ou qu’on le déplore, le président russe est gravement affaibli. Il n’est pas sûr dès lors que la constitution semi-autoritaire mise en place puisse fonctionner efficacement. Les alliances politiques sont mal imaginables dans un pays qui découvre les délices et les poisons du multipartisme ; les projets ne sont donc pas identifiables et les scénarios ne peuvent être dessinés qu’à très court terme. Retour à la période précédente donc, l’incertitude croissant.

Quelles que soient les évolutions du pouvoir de l’État russe, on peut miser sur un durcissement de sa politique étrangère. L’interrogation porte sur le degré et les formes de ce durcissement, non sur le fait. Les résultats des élections peuvent être diversement justifiés, mais ils témoignent du rejet massif — quelles que soient ses expressions — d’un modèle de transition brusque, étroitement lié à une diplomatie plus ou moins alignée sur un Occident représenté par Washington. Les choix de l’armée en faveur d’un État fort se sont clairement exprimés ; ses responsables savent désormais, intégrant cette donnée, quel discours tenir aux politiques. Un refroidissement des relations avec l’Ouest pourrait aussi permettre de freiner le processus de désarmement, mal vu par tous les ensembles militaires du monde et, au premier chef, par l’armée russe. Enfin, la déliquescence de nombre d’anciens membres de l’URSS — qu’on pense à la Géorgie, à l’Ukraine, au Tadjikistan — produit un appel d’air, un appel de puissance, ou d’autorité, qu’aujourd’hui la Russie n’est pas loin de penser pouvoir remplir.

Ceci pourrait avoir au moins deux conséquences. Le système politique russe va demeurer, pour un temps inconnu, imprévisible. C’est dire que nous ne pouvons intégrer ses choix dans nos propres prévisions. Le refroidissement est ainsi une tendance, pas une politique précise, ni une stratégie de long terme. La situation que nous redoutions depuis plusieurs années se confirme donc : Moscou ne peut être considérée, pour les années qui viennent, comme un élément positif de recomposition des espaces européens. Au mieux nous aurons droit à un certain nombre d’à-coups diplomatiques, au pire à un désordre croissant : dans tous les cas à l’inconnu.

Cet inconnu nous concerne, mais il touche surtout les relations entre la Russie et les anciens membres de l’URSS d’une part, de l’autre entre la Russie et les pays d’Europe centrale et orientale. Pour la première de ces relations, la remise sur pied d’un ensemble d’influence plus large que la stricte Russie actuelle apparaît à peu près inévitable, au vu de l’histoire de notre continent. La question est de savoir si cette reconstitution se fera selon une anarchie contagieuse, par une imposition autoritaire, ou avec le consentement d’États souverains choisissant de lier leurs destins. L’instabilité russe est sans doute moins grave, en dépit des apparences, en ce qui concerne les rapports de Moscou avec les pays du centre et de l’est de l’Europe : simplement parce que l’appareil politico-militaire russe ne dispose plus des moyens, le voudrait- il, de reconstituer une aire d’influence structurée en Centre-Europe. Mais les clameurs nationalistes de Moscou ont néanmoins des effets psychologiques, donc politiques, déplorables pour toutes les capitales anciennement vassales qui s’imaginent à nouveau proches d’une force d’empire renaissante.

Le naufrage yougoslave

Autre cruelle école de l’année 1993 : la Yougoslavie. Nous sommes loin de pouvoir en tirer tous les enseignements, mais quelques constats s’imposent déjà. Nous avons, depuis quelques années, été près de succomber à un mirage de stabilité et de sécurité collectives, panachage d’un peu de nucléaire, d’un peu d’Amérique, et de beaucoup de juridisme et d’idéologie démocratique. Nous savons maintenant que ni l’affirmation des droits, ni l’idéologie démocratique ne permettront de gérer tous les problèmes européens et que certains conflits déboucheront sans doute sur l’usage de la contrainte armée. Le dire n’est évidemment pas bénir la guerre, ni mettre sur le même plan agresseurs et victimes : en échappant au règne nucléaire, certains espaces d’Europe retournent simplement à une logique néo-clausewitzienne, celle où la force est chargée de trancher les impasses politiques. Ce constat s’impose aussi à nous. Nos discours ne suffiront pas à faire taire les armes des autres, comme on l’a vu très clairement en Bosnie. Nous nous trouverons peut-être demain dans une position où nous devrons utiliser les armes, si cela s’avère nécessaire à la fois pour nous et pour les autres. Or aucun cadre collectif, international ne dispose d’une légitimité suffisante pour encadrer l’usage de cette force.

Nous savons aussi, désormais, qu’il y a en Europe un problème d’État. La récupération de leur souveraineté par des acteurs hier dominés par l’Union soviétique crée non un système d’États cohérents, comparables, pouvant coopérer, mais une juxtaposition d’entités, de formes, de conceptions, de légitimités très différentes. Bref, à la multiplication des États en Europe correspond une profonde crise. Ce qui prévaut en Centre-Europe et dans la plupart des espaces de notre continent, c’est la conception de l’État communautaire : la communauté érigée en unique médiation au politique et s’appropriant la forme étatique. Pour nous, c’est l’État politique qui est créateur de citoyenneté donc de communauté, mais la plupart des Européens pensent l’inverse — à l’exception de l’ensemble ouest-européen à peu près solidaire désormais d’une conception commune, et sans doute aussi de l’espace russe organisé traditionnellement autour de l’idée d’empire.

Or ces États de conception communautaire sont par définition des systèmes de clôture, des ensembles fermés : en témoigne la scission tchécoslovaque qui réinstalle les postes-frontières au moment où Prague et Bratislava souhaitent entrer dans une Union européenne qui les supprime. Pourtant, seules l’ouverture, la transparence, la libre circulation peuvent rendre viables des découpages politiques artificiels hérités de tous les malheurs du siècle. Le génie de la CSCE fut en son temps de démontrer que l’Europe pouvait vivre « ensemble », dans des frontières non modifiées si ces dernières s’ouvraient. Ce qui se passe aujourd’hui en Europe, et en particulier dans l’ancienne Yougoslavie, est l’exact contraire de ce que nous avons voulu tout au long des années 1970. Hier l’oppression étatique forçait à développer une libre circulation entre les sociétés, aujourd’hui la liberté des États s’assimile à un système de serrures, serrures rendant difficilement viables la plupart de ces États. Le drame yougoslave nous réintroduit donc dans la problématique classique des rapports de forces, et nous démontre aussi la profonde crise d’une idée d’État que nous avons depuis des décennies érigée en référence universelle.

Les institutions collectives ont ici aussi crûment démontré leur inadaptation. La Communauté européenne, non pas parce qu’elle n’a rien fait mais parce que son efficacité n’a pas été à la hauteur des attentes de l’ensemble des acteurs. La CSCE, parce qu’elle est faite pour organiser la paix plus que pour interdire ou freiner la guerre et qu’elle est engagée depuis 1990 dans une très complexe transition : multiplication des membres, institutionnalisation, etc. L’OTAN, qui a clairement prouvé qu’elle était un réservoir de forces et de savoir-faire, et non un lieu de décision politique. La grandeur de l’Alliance c’est, comme il est normal, le vouloir politique américain. Quand les États-Unis bloquent, l’Alliance est bloquée ; si les États-Unis avancent, l’OTAN avance comme un instrument activé par Washington : rien d’autre. Quant à l’ONU, sa légitimité s’est renforcée ces dernières années, mais pas assez pour qu’elle ait une autonomie, même limitée, de décision et d’action par rapport aux États qui la composent, aux cinq membres permanents du Conseil de Sécurité, et particulièrement par rapport aux États-Unis.

Les déceptions de l’Union

Aux cahots du continent, les Douze ont voulu opposer un processus d’unification accélérée. Maastricht, nom en passe de devenir mythique, recouvre en fait deux réalités. Tout d’abord des engagements politiques et institutionnels qui, même difficiles à mettre en place, seront sans doute à terme appliqués : concertation diplomatique accrue, modes de prise de décision, avancée vers la monnaie unique. A cet égard on aurait tort d’enterrer trop vite les décisions concrètes du texte. Au delà, le traité de Maastricht met en scène autre chose : une dynamique politique, une rencontre de volontés et d’espoirs censés faire prendre en charge par les peuples la construction européenne, créer un rythme proprement politique pouvant bousculer les raideurs techniques. Cette dynamique politique, cette fonction de représentation, ont largement échoué — quelle que soit l’explication retenue : le médiocre enthousiasme de la ratification, le choc monétaire, la défiance complaisamment entretenue sur les organes communautaires, la honte rampante de l’impuissance yougoslave…

Pire : il n’est pas sûr que deux acquis essentiels de la construction ouest- européenne revue par Maastricht ne puissent être mis à mal dans un avenir proche : l’identification de l’objectif même de cette construction, et les procédures de fonctionnement de l’Union. L’objectif stratégique de Maastricht : faire de l’Europe de l’Ouest un acteur politique cohérent sur la scène internationale, donc un acteur disposant de privilèges (monétaires, diplomatiques, à terme militaires) annonçant une souveraineté, ou au moins une identité, cet objectif survivra-t-il à l’élargissement déjà décidé aux pays — dont plusieurs « neutres » — de l’AELE ? Certes, le Conseil d’Édimbourg a proclamé que toute adhésion supposait le respect de l’ensemble des exigences de Maastricht (et donc aussi de la politique étrangère et de sécurité commune). Il n’empêche : comment fera-t-on accepter aux nouveaux des options que certains membres actuels écartent — la Grande-Bretagne, membre lourd de l’Union, qui donne aux refus et exceptions toute leur légitimité, le Danemark qui prouve qu’un petit pays peut détraquer l’ensemble du processus ?

En deçà du débat à venir sur la finalité de l’Union (c’est d’une insertion économique beaucoup plus que d’une construction politique, que rêvent la plupart des candidats), se pose la question du fonctionnement d’une Union comptant un nombre croissant de membres. Le fonctionnement des institutions de l’Union, fort complexe à Douze, risque de se bloquer dans l’élargissement à Seize, blocage qui encouragerait la tendance déjà forte à la multi-étatisation du processus de décision (le retour au strict « intergouvernemental »). Une multi-étatisation promettant d’autant plus d’impuissance que les membres de l’Union sont plus nombreux. Ceux qui plaident aujourd’hui simultanément pour l’élargissement rapide de l’Union et pour le strict retour aux pouvoirs des États dans la décision européenne, savent bien qu’ils jouent des deux faces d’une même monnaie, qui garantit dans la plupart des cas l’incapacité du collectif européen. Non que la décision des États soit illégitime ou doive disparaître. Mais la collectivité européenne a précisément été créée autour de deux objectifs : empêcher que les relations entre ses membres soient de simples relations d’États sur la scène internationale, conduisant aux conflits classiques de notre histoire ; parer à l’impuissance des États moyens d’Europe pris séparément, en des circonstances de plus en plus nombreuses. Double logique qui explique que l’Union européenne n’a pas de sens si elle se contente d’être un forum de discussion et de coopération des instances étatiques. […]

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The US’s Baltic and Adriatic Charters could become templates for embedding Ukraine and Georgia as well as, perhaps, Moldova and Azerbaijan into a provisional multilateral security structure.

 

By Iryna Vereshchuk and Andreas Umland

It is remarkable how strongly some international organizations’ coverage of the East-Central European and South Caucasian post-Soviet space has come to correlate with the region’s states’ territorial integrity. Two large blocs are confronting each other in Eastern Europe: NATO as well as the EU, on the side, and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) as well as Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), both Moscow-dominated, on the other. Today, exactly those four countries – Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova (GUAM) – which are not members of either of these two coalitions do not fully control their territories. In contrast, such NATO and EU members with large Russian minorities and restrictive citizenship laws, as Estonia and Latvia, on the one side, or such, by themselves, economically weak CSTO and EEU member countries, as Belarus and Armenia, on the other, have fully preserved their internationally recognized borders.

In Azerbaijan’s Nagorno Karabakh, Moldova’s Transnistria, Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia as well as Ukraine’s Donets Basin (Donbas), on the contrary, six unrecognized pseudo-states were created, with direct or, in the case of Karabakh, indirect support from the Kremlin. Crimea has been simply annexed by Russia. In Moscow’s reading, the Ukrainian peninsula has, since March 2014, become an ordinary region within the Russian Federation. This interpretation has since been rejected in, among other international statements, several documents of the UN, OSCE and Council of Europe – organizations of which Russia or/and the Soviet Union have been full members for many years.

The Many Inconsequential Alliances of Eastern Europe

The prospects of a soon further eastern enlargement of the EU and NATO are dim. The UN, OSCE and Council of Europe have, despite clear statements in support of Ukraine and Georgia, demonstrated their unsuitability for resolving the East European gray zone’s fundamental security problem. This indicates that the GUAM region will remain a source of instability for years to come.

That is in spite of the fact that there have been various multilateral frameworks specifically designed to increase cooperation and stability, in East-Central Europe and the Southern Caucasus, during the last two decades. Among them are the:

• Organization for Democracy and Economic Development (GUAM: Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan) instituted in 2001,
• Community of Democratic Choice (CDC:) assembled in 2005,
• Black Sea Synergy (BSS) started in 2007,
• EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP: Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) established in 2009,
• Bucharest Nine group (B9: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria) launched in 2015, or
• Three Seas Initiative (3SI: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia) set up in 2016.

Yet, these fora or structures where either, as in the case of GUAM, CDC or BSS, too weak or short-lived to make the region substantively more secure. Or they are relatively dynamic and strong, yet do not include, as in the case of the B9 and 3SI, any of the most vulnerable gray zone countries. In fact, the latter two projects deliberately excluded, from the outset, the four GUAM states.   

The EU’s Eastern Partnership led to the conclusion of impressive Association Agreements with three of the four gray zone countries, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova, in 2014. These exceptionally large treaties, moreover, include articles addressing issues of security and defense. Yet, the EU – with the partial exception of its members Poland, Great Britain and Lithuania – did not follow up on filling these formulations with any notable substance beyond general financial and technical support. Since the three Agreements’ full ratification by all of the Union’s member states and by the European Parliament in 2014, Tbilisi, Kyiv and Chisinau have benefitted from only very limited military support from Brussels.

Worse, several EU member states have started to slowly rebuild, in one way or another, their economic and diplomatic relations with Moscow, after the introduction of sanctions in reaction to Russia’s attack on Ukraine since 2014. The most egregious such attempt is the currently build so-called Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline via the Baltic Sea. The Kremlin designed this project specifically to eliminate Moscow’s remaining partial dependence on the Ukrainian gas transportation system, and to thereby free its hands for future escalation.

The US as Eastern Europe’s Indispensable Nation

The embarrassing story of both trans- and East European institution-building over the last quarter of a century illustrate the need for the US to get finally involved. Not only for West but also East European political stability, an engagement of Washington was and remains crucial. This has been amply illustrated by the Baltic and Adriatic Charters signed by the United States with various post-communist countries in 1998 and 2003 respectively, and designed to prepare them for future NATO membership. After their allying with the US within the Baltic Charter, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia successfully entered NATO in 2004.

In the Western Balkans too, the United States’ Adriatic Charter has done – what would have been regarded twenty years ago as – wonders. In 2009, Croatia, a state that had not existed two decades earlier, and Albania, which had once been one of Europe’s most gruesome communist dictatorships, became NATO members. In 2017, Montenegro – which had been bombed by NATO war planes, less than twenty years before – became NATO’s 29th member country. Currently, Macedonia’s as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina’s accession to NATO is being prepared. Serbia, to be sure, is only a candidate for membership in the EU, and not a full signatory but only observer of the Adriatic Charter. Yet, it appears not unlikely that Serbia too will eventually apply for NATO membership, once it has entered the EU, and all other Balkan states have become full members of the alliance.

Already in 2008, Georgia and Ukraine officially applied for starting NATO’s Membership Action Plan. While these applications were rejected, in their Bucharest Summit Declaration of April 3rd, 2008, the then 26 member countries welcomed “Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” The ambivalent status of Georgia and Ukraine as official future members of NATO, yet without roadmaps for entering the Alliance, was among the determinants of Moscow’s occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008 as well as of Crimea and the eastern Donbas in 2014. Russia’s expansions, in turn, have increased wariness within the Alliance about further enlargement, and created an accession deadlock for Ukraine and Georgia. The lesson from the various stories of post-communist states is that political ambiguity and institutional indetermination breed instability and stalemate while resolute engagement and organizational structuring increase security and foster progress.

Towards a US Charter with the GUAM Group

The US, partly, learned its lesson from its earlier successes, and from the disaster of the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war. It signed bilateral Strategic Partnership Charters with Ukraine in December 2008, and with Georgia in January 2009. The two Charters announced that the parties will support the integration of Ukraine and Georgia into European and Euro-Atlantic structures, security cooperation, and preparing these countries for candidacy for NATO membership. The two new documents, however, did not send much of a signal to Russia. They remained largely unknown within even the publics of the three signatory states.

What is, against such a background, needed is an expansion of Washington’s current two bilateral Charters into a larger quasi-alliance. A new multilateral Charter should link the US demonstratively with the EU’s three associated Eastern partners Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, as well as, perhaps, with Azerbaijan. This provisional semi-coalition could become a consequential upgrade for the GUAM group formed in 2001. It could be modelled on, or even go beyond, the Baltic and Adriatic Charters.

Ideas like that have been voiced before a number of times. For instance, at the 2009 meeting of foreign ministers of the Adriatic and Baltic countries as well as US in Riga, the Lithuanian MFA’s head Vygaudas Ušackas called for continuing NATO enlargement. Ušackas suggested to invite to such meetings of Balkan, Baltic and US department heads and ministers also representatives of Ukraine and Georgia. Ušackas noted that “Ukraine and Georgia that aspire NATO membership could make use of our experience in the conduct of military, political and economic reforms.”

A new multilateral US Charter for Eastern Europe and the Southern Caucasus will, to be sure, not offer nearly as much protection to GUAM, as Article 5 of the Washington Treaty provides for NATO’s members. The US’s assurances in such a document would, most probably, even remain significantly below those given to such countries as South Korea or Israel. Still, a US-GUAM Charter could provide elementary organizational structure to Eastern Europe’s gray zone during the interregnum, until these countries eventually become members of the EU, NATO or/and other relevant international institutions that embed them properly in the international system. Even a very cautiously formulated American Charter for the GUAM countries would have considerable symbolic power, increase East European security, and raise the stakes of further escalation in the current post-Soviet gray zone for Moscow.

Three caveats apply. First, the US would hardly and should not agree to promise helping the four countries to reconquer their lost territories. The eventual recovery of the separatist regions are major topics in Ukrainian, Moldovan, Georgian and Azeri domestic discourse, and subjects of constant patriotic outbidding. Thus, Washington should make clear, from the outset, that a return of the altogether seven seceded territories under GUAM’s control is not the Charter’s function. In arguing so, reference could be made, for instance, to Washington’s close pre-2008 cooperation with Tbilisi, yet eventual inability and unwillingness to interfere militarily in the five-day August war between Russia and Georgia.

Second, Azerbaijan has no announced ambition to join NATO or the EU while Moldova has, in its currently valid 1994 Constitution, defined itself as a permanently bloc-free country. Thus, the Charter should leave the question of a future entry of its signatory states into NATO and EU open – or even entirely ignore the issue. Oddly, exactly Moldova and Azerbaijan have both exceptionally close political, economic and ethno-linguistic links to a large NATO member country – Romania and Turkey respectively. Georgia and Ukraine, in contrast, have no comparably close relations to any Western country (Poland’s once close relations to Ukraine have deteriorated during the last years because of historical memory issues). Azerbaijan, moreover, has since 2010 a mutual aid treaty with Turkey that, at least formally, provides Baku with far-going security assurances, by a NATO member country.

Finally, Azerbaijan has – unlike Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova – not only no large Association Agreement with the EU. It is also, unlike the other three, not even an electoral democracy, but clearly an autocracy. The Charter would thus have to be careful in formulating its political standards. Support for Azerbaijan could be seen as contradicting the US’s general foreign policy goals. Yet, one should not forget that such inconsistencies are not unusual in Western geopolitical engagement. For instance, Azerbaijan is fully included into the EU’s Eastern Partnership program since 2009, and benefits from Brussels’s financial support. The NATO member countries Poland, Hungary and, especially, Turkey have recently suffered from significant setbacks in their political development which put into question their classification as proper liberal democracies.

In spite of caveats like these, a US-GUAM Charter following the examples of the Baltic and Adriatic Charters would be a small, but symbolically significant step forward in making Eastern Europe more secure. It would usefully parallel and demonstratively support Brussels’s European Neighborhood Policy, in general, and the Eastern Partnership initiative, in particular. While not providing yet a comprehensive solution to the fragile security situation in East-Central Europe and the Southern Caucasus, it would help making gradually Europe’s post-Soviet gray zone less gray.    

 

The article appeared first in the “Harvard International Review,” 2019, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 38-41.

IRYNA VERESHCHUK is President of Kyiv’s International Centre for Black Sea-Baltic Studies and Consensus Practices which unites several former heads of state and government from various European post-communist countries.

ANDREAS UMLAND is Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute of International Relations at Prague, Principal Researcher of the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation at Kyiv, and General Editor of the ibidem­-Verlag book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” distributed by Columbia University Press.

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Avec l'industrie mécanique, l'accélération a automatiquement conduit à l'extension des formes d'homogénéisation dans l'organisation de l'espace et du temps. Les bureaucraties basées sur les conditions de la mécanisation du dix-neuvième siècle tendaient à une centralisation du pouvoir, accompagnée d'une (...) / Communication, Culture, Éducation, Informatique, Médias, Technologie - 1970/05

Il est peut-être nécessaire de rappeler dès le début que nous ne pouvons éviter la pluralité de sens du mot information, car les moyens modernes d'information ne se situent que par rapport à tel ou tel usage de ce mot. D'un côté, l'information concerne les « nouvelles » transmises, qu'il s'agisse de (...) / Culture, Éducation, Information, Informatique, Médias, Mutation, Technologie - 1970/05

An anonymous young woman representing Free Joseon read the declaration with adamant ‘self-determination’ on the 100th anniversary of the March 1st anti-colonial resistance movement(Photo Credit: YunHap).

On the 100th annual anniversary of the Koreas’ March 1st anti-colonial resistance movement, a North Korean underground resistance organization called Free Joseon (formally known as Cheollima Civil Defense [CCD]) declared the country’s provisional “government-in-exile” with their adamant self-determination to “dedicate themselves to abolish the ‘Great Evil.’”

An anonymous young woman wearing Hanbok solemnly read aloud the declaration in the venue, alleged to be Topkol park: “We declare on this day the establishment of Free Joseon, a provisional government preparing the foundations for a future nation built upon respect for principles of human rights and humanitarianism, holding sacred a manifest dignity for every woman, man, and child.” A century ago, it was Seoul’s epicenter of the March 1st movement during which tens of thousands of Korean youths dauntlessly shouted ‘Manse (Korea Forever)’ in protest against the Japanese colonial rule under the principle of non-violent civil disobedience. Free Joseon’s choice of venue resonates with the impression that their declaration is the zeitgeist sublimation of the March 1st movement’s resistance spirit that once solidarized marginalized Pan-Korean voices for the purpose of obliterating Japan’s, then, imperial and oppressive disciplinary power. The March 1st movement was partly inspired by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s “self-determination” doctrine under the 14-point statement. On a global scale, this contributed to kindling the global wave of national resistance against the Fascist top-down, realpolitik collusion for totalitarian oppression.

Carrying the torch of the March 1st spirit, the woman attested to the Kim dynasty’s “Great Evil.” “On this very day, tens of millions of our fellow Koreans remain enslaved by a depraved power, ruled by a corrupt few, made wealthy by the toils of many.” She then, in the name of the organization, indicted the actual crimes conducted by the Kim dynasty; they include, but are not limited to, “the devastating starvation of millions to government-sponsored murder, torture, and imprisonment, ” “overwhelming surveillance and thought-control”, “systemic rape, enslavement, and forced abortions, ” “political assassinations and acts of terror around the world, ” “the forced labor and stifled potential of our children,” “the enforced poverty of body, mind, and opportunity,” and “the development and distribution of modern weapons of great destruction, shared and sold to others who would also use them towards cruel ends.”

The “thaw” spectacles of the already year-long inter-Korean rapprochement have so far flash-blinded the global civil society of these miserable realities of the North Korean people. Nevertheless, South Korean pro-Kim apologists have adulterated these truths through their baroque dramatization of the country’s hegemony of ethnic nationalism. Such fabrication, which myopically conceptualizes the Pan-Korean diaspora, narrowly based on their subconscious cultural elitism and selective bias, have, consequently, silenced the agonies of the North Korean people. Frustrated by the South Korean Pan-Korean leaderships’ political unwillingness to fulfill the diasporic responsibility of emancipation, civil organizations, formed by North Korean defectors and refugees such as New Joseon, now resort to the principle of self-determination to help themselves. “We gazed at incredible feats of prosperity and developments to the south, hoping that, with their rising strength, they would remember their sisters and brothers left behind by history. But liberation did not come.” This declaration points out the political unwillingness.

New Joseon first appeared on the news using its former name, CCD, when the group posted a YouTube clip claiming that they were protecting Kim Han-sol, after his father and Kim Jung-un’s half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, was assassinated in the XY nerve agent attack in 2017.

New Joseon is the North Korean version of the national liberation front organization that has been conducting secretive activities to realize their mission goals, “If you want to escape or share information, we will protect you. This would be possible no matter what country you are in. We will safely escort you to wherever you want. We, who have already helped several North Koreans, do not expect any payment.” At the apex of the 2017 presidential race in South Korea, for instance, CCD posted on their website an open letter questioning presidential candidates, “Will you embrace and defend each and every defector who is looking for shelter?”

One of the alleged episodes regarding the CCD’s plan for government-in-exile dates back to decades ago. CCD once contacted Hwang Jang-yeop (a high-rank party secretary and the father of Juche ideology who defected to South Korea in 1998 and passed away in 2010) to nominate him for the first premier of the provisional government. However, Hwang refused the offer to keep his faith in the rule-based democracy, saying “My homeland is now South Korea and the coexistence of two governments is unconstitutional in the country.”

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