Democratic hope

The Italian opposition is rudderless, after Walter Veltroni quit as leader of the centre-left Democratic Party. When they lost the general election last April to Silvio Berlusconi's coalition of the People of Freedom and the Northern League, this blog counciled patience for the Democrats, arguing that they should invest time in forging a coherent centre-left identity and seek to exploit the inherent weaknesses of the governing coalition. But following a string of regional election set-backs and corruption scandals, Veltroni leaves the party in danger of unravelling, disorientated by the economic crisis, the resiliance of the Berlusconi government and its own failure to formulate and project a credible image.

It would be gravely disappointing if the Democratic Party, formed in October 2007 out of the two then-largest leftist blocs, was to collapse again, or to abandon attempts to stake out the centre ground by instead attempting to recreate the broad leftist coalition of the previous Prodi regime by reaching out to far left groupings ousted from the legislature at the last election. While the last election produced a troublingly xenophobic and populist government, one blessing to emerge was a much simplified political landscape with a greatly reduced number of parties in parliament. Rather than two disparate blocs, each straddling both the Catholic centre and the extremes, it seemed that Italian voters would in future face a clear choice between a pair of major parties, one on the centre-left and one on right, which in turn would make the process of actually elaborating government policy a lot more efficient. Reaching out to the Communists risks returning either to the old incoherent political blocs or a wholesale abandonment of the reformist centre - an alarming development in the midst of an economic slum.

Economic realism need not come at the expense of political success, for forming a credible centrist alternative remains a viable medium term strategy for the Democrats. The Berlusconi regime remains heavily dependent on the charisma of the Prime Minister himself to hold the coalition together and keep up support in the polls, but Mr Berlusconi is almost certainly too old to contest the next election personally, and will instead spend the next few years distracted by his attempts to end his political career in the largely ceremonial Presidency. This desire was in evidence when he deliberately sent the country into constitutional crisis to undermine the current leftist incumbant earlier in the month, when he issued a decree to keep alive an Italian woman who had entered persistent vegetative state 17 years ago which the President then refused to sign. If the Italian public have to face such shenanigans - against the backdrop of a truely dire economy - for the next few years, only an opposition in utter disarray could fail to capitalise. It is up to the Democratic Party to hold themselves together, and hold true to the moderate platform they have largely represented up to now.

Berlin to Baghdad

At the dawn of the 20th century, the Germans scented riches and strategic gain in the sands of Mesopotamia, and so began construction of a railway line from Baghdad to Konya in Anatolia, to join up with existing lines that stretched all the way to Berlin. Now they're back, or at least their foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is, on the first visit of a German minister to Iraq since 1987. As they were 100 years ago, Germany is again active in the region to build bonds with the regional hegemon. In 1903 it was the Ottoman Empire that was considered an ally worth fostering; this time around its the Americans.

Mr Steinmeier arrives promising the promotion of stability through closer economic co-operation, and support for "a peaceful settlement between religious and ethnic groups" and "democratic consolidation" for "this new Iraq". Proactive German involvement in the country is a far cry from the empty handwringing which accompanied first the invasion and then chaos of the last 6 years, and its an open secret that this sudden engagement is due entirely to a new man at the top in the US. Global goodwill towards Barack Obama is legendary, and European governments are keen to appear willing to heed his call for greater support in cutting the trickiest knots that the US finds itself tied up in. The Germans recognise that they must now in some form up their support of their NATO allies, and backing the new Iraq is simply more palatable than sending more troops to Afghanistan and letting them see front-line action in the hostile south.

But there is only so much favour in Washington that the deployment of soft power alone can generate. Obama's priority is now the forthcoming 'surge' in Afghanistan; simply supporting Iraq economically will not enough if Europeans want to stay relevant to the superpower. Helping consolidate a battle already largely won will not suffice when Germany has the wherewithal to help win the battle in the first place. It is perhaps too much to expect the fragile coalition government in Germany to reopen the subject of German military adventures abroad in the run-up to tense federal elections in the Autumn. But come the end of the year much more will be expected of Chancellor Angela Merkel, or indeed a Chancellor Steinmeier if his SPD out-polls her CDU, than a delegation to Baghdad.

The Berlin to Baghdad railway was incomplete and largely irrelevant during the conflict that began in 1914, and upon the Great War's cessation the railway was taken out of German hands, to eventually be completed in 1940 to serve against it in yet another world war. One wishes the Germans a lot more success as they have another go at engaging Baghdad a century later. If it proves a precursor to greater German commitments elsewhere it is to welcomed wholeheartedly. If not, Berlin's attempts to please America will be about as successful as its Mesopotamian railways.

The Revolution Will Not Yet Be Finalised

Hugo Chavez has won the extended term limits he tried and failed to secure in a referendum in late 2007, by winning the latest plebiscite 54.4% to 45.4%. Talk of the Bolivarian revolution unravelling a year ago was clearly premature. This time around, the crucial difference seems to have been Mr Chavez's more modest proposals - with a mere 5 articles of his 1999 Constitution up for amendment rather than a wopping 69 - and a much higher turn-out of 67% rather than 56%. With international observers widely reporting a clean and fair vote, Mr Chavez's social movement still clearly commands a wide base, and unlike in December 2007, this time it was able to energise it and bring it to the polls. Mercifully this was managed without the usual shrill attacks on 'imperialist' America and Spain that Mr Chavez uses to drum up nationalist support, but not without ugly anti-semitic violence accompanying the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador on January 6th.

Of course, not all the problems facing the Venezuelan leader have simply evaporated. Half the government budget comes from oil revenue, leaving it cruelly exposed now that oil prices are bobbing below $40 and the economy falters. There are already signs that Mr Chavez's chequebook diplomacy is scaling down - should his domestic social programmes follow suit he may be in real trouble. But he doesn't face the voters again until 2012, by which time a global recovery - including one in oil prices - should be underway. The marrionette spirit of Simon Bolivar will haunt Venezuela for a few years yet.

Briefing: Zimbabwe

Each Sunday this blog briefs the basic background information on a major international event recently in the news. This week: Morgan Tsvangirai is sworn in as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai last week finally agreed to a power-sharing arrangement following disputed elections last March. Mr Mugabe will retain the Presidency, but Mr Tsvangirai becomes Prime Minister and the oppostion will control just over half the seats in the cabinet.

Mr Mugabe has ruled in Zimbabwe since the end of white-minority rule in 1980, having previously been a prominent leader of the black opposition and armed-resistance. For years his regime, led by the ZANU-PF party, was on the whole considered a rare African democratic success story, but since the end of the 1990s Zimbabwe has experienced international condemnation and a combination of crippling domestic crises. These began with a land-seizure programme from white farmers, which has in turn triggered famine and hyper-inflation, while more recently the country has also been hit by a cholera epidemic. ZANU-PF has been forced to use brutal repression, harassment of the opposition MDC party and election-rigging to hold onto power.

Yet nevertheless, the opposition won a majority in parliament in elections last March and the candidate of the MDC, Mr Tsvangirai, almost won the Presidential election in the first round, only to withdraw from the contest before the decisive second round was held amid mounting ZANU-PF sponsored violence, leaving Mr Mugabe to win uncontested. Since then the opposition and government have been locked in talks brokered by the largely toothless Southern African Development Community, with a deal appearing in outline last September but only finalised on Wednesday with the swearing in of Mr Tsvangirai as Prime Minister.

While the agreement represents progress from sole ZANU-PF rule, serious doubts remain as to its actual effectiveness. It is unclear how much real authority ZANU-PF, which still controls the army and will jointly oversee the police, has ceded to the MDC, and how co-operative long standing enemies will prove sharing government. Even more worrying, the Zimbabwean economy still lies in utter ruin, and even a united and fully functioning government would find its tasks Herculean. Large-scale international aid from the US and Britain awaits decisive proof that the deal is more than a smokescreen and that Mr Tsvangirai is actually allowed to govern.

European relevance

Europe merited no direct mention in Barack Obama's inaugural speech last month, and it was three days before the new American President phoned a European leader, having contacted the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority just a day after taking office. The Economist notes that Europe might have thus slipped somewhat down the list of American foreign-policy priorities. Good. Why should Europe have trumped the middle east, say, in absorbing precious moments during Obamas first hours in charge? War had ravaged Gaza until mere days before the swearing-in. Iraq and Afghanistan - the only foreign countries to merit a mention in the inaugural speach - are theatres of continuing conflict. Iran, which may be months away from aquiring a nuclear weapon, recieved a further oblique reference in the speech with the offer "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist".

Should Europe be worried if it is overshadowed by more pressing foreign issues? No. Europe hasn't disappeared: even if it recieved no explicit recognition in the inaugural speech, its continued centrality to the operation of US foreign policy was still implied. It is hard to read lines such as:

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

or

To those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders.

without reading them as references to the proactive role the US hopes that Europe will come to play in the world.

A non-European focus to the early days of the current US administration shows not an indifference to Europe, then, but a shift in the position of Europe in US foreign-policy thinking since the end of the Cold War. For much of the 20th century, America was troubled with the problem of securing an undivided Europe of peace and prosperity. When I spoke before the US election to Erik Jones, an advisor affiliated to the Obama campaign, he described how until the last few years,

when we talked about 'foreign policy', we talked about what was happening in Europe. Now we talk about what's happening in Europe because want to see what Europe is going to be able to do to help us in dealing with the outside world. Europe has become much more the instrument of foreign policy concerns than the object.

That Europe is no longer listed alongside the dilemmas facing an incoming US administration is to be celebrated rather than feared. Europe risks irrelevance only if shirks the global obligations to the still outstanding problems of the world that come with being one of the problems now solved.

Barbarians within the walls

The spectre of state failure should concern us all, even those within countries least at risk of it themselves. On top of the humanitarian obligations that increasing anarchy elsewhere imposes on those with the means to remedy the situation, failing states can pose a threat to the developed world by harbouring elements capable of striking at it. "It was not the well-organised Persian Empire that brought about the fall of Rome, but the barbarians”, as the eminent British diplomat Robert Cooper argues in his book The Breaking of Nations, quoted approvingly in last weeks Economist. While the Roman Empire represented stability, "outside the empire were barbarians, chaos and disorder."

The trouble is that this historical analogy is misleadingly false. The Germanic successor kingdoms that emerged from within the Western Empire in the 5th and 6th centuries were by no means the first "barbarian" structures of the Roman dominion. Indeed, ever since the days of the Republic, "barbarians" were employed to hold, defend and expand swathes of Roman territory, and with a military career a sure route to political power, Rome even began to have "barbarian" emperors from the 3rd century onwards. Successive waves of Germanic migration from at least the 2nd century BC put pressure on Rome, but "barbarians" were successfully absorbed into Roman structures of power for centuries, with those who led military expiditions against the empire often subsequently promoted to positions of power within it; even Attila the Hun was awarded the title of magister militum and was recruited by the rulers of Rome. Romulus Augustus, whose abdication in 476 is usually taken as marking the end of the Empire in the west, was the last Western Emperor because for Odoacer, the Germanic ruler of Italy, the title of Emperor had become more of a burden than a boon.

Rome didn't fall to an unprecendented flood of chaos from beyond its lands; it survived as long as it did through a flexible and pragmatic embrace of "barbarian" peoples, and it failed in the 5th century when the mechanisms for dealing with them stopped functioning and Roman titles lost their allure. The story of the fall of Rome itself, therefore, is one of state failure, not of a comparatively developed polity undone by anarchy from distant lands. What is more, such an accurate assessment of the fate of Rome actually sheds more light on the current threats facing the developed world than Cooper's spurious reading. Failed states today are often feared primarily as havens for international terrorist organisations, but if we look at the terrorist atrocities that have occured in industrialised democracies over the last decade - those of New York and Washington, London and Madrid - they were all organised from bases in functioning states: the former from pre-invasion Afghanistan, and the latter two at least partly from Europe itself. As the Economist article cited above goes on to note, organisations such as Al-Qaeda simply couldn't function without stable modern structures such as international money transfers, mobile phone networks and the internet. In the modern world, as in ancient Rome, the barbarians to fear are often those who work within the system, rather than those from the chaos beyond.

Follow the money

Austrians have traditionally been one of the more hostile European nations to EU expansion. In the latest Eurobarometer poll, for instance, a mere 33% of them ventured that the expansions since 2004 had strengthened the bloc, the lowest support for past enlargement across all 27 member states. Which is why it might appear strange at first glance to see the Austrian Finance Minister and vice-Chanceller Josef Pröll taking a keen interest in the economy of Ukraine, linking it to member states and membership candidate countries in calling for EU instruments to stand ready in support of battered financial systems across the region.

Mr Pröll's anxiety doesn't stem from simple good neighbourliness or a sense of old Hapsburg imperial fraternity with Ukraine's western corner. He rightly worries about "a domino effect in terms of economic difficulties in the EU" should "such a huge neighbouring country" like Ukraine run into acute trouble. But Austria's stake in the situation runs deeper than this. Austrian banks such as Raiffeisen have led the way into eastern Europe, and were their position in countries like Ukraine to weaken dramatically, Austria's own €100bn banking sector support plan would be seriously undermined.

So the financial sector is leading the EU framework deeper into eastern Europe, just as it paved its way into central Europe through the 1990s. If the current credit crunch eventually passes to leave something at least vaguely resembling the old banking networks in its wake, they will in time once again resume the hunt for new markets and profits on the boarders of the EU. One such country in Europe that Raiffeisen has yet to reach is Turkey, but it is hard to see why they eventually won't, unless Turkey is first goaded into turning its back on the EU for good, and where the banks lead, political support follows. Come a subsequent financial crisis in 10 or 20 years we might well be treated to the spectacle of that arch-sceptic of Turkey's membership bid, Austria, calling for greater EU support for its next giant neighbour.