The Old New European

The question of who will be the next Russian president has been near the top of my list of no-brainers for some time. Now it’s been answered. As Vladimir Putin told the congress of the ruling United Russia party, “It’s not really important, who will do what and which of us occupies which position. The important thing is how we work.” Indeed.

The important thing is thus what Dmitri Medvedev’s announcement—foreswearing his own ambitions to be elected for another term and recommending his predecessor and current prime minister to replace him as the next president, in exchange for replacing Putin as the next prime minister—says about the nature of the present and future Russian governments and how they work.

The quiet street in a leafy neighborhood on the outskirts of Prague where I have been living since I was born is an unlikely vantage point from which to watch history unfold, yet it is no stranger to epoch-making events. For some reason, they always take place on August 21st. It was in the dawn of that day 43 years ago when a friend woke us on the telephone with the news that the Soviet army had just invaded our country. For the next couple of hours, my sister and I stood hypnotized by the window watching a slow movie of four Antonov heavy transport aircraft making an approach across the horizon to the Prague airport a few miles to the north. There were always four—whenever the plane closest to the landing disappeared from view on the left, another one entered the picture on the right. It took a while to transport the half a million soldiers who made up the occupying army, and even the much smaller number that was airlifted in.

Amidst the flood of sobering news about markets, shares, currencies, and the future of Europe and the United States, a small but historic victory for the cause of human rights, tolerance, and understanding of all kinds was scored last week in Prague, where I am spending my summer holidays. The first LGBT Pride Parade marched through the streets of Prague as a part of a five-day festival of alternative music, art, and performance.

The arrival to Bohemia of this modern form of staking territory was neither unexpected nor unwelcome. The event was in the making for some time, the venues were booked, the route of the parade planned, and the Lord Mayor of Prague accepted the auspices over the whole thing. August is a quiet month here and the expected influx of a few thousand of LGBT visitors from all over the country and abroad was a nice contribution to the well-being of the tourist industry. This bleak and rainy summer needed a little color.

Seventy years after the crimes, any trial of former Nazis and their collaborators will be an imperfect exercise at best. The victims and most of the witnesses are dead, the perpetrators frail, and the chain of evidence hard to demonstrate. For all that, and because of that, whatever justice can still be done must be done.

For once, it came to London on time. The parks and gardens are in glorious blossom. In Austria, on the other hand, it snowed over the weekend. And in the skies over Libya, UN Security Council resolution No. 1973 (2011) is in force.

A lot of diplomats in Brussels, Washington, and other capitals will miss the blossoming, working into the night to hammer out the details of the international operation mandated by the resolution. The air is so fragrant, and the language so vague. Is a “no-fly zone” primarily a mandate for the use of force, as seems to be the case here, or primarily a mandate for the threat of using force, as was the case for long periods of time in former Yugoslavia and in Iraq after the Gulf War? Obviously much depends on how the other party behaves. Does “protection of civilians” entail simply a no-fly zone or does it also imply going after Colonel Qaddafi? Assassinations and forced regime changes from the outside are prohibited by the international law, the non-interventionists warn. On the other hand, it seems to be primarily Colonel Qaddafi that the civilians need to be protected against.

Colonel Qaddafi is using tank columns and jet aircraft to resolve the argument of who Libya belongs to — its people or its ruler? We do not exactly know who the people opposing him are. Are they democrats, are they Islamists, or are they, as sometimes happens, more of the same? Whoever they are, they are showing a considerable amount of courage fighting tanks and jets with Kalashnikovs.

Though many of Qaddafi’s weapons are obsolete, Cold War–era junk, some of the equipment is of a more recent vintage. Since the lifting of the embargo in 2004, EU member countries have collectively exported close to a billion euros worth of armaments to the country. In February 2010, Russia and Libya signed a new arms deal worth billions, in which Qaddafi was granted deliveries of modern Russian T-90 main battle tanks, military aircraft, and artillery. The wringing of hands has just started.

In the end, history always catches up. These days, it often catches up rather quickly. It is not yet two years since G8 leaders met in the earthquake-stricken Italian town of L’Aquila in the middle of the financial crisis to ponder the all-important issues of global present and future. Yet try to find anyone except a few bureaucrats who remembers where the meeting took place, what issues came up, what plans were adopted, or even who participated. Maybe the last one — it sounds really easy. The G8 summits bring together the leaders of the eight largest economies, i.e. the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy … and China? Wrong. The last one is Russia, which may not be a very large economy but certainly is a very large country.

It would be unfair to omit China entirely, so China makes up part of another grouping, also present at the summit. Comprising China, Mexico, Brazil, India, and South Africa, the G5, as it is now known, labors under even more obscurity than the G8, which is probably why some instead focus on the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) when talking about emerging economic powers.