Given our historic links with India, it is easy for the UK to feel complacent about the future of Indo-British relations. A seamless transition from rosy memories of the sunset of empire to Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice suggest that the relationship can continue to glide smoothly along, accommodating changing fashions as it goes. The world, however, is changing and Indo-British relations are being shaped by two forces which mean that the UK’s approach to its relations with India must change too.

First, substantive strategic discussions about issues of global concern have migrated upwards from the UK to the level of the EU. In typically thorough EU fashion, the EU-India summits held annually since 2000 have left hardly a realm of political or economic activity untouched. There is now a summit, forum, working group or round table on everything from maritime affairs, civil aviation and space, through to the environment, the Millennium Development Goals and nanotechnology.

As a result of the fifth EU-India summit in The Hague last November, the EU and India have now agreed to co-operate on the level of Strategic Partnership and are working on an Action Plan and Joint EU Indian Political Declaration to be finalised at this year’s summit in India. Such ties are a reserection of the similarities, both in terms of outlook and structure, between the EU and India. The common commitment to democracy, international law, human rights, economic liberalisation and development goals makes the EU and India natural partners for strategic co-operation. Together, they represent the two great political laboratories of the latter half of the twentieth century – albeit that they are in some senses mirror images of each other.

In India, a ‘Centre’ was created to build an Indian nation, which formed a union over time; in Europe, European nations began creating their own version of a union and over time have created their own ‘Centre’. Neither project is complete but each can learn a number of lessons from the other and share experience of common issues, such as democratic defecit, competing claims of federalism and regional/national autonomy and the demands of presiding over multiple cultures, religions and languages within an open, tolerant and secular framework.

Within this context, India is a country that could, despite its geographical location, be a candidate member of the EU. Perhaps, as these two political experiments evolve through the twenty first century, such an idea may not be as outlandish as it appears. The EU’s focus on its relations with India could become the cornerstone of its international cooperation over the coming decades. The EU and India could form a massive demographic and trading alliance of two emerging powers both searching for their role within the international firmament, both with a commitment to a similar set of values.

India is certainly acquiring the accoutrements of major power status: a growing economy, a large military budget, large population and a reputation for technological innovation. But it is also building its soft power resources as an upholder of international norms, as a major contributor to UN peacekeeping efforts, and as a growing cultural magnet (built partly on the cultural appetite of its vast diaspora). One of the results of this is that, at present, the major actors on the world stage – including the EU and India – are hedging their positions, aware that the current unipolar world is unsustainable in the long term, aware that new powers are emerging and aware too that the international frameworks which seek to manage global affairs will need to change to accommodate new realities. These realities will likely see a new geo-strategic geometry of a Big Four: the US, India, China and the EU. Whilst the EU can only play its part if it manages to align the interests of its member states, it is improbable that either the UK (or France) can remain major powers in their own right in the long term. This clearly has implications for the UK.

So as India recalibrates its diplomacy to new strategic realities, the UK must carve out a new niche for itself. Of course, the UK would like to continue to promote itself as India’s economic, political and cultural gateway into Europe. The UK is the second largest investor in India, bilateral trade is worth £5 billion per annum and the UK attracts 60 per cent of all Indian investment into Europe. Last year the two countries announced the establishment of a Joint Economic and Trade Committee to further these strong ties. The visit of the Indian Prime Minister to London last September, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s visit to India in February of this year and even the recent visit to India of the new EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson have all enhanced Indo-British political contacts.

The UK has approximately 1.3 million citizens of Indian origin and 500,000 Indians visit the UK every year with 400,000 Britons visiting India. All of these facts testify to the current vibrancy of ties between the two countries.

And yet culturally and politically there is a sense that India’s attention may slowly be wandering elsewhere. This is the second force reshaping Indo-British relations. The passage of time since Independence and the forces of globalisation mean that India’s commitments, interests and outlook require it to focus on more than just the UK. As Parag Khanna states in a new publication by the Foreign Policy Centre (India as a New Global Leader), India’s diaspora has become a “networked borderless global polity” with interests across the world. There are some 20 million Indians abroad and nearly 50 countries with Indian populations of 10,000 or more. In this context, the UK – despite its large Indian community – is no longer the only natural hub for NRIs. There is a new generation of leaders emerging in the economic and cultural spheres that has not had direct relations with the UK and has no shared memory of the colonial period. Many young educated middle class Indians are more familiar with the US than the UK and find Silicon Valley more alluring than Sheffield.

So it is time to accept that we can no longer congratulate ourselves on our deep ties with India when in reality we are only ever engaging with the educated English-speaking elite. India’s huge population contains over one billion people speaking hundreds of languages and dialects. Only four percent of Indians speak English.
There are some 15 official languages and over 20 languages spoken by a million people or more. This makes India one of the most challenging countries in the world with which to engage effectively.

Practical measures the UK can take to consolidate its interests in India include, first, leveraging our position as the largest aid donor to India. Over time India’s requirement for aid will diminish but, in the meantime, the UK can maintain its position as India’s premier partner in this area in promoting the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Second, in order to maintain the strength of our economic ties, the UK should continue to push the Indian Government on issues such as streamlining bureaucracy for business, financial sector reform and the promotion of clean energy technology and resurrecting its stalled privatisation programme. Producing an enabling commercial environment in India is crucial to the continuing vitality of bilateral trade links. Third, the UK must act to promote itself as a key interlocutor between India and Europe. This will require a more effective UK strategy to convince non-European allies and partners that we are serious and committed members of the EU.

But in the longer term, we need to become far more sophisticated in our approach and recognise that to communicate with India as a whole, we need new strategies. This means that additional resources need to be focused on India and they need to be focused in a new way. The UK currently has High Commission offices in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata; Trade Offices in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad; DfID works with the state governments of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa; and British Council has offices and libraries in eleven cities stretching from Thiruvananthapuram to Chandigarh and Ahmedabad to Kolkata.

These resources need to be co-ordinated to deliver a new public diplomacy strategy for the UK in India – one which accommodates the enormous diversity of India and builds on the relationships that currently exist.

We must recognise that old relationships need to be built anew, with a new generation of Indians, for many of whom English is an unknown language and the UK very much a foreign land. A new UK public diplomacy for India need not start with a blank canvas but new realities mean that we need a fresh approach.

Keith Didcock is Deputy Director of The Foreign Policy Centre

So far, security has been at the very bottom of the list, eclipsed by aid and debt relief. The UK government kicked off the year with a diplomatic offensive to build support for Gordon Brown’s International Finance Facility, an ambitious proposal to double the amount of aid through the creation of special bonds allowing African countries to borrow against future aid receipts – what has been dubbed a new “Marshall Plan for Africa”.
In a landmark six-day visit of the continent, Brown spoke out on poverty and AIDS and appealed for international assistance. Yet his passion did not dispel all scepticism. Critics have been quick to point out that the original Marshall Plan or European Recovery Program initiated by the US after the second world war provided funding to reconstruct Europe. While the continent had been physically devastated by conflict, its human and institutional capital – the basic blocks of development – was largely intact.
By contrast, many African countries today face the far more daunting task of building these from scratch. Financial aid alone will not enable African nations to train the doctors, teachers and managers needed to power their growth; and pretending otherwise is likely to breed disillusionment.
An even more obvious gap is that, unlike Europe in 1948, Africa is still at war. Three wars and fourteen “violent conflicts” are currently unfolding in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Bank regional brief, and a further ten countries are at a “high risk” at seeing the outbreak or resumption of conflict. Today approximately 15 million Africans are internally displaced as a result of conflict, while around 4.5 million have sought refuge in neighbouring countries. An astonishing one in five sub-Saharan Africans live in communities directly affected by armed conflict. But despite the profound repercussions for economic development, dealing with conflict has barely figured so far on the UK agenda.
This is all the more astonishing given how cruelly the crisis in Darfur last year exposed the shortcomings in the international community’s ability to deal with threats to security and human rights on the African continent. Despite early and repeated warnings that the attacks of government-supported militias on villages in the Sudanese province of Darfur amounted to genocide, the international reaction was painfully slow – perhaps with the exception of the US.
As Dr Greg Austin, research director of the Foreign Policy Centre, points out in a recent FPC publication on Darfur, the lessons from Rwanda have not yet been learnt. There is only a narrow window for halting the chain of violence once unleashed; and there are still no effective legal and institutional mechanisms that enable or require the international community to take action to do so. Other conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Ivory Coast have also tested the strength of the international commitment to African security and justice.
But security may prove the sine qua non of the UK’s plan for Africa. The UK government is unlikely to win international and domestic support for a Marshall-style effort unless people are reasonably convinced that it will not be jeopardised by apathy and indecision in the face of devastating conflict. Drumming up enthusiasm for the “Year of Africa” after the “Year of Genocide” will be no mean feat. Tony Blair was visibly rattled when, during a press conference in January on his plan for more aid to Africa, he was asked why he had allowed 50,000 to die in Darfur since pledging to take action six months previously. The “fresh thinking” that the Prime Minister has correctly identified as lacking in the world’s approach to Africa must clearly embrace security as well as aid.
A bold complement to the new “Marshall Plan” for economic development is the creation of a “NATO for Africa” in parallel to guarantee its security – a bold idea put forward by Richard Gowan of the Foreign Policy Centre in “Effective Multilateralism: Europe, Regional Security and a Revitalised UN”. He argues that a promising new partner for the international community in general and Europe in particular has emerged in the shape of the African Union (AU). Just as NATO allowed the US to provide an effective security guarantee to European nations against Soviet invasion while giving them the status of equal partners, so the EU could create a new partnership with the African Union to deal with security threats together without the charge of colonialism.
The EU has already provided 250 million euros to the African Peace Facility, funding AU peacekeeping operations in Burundi and Sudan. There are admittedly many obstacles to such a plan – namely, African diplomats have repeatedly voiced their fears that Europe will use such an agreement to “subcontract” danger and potential loss of life to their African partners. But the new European “battle groups” finally given the go-ahead last year hold the key to a promising new formula for a genuine partnership, meriting further consideration at least. This would involve high-tech European troops to help stabilise the initial crisis, and act as a precursor to a larger AU peacekeeping force that would confer regional legitimacy on the mission.
Generalising on the scale of a continent is dangerous, as is seeking to rank scourges like disease, famine and war dispassionately. Clearly, development priorities in Africa differ from country to country, and security will not always come first. For instance, although 2,297,600 people lost their lives through the armed conflicts active in Africa between 1990 and 2004, according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, UN AIDS reports that the same number (2,200,000) died from AIDS in the sub-Saharan region in 2004 alone.
But security needs at least to be one among equals. Just as HIV/AIDS has broader implications for development than purely in terms of lives lost, because of its effects on health, productivity and education, so is conflict a particularly pernicious problem, both wide-ranging and diffuse. People who fear for their lives are not best placed to acquire vital skills, create jobs and drive forward their community’s economic development.
Preventing, resolving and dealing with the repercussions of conflict must be at the heart of any comprehensive development strategy. Uganda offers perhaps the best illustration of the indivisibility of development from security. Although Uganda is acclaimed as one of Africa’s “success stories”, having reduced the rate of HIV/AIDS infection and sustained average annual growth of 6.7 percent in real GDP terms since 1995, its government is still struggling to resolve a bloody 18-year conflict waged against rebels on its northern borders.
It seems unlikely that the Commission for Africa’s long-anticipated report will rectify the current security-shaped hole in policy innovation. While the panel brings together an impressive array of experts and politicians, their expertise lies mainly in development and wealth creation – the focus of their consultations so far. Security is the missing link in the UK initiative on Africa. To prevent this jeopardising a plan so central to Tony Blair’s premiership, it must be brought to the fore of the debate.

The system that Putin inherited would leave few to argue with Dejevsky’s assertion that Putin is a weak president desperately trying to grab more control over an unruly periphery. His oft-repeated mantras for a ‘dictatorship of the law’ and establishing a ‘vertical of power’ are by now, well known in the West.

Instead of seeing Putin’s weakness as a buffer against the West’s desire for a strong and stable Russian partner, it only increases the West’s need to actively monitor and engage Russia to improve the situation. As Dejevsky illustrates, Putin is weak both internally and externally. If Putin is to combat the three great Russian diseases, that Andrew Meier notes, of greed, corruption and bureaucracy, he will have to strengthen both the rule of law and accountability, especially in the regions. By doing so, Putin could establish the necessary ‘levers of power’ that Dejevsky calls for. As such, Putin’s crack-down on political parties, the election of regional governors, media independence and the destruction of Yukos is not only ill-timed but ill-conceived and are likely to damage his position.

The ‘levers’ that Putin is currently pulling, specifically the limitations placed on media independence and executive influence over the judiciary, may work in the short-term but are very damaging over a protracted period. The West should not hesitate to speak out against reforms that both weaken Russia and take it in the wrong direction. Far from increasing his power or stabilising Russia, Putin’s involvement in the recent Ukrainian elections and his ‘persecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’ and a free market economy only compound his weaknesses.

Dejevsky calls for realistic help to establish security along porous borders and to encourage the development of local and national democracy. But far from creating security, meddling in Georgia and Moldova will only decrease it. The continuing problem of Chechnya, what one human rights analyst has called ‘a spreading cancer on the edge of the Russian Federation’, is also hindering Russian security.

With fewer parties in power, the populace will increasingly associate current problems with the Putin administration; over time it is also likely that they will become more distrustful of government in general. Furthermore, the lack of a durable multi-party system and fewer opposition parties gives Putin’s United Russia increased access to administrative resources that can be used to disrupt the ‘democratic rule of law’. As Putin’s reforms continue to amass power for his regime and for United Russia, the lack of accountability has led to an increased number of abuses of power.

Similarly, instead of fostering democracy, Putin’s reforms have removed democratic accountability one step further from the people. Increasing the minimum number of registered members of a political party from 10,000 to 50,000 with membership throughout the Federation’s regions will undoubtedly curtail the development of local or regional political activism geared at specific interests. A lack of political activism not only impedes Russian democracy, but strengthens the hand of conservatives to unite those who have been pushed aside.

By moving the legislative and judicial branches, as well as the media and opposition, from being outside of the system to being an integral part of it, Putin has paradoxically decreased the possibility for real debate in Russia and has therefore increased the chance that Putin’s regime could collapse. Dejevsky is correct in asserting that this is not the situation the West wants, but this should not mute the concerns of Russia’s Western friends and partners. To the contrary, the West must begin to work with the Russian state, and not just an idealised president. Far from advocating ‘further and faster reform’, the West merely advocates that Russia should, in the words of one liberal Russian politician, ‘realise its own Constitution.’

Multilateral organisations have been left with the task of pushing for positive reforms for too long. Recent moves by Bush, however half-hearted, are a positive signal that the West is willing to provide more practical advice and support. Instead of advocating more reforms, the West has turned to advocating a better quality of reforms, one that will benefit the Russian people, and undoubtedly, the current administration as well. The West must work to show Putin’s government that stabilising a democratic rule of law through increased debate and dialogue will not only make for better Russian relations with the West, but will create a more stable Russia.

Jennifer Moll is the Russia Project Officer at the Foreign Policy centre

To join in the debate on the Open Democracy website please go to:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/forums/thread.jspa?forumID=128&threadID=44028&messageID=59416#59416

Long-opposed sugar subsidies are soon to be ruled illegal by a World Trade Organization appeals panel, and non-governmental organisations such as Oxfam and Christian Aid have put together high-profile campaigns against a whole range of agricultural policies that harm poor rural communities in the southern hemisphere.

Last month the UK government followed the example set by Denmark by announcing that it would reveal details of CAP payments to individual farms.

The move – the result of an application from the Foreign Policy Centre and the Guardian newspaper under the UK’s new Freedom of Information Act – will allow British taxpayers, for the first time, to find out exactly where the £3.5 billion (€5.1bn) they pay in farm subsidies every year goes to. Were this to become an EU-wide requirement, it would boost public support for CAP reform significantly.

In the US, a similar campaign for disclosure was led by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the Washington Post newspaper. The EWG now maintains an online database, providing a full breakdown of how much public money an individual farm has received at the touch of a button. More transparency about payments would first of all end the oft-heard but erroneous argument that the CAP is there to protect small, family-run farms. In fact, across the EU, 80% of the money currently goes to just 20% of farms: mostly large agri-businesses.

This is not about demonising farmers. The public recognises that Europe needs its farmers for many reasons: to produce quality food, to sustain rural communities and to manage and enhance our pastoral landscapes. France for instance, the staunchest defender of the CAP, argues that it does not want its marginal areas to be abandoned or its rural populations to dwindle. Nor does it want to become like New Zealand, where vast areas are set aside for ranching. So long as farmers are delivering public benefits, they should not be ashamed of receiving public money.

This thought is central to the new contracts between farmers and wider society that have emerged in Germany, UK and France in the past few years. During the 1980s, EU food mountains, at a time when millions were starving in Africa, caused public outrage. In the 1990s, food safety scares over BSE, foot-and-mouth disease and genetically modified organisms battered confidence in the ability of farmers to produce safe, nutritious food.

Trade and development NGOs are successfully making the moral case against farm subsidies in rich countries that close off markets to some of the world’s poorest countries. Recently, a radical idea to end CAP subsidies to the richest 2% of farmers and redirect the money to the fight against AIDS won the support of dozens of members of the British parliament, including the former foreign secretary, Robin Cook.

What, then, does the future hold for the CAP? Currently, the greatest pressure comes from finance ministries in those EU countries that bear the bulk of the cost for farm subsidies, including the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and – above all – Germany. Among the ‘1% club’ of member states that wish to limit EU budget contributions to 1% of national income, agricultural subsidies – which account for nearly half of the EU’s total spending – are an obvious target for budget cuts.

Farm subsidies were once the dirty secret of European politics but the connections that are increasingly being made between agricultural policy, global poverty, the environment and taxation are finally bringing the issue into public awareness. They are focusing attention on the need for openness and a debate on farm policy that reaches beyond traditional agriculture lobbies. Mariann Fischer Boel, the European agriculture commissioner, was also the mover behind Denmark’s decision to disclose details on individual CAP subsidy payments, when she was Danish minister for food, agriculture and fisheries. She should implement the same policy at an EU level.

Jack Thurston is senior research associate at the Foreign Policy Centre and a former special adviser at the UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. He is co-editor of ‘Free and Fair: Making the Progressive Case for Removing Trade Barriers’, published by the FPC.

© Copyright 2005 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved

The Indo-British Partnership (IBP) set up in 1993 to promote bilateral trade and investment was very successful in its endeavour with the UK becoming the third largest investor in India after the US and Mauritius.

Indo-British trade figures are estimated at £5 billion per annum. However, India’s bilateral trade with China is over £7 billion per annum and with the US is over £10 billion.**

From the Indian point of view, UK investment in India is disappointing; especially considering the enthusiasm in recent years among Indian businesses investing in the UK.

Not only does the UK emerge as the top European investment location for Indian companies targeting the European markets and beyond; but India is also the second largest source of FDI from Asia.

Driven by a desire to see more trade and investment by the UK in India, the Indo-British Parliamentary Forum (IBPF) delegation that visited the UK in the first week of February this year asked this very question of a distinguished panel hosted by the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC), a London based think tank.

The eloquent Jyotiraditya Scindia MP confounded the UK panel comprising of representatives from the government, big corporate firms, and industry by repeatedly asking, “Why is there relatively less investment from the UK in India as compared to other countries?”

The answer to this question cannot solely lie in problems with the Indian economy since the much cited impediments such as dealing with bureaucracy, restricting labour regulations, inhibiting industrial and trade policies and poor infrastructure; are universally forbidding to foreign investors. This then could possibly mean that the new economic policies such as the introduction of the new Patent Law and VAT in India are not likely to change UK attitudes either.

Perhaps there is more of a need to look within the UK itself and for policy makers and investors to ask themselves why they do not have the confidence that the US does in investing in India.

Still, it is not all a pessimistic picture. Renewed hope lies in the relatively near future with the introduction of Chinese-style Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in different parts of India, beginning in May 2005.

These zones are deemed foreign territory for tariff and trade operations and are to have excellent infrastructure facilities.

It is still too early to examine how successful these will be, however the UK, if it so desires, would have to act very soon in order to carve its share within these expected “engines of economic growth.”

For the sake of Indo-British relations, let’s hope that this is not a missed opportunity.

*Shairi Mathur is Project Officer for India at the Foreign Policy Centre, a leading London-based European think tank with a Global Outlook.

This is an article published originally at http://www.indianewsineurope.com/

Although they treat him with due courtesy, there is a deep sense of resentment against him. They were appalled at his conduct during last year’s Greek Cypriot referendum on the Annan plan, when he waged a highly demagogic campaign, flanked by an unholy alliance of the Communist Party and the most obscurantist elements of the Orthodox Church, wrecking the prospect of a reunited island joining the European Union last May.

On 24 April, the Greek Cypriot voters rejected the United Nations plan by a three-to-one majority, an “astonishing result”, as UN representative Alvaro de Soto described it in European Voice last week, while Turkish Cypriots accepted it by two-to-one.

Spurred by their sense of outrage, the Council of Ministers took a speedy decision to reward the Turks for their more co-operative stance, and to try to reduce the isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which remains unrecognised internationally. It decided, within two days of the referenda, to grant €259m in economic aid, which was the amount which would have been spent by the EU in the Turkish sector if reunification had gone through, and to open up the Union to Turkish Cypriot exports.

The Commission was invited to draw up detailed regulations to implement these decisions, which it succeeded in doing by early July last year. Unfortunately, one, at least, of the regulations needs to be approved by unanimous vote of the Council of Ministers, and when the Dutch presidency sought to put them on the Council agenda last autumn it met with resolute obstruction from the Cyprus government.

Not wishing to provoke an open row, it held its hand, and the incoming Luxembourg presidency is undecided how to deal with the issue. It has not made the agenda of any of the three Foreign Affairs Councils held so far this year.

In the face of this hostile reaction by the Greek Cypriot government, the Turkish Cypriots continue to show moderation. In the elections for their Parliament last month, the vote for the Republican Turkish Party (CTP), of Mehmet Ali Talat, the pro-settlement Prime Minister, shot up, leaving him only one seat short of an overall majority, and greatly strengthening his position within the coalition government.

Moreover, the veteran President, Rauf Denktas, who for many years successfully aborted negotiations with the Greek Cypriots, has finally decided to give up, and will not be a candidate in the presidential election in April. Talat is the hot favourite to succeed him, and this should further reinforce his authority.

In a recent visit to Brussels, Talat made it clear that his government was extremely flexible in its approach to possible renewed talks with the Greek Cypriots. He called on Papadopoulos to prepare a list of the alterations he would like to the Annan Plan and submit them to the UN Secretary-general in the hope of resuming negotiations.

So far, the Cypriot President has not responded to Talat’s offer, and, indeed, told the Cyprus newspaper Simerini that, while congratulating Talat on his re-election as Prime Minister, he believed that “he was seeking division of the island rather than reunification, as he claims”.

In Cyprus itself, his government resolutely refuses to countenance any dealings with Talat’s administration, even in the pursuit of criminal justice. One particularly blatant example, to which Talat drew attention at a meeting organised by the European Policy Centre during his Brussels visit, was the Elmas Guzelyurtlu murder case.

This was a particularly gruesome affair, in which Guzelyurtlu, a Turkish Cypriot living south of the ‘Green line’ dividing the island, was slain in his home, together with his wife and daughter, early in January. Eight suspects, all Turkish Cypriots, were arrested by the Turkish Cypriot authorities, but the Greek Cypriot police, who had collected evidence implicating the eight, refused to hand it over to a Turkish Cypriot court.

In the absence of this evidence, the suspects were released on 9 February, though investigations are continuing.

Not all the Greek Cypriot parties are as hostile to dealing with the Turkish Cypriots as Papadopoulos. At a rare meeting, in Nicosia on 9 March, between political parties from the two sides, Mikhalis Papetrou, from the opposition United Democrats, welcomed Talat’s approach, saying that he had “expressed readiness for a Cyprus settlement… and therefore the ball is in our court. We must tell the UN secretary-general what changes we want to his plan”.

In retrospect, it can be seen that the EU made a fatal misjudgement in agreeing in advance to the entry of the Greek Cypriot Republic in the absence of agreement on the reunification of the island. Its bargaining power with the Cyprus government is now much less, now that the carrot of EU membership is no longer being dangled, but has been granted.

Nor can much economic pressure be applied, as Cyprus is one of the more prosperous of EU members and is much less dependent than other new member states on aid from the structural funds. It should, however, be made clear to Papadopoulos that his continued obstructionism is against the spirit of EU membership, and that he can expect no favours from his colleagues the next time his country runs into difficulties.

It is also to be hoped that the Greek government, anxious to maintain its greatly improved relations with Turkey, will use what influence it has with the Cyprus government to act more reasonably, both with regard to the stalled EU aid and trade package and the possible rescue of the Annan plan. If Papadopoulos continues on his present course, he may well eventually end up with the outcome he most fears: the incorporation of Northern Cyprus into Turkey.

Dick Leonard was formerly Assistant Editor of The Economist. His latest book, A Century of Premiers: Salisbury to Blair, has just been published.

A full range of challenges

While both of these efforts have provided additional stimulus for significant reform efforts, neither has captured the full scope of the challenges facing the UN system — as well as the people of the world.

States can now work towards a “new grand bargain” — one that will bridge the growing gulf between the developed world and the developing countries.

There is, for example, little recognition that proposed new ‘standing members’ of the UN Security Council, especially India, represent a belief system and a set of power relationships that may — and probably should — sweep away important deformities of the old order.

There is a growing gulf between, on the one hand, U.S. and European perceptions of the international order and, on the other, those of the ‘non-West’ — especially in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

A growing gulf

On the economic front, this gulf between the developed world and the developing world, represented in part by the G-77, has been made plain in that group’s rejection of key aspects of the report of Annan’s High Level Panel.

With regard to the threats and challenges facing the UN system and its members, “the report does not adequately address many issues of concern to the South,” the G-77 has stated.

Excluding the non-Western world

This is our conclusion, too. As useful and reformist as the Panel’s report is, the claim of its chairman, Thailand’s Anand Panyarachun, that the report “puts forward a new vision of collective security, one that addresses all of the major threats to international peace and security felt around the world,” is patently unsustainable.
A new international economic and social order — with a fundamentally more democratic and grass-roots nature — is taking shape.

Specifically, there is too little of the non-Western — especially the Islamic — world in the report. Long-standing goals of the Non-Aligned Movement or its leaders have been ignored.

There is, for example, no serious treatment of the elimination of nuclear weapons — or of the reining in of the disposition of Security Council members to use force without adequate reference to the UN Security Council.

Criticism all around

India criticized the report for its one-sided approach to terrorism and its selective treatment of associated causes. South Africa has criticized it for wanting to expand the powers of the Security Council at a time when the Council has been overstepping its existing authorities.

Pakistan felt that the report should have addressed a number of old threats (“foreign occupation, regional rivalries, the global and regional arms race”) and new ways of enhancing the UN’s capacity for the peaceful resolution of disputes.

A new iron curtain

It said that the report overlooked one of the major threats — the risk of a new iron curtain coming down between the West and the Islamic world.

There is rising intolerance among developing nations of the current system of ‘indulgences’ enjoyed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Many Islamic countries do not agree with the panel’s view of terrorism, feeling that it de-legitimizes armed struggle against occupying forces.

While even these critics have expressed support for key recommendations of the Panel’s report, the depth and scope of the criticism — alongside the Panel’s report itself — provide strong evidence that the United Nations does not just need reform. It is in need of a moral, political and structural reformation.

A ‘root and branch’ reformation

The need for this reformation and the paths it must take has to reflect the massive changes in power relationships in the world in the past 60 years — and the moral and political impulses that led to or flowed from those power changes.

That is why a ‘root and branch’ reformation of the UN will not be led from New York — or from the foreign ministries of the major powers.

Through appointment of his High Level Panel on UN reform, Kofi Annan has delivered the opportunity, and indeed further exposed the need, but he cannot lead the reformation. Annan is no Martin Luther. He could not survive as Secretary General if he were.

A system of ‘indulgences’

The underlying credo of the old order may be the same as the new one now on offer — peace among nations. But there is rising intolerance among developing nations of the current system of ‘indulgences’ enjoyed by the five permanent members of the Security Council, particularly but not exclusively, the United States and Britain.

A ‘root and branch’ reformation of the UN will not be led from New York — or from the foreign ministries of the major powers.

There is a rising confidence among leaders in the developing world that a new international economic and social order, with a fundamentally more democratic and grass-roots nature, is taking shape.

Under these circumstances, a new order for international security — based principally on procedural reform of the UN Security Council — is not sufficient by itself.

It does not remedy the absence of a comprehensive approach to other aspirations for reform among major actors, nor does it address areas of grave concern in international order broadly defined.

Room for improvement

UN reform this year and in coming years need not address all of the criticisms raised in response to the High Level Panel’s report. But there is ample room for a major advance in many areas, as long as some genuine effort is made to address the most urgent concerns of the developing countries in the field of international and national security broadly defined. They include:

• High indebtedness of developing countries

• Depleted human resources in developing countries

• Constraints on bank lending to developing countries

• Sanctions and trade bans

• Military interventions and the ‘responsibility to protect’

• Nuclear weapons proliferation and control regimes

• Weaponisation of outer space
At first glance, there may appear to be few direct links between many of these subjects. Yet, all of them raise concerns that can no longer effectively be addressed only by relying on the normal processes of subject-specific international conferences or bodies set up to negotiate on specific and narrow issues — such as nuclear arms control instruments or debt reduction.

A new grand bargain

The growing support for reform of the Security Council provides a unique opportunity to address these other concerns.

States can now work towards a “new grand bargain.” This new grand bargain will not be one, as has been argued in some places, that offers more development money to poorer countries in return for their agreement to reforms on Security Council membership or weapons proliferation.

A new approach to security

The new grand bargain will have to bridge the growing gulf between the developed world and the developing countries on fundamental approaches to security.

Kofi Annan has delivered the opportunity for reform — but he cannot lead the reformation.

It will be a complex process and surely take quite a bit of time. However, only when this broader goal of a new grand bargain is pursued will reform of the Security Council be meaningful and durable.

The general objective must be to seize the opportunity now presented by the prospect of Security Council reform to make a quantum advance in other areas.

Reducing the scope of war

For example, in the area of security, there is an opportunity to reduce the scope of war and war-like actions, an advance that may be as radical as the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 which sought to outlaw aggressive war. Innovations in this area might include:

• Strengthening of the UN capacities for peaceful resolution of disputes through new mandatory processes

• New procedures for addressing long-running foreign military occupations

• New procedures for addressing long standing claims to self-determination that threaten peace

• New international regimes for the acquiring and use of foreign military bases

• A new requirement to report in detail to the UN Security Council on the conduct of any war or war-like operations

• A new mechanism of accountability to the UN General Assembly for civilian casualties in all wars or combat operations

• A new commitment to work towards the complete prohibition of weapons of mass destruction.

The opportunity for a ‘reformation’ within the UN and international security order is now here and the need is urgent.

Creating effective policies for including immigrants is vital if the EU is to meet its ambitious Lisbon Agenda targets on employment and competitiveness; and for reaping the wider benefits of socially cohesive and economically vibrant communities. It is clear that there is no shortage of good intentions. At the 1999 Tampere Summit meeting, EU leaders signed up to give non-EU citizens ‘rights comparable’ to those of EU citizens, and repeated their commitment to managing legal migration and integration at The Hague in 2004.

Yet according to new research published by British Council Brussels, the Foreign Policy Centre and Migration Policy Group, Europe’s current performance on immigrant integration is patchy. The European Civic Citizenship and Inclusion Index has developed a unique measure of EU practices in relation to their common commitments in five key areas of policy: labour market inclusion; long term residence, family reunion, naturalization and anti-discrimination. It finds the EU-15’s immigration practices to be ‘less favourable’ on average to immigrant inclusion across all five areas – as well as sharply divergent between individual countries. Given that the Member States have signed up to common commitments in this field, the gap between rhetoric and reality in their real-life performance is striking.

Interestingly, the Index also suggests that there are no major differences in policy between countries with long and short migration histories. Germany, home to over 7 million immigrants, in fact scores below the European average in all areas apart from Family Reunion. Clearly, all member states have a lot to learn and to share on best practices for including immigrants and increasing their social and economic participation. So how can Europe raise its game? First, EU Member States could do a lot more on employment – not least recognising foreign qualifications, improving access to training and making it easier for entrepreneurs to set up businesses. If Europe does decide that migration is the best medicine for its lacklustre economy, it must first ensure that effective inclusion policies are in place.

But labour market inclusion is not enough. Europe’s post-war immigration experience can be nicely summarised as – “We asked for workers, but got people instead.” It is obvious that immigrants cannot integrate into local communities as active members while basic human needs for family stability and personal security are not met. Legal rights such as long-term resident status and family reunion are crucial – yet European countries have not made either easy. Across Europe, right-wing groups are increasingly using the fear of social breakdown and the security card to argue against immigration. Strong civic citizenship and inclusion policies are the best defence against these (albeit unlikely) threats.

Ironically, Europe’s current citizenship policies may undermine the very values they are seeking to protect. Europe is committed to a ‘Common Space’ for Freedom, Justice and Security. But by excluding many citizens of non-EU member states – so-called ‘Third Country Nationals’ – the ‘Common Space’ can create an underclass of second-class citizens – who currently number the same as the combined populations of Ireland, Denmark and Finland. Hardly the haven of equality and openness Europe claims.

Perhaps more worrying still is the lack of data. Whilst Member States systematically collect data on every cow and chicken in the EU as part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), migration is apparently too politically sensitive, and migrants too diverse, for comparable, transparent data to be collected. Until data is available to hold Member States’ to account for their migrant inclusion policies, their promises to manage migration sensibly and sensitively will lack credibility.

The latest wave of ‘immigration frenzy’ in European media and politics largely misses the point. The relevant questions are less to do with ‘who to let in’ or ‘who to keep out,’ but how effectively to manage migration, past, present and future. Europe must accept that inward migration is a fact of life, and move beyond outdated ‘Fortress Europe’ arguments. It must focus instead on how to ensure that immigration is beneficial, both for immigrants and society as a whole. How else can Europe make sure that migrants contribute to a dynamic economy and cohesive society?

There is no reason to despair. A rich menu of policies to improve the situation of immigrants in Europe already exists and has been agreed by Member States. They should now live up to these pledges. It is possible to reimagine and reorganise European societies in ways that respect traditions and histories while being open and inclusive.

834 words

By Professor Andrew Geddes, University of Sheffield, UK, and Jan Niessen, Director, Migration Policy Group, Brussels.

‘The European Civic Citizenship and Inclusion Index’ is published by British Council Brussels, Foreign Policy Centre and Migration Policy Group.

EU countries collectively spend almost 180 billion EUR per year on defence; more than half the US total of 330 billion EUR, and have many more men under arms. Yet it became apparent during the Kosovo War – if not long before – that the EU’s actual capacity is a great deal less than half that of the US.

One reason among many is the chaotic state of military procurement within the Union, which is very far from having achieved an open internal market in defence equipment. All too often European governments end up by paying far too much for inferior products, which lack inter-operability, both with their EU and NATO allies, including, of course, the United States.

Two years ago, at a meeting at Le Touquet, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac proposed the creation of a new EU defence agency which would encourage member states to boost and co-ordinate their military capabilities. At the Thessaloniki summit, in June 2003, the proposal was approved by EU leaders, and on 1 January this year the European Defence Agency (EDA) opened its doors in Brussels, under the leadership of its first director, a former senior British civil servant, Nick Witney.

It is an inter-governmental body, under the aegis of the Council of Ministers rather than the Commission, and its Steering Board, made up of 24 national Ministers of Defence (Denmark does not participate because of its opt-out from the European Security and Defence Policy), is chaired by Javier Solana, or by one of his deputies at more routine meetings when officials rather than ministers attend.

It operates on a fairly modest scale, with a staff of 25, scheduled to increase to 77 during the course of this year, and an initial budget of 20 million EUR, of which only €3m is earmarked for research. Its three main functions have been described in some detail by a useful recent publication of the Centre for European Reform (CER), Europe’s New Defence Agency, by Daniel Keohane. They are defined as “harmonising military requirements, co-ordinating defence research and development, and encouraging the convergence of national procurement procedures”.

Last week Witney was grilled by the Security and Defence Sub-committee of the European Parliament. It became clear, during the course of his cross-examination, that the EDA lacks executive authority and is entirely reliant on its powers of persuasion to get member states to accept its advice. Its initial priority was to present to the Council of Ministers in May a report on the European Capabilities Action Plan (ECAP), which is designed to identify the most significant shortfalls in military capability.

In particular, Witney said, the EDA was looking at the situation concerning armoured fighting vehicles. Some 10,000 of these could be bought by member states over the next few years, but the purchases would be made under more than 20 different national procurement programmes, only one of which was co-operative – the German-Dutch Boxer programme. Another area being closely studied was the market for unmanned air vehicles. Most member states were thinking of going off in their own direction on this, according to Witney.

From what Witney told the parliamentary committee, and from his speech the following day to a conference in Brussels organised by the New Defence Agenda (NDA), it was clear that the agency is already performing a very useful function in shedding light on current deficiencies. But its efforts will be largely wasted if the member states do not act decisively on the reports it presents.

The reason why so little has been achieved in the past, particularly in the field of procurement, is the effective exclusion of defence from the internal market programme of the EU. The basis of this is Article 296 (b) of the European treaties, which states, in part:

Any Member State may take such measures as it considers necessary for the protection of the essential interests of its security which are connected with the production of or trade in arms, munitions and war materials…

If member states had sought to use this provision sparingly, restricting the derogation to what could reasonably be interpreted as their ‘essential interests of security’, such as the protection of high tech. information on newly developed electronic systems, the damage would have been less serious. As it is, however, most member states have claimed a blanket exemption for defence supplies, even extending in many cases to the provision of soldiers’ boots and rucksacks.

It is a rarity for the supply of any goods for the military to be put out to open tender, and even when competitive bidding is permitted it is seldom widely publicised on a cross-border basis. The CER pamphlet quotes Professor Keith Hartley, of York University, as estimating “that a more integrated defence market could save European governments up to €6 billion a year, equivalent to 60 per cent of current R&D spending”.

So, what should now be done? Everybody agrees that it would be a political impossibility to get member states to agree to scrap Article 296. Attention is focusing instead on agreeing a non-binding voluntary code of conduct which the EDA would be invited to draw up. Under this, member states would be asked to restrict to a minimum the contracts which they would reserve under the Article, and to submit a written justification each time they wished to apply it.

An alternative, or perhaps complementary, proposal was suggested in a green paper published by the Commission last September, and on which they have invited comments from interested parties. This is that it should draw up a directive defining more closely the exact legal position under 296 and drawing up rules for contracts which clearly did not come within its purview.

Either way, the ball is now clearly in the court of the member states, six of which, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden, produce well over 90 per cent of defence supplies within the EU. They all agreed to the establishment of the EDA: it is now their responsibility to see that its efforts will not be in vain.

Dick Leonard is a former Assistant Editor of The Economist. His latest book is A Century of Premiers: Salisbury to Blair.

At the same time, a growing conceptual gap is emerging between Russia and the West. Europe has long sought to build common values by placing human rights at the heart of relations with Russia, namely by monitoring how the country meets its commitments within the Council of Europe and the OSCE. President Putin, meanwhile, loudly denounces any suggestion that Russia is moving away from democracy. His administration is now applying considerable pressure for the Council of Europe to end the ‘humiliation’ of detailed scrutiny of Russia’s record on human rights and democracy – or outside interference, as Russia’s ultra nationalists describe it.

To complicate matters, Russian society itself is divided as to the particular meaning of democracy and freedom for the country. Against the majority of the population sympathetic to Putin’s argument of the need for strong leadership to deal with the admittedly considerable threats of terrorism and corruption that the country faces, stands the growing outrage of Russian liberals. The scathing attacks on Putin made by Garry Kasparov, the former chess grandmaster, during his astonishing recent international ‘tour’ to build support for a possible presidential bid, is a measure of just how far things have come since Putin’s first accession to power.

Increasingly, the question is: ‘Whither Russia?’ Many nervously recall the predictions of the 1990s that Russia’s fragile democracy would descend into a Pinochet-style autocracy, and see recent trends as ominous. And to date Putin has been remarkably successful in cracking down on the power of regional governors and restricting the room for manoeuvre of political parties, with the new laws passed after Beslan.

But it is precisely because many of these reforms have not impacted on the average Russian that some leading Russian liberals, paradoxically, now admit to half-hoping that Putin will be tempted into going too far and overstretching himself. Many believe the Russian president is walking a dangerous line. The well-documented cases of intimidation of the media and of NGOs, and the decision to place the final free television stations under Kremlin control, have led once vocal voices to fall silent. How much more Putin will be able to erode hard-won freedoms without popular contest is open to question.

What position should Europe now take, given the complex and evolving dynamics of Russian politics? Clearly it cannot unreservedly accept Russia as “one of us”. Putin’s recent moves have violated standards that Russia is committed to both under its constitution and in its pledges to Europe’s intergovernmental and interparliamentary institutions. The Council of Europe must use this leverage to promote the freedoms that European nations enjoy in Russia through continued monitoring – and cannot accept terrorism as an acceptable excuse for recent abuses, as the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee makes clear.

The international community must also resist the temptation to sit by passively and rely on Putin’s possible vulnerability. Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, it cannot hope that Russia will once again implode of itself in a peaceful and bloodless revolution. The stakes are too high, and the dangers too uncertain. European leaders are particularly well-placed to have an impact at this critical juncture. The OSCE and the Council of Europe should now work with Putin’s government to make the point that respecting individual rights and a democratic rule of law can have its own positive consequences. This means engaging imaginatively with Russian’s current leadership to convince them that dialogue with the West on the protection of human and democratic rights need not mean sinister ‘outside interference’. Not only would this make for better relations with the West, it would promote a more stable and prosperous Russia as well.

David Atkinson is the former MP for Bournemouth East and Rapporteur on the Monitoring of Russia’s commitments to the Council of Europe. Jennifer Moll is the Programme Officer for Russia at the Foreign Policy Centre and co-author of Losing Ground? Russia’s European Commitments to Human Rights.