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Dying for the mistakes of others?

More than 400 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean in recent days.

That sentence gives pause for thought and it should.

With the arrival of spring and better weather, 10,000 people have attempted to get into the EU by making the relatively short – but still perilous – crossing from Libya to Italy in recent days.

But they are often sent across in rickety, unseaworthy vessels by unscrupulous people smugglers who abandon them knowing the Italian navy and coastguard, following established humanitarian practice, will try to save them – if they are spotted in time.

Many come from countries torn by conflict like Syria, Libya and Yemen, or ruled by repressive regimes, like Eritrea.

That is the push factor.

But they are not all asylum seekers and there is the pull factor too.

Most can earn more money in Europe than at home and then they can help support their families back home in Africa and the Middle East.

EU governments are not short of advice on the need to use aid and trade to help develop the economies of their near neighbours to take away the incentive to migrate.

There have been a series of agreements and initiatives since the Barcelona Process was launched in 1996, but so far they have failed to staunch the flow of people.

The continuing differences in income between EU and African and Middle Eastern countries would be enough to ensure people still wanted to make the journey.

But the instability and conflict that followed the so-called Arab Spring of 2011 has added to the incentive by making life in several countries much worse.

And EU governments have compounded both the push and the pull with actions that ended up both encouraging and enabling more migrants to make the attempt to get in.

Despite having drawn the conclusion in the 1990s that supporting economic development in the MENA region was a long-term solution to cutting the number of migrants, in the 2000s the EU diverted scarce resources and political attention to its eastward expansion and then the Eastern Partnership initiative with, among others, Ukraine, that has ended in the struggle for influence with Russia.

Also, before 2011, the EU supported regimes in countries like Tunisia and Egypt whose repression helped trigger the uprisings of the Arab Spring which spread and ended in the civil war in Syria which has led 3 million people to flee the country as refugees – not to mention the 6 million internally displaced.

In Libya, several EU countries led by Britain and France, intervened militarily in the uprising against Colonel Gaddafi and helped overthrow him, but then they failed to provide the necessary political and economic support which might have preventing the country collapsing into the anarchy the people smugglers are now exploiting to use the country to funnel migrants across the Mediterranean.

So as things stand, EU countries are in a bind partly of their own making.

The migrants keep coming and popular resentment of immigrants in an economically stagnant Europe keeps growing and is fanned by populist parties like the FN in France and UKIP in Britain which attract support away from established parties by calling for a tougher line on immigration and cuts in foreign aid.

Assuming governments still have the will, this means the political room to enable a long-term answer to the problem – supporting economic development in neighbouring countries – is shrinking.

And the attempt by EU governments to discourage migrants last year by scaling down the effort to rescue boats in trouble has proved no deterrent to would-be migrants.

In the short term, it is likely that media coverage and UN criticism of the rising death toll will force those governments to return to helping the Italians rescue more migrants – which is the humane thing to do, but does nothing to help reach a lasting solution.

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Beware of Greeks …

A recent re-watching of the movie ‘Troy” got me thinking about the stand off over debt between the modern Greeks and the EU.

The film portrays the Greeks as a vainglorious bunch who have to resort to deceit to take and sack Troy.

Whether or not this is a misreading of Homer, I was left asking myself why, if the Trojans are so guilty of hubris and fated to get their comeuppance, the Greeks needed to employ tricks to win.

But maybe that is the way the Greeks are themselves fated to be portrayed.

Some commentary this week has characterised Greek Prime Minister Tsipras’s trip to Moscow as a ploy to put pressure on the rest of the EU to be more receptive to demands to renegotiate his country’s bailout.

The timing of the visit around Orthodox Easter was a gesture to the historic links between Greece and Russia and an unwelcome reminder to Germany in particular that Athens could prove awkward for the EU beyond wanting to ease its debt burden at Berlin’s expense.

But, however justified Mr Tsipras may be in undertaking his Russian visit or calling for Germany to pay reparations for its World War Two occupation of Greece, he may be underestimating the long pedigree of distrust with which his country is perceived going back to the story of Troy and long pedigree of the adage “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”.

Greece’s EU partners are in no mood to give the Syriza-led government in Athens a win in the debt talks because they have much to lose – whether they are creditor governments like Germany or debtor governments like Spain’s which has implemented deep spending cuts and faces a similarly popular anti-austerity party, Podemos, in elections later this year.

By extension, is it going too far – as this piece does – to suggest that it is in the interest of the supporters of austerity that Syriza fail, and be seen to fail, to deliver on its promise to the Greek electorate, so voters elsewhere don’t follow their example?

If this is so, it isn’t the first time Greece has been held up as a negative example to keep others in line.

In the Italian historian Claudio Pavone’s epic account of the 1943-45 partisan war against the German occupation and its client fascist republican regime in northern Italy, Una guerra civile, he argues the Greek experience was used effectively as a negative example to the Italian resistance.

In Greece, the communist-led resistance against German occupation mutated into a civil war after the Nazi withdrawal in 1944 and fighting broke out between the communists and British forces backing the new government in Athens.

In Italy, the Communists were also a leading force in the resistance, but despite their admiration for their Greek comrades, they didn’t come to blows with the British, Americans and the forces of the new royalist Italian government who were advancing north to push the Germans out of Italy. One of things that held them back was the prospect of civil war “a la Grecque” being used as an effective deterrent by the more right-wing resistance groups.

And the deterrence of the Greek experience seems to retain its potency today.

The brinkmanship being employed by Mr Tsipras and his Syriza colleagues doesn’t seem to be working as the rest of the Eurozone has remained united – and is indulging in brinkmanship of its own, giving Athens six days to come up with acceptable proposals for an extension of funding.

Financial leverage has been added to diplomatic pressure with the European Central Bank restricting the ability of Greece to raise emergency cash while international investors and wealthy Greeks withdraw their money.

In a few short months, things have moved from a position under the previous conservative New Democracy government, which was being praised for restoring confidence in the Greek economy, to the current financial crisis facing the left-wing Syriza administration.

So it looks like the odds are stacked against Athens in the coming days as it plays a hand weakened not only by the mismanagement of Greece’s finances in recent years, but also the historically and culturally ingrained distrust of its European partners.

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Scotland and the UK election: sticks and stones …

When I was small and came back from school smarting from some insult, my father used to say to me “sticks and stones may break your  bones, but names can never hurt  you” and I used to think “well not always, words can have a real effect”.

I’ve been reminded of this by the coverage in the London-based media of the rise of the Scottish Natonal Party in the polls ahead of the UK general election in May.

This week for instance, former Scottish First Minister and SNP leader, Alex Salmond, caused quite a stir telling the New Statesman magazine he would prevent a Conservative minority government taking power if his party held the balance of MPs after the election and support a Labour minority administration instead.

The SNP has already been attracting more attention than usual in the run up to a UK general election because, if opinion polls are correct, the party is on course to be the third largest party at Westminster with as many as 40 to 50 seats.

Add to this that despite losing last September’s referendum on Scottish independence when 55 % voted to stay in the Union, the SNP has also attracted thousands of new members topping 100,000 in an a country with a population of 5 million and outstripping the Liberal Democrats to become the third largest party in the whole of the UK.

Mr Salmond’s comments were partly intended to tweak Labour’s tail and counter the argument it has been making in Scotland where it has been trying to stave off a nationalist landslide by telling voters it is the largest party which gets to form the government after an election – which may be what usually happens but is not constitutionally pre-ordained, as Labour itself demonstrated after the 2010 election when it initially sought to hang on to power in a coalition despite coming second to the Conservatives.

In the English-based media, Mr Salmond’s comments have been condemned as anti-democratic. If after the election the SNP is indeed the arbiter of who gets to form a government – the argument goes – this could result in Scottish voters imposing a government on the rest of the UK which it didn’t vote for.

The Conservative Party is also trying to play on this with a poster of a giant Mr Salmond with a tiny Ed Miliband in his pocket.

Putting aside these same commentators – and the Conservative Party – did not seem to object on the occasions since 1979 when Scottish voters got a government in London they didn’t vote for, the idea it is undemocratic for voters in one part of the UK to freely cast their ballots for the party of their choice risks suggesting those voters are somehow second class.

Scots, like the independence supporting Proclaimers, lamented in vain in the 1980s about “what to do you do when democracy fails you” .

The problem is the tone of much of this commentary has become increasingly hostile and insulting.

Even the liberal Guardian’s Steve Bell – well known for his hard-hitting cartoons – has portrayed Mr Salmond and SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, in ways many found hard to imagine him doing if they were Jewish or black, rather than white Scots.

Notably, one of the better pieces on Mr Salmond’s gambit by the former Times Editor, Simon Jenkins, couldn’t resist portraying Scotland as living off English “subventions and subsidies” which is a strongly contested argument that appeals to English prejudices and ignores that Scotland’s contribution to UK GDP is roughly equal to its contribution to taxes, not to mention the benefit the whole of the UK has derived from North Sea oil and gas revenues over the past few decades.

Towards the end of the Scottish referendum campaign when it appeared the opinion polls were closing, London-based commentators and politicians were telling Scottish voters how much they valued their contribution to the Union, but last September now feels a long time ago.

Whatever the outcome of May’s election, the SNP is clearly popular at the moment in Scotland and the increasingly vituperative tone of the campaign and commentary in England over the way Scots might vote could provoke a backlash fuelling support for the SNP – and independence – and risking the end of the Union these commentators and politicians say they hold dear.

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Brazil’s Right finds its voice

On the face of it Brazil has been governed by centre-left parties for twenty one years.

From 1994-2002, the Brazilian Social Democratic Party – PSDB – held the presidency and since then it has been the Workers’ Party – PT. And although the reality is somewhat more complicated in that the more business-friendly PSDB is more on the centre-right, the absence of a conservative right at federal level has been notable over the past two decades.

But that is now changing.

Last weekend saw large demonstrations in Sao Paulo and other cities. First out on the streets were supporters of the PT-led government, followed on Sunday in larger numbers by anti-government protesters, many calling for the impeachment of President Rousseff over the Petrobras corruption scandal.

The anti-Rousseff protesters were predominantly middle class and organised by young right-wing activists of the Free Brazil Movement with support from the PSDB-controlled local government. But some demonstrators also held placards calling for the return of military rule to ‘save’ Brazil – something that would have been unthinkable only a short time ago.

So why has the right found its voice again in Brazil?

Most reports and analysis have put this down to two things undermining the President.

The corruption scandal at the national oil company, Petrobras, where it appears funds have been diverted from the business to help fund political parties in Congress for many years, has come to light under the PT and made the party vulnerable. Ms Rousseff also chaired the board of Petrobras when Energy Minister and Chief of Staff under President Lula and her personal popularity has been dented too.

President Rousseff, who won re-election only last October, has also found her authority undermined because measures to revive a slowing economy have so far failed to boost GDP growth, which has ground to halt following impressive figures over the past decade.

So the right now has an opportunity to reassert itself because the overwhelming popularity which allowed the PT to dominate Brazilian politics for the past 12 years has diminished.

But there are other reasons which have been much less commented on.

One is the rightward drift of the PSDB which, despite its origins as a social democratic party, is now more openly pro-business. Although the austerity measures President Rousseff is trying to introduce now echo the PSDB’s defeated presidential candidate, Aecio Neves, he has lent support to the protests and the local PSDB authorities in Sao Paulo reportedly gave the anti-government demonstrators free use of the metro last Sunday.

At a more profound level, the very success of the PT’s core policies also help explain what is going on.

Presidents Lula and Rousseff – building on measures first introduced under PSDB President Cardoso – have taken the credit for reducing inequality.

Twenty years ago, Brazil was one of the most unequal countries in the world. But in recent years, 30 million Brazilians (out of population of 200 million) have been lifted out of poverty by federal government action.

The Bolsa Familia scheme, where the poor get cash supplements if they vaccinate their children and send them to school, along with extending employment rights to workers who’d previously worked on a casual basis have been very effective. There have also been attempts at affirmative action to give poorer Brazilians more opportunities in education.

The success of these PT policies has come to be resented by many in the traditional middle class who see them as a threat to their interests and this has fuelled the rightwing backlash.

In recent years, I have heard private complaints about children not being able to get on the course they want at university because of positive discrimination or that the people receiving the Bolsa Familia are freeloading on the taxpayer.

These grievances have been growing and explain some of the anti-PT sentiment behind the protests.

There are also what one Brazilian commentator has called the country’s bizarre McCarthyites who say the PT is trying to turn the country communist.

It is these people who are most likely to be the ones calling for the return of military dictatorship.

Many Brazilians who lived through the dictatorship see the invitations to the military to intervene as sinister. Although, the numbers of people murdered, tortured and disappeared in Brazil were not as high as in Chile or Argentina, the Truth Commission which reported last year found over 400 people were killed or disappeared at the hands of the military.

The President herself was a victim of torture as a young activist – as she memorably testified to a Senate committee in 2008.

Some of the protesters holding these placards are clearly too young to remember those years, but others are not, and they are a reminder that, at the time, the dictatorship was not unpopular with many wealthier Brazilians.

The 1964 coup, 51 years ago this month, was called a revolution to save the country from communism. Under the generals, who ruled until 1985, there was economic growth before the debt crisis of the 1980s; the economic privileges of the middle class were protected and nothing was done to reduce the extreme inequality in Brazil.

As things stand, there seems little popular appetite to undermine the democracy Brazil has built since the generals handed power back to the civilians thirty years ago.

So the protests may well go on. Though for now there are no grounds for impeachment of Ms Rousseff because she was not chair of Petrobras while president, she – and the PT – have been weakened and conservatives have found their voice again.

If the right can establish itself as a coherent force in Congress, in coming years Brazilian politics may come to look more like other democracies where parties more clearly of the left and right vie for power.

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Germany: risking its post WW2 modest image for little gain

When it came to foreign policy, the late Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, advised his countrymen to “keep a low profile and achieve something” by which he meant concentrate on the economy and avoid getting involved in disputes.

This week has raised the question – should Germany’s leaders heed Deng’s advice?

On Monday, Chancellor Merkel was in Japan and chose to issue her hosts some of her own advice in dealing with the legacy of Tokyo’s conduct in World War 2 which is still souring relations with its neighbours, especially China and South Korea.

Ms Merkel’s speech reminded us how much Germans pride themselves on coming to terms with the Nazis’ wartime record and reconciling with their neighbours.

As speculation grows that Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, may use the 70th anniversary of the end of the war to water down previous Japanese apologies to its neighbours, Ms Merkel took it upon herself to urge the Japanese to follow Germany’s example.

Her hosts were polite and did not give away how they felt about Chancellor Merkel’s comments, but shortly after her speech events back home suggest it may have been wiser to avoid the risk of hubris and keep out of the debate about Japan’s wartime past.

On Wednesday, the very public row between Berlin and Athens over debt escalated with a reminder that perhaps Germany’s reconciliation with the victims of Nazi aggression has not been as successful as it thinks.

The new Greek government is trying to renegotiate the terms of its debt to the rest of the EU and IMF and wants to end the 2010 bailout – largely funded by Berlin – negotiated by its predecessor during the Eurocrisis which mandates economic austerity that Athens says kills any chance for growth.

German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has been using insultingly undiplomatic language to tell his Greek counterpart – with an eye to his own taxpayers – that Berlin has been generous enough already and will not countenance further debt forgiveness.

The Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, responded – also with an eye to his political supporters – by reviving claims that Berlin pay reparations for Germany’s harsh wartime occupation.

But instead of trying to emolliate Athens, as German governments of the past might have, the response of Chancellor Merkel’s spokesperson, Steffen Seibert, was dismissive “the question of reparations and compensation is legally and politically closed”.

It is no secret to anyone in Europe that the Eurocrisis means Germany is now the continent’s undisputed political as well as economic leader. Berlin’s traditional policy of hiding its economic strength by letting France take the political lead is no longer viable given current French weakness.

It is also obvious when talking privately to Germans born since 1945 that they are increasingly tired of being reminded of what their grandparents’ generation did and feel others use the Nazi past to justify freeloading on their generosity.

But Germany is now risking undermining its newfound leadership by appearing arrogant and overplaying its hand.

It is not just the Greeks who are beginning to chafe at Berlin’s attitude. There is growing anti-German sentiment in Italy too. Outside the EU, Germany has taken the lead role in pressurising Serbia to accept the secession of Kosovo reviving many Serbs’ historical distrust and resentment of Berlin’s wartime record.

The EU works by consensus and goodwill to build common interests and Germany has prospered since 1945 by pooling sovereignty with its former enemies and appearing unthreatening.

But circumstances change and now demand Berlin take a more active leadership role in Europe because it is the only country economically strong enough to bail out its partners and save the Euro.

However, it is one thing to lead by force majeure and quite another to take people with you.

Germany and the rest of EU face tough enough challenges trying to revive economic growth and ensure the Euro has a future.

If Berlin abandons the modesty that has reassured the rest of the world it no longer harbours the desire to dominate and awakens the ghosts of the past by lecuring others and deliberately reminding its neighbours just how powerful it is, it will make the job of leadership even harder and risk undermining its newfound role before it takes root.

 

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China’s choice: push reunification or build soft power

China’s parliament, the National Peoples’ Congress, has begun its annual session in Beijing and there has been inevitable western press coverage of plans for next year’s defence budget – which is expected to increase by 10%.

Now, depending on what you read this is either a commitment to maintaining high defence spending despite slower economic growth or a cut in the increase in defence spending because of that slowdown.

The headlines and attention now paid to China’s military budget fit into a western narrative, increasingly reflected among China’s neighbours, that its rapidly modernising armed forces are a threat increasingly capable of challenging US military dominance in East Asia.

In order to counter this narrative and reassure its neighbours – and the rest of the world – China describes itself as a rising, but peaceful power, arguing its military modernisation is partly catch-up after years of underspending on the military and partly natural for a country dependent on energy imports and foreign trade for its prosperity.

And to get its peaceful message across, Beijing has invested heavily in soft power tools, spending billions expanding China Central TV’s broadcasts in English and other languages and opening 450 Confucius Institutes around the world teaching Chinese language and culture – it is even trying to create a global pop star, Jia Ruhan, to project a softer image.

Although asserting its maritime claims against the Philippines and Vietnam has undermined these efforts with those countries, Beijing’s global soft power push has continued and involves more than public diplomacy tools.

Soon after taking over the leadership in Beijing two years ago, President Xi Jinping – understanding he needed a national story to tell his own people and the world about what China stands for – articulated what he called The Chinese Dream.

When it comes to constructing an attractive narrative about your country language is crucial and President Xi’s formulation is almost certainly a deliberate echo of The American Dream – a concept which is seen as central to the attractiveness and soft power of the US.

Loosely defined, The Chinese Dream is not only about increasing prosperity for the Chinese people, it is also about national rejuvenation – and an important part of that rejuvenation is to reunify the lands lost to foreign powers during China’s decline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

It is here that Beijing faces a dilemma.

The main remaining candidate for reunification is Taiwan and it shows no sign of wanting to return to the fold while the Communist Party continues to run things in China, and Beijing has made it clear that if the island were to declare formal – as opposed to de facto – independence, it would use force to stop it.

And as the delegates to the NPC were gathering in Beijing last week, President Xi returned to this theme with a veiled warning to Taiwanese who want independence .

The problem for Beijing is China’s soft power projection requires the world to see it as benign, so any use of force against Taiwan would have the opposite effect.

It would be widely seen outside China as an act of aggression and probably lead to conflict with the US which has given the island security guarantees.

To avoid this Beijing has been trying to woo Taiwan back into the fold since the 1990s using a combination of trade, investment, diplomacy and tourism, encouraging ordinary Taiwanese to visit their ancestral homes on the mainland.

Beijing has also hoped that the way it handled reunification with Hong Kong and Macao, which were returned to China by Britain and Portugal in the late 1990s, would help its case with Taiwan.

Both former colonies were given special administrative status within the Peoples’ Republic, including a high level of autonomy and the retention of their own legal systems.

But the student-led pro-democracy protests last autumn in Hong Kong show how complicated a balancing act this is for Beijing and the risks to its soft power.

The demonstrations were sparked by plans to extend the franchise for the election of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive so voters would be able to directly elect their leader for the first time. But the catch was that a Beijing-appointed committee would vet the candidates first.

The protests attracted large crowds and lasted weeks, bringing parts of central Hong Kong to a standstill. The Beijing appointed administration stood firm and there were violent clashes between police and protesters which were shown on news broadcasts all over the world.

So a reform which would actually extended democracy in Hong Kong ended up in a setback to China’s image – especially in Taiwan which had seen its own student protests against closer ties with Beijing earlier last year.

De facto, the world has been living with two Chinas since the Chinese civil war ended in 1949 with the defeated forces of Chiang Kai Shek’s KMT fleeing to the island, where it continued to be recognised by the US and the UN as the rightful government of China throughout the 1950s and 60s.

Since losing most international recognition after the 1970s when Washington decided to open up to the Peoples’ Republic, Taiwan – or the Republic of China to give it its official name – has become a democracy with one of its major parties, the Democratic Progressive Party, flirting with the idea of de jure independence.

The DPP looks set to win next year’s elections and Mr Xi’s comments last week show how a DPP victory could raise tensions over Taiwan.

But unless Beijing finds a way to resolve the apparent contradiction between projecting a peaceful message towards its neighbours and the world with the threat of force to prevent Taiwanese independence, it will undermine its soft power efforts and find the huge sums it has spent on public diplomacy have been wasted.

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US Israel relations: bump in the road or terminal decline?

On the face of it relations between Israel and US have not been this bad since the Suez crisis of 1956 when President Eisenhower opposed the Israeli invasion of Egypt.

Before Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered his address to Congress in Washington at the invitation of the Republicans, National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, said his intervention in American partisan politics would be destructive of relations and other senior US government figures have openly criticised him.

Mr Netanyahu is using his speech to criticise the US approach to the nuclear talks with Iran which are coming to a crunch with a deadline of the end of March for an agreement and signs of progress is being made.

For the Israeli leader a deal with Iran which allows Tehran to retain any nuclear technology seems to be a red line. He believes Iran wants to destroy Israel and is developing nuclear weapons, although intelligence leaks this week indicate his own spy agency doesn’t see it this way.

The US on the other hand seems willing to accept a peaceful Iranian nuclear programme in return for safeguards it will not be used to make weapons. Something Iran is entitled to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Back in 1956, Israeli reasoning was not that different. The government of the time regarded President Nasser as bent on the destruction of Israel and decided to attack Egypt before Cairo was able to build up its armed forces.

The French and their British allies wanted to reverse General Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal and secure control of the strategic link to their colonial and commercial interests further east. So they had common cause with Israel and sent troops to take control of the Canal by force – ostensibly to secure international access.

In Washington, President Eisenhower saw things differently. The US wanted stability in the Middle East as it was becoming increasingly dependent on oil imports from the region. The Cold War was also intensifying and the Americans wanted to prevent Egypt, the key Arab power, from going over to the Soviet camp.

So, not only did the US condemn the invasion, it took active diplomatic and economic measures which forced Tel Aviv – as well as the British and French – to withdraw their troops from Egyptian territory.

As history shows, relations between the US and Israel recovered and Israel has gone on to become the largest recipient of American aid of any country since 1945. The US has also spent a lot of diplomatic capital over the years wielding its veto – or the threat of it – at the UN to protect Israel from international censure over its military action against Palestinian groups and continued occupation of land captured in the 1967 Six Day War.

Of course there have been ups and downs since Suez – notably under the first President Bush who had a frosty relationship with another Likud Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, when Mr Bush wanted to get the peace process moving.

So will relations recover this time?

Mr Netanyahu’s visit is controversial because he is involving himself in partisan American politics by giving succour to Republicans opposed to Mr Obama’s approach to Iran. But it is also contentious because Mr Netanyahu is in the middle of an election campaign and the Obama Administration says the US has a long-standing policy of not hosting foreign leaders so close to polling day.

Relations between Washington and Tel Aviv have been on a downward trajectory ever since President Obama launched his ill-fated attempt to revive the peace process in his first term by calling for a freeze in Israeli settlement building in the Occupied Territories.

Back in 2010, Mr Netanyahu went as far as attempting to humiliate a visiting Vice-President, Joe Biden, by announcing the expansion of settlement housing in occupied East Jerusalem while Mr Biden was still in town.

Mr Netanyahu has also repeatedly tried to outflank the White House by appealing for support from the US Congress, despite the danger of a backlash from Americans who could see it as interference in their internal affairs. Before now, he has worked with both Democrat and Republican supporters of Israel, but this time he accepted the invitation from the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and a substantial number of Democrats have said they will boycott next Tuesday’s speech.

However, Mr Obama will not be president in two years’ time and Mr Netanyahu may also have passed from the stage by then, so the likelihood is relations will improve again whatever happens in the Iran nuclear talks.

Although polling evidence in recent years suggests younger voters in US, including Jewish Americans, are less supportive of Israel than their parents’ generation, Washington’s support for Israel is based on solid foundations.

The much cited influence of pro-Israeli lobby groups, like AIPAC, is one reason American politicians will continue to push any US government to support Tel Aviv. And although the US shale revolution has made Americans much less dependent on Middle East oil imports, Washington still sees Israel as an important ally in an unstable region.

But most importantly, there is a strong ideological and emotional basis for the relationship.

When Americans look at Israel many see a reflection of their own national myth – a democratic state built by a hardworking people who migrated in the hope of creating a new country and society for themselves.

Given this deep well spring, it is difficult to envisage any US President turning his back on Israel.

It is also instructive that in spite of the antipathy between Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu, Washington has kept its financial and military support to Tel Aviv going, even in the face of international criticism of Israel’s military actions, such as last summer’s Gaza conflict which cost the lives of around 2,200 Palestinians and 71 Israelis.

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Is democracy really where Burma is heading?

With much media attention focussed on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Arab world in recent months, Burma’s troubled reform process has taken up far less airtime and column inches.

But the Burmese government led by former General Thein Sein has been accused for more than a year by pro-democracy campaigners of backtracking, so asking where the military intend to take Burma is a pressing question.

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, now very much the politician rather than the democracy icon – and ever mindful of her ambition to be president – has said reforms stalled in 2013. She is still keen to see the government approve the constitutional change needed to allow her to stand in this year’s presidential election so, despite strong indications they are not going to do this, she has been quite restrained in her criticism.

Two events over the past ten days have highlighted where there has been little evidence of substantive change – the treatment of the Muslim Rohingya minority in western Burma and the army’s repressive approach to ethnic unrest that has beset the country since independence from Britain in 1948.

After having passed a measure that would have allowed the Rohingya to vote – even if it still refuses to give them full citizenship – the government did an immediate u-turn after protests by Buddhists. Then, earlier this week, President Thein Sein imposed martial law in Kokang region after fighting erupted between the army and Kokang fighters. The Kokang are a Han Chinese ethnic group and 30,000 have fled across the border into China to escape the fighting.

Western governments, including the US and the UK, rewarded the reforms started in 2011 by quickly relaxing their sanctions on Burma. President Obama has even visited the country twice and received Thein Sein at the White House.

These early reforms included legalising an independent press, releasing political prisoners and allowing Aung San Suu Kyi and others from the National League for Democracy to be voted into parliament in by-elections.

The motive for the reform process and opening to the West arose partly from the military’s realisation that isolation from the US and Europe had seen the country fall far behind its neighbours economically and technologically. There was also Rangoon’s desire to avoid becoming too dependent on its huge neighbour China which had become its main political and economic backer.

But even though there are now independent media in the country, journalists are still being jailed for what they write and say. Political prisoners have been released – but not all of them as was promised – and others arrested.

Criticism of Thein Sein is usually couched in language aimed at encouraging a reform process intended to turn the country into a free market, democratic state. During his visit to Burma last November, Mr Obama told local media “I’m determined that the United States will remain a partner with those who seek greater freedom, prosperity and dignity.”

But is the Burmese government really such a partner?

A well informed observer of the Burmese military told me the former dictator, Than Shwe, had mapped out a process of constitutional change twenty years ago and it is possible to see what has happened since as fulfilling that plan.

For instance, he points out, Burma’s Defence Services Academy has trained many more officers than the armed forces really need and after serving for a few years many of these graduates have now taken off their uniforms and gone into business or sit in parliament as MPs for the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party.

So the objective may not be – as western governments seem to assume – to eventually turn Burma into a liberal democracy.

Rather the endgame may well be a country, balanced between Washington and Beijing, governed by an oligarchic authoritarian system legitimised by regular multi-party elections in which the military caste can continue to run things while benefitting from the economic modernisation and growth that flows from better relations with the West.

If this is indeed the case, western policy is supporting an outcome at odds with its stated aim of encouraging democracy to take hold in Burma, even if weakening Chinese influence may still be seen as win in the US and Europe.

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Clash of the Totems? Greek democracy and EU technocracy

This coming Monday, Eurozone Finance Ministers are gathering for what is being billed with that well-worn cliché as a ‘make-or-break’ meeting on the future of the Greek bailout.

The newly elected Greek government led by the left wing Syriza Party of Alexis Tsipras won a convincing victory in last month’s election on a promise to end the bailout programme altogether and roll back the austerity measures its predecessor had put in place in order to get the 240 billion euro bailout from EU member states, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Syriza argues the country is basically broke and the debt burden it carries simply too great to be paid back. In the party’s eyes endless austerity will not enable Greece to pay off its debts to the EU and IMF.

Athens argues that in order for the country to recover two things are needed – at least some of its debt needs to be written off and cuts to public spending need to be reversed in order to get people back to work and stimulate growth, some of proceeds of which could be used to pay off the remaining debt.

Germany, the major EU creditor nation, is insisting there can be no more debt forgiveness and the economic reforms and spending cuts agreed to by the previous Greek government must be continued. The ECB and many other EU governments are backing Berlin.

So the stage is set for Monday’s key meeting where the Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, will face his counterparts. Monday is seen as so crucial because it is the last Eurozone Finance Ministers’ meeting before February 28th when the current bailout programme runs out.

Greece wants a temporary extension of the bailout so it can continue to pay its bills while it negotiates a new agreement on a debt write off.

Markets and observers are nervous that the showdown could reignite the Eurocrisis.

The Greek bailout deal of 2010, which was extended in 2012, has been credited with helping to stabilise the Euro by preventing a Greek exit from the common currency which many feared could have caused more countries to follow and currency to collapse.

After a couple of meetings between Mr Varoufakis and EU officials there seemed to be little sign of compromise on either side. But going into the weekend, there have been more positive noises with Germany’s Chancellor Merkel saying compromise is possible and Mr Tsipras saying he is confident a new deal can be reached.

EU officials have also been telling the media the Greeks could make changes to the original deal if the effect is the same which seems to suggest room for manoeuvre in talks.

But whatever the outcome of the talks, this clash between Athens and its partners can also be seen to highlight a broader tension in the EU between democracy and technocracy.

Syriza has a clear democratic mandate to renegotiate the bailout.

But for the creditor nations like Germany and the EU institutions, it is technical more than political – they believe there is no alternative to Greece abiding by the agreement it made because it is the only way the Greek economy will be revived, regardless of what Greek voters and Syriza might want.

This isn’t to say there isn’t a healthy dose of politics involved on both sides.

The German and for that matter other EU governments know their voters are sceptical of lending any more to Greece and they also want the existing loans – which faced a lot of media and popular criticism, particularly in Germany, in the first place – to be paid back eventually.

Syriza based its election campaign on the claim that they could and would end the bailout and the austerity that has driven Greek unemployment over 25%, so they stand to lose credibility with voters if they make too many compromises.

But at root the clash remains one between what the Greeks voted for and what the EU institutions and its most powerful member state are insisting on.

Does democracy automatically lead to sound economic policy?

Clearly not; as countries like Greece and Portugal seemingly lived beyond their means after adopting the Euro – taking advantage of the stability of the common currency to borrow more than they could afford. Debts which were cruelly exposed by the global financial crisis of 2008.

However, democracy is the political system the EU has elevated to totemic status. In order to be a member of the Union countries have to meet democratic standards and the EU bases much of its international prestige on its democratic credentials.

So how does the EU reconcile its commitment to democracy with its rejection of what the Greeks have voted for?

Some have argued the Eurozone leaders, especially those in other debtors countries like Spain, need to Syriza to fail or they could face being voted out of office and replaced by parties, like Podemos, advocating similar policies.

Some form of face saving compromise between democratically elected governments in Berlin and Athens would be an answer.

But if Berlin continues to attach totemic value to austerity and the rest of the EU backs it and refuse to offer the Greeks concessions, the danger is not only economic in the form of a return of the Eurocrisis, it is also political.

As parties – of both right and left – critical of the EU could use it to reinforce their accusation the Union despite all its talk of democratic values suffers from a democratic deficit and doesn’t respect the voters’ choice.

EU leaders face a dilemma.

Be too hard on Greece and risk undermining the bloc’s political stability by fuelling populist parties opposed to the EU or compromise too much and encourage voters in other debtor nations to vote for an end to the reforms and austerity they believe stabilised the Euro.

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Commentary on global affairs and where they may be headed

About the writer:

Alistair Burnett is a journalist and analyst with 25 years of experience in BBC News. From 2004-2014, he was Editor of The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4 and before that was Editor of Newshour on BBC World Service.

He has also worked on several other leading BBC programmes, including Today.

He has a particular interest in international relations and the implications of the shifting power relations in the world which are challenging the traditional western dominance of global affairs.

Alistair studied history at The University of Edinburgh and has worked in several countries, including Italy and China.

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