Sony was right to cancel 'The Interview' (and other thoughts)

'The Interview'

Even if the morality of ‘giving in to terrorists’ is debatable, Sony’s directors have every right to make commercial decisions based on what they consider to be in the best interests of their company. Following Sony’s decision not to screen ‘The Interview’ (a film about an assassination attempt on the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un) on the 17th of December, following a hack by the ‘Guardians of Peace’, Barack Obama’s intervention last week to demand that the film be shown was as dramatic as it was self-righteous. The leader of the free world stood up for the right of free peoples to speak their mind. However, the Christmas Day hack on Sony’s Playstation network - perhaps in retaliation for their decision to release the film - shows that the company remains very vulnerable to cyber attacks. Obama spied a universally popular headline and jumped at it; he offered a lecture on ethics and principles - he didn’t, however, offer Sony any advice, expertise or hardware to help beef up their cyber defences.The cost of the first hack may well be over $100m, whilst the second caused huge reputational damage as thousands of consumers were unable to use their new Christmas presents. This is all against a film which was never likely to earn much more than its $44m production cost. Having been coerced into cancelling ‘The Interview’ and then prodded into releasing it, the Sony directors and shareholders are no doubt rueing being caught between a shady state actor (North Korea) on the one hand and a sanctimonious headline-grabber (Barack Obama) on the other.

An unbundling for Christmas

Google makes my life easier: it handles my emails, runs my calendar and hosts this very blog. However, I did feel a little uncomfortable (whenever it was - they seem to change their interface all the time) when they decided to give me one account for all their various services. I can now access all their products at a click; indeed I get cross-selling emails all the time. It is slightly irritating, but something that I am happy to tolerate to access the services that I use. 

Now, the European parliament is doing something about that very problem. ‘European parliament votes yes on Google breakup motion' ran one headline in late November. In actual fact parliamentarians were calling for tougher regulation of the internet search market in Europe - where Google hosts 90% of search traffic - as opposed to an actual break-up. Such a motion appears to the pundits as European Union vs US tech round two (round one being the ‘right to be forgotten’ saga). It is easy to portray it as the EU once again attempting to stand Canute-like against the tide of history and progress. European parliamentarians, when they are noticed in their home countries, appear as a collection of faceless, uncharistmatic and irrelevant technocrats (hands up anyone who can name their European parliament representative).

Yet the EU apparatus has authored a whole range of useful consumer protection legislation, from giving customers the ability to challenge unfair terms in template online contracts to capping roaming costs. In this instance they aren’t seeking to break-up Google, or to foist home-grown alternatives on the peoples of Europe; they are simply investigating a slightly irritating monopoly.

The right honourable Russell Brand

British comedian, actor, radio host and activist Russell Brand - perhaps best known as being singer Katy Perry’s former spouse - is a colourful character in every way. He appeared recently on BBC Question Time, a current affairs program, where he passionately railed against the anti-immigration United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), bankers and the political class in general. In his 2014 manifesto, ‘Revolution’, Brand called for a fairer society and has continued to build his political profile since - refusing to comment on rumours about his possible candidacy in the London 2016 Mayoral election. He doesn’t, however, appear to have any plans to stand for a seat in the 2015 UK parliamentary elections. This is a shame - although his generally hard-left views are not particularly revolutionary, it is patently obvious that he cares deeply about inequality and improving society. No doubt the establishment machinery would turn on him if he did run as a candidate, much in the same way that the Tory and Labour machines dig up and circulate every piece of dirt that they can find on UKIP, but it would surely boost the profile of UK politics to have a genuinely popular (8.8m twitter followers) figure rubbing shoulders with all those career politicians in Westminster.

The Iraq war was not about oil

How many times have you been told that the Iraq war was all about oil? Perhaps an article you have read on the subject also contained extracts from ‘leaked’ State Department documents setting out in detail post-war plans for the Iraqi oil industry? The number of otherwise well-informed people who have regurgitated this line since 2003 is worrying. People in the US and UK distrust their governments: they are uncomfortable about the extent of government surveillance and interference, and they feel that the Iraq war should never really have happened. The suggestion that the Iraq war was all about oil fits conveniently into this narrative. Yet such an interpretation is symptomatic of what is wrong with political engagement in our times: we all have our opinions, but we often form them on the basis of sentiment alone. Saying ‘all politicians are corrupt and in the pockets of big oil companies' is a way to justify our disinterest, our apathy.

This misinterpretation is of course not helped by apparently definitive statements from several establishment figures: "of course it's about oil; we can't really deny that," said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of US Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. According to then Senator and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in 2007, "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are." Convenient as both of those statements are, neither of those two appear to have had any involvement in the decision to invade.

The argument that Iraq was all about oil is still in need of correction years on from the invasion. The media, at those moments (such as anniversaries) when it remembers its disgust at the event, shows little appetite for revisionism – correspondents have continued with the same interpretation (see Guardian articles by Glenn Greenwald and Nafeez Ahmed for example). I hope that at the very least this post will convince you to consider the strength of whatever stance you hold.

The argument that oil was the main reason for the Iraq war is based on: anecdotes from figures involved; heavy suppositions about geopolitical power; and interpretations of the unfortunately small cache of declassified documents on the subject. The argument goes something like this - Bush, or in particular Vice President Dick Cheney, sought to invade Iraq because:

1. The US imported over 10 million barrels/day ("b/d") of oil in 2003 and both demand and prices were set to rise;

2. The Gulf supplied a quarter of the world’s oil and Saddam’s Iraq had become an erratic producer and a threat to the safe passage of oil through the Gulf;

3. With production constrained in Russia and in Africa, Iraq – the Gulf was believed in 2003 to hold 60% of global oil reserves – was a good place to look to ramp up production whilst also undermining the OPEC cartel and the Saudis; and

4. The installation of Western oil majors in Iraq and the lifting of UN imposed quotas would dramatically increase Iraqi oil output.

It all sounds very plausible. I cannot absolutely discount this argument, in the absence of comprehensive proof either way, but consider an alternative arrangement of the facts:

1. Every petroleum price spike in the post-WW2 era has been caused by war or geopolitical instability in the Middle East (e.g. the 1973 Arab OPEC embargo following the Yom Kippur war or in 1979 following the Iranian Revolution) and so politicians were aware that a war would raise prices;

2. Any attempt to invade Iraq would reduce Iraqi oil output from its 2002 average of 1.5 million b/d and it would take years to increase it (Iraq only reached 3 million b/d in 2012);

3. Even before the US became a net oil exporter in 2013, in the post-war period China has been the main purchaser of Iraqi oil, importing about 600,000 b/d so far this year; and

4. The Iraq war has cost the US $1.7 trillion so far (although the Bush administration couldn’t have known that at the time) as against annual oil import costs (to the economy as a whole) of approximately $120 billion in 2003.

In sum, no one in possession of the facts could have thought that invading Iraq would lower prices or that it was a cost-efficient way of increasing the supply of oil. The key drivers of price drops in oil in the post-Iraq war era have, unsurprisingly, been the massive falls in global demand in 2008 and in recent months. One can point to meetings between Cheney’s energy taskforce and the heads of US oil companies before the war, or post-war contracts that went to Haliburton (of which Cheney was formerly CEO), but that is not conclusive proof. Until clear evidence emerges, the Iraq war will continue to defy simplistic analysis. Its causes were multi-faceted: neo-conservative ideology; the importance of war to the post-WW2 US economy; the climate of fear following 9/11; and a genuinely held, if somewhat bizarre, analysis of threats to the West (think "axis of evil"). Over a decade on from the event, the fact that there isn't an accepted explanation suggests that the Iraq war will remain an event that defies simplistic explanation.

People are right in thinking that powerful interests wield a great deal of influence in the US and elsewhere, and that the interaction between government and corporate donors is opaque and occasionally shady. However that doesn’t mean that the directors of JP Morgan, Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin and Goldman Sachs meet with the President in Benedictine robes to determine the future direction of world affairs. Intelligent people are rightly disillusioned by the fact that they have little hope of influencing such processes or penetrating the halls of power, but that doesn’t make it all one big conspiracy. Often events have a momentum of their own

Is America's decline a self-fulfilling prophecy?

National decline always manifests itself in the mind of a nation's citizens before it shows itself in any practical way. Perceptions often then shape the reality - much like in economics, these expectations define behaviour to such an extent that they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Pew centre research last year indicated that 70% of Americans believe that their nation’s influence around the world is declining. Perhaps more significantly, 48% of respondents believed that China was the world’s largest economy. This is well wide of the mark. Whilst Chinese GDP, in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, is set to overtake the USA by the end of this year, PPP is little more than an indicator of relative prices – in dollar terms Chinese GDP is still $5-6 trillion less than the US figure of $17 trillion. Of course it is hard not to see China, with its population of 1.2bn, one day consuming an equal number of goods and services as the USA (population 300 million), but this is not an imminent event. There is clearly a deep sense of unease amongst Americans about how their nation's global standing has changed since 2007; it is indistinct and difficult to pin down, but two of the elements are as follows:

The first way in which perception has started to alter the national psyche is the attitude of Americans towards China. In many ways China has replaced the USSR as the necessary ‘other’ in the American national psyche. Like the USSR it is seen as authoritarian, a threat to the American way of life, mysterious and powerful. However, this time it is different. China – through trade – is seen as already having infiltrated the USA more successfully than Soviet spies ever did. I have had a series of increasingly bizarre conversations with American friends and relatives about China; the crux of these is ‘I don’t trust the Chinese but I don’t know why’. They then promptly pop along to Walmart to stock up on cheap, well-made Chinese goods. Like the USSR, China is seen as capable of surpassing the USA in the areas in which it prides itself (global influence, power and productive might). Essentially, they think Chinese strength will come at the expense of American weakness; that China will win this one. Americans are viewing the US-China relationship through cold war lenses partly because of a fickle and increasingly balkanized media. The American public has rarely been kept well-informed by its media, but the current media landscape is absurdly partisan. The truth is that no two nations have been so economically entwined in history as the US and China. Despite the barely credible headline growth figures, the truth is that China has struggled since 2008 to plug the gap created by weakness in its main export market and has resorted to a historically unprecedented fiscal and monetary binge in response. Essentially, a prosperous China = a prosperous America. Of course the relationship is far from plain sailing – bumps have been caused by cyber hacking and spying - but it is a great trading partner. Americans shouldn’t feel guilty when buying Chinese-made goods, but nor should they be jumping for joy at the prospect. It is a reality to be accepted like queues at airport security or the person in lectures who won’t stop asking questions. 

Secondly, there is a recognition that US political institutions, which were once the envy of the world, are in a deep malaise. Congressional deadlock is nothing new, but it is believed to be worse than ever - this is borne out by the facts. According to the Brookings Institute, during the 80th Congress (1947-8) fewer than 30% of significant issues were left unlegislated as contrasted to 70% in the 112th Congress (2011-12). There is a strong anti-political narrative that holds that all politicians are corrupt, selfish and in the pockets of donors. This is often an excuse for people to justify their disengagement and intellectual laziness. However, it is fair to say that the money and backing required to run for office does place an enormous strain on any legislator’s independence. Whatever the facts, people are clearly discontented with national politics.

Yet, in contrast to the widely believed narrative that the US has been in decline since 2007, in some ways it has actually increased its global dominance over the last five years. In recent years, the USA has strengthened its hold over the financial markets. Since November 2010 the Fed has added almost $2.9 trillion to its balance sheet; it is an interesting point in itself that this hasn’t been hugely inflationary, but significant also for the dependence on dollar liquidity that this has engendered. One only needs to remember the stock market crashes in Asian markets during the summer of 2013, the so-called ‘taper tantrums’, when the Fed first threatened to slow its monetary injections. Furthermore, the US has maintained its ability to police the financial markets. For those unversed in international finance, it is truly startling that US District Judge Thomas Griesa has been able to stop the payment of interest on non-US law denominated Argentinian sovereign debt from a New York courtroom. In fact the explanation is simple - because of the continuing dominance of US domiciled investors and the abject fear of commercial banks that their ability to clear dollar transactions might be suspended, US courts effectively exercise a worldwide jurisdiction. And, finally, it remains the world’s pre-eminent military power by quite a distance. Even if Chinese military spending exceeds its officially reported level, which it almost certainly does, they are several hundred billion dollars behind the US’ 2014 budget of $801.3bn. It speaks volumes for US power projection that the F-22 Raptor – developed in 2007 – was seen by military chiefs as too powerful for use until its recent debut in Syria. Of course there are pressing issues for the US military to address – such as its inability to close military bases or the cosy relationship between the Pentagon and arms manufacturers - but the perceived loss of US military might has much more to do with the choices of its Commander-in-Chief than any change on the ground.

That said, the picture has not been uniformly positive. The US has seen a marked decline in its soft power in recent years. Where once only words were needed to influence, cajole and prohibit, actions are now required.  Take the UN Security Council: although the USSR was by far the most common user of the veto, since its fall the Russian Federation has used the power very sparingly – however its recent persistence in blocking resolutions on Syria and Ukraine has been notable. Unsurprisingly, these are the two crises over which Obama has drawn red lines or made threats about consequences without any desire to back up his threats with military deployments. Furthermore, institutions crafted by the US at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 have largely failed to reform and are rightly viewed with distrust in many parts of the world. The position of managing director of the IMF is still, somewhat bizarrely, reserved for a European, whilst European countries retain a massively disproportionate influence through the quota system – which determines votes and contributions. Both the IMF and the World Bank are seen as rigid adherents to austerity and fiscal discipline when it comes to third world nations, but far more willing to accept laxity in the developed world. In the face of Congress’ refusal to reform the IMF, efforts by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to create an alternative development bank should be applauded. If soft power has at its basis respect for cultural, political, governmental and societal systems, then dysfunctional Bretton Woods era institutions deserve their slide into irrelevance. 

In sum, the prescription is clear: the US must use hard power sparingly but more wisely and regain some of the moral credibility lost in Iraq. This must begin with extricating itself from what is shaping up to be a brutal war between Shias and Sunnis across the Middle East. Whatever their limited involvement might be in airstrikes against ISIS, Qatar and Saudi Arabia continue to fund ISIS as a bulwark against Shia Iran. Western countries can only further play into the narrative that they are against Islam by their participation. The comparisons between the Nazis and ISIS continue to pile in: whilst the massacring of innocents is always a justification for humanitarian intervention, the US has felt no great need to stop the Lords Resistance Army – which continues to kill with abandon in eastern Congo – or numerous other thugs around the world; why is this any different? On the domestic front, the separation of powers between the judiciary, legislature and executive needs re-examining in light of the partisan environment. However, in a land where the constitution is sacrosanct and rarely amended, such a fundamental change looks impossible.  Thankfully the vitality of the economy is largely out of politicians' hands and instead spread across 300 million shoulders. 

The world is moving towards an era with no clear global hegemon, but the US looks set to remain a first among equals for a while yet.

The Taint of Modern Politics

Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition in the UK, recently proposed a public form of Prime Minister’s Questions suggesting that this would make the PM more accountable. It is certainly an interesting idea, and any proposition that would help to bridge the chasm between the governors and the governed is welcome in these apathetic times. However, it would be a sticking plaster over what is fast resembling a gaping sore: the utter contempt in which most people hold politicians.

Personally, I never blame people for disliking politics or politicians – it is a profession that has scandalised itself and has been the chief architect of its own downfall. It is tempting to lay the blame squarely at the feet of New Labour and their political machine (itself largely copied from Clinton’s ’92 campaign). After all, many of their innovations excite general disgust even two decades later – the culture of spin; occupying the centre ground of politics; and media training to help MPs avoid answering questions and to instead spout party political achievements.

However, although Blair and his cronies ought to bear some of the blame, the startling and almost universal unpopularity of politicians across the western world points to a wider malaise. Even when one individual’s force of character and charisma briefly reverse the decline (think Obama, Blair, Clinton or Sarkozy), their inability to live up to whatever they had to promise to get elected inevitably disgusts the electorate. I believe that there are three main ways in which politicians have fuelled their own unpopularity: perpetuating the stranglehold over politics exercised by a certain group; allowing our democratic institutions to decay; and using short-sighted media strategies. This analysis is aimed at the UK, but, with some tweaking, could equally well apply to France or the USA. Furthermore, it is important to point out that the behaviour of politicians is not the sole cause of popular disengagement from politics in general; other factors include – the decline of traditional class identities; an increasing societal focus on consumption; and the failure of electoral systems to keep pace with voter preferences (i.e. no e-voting).

 

1)      Government by the ambitious

Whenever David Cameron or George Osborne are criticised for their aristocratic origins or familiar path to power, they reply that it doesn’t matter where you come from provided that you’re the best at your job. I have no particular issue with that answer, or their particular routes into Parliament – Eton and Oxford are both fantastic educational institutions in their own right. The problem is more that as a cabinet, as a Parliament, as a political class, they appear to have wanted this all their lives – reflecting a triumph of ambition over merit.

The people in the public eye at large are a relatively diverse bunch, reflecting the fact that merit or talent is fairly equally distributed across the population. However, Parliamentarians are anything but (although which legislature isn’t?). To make Parliament more representative of the nation all three parties are promoting women in place of the white public school boys. However, as soon as you look into their backgrounds (middle class, Grammar/ Private school educated and Oxbridge attendee) the difference appears to be cosmetic. Although that might be a reflection on the candidates that apply to stand as MPs, it does demonstrate the death grip of a reasonably talented but incredibly ambitious group. Whether they are selected as the political class or they select themselves appears to me to be irrelevant.

When I look for patterns amongst MPs, schools and universities are only a symptom of the disease. What is more apparent is the prevalence of ambitious people from well-connected family backgrounds. Furthermore, they appear to have precisely planned their ascent to Parliament. That they pass through the Bar and Oxbridge is significant for the fact that MPs have targeted and attended such institutions to equip themselves for political office – they do not discover their ambition there. Rather PPE at Oxford and the Bar seem to be the quickest route to power in the system as it is currently constituted. So who are these people who grow up wanting to be Prime Minister? Well, they are generally well-spoken, well-educated and are used to stimulating discussion at home. The political class is upper middle class not because of any class-based plot, but because their parents are more likely to say ‘I want you to be PM someday’; or because their dinner party guests say ‘you’d make a great PM’; and because it seems achievable – clearly amongst some that ambition crystallises.

People sense that there is something deeply wrong with how people get into Parliament and how the selection process works. Even worse, it stops people who would otherwise be interested from even applying. In this age of fluid political beliefs, party leaders seem to desire power with a vague idea as to what they’d change rather than seeking power solely to change the country. Unfortunately, we are currently governed by those with the most ambition – I would prefer to be governed by the most able.

 

2)      The decay of our democratic institutions

Like any big and powerful institution, Parliament has its own-subculture. You can sense it when you visit the place, you can feel it during exchanges in the chamber. MPs refer to ‘the other place’ (instead of the upper chamber, the House of Lords), ‘Erskine May on Parliamentary procedure’ and ‘the mother of all Parliaments’.

A great number of MPs are apparently obsessed with the dignity and importance of their office, which is why many stay on as backbenchers even as the chances of promotion recede. And if you add a tiny bit of power to the mix, you create a dangerously potent mixture – just look at the select committee chiefs presiding over their kangaroo courts as if the whole nation is hanging on their every word!

It’s all a dreadful overhang of empire – the trappings of power remain even if real power is long gone. We are a medium sized nation with medium sized socio-economic and military influence; we need a legislature that reflects that fact. Tradition is great to the extent that it keeps Japanese tourists clicking their cameras, but when it begins to stifle democracy itself it’s time to say goodbye to the Blackrods (the Queen’s steward who bangs on the door of the Commons to invite MPs to the Lords so that she can make her annual speech because during the reign of….blah blah blah).

Parliament doesn’t make laws half the year, it is hard to pass complicated legislation within a reasonable time frame, there is no-electronic voting and it is obsessed with its own importance. And none of that even touches on the reputational and political problems of the unelected House of Lords! The US Congress is in need of reform because time has moved on and its practices haven’t; Parliament is in need of reform because it is choking on bizarre and restrictive conventions.

 

3)      Short-sighted media strategies

When the Coalition government attempts to make any sort of policy announcement, Labour MPs fall over themselves to tweet that it is evidence of ‘how out of touch’ the Conservatives are. On most episodes of Question Time Coalition politicians ignore the question as asked and instead spout a list of their achievements; Labour then comes back with a list of how their ideas are in fact better. This all stems from the at best dated calculation that the average voter will only remember easily digestible information and that these sound-bites really get through.

What they don’t seem to grasp is that the viewer doesn’t give a toss about these nonsensical lists; they are instead annoyed at no-one answering their questions and left with the feeling that all politicians are as bad as each other. Surely the benefit of any memory association is vastly outweighed by the general disgust that the practice incites? Our system has always been adversarial, but I believe that the petty, party-political point scoring is a modern inception. The tiny minority of MPs actually speaking their mind have either already been blacklisted or are not seeking promotion, leaving a large group of apparently intelligent people refusing to engage in reasonable analysis and instead accusing the other party of wrecking the economy. 

The culture of briefing in order to shape newspaper headlines is complex enough to be the subject of a blog by itself. I would say though that such a process – even if it is as sordid as the Leveson inquiry portrayed it – is a more secret affair between press officers and journalists. It is less obviously irritating and damaging than television interviews and appearances.

To conclude, although I never blame people for disliking politicians, there is a distinction to be made between politics and political thought. One can dislike the former without renouncing the latter.

 

© Amarjeet Johal 2014 All Rights Reserved.

Diplomatic Chess

Diplomatic Chess

Some find it offensive when the goings on in Syria and Ukraine are likened to a game of chess, a statement that I agree with to some extent. Some estimate that up to a hundred and fifty thousand people have been killed during the fighting in Syria. And, as ever, although the majority of the combatants are young men, the majority of the suffering has been borne by those with no cause for quarrel - mothers, families, children, the old and the infirm. Yet precisely because the only possible solution lies within the realm of cold, impersonal diplomatic liaison I feel justified in analysing the moves and actions of the key protagonists in the same detached manner.

I liked 2004 Obama, I liked 2008 Obama - even in 2014 there are things that I admire about the man. However, when it comes to foreign policy he has been outplayed in every possible way and at every turn by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin over the past two years. Many leaders ride to office on a wave of euphoria that they can´t possible satisfy, although most of them are aware of how fickle public opinion can be. However, with Obama, I will always suspect that he truly believed in the power of words to conquer all. He believed that rhetoric could heal the suspicion with which numerous countries around the world regard the State Department; that it could conquer Bush-era mistrust; and that through rhetoric America would once again be regarded as the defender abroad of the principles that it espouses at home. Yet, a change of government only ever changes half a dozen people at the top, and the state machinery has rolled inexorably on - most notably in the NSA/ Snowden revelations.    

Theodore Roosevelt once claimed that the secret to foreign policy was to "speak softly, and carry a big stick." He furthermore described his style of foreign policy as "the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis". Obama has fallen short on both accounts. He sits wedged between a public uninterested in further foreign intervention and a political establishment obsessed with the US´s self-importance and global role. Yet he also holds in one hand a $750 billion defence budget and in the other the Sixth Fleet based in the Mediterranean. It is not that the stick isn´t still big, more that it is dwarfed by the shrill ejaculations of its wielder. During the last two years he has trodden the awkward path of attempting to maintain American primacy in the Middle East and Eastern Europe without being committing either effort or resources to the cause, leaving his words looking increasingly feeble. I wish that the business of the state was entirely encapsulated within the art of public speaking, that the breathtaking eloquence that we are treated to each time Obama takes to the podium did inspire America and the world to greater humility, generosity and eloquence. However, this is not the case, and his indecisive actions appear to be presaging the self-fulfilling prophecy of American decline. 

What makes this all even more stark is that Putin has played the average hand of cards that he has been dealt extraordinarily well. He has trod the fine line of appearing to give the EU and the USA what they are demanding without really giving them anything at all; precisely because he senses that they lack the will to carry out their threats. And each time he offers a morsel he increases the conviction in Washington that he really is the master puppeteer. I can´t see any way in which air strikes against the Assad regime in Syria would have solved what is increasingly looking like a festering sore of hatred as old as life itself. One needs to look no further than Libya, or indeed Iraq, to appreciate that it is not a simple case of regime change from autocracy to liberal democracy. But I am no expert on Arab nation building so I will not attempt to prescribe any sort of solution. The point is merely that Obama had no desire to go ahead with air strikes and probably thought that his red line sounded like the sort of thing a statesman would say if he or she actually meant business. Putin called his bluff. 

And then came Crimea and the civil war in eastern Ukraine. I firmly believed that Putin has no desire to annex eastern Ukraine. I believe that by arming the rebels his aim is to destabilise Ukraine and to neutralise the possibility of a hostile, economically resurgent and pro-EU neighbour. Russia was forced to pour $7bn to prop up the Crimean economy after annexing it in March; the damaged eastern Ukrainian economy would need a far bigger stimulus. Nor does he desire to provoke the sort of sanctions that would send the Russian economy into freefall and vastly outweigh any benefit to Russian influence to be gained by destabilising Ukraine. He was been willing to supply, train and support the rebels, but has not attempted to invade without an appropriate casus belli. On the rare occasions when he has been called to account, he has been willing to agree frameworks, dialogues and joint statements on the phone to his European counterparts, but has not altered covert Russian support for the rebels - after all Putin is very much aware that the Italians, Dutch and Germans are extremely reluctant to impose sanctions on Russia.    

But has he overplayed his hand? Russia supplied the missile system (and other heavy weapons) that shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on 17 July 2014 without apparently monitoring exactly what they rebels were doing with it. Surely this would finally unite the EU against Russia? Apparently not: EU foreign ministers failed to agree on broad economic sanctions on the 22nd of July, instead kicking the issue into the long grass by asking the Commission to draw such measures up and agreeing to debate them later. Despite a push by a group of nations including Poland, the UK and Sweden, the Germans and the Italians have been especially lukewarm on the possibility of imposing sanctions. The Dutch and the Germans do a great deal of trade with the Russians and the Italians remain reticent to harm the Russian interests of oil giant Eni. Furthermore the French, wary of contractual penalties and happy to see the STX shipyards back at work, remain determined to push on with the sale of two Mistral class Helicopter assault ships to Russia. Understandable as that decision might appear, it must be remembered that a Russian naval commander commented at the time that the ships were ordered that had they had such vessels during the 2008 war with Georgia, the operation would have taken "40 minutes, instead of 26 hours". Thus, it appears that the initial clamour for action is fading - amongst other developments UK and US officials are backtracking from initial claims that Russian personnel may have been operating the Buk missile system responsible for bringing down MH17. 

Once again Putin has given the EU and the US just enough - the crash dead and the black boxes - to stymie concerted action; he might be on the backfoot for the moment, but he never was and never will be a fool.