The European Council on Foreign Relations

ECFR This Week: 21st December 2011

Date: 21st December 2011  |  Author: Nicholas Walton,

Categories: ECFR this week ,

Dear friends,

After a momentous and difficult 2011, Europe faces 2012 with trepidation and foreboding.To help those wondering what the next year will bring (and 2011 teaches us that it’s unwise to make too many predictions…) here at ECFR we’ve identified ten trends that we see developing in the next twelve months, and – for balance – one widely predicted trend that we don’t think will come about. Have a read, and send any of your own predictions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) – we’ll gather the best into a blog post after the

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Vaclav Havel: the best president Slovakia never had

Date: 21st December 2011  |  Author: Jana Kobzova ,

Categories: Europe and the world,

It was December 1989 and I was a school girl in what was then Czechoslovakia. I had flu and so instead of going to school or accompanying my parents for the protests, I stayed at home and watched TV. This is where my first memory of Vaclav Havel comes from: he was trying to pass through a big crowd of his supporters, smiling, with his fingers forming the letter ‘V’ for victory. I hadn’t heard of this man before, of his extended stays in prison, dissident activism or playwriting. At that time, I didn’t even know that it was Havel who in his 1975 letter to the then Secretary General of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Gustav Husak wrote the best analysis of how and why the communist regime in Czechoslovakia sustained itself: “why do people behave as they do; why do they do everything that put together creates an impression of a totally unified society, totally supportive of their

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Madrid view: wobbly BRICs

Date: 21st December 2011  |  Author: Jose Ignacio Torreblanca,

Categories: China, Euro Crisis, Madrid view,

One consequence of the crisis in Europe is a return to the tendency for introspection. The past decade was wasted on institutional debates such as picking up the pieces of the failed European Constitution after the debacle of the referendums in France and the Netherlands, and rebuilding the consensus necessary to get the unity plans going again, consuming a lot of time and energy along the way. This is why, when the Treaty of Lisbon came into effect two years ago, a firm resolution was made to leave institutional debate behind, renouncing new reforms of the treaties. Lisbon, it was said, would be the last treaty for a long time. In future the Europeans would practice politics, not institutional engineering. But now, two years later, that Europe capable of united action in defence of its interests and values has yet to gel, and there is talk of yet another treaty. 

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North Korea: still a family business

Date: 20th December 2011  |  Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner,

Categories: China, Rule of law, democracy and human rights, Security and Defence,

In Europe, the finest and most valiant crusader against dictatorship both in word and deed, Vaclav Havel, passed away.  Meanwhile, Kim Jong-il, a long-lasting dictator and ruler of the world’s only hereditary communistic system, died of a stroke at the symbolic age of 69 (following an age pattern from other illustrious dictators like Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi, joining what one commentator has coined the ’69 club’).

The announcement of his death was made by a weeping female news reader dressed in black. In Pyongyang, public mass crying broke out, perhaps to balance the lack of condolences from the outside world: the former American presidential candidate, John McCain, suggested that Kim Jong-il had gone to a ‘warm corner of hell’.

Kim’s youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, is the likely successor. His grooming started recently, although his apprenticeship and rise to power was far from

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Vaclav Havel: how dared he?

Date: 19th December 2011  |  Author: Konstanty Gebert,

Categories: Rule of law, democracy and human rights, Europe and the world,

Vaclav Havel was an icon: the reference victorious dissident, the Sevres standard of decency in politics. Attempts to besmirch that icon – understandable, almost legitimate: isn’t that what investigative journalists are supposed to do – were many, and all ultimately failed. To the aggravation of his detractors, and the at times ill-concealed irritation of even his friends, he largely in fact was what he was seen to be.  The genuine and radiant halo which surrounded his public persona made even his failures melt away. He opposed the splitting of Czechoslovakia, but was utterly powerless to prevent two lesser men, the Czech PM Vaclav Klaus (who was to become his bane and his successor) and the Slovak PM Vladimir Meciar (who, as the authoritarian leader of the newly independent Slovakia, was to become his antithesis in politics), to bring it about. He resigned in protest, only to become

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