The Guardian: Turkey denies blackmailing Nato over Baltics defence plan

Erdoğan has blocked a defence plan for Poland and the Baltic states until Nato recognises that the Syrian Kurdish YPG are a terrorist threat that must be addressed. Ahead of his departure from Ankara, Erdoğan reiterated the Turkish position, telling reporters: “If our friends at Nato do not recognise as terrorist organisations those we consider terrorist organisations ... we will stand against any step that will be taken there.” [...]

Macron is angry both at the Turkish decision to invade Syria, and the manner in which the decision was taken in consultation with only one Nato ally, the US. Macron warned it will create a humanitarian disaster, undermine the YPG’s leading role in suppressing Isis and complicate efforts to secure a peace settlement across Syria. [...]

On Monday US Defence Secretary Mark Esper urged Turkey to stop holding up support for the military plan. Esper warned Ankara that “not everybody sees the threats that they see” and added he would not support labelling the YPG as terrorists to break the impasse. “The message to Turkey ... is we need to move forward on these response plans and it can’t be held up by their own particular concerns,” he said as he flew to London.

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Bloomberg: Russia After Vladimir Putin

The Free Russia Foundation, a Washington-based think tank chaired by former Assistant Secretary of State David Kramer, has just published a 170-page report what the country might look like in 2030. The authors include some of the most insightful anti-Putin commentators today: political analyst Alexander Morozov, media expert Vasily Gatov, economists Vladimir Milov and Vladislav Inozemtsev, social anthropologist Denis Sokolov and energy expert Ilya Zaslavskiy. [...]

Russia will increasingly come under China’s sway. The alliance between the two countries will strengthen, with Russia supplying more raw materials and China industrial goods. The two countries’ extensive military cooperation may be bolstered by their increasing alignment against the U.S. In the most likely scenario discussed in the report, Russia will become a Chinese satellite, boosting its military power and gradually allowing its domestic market to be subsumed. Both Western sanctions and the U.S. confrontation with Beijing make this outcome likelier, despite the domestic unpopularity of such an alliance.

No high-cost military adventures, but watch Belarus and Kazakhstan. None of the authors expect Russia to make any militarily aggressive moves against the Baltic states, but Belarus could be an attractive, and domestically popular, target if Putin wanted to stay in power beyond 2024 as head of a unified state. Separately, the slow leadership succession in Kazakhstan is likely to pose a threat. If the neighboring state chooses to align itself more closely with China or Turkey, it would strip Russia of one of its vaunted security buffers. Thus the report's authors see Belarus and Kazakhstan as more likely targets for Russian meddling than any other country, if only because they are uncertain about Moscow’s true military strength and the potential domestic popularity of armed aggression. Recent victories in Ukraine and Syria were against only weak adversaries. The military remains underfunded, and any losses would likely be extremely unpopular.

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Politico: Macron criticizes ‘ultra-liberal’ Europe

In his first appearance on a radio talk show since he was sworn in, the increasingly unpopular French president came out swinging against an EU he is better known for defending against opponents such as Matteo Salvini, Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin.

The EU is letting down its middle classes, ignoring their legitimate fears and exposing itself to a populist wave that could ultimately submerge the bloc, Macron told Europe 1 radio a few months before his centrist La République En Marche starts campaigning for the European Parliament election.[...]

His target was not the right-leaning populists who oppose him face-to-face. By railing against European “ultra-liberals,” Macron was pointing to all the factions that have resisted his plans, articulated during his presidential campaign and during a landmark speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, to make the EU a more “protective” bloc via tighter security cooperation, taxes on digital giants and tougher restrictions on state-aid takeovers. [...]

An example of “ultra-liberal” resistance was on display this week in Brussels, where Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was pitching a French plan to impose a 3 percent revenue tax on companies like Google and Facebook. After more than a year of high-level diplomacy, the best Le Maire was able to extract was a vow from Germany to consider enforcing the tax from 2020, only if and when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was unable to come up with its own solution for taxing digital companies.

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Social Europe: Why Such Disparity Between Unemployment Rates In Europe?

But the statistics do not explain why some countries have much higher rates of joblessness than others with Greece posting nearly ten times the rate of unemployment as the Czech Republic and Spain, the same size as Poland, having nearly five times as many out of work as the EU’s most easterly member state.

One of the most curious aspects is how well the former communist countries have done in getting unemployment down to very low levels. The transition to a market economy has been rough but with Czechia, Hungary and Poland all posting unemployment rates below that of Britain, where commentators boast endlessly of the UK’s high levels of job creation, it would seem that former communist economies have adapted well. [...]

There seems no correlation either with the colour of the government. Spain was ruled by socialists until 2012 and has just booted out the centre-right PP government but unemployent remains stubbornly high. Greece switched from a conservative New Democracy team in 2015 to Europe’s most left government – at least in terms of the rhetoric of Yanis Varoufakis – but has been unable to tackle unemployment seriously (It was 22.1 per cent a year ago). [...]

Nor is it possible to read across trade union density with unemployment. France has the lowest number of workers paying membership dues to trade unions – eight per cent of the workforce – but twice the level of unemployment as Hungary and Poland where unions organise 12 per cent of the workforce according to European Trade Union Institute figures.

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Bloomberg: Europe’s Depopulation Time Bomb Is Ticking in the Baltics

The trend is hitting especially hard in the Baltics. Latvia, with a current population of 1.96 million, has lost about 25 percent of its residents since throwing off Soviet control in 1991. The UN predicts that by 2050, it will have lost an additional 22 percent of its current population—second only to Bulgaria—and by 2100, 41 percent. [...]

As bad as those numbers look, the trend looks even worse for Ukraine and Moldova. The UN predicts 36 percent and 51 percent declines in those nations by the end of the century, respectively. Russia, meanwhile, is expected to lose 13 percent by 2100.

Several factors are contributing to the depopulation of Eastern Europe, and Latvia has all of them: low income, compared with more developed EU nations; insufficient growth; and strong anti-immigrant sentiment. The average annual take-home pay among all EU nations was 24,183 euros ($29,834) in 2015, according to Eurostat, while in Latvia it was only 6,814 euros ($8,406).  [...]

Nine out of 10 countries with the lowest acceptance rate of immigrants are former members of the Eastern bloc. Of these, the three Baltic nations had been previously forced to accept Russian-speaking migrants. In Latvia, the issue is so controversial that in 2015, when the EU insisted it accept just a few hundred Syrian refugees, nationalists initially threatened to withdraw from the government. That same year, Latvia came in second to last in the Migrant Integration Policy Index, which ranks 38 democracies according to the quality of immigration policies. Only Turkey did worse. Latvia was fourth from the bottom in Gallup’s 2017 Migrant Acceptance Score list, which ranks countries in order of their populations’ attitudes to immigrants. 

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Social Europe: Small States Under Pressure

For the Baltics Euro Area membership has become even more important with the uncertain US commitment to NATO. Some American politicians have made absurd statements about the Baltic States. Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, told CBS that “Estonia is in the suburbs of St Petersburg […] I’m not sure I would risk nuclear war over some place that is the suburb of St Petersburg.” Statements like that from an influential US politician must be especially shocking for Estonians and all the Baltics, but also for all EU member states as well as for European NATO member states. During the election year 2016 President Trump said, according to the Washington Post: “Pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually. The cost of stationing NATO troops in Europe is enormous. And these are clearly funds that can be put to better use.”

The Baltic states sought economic shelter in the EU during the 2008 crisis. But the cost was high with austerity and fixed exchange rate policy, a condition for euro adoption. Staying within the Euro Area is not easy. Tight fiscal discipline and a fixed exchange rate have not exactly proven to be a growth formula for transition countries wishing to catch up. But this formula seems perfect for stable stagnation. And the Euro Area crisis continues with incomplete fiscal and banking union. But the Baltics know that powers like Germany and France could not possibly tolerate an attack from Russia on the Euro Area. They would be forced to respond. So, the Euro provides external security for the Baltics, but the austerity policies fuel internal divisions and outward migration. [...]

Shelters can be a blessing and a curse for small states. For the Baltics, the shelter provided by the European Union in 2008 came at a high cost with fixed exchange rate policy and austerity programs. Foreign banking systems were saved. Iceland enjoyed no such shelter. Its currency depreciated sharply and the government ran large stimulus deficits well beyond the formulae prescribed in Brussels. Its local banks collapsed but its economic recovery was resounding.

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Katoikos: EU Defence Union: The end of soft power?

Rising insecurity is becoming the new normal in Europe. Armed attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice, Ansbach, Würzburg, Rouen, Berlin and now Manchester have brought to light the potential of jihadist groups both to recruit and strike within Europe. In the wake of the military conflict in Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly violated the sovereignty of neighbouring countries, intruding regularly on member states’ airspace and territorial waters. From the south, organised crime and unrest resulting from the Libyan chaos is spreading towards European shores. War in the Middle East is causing a mass exodus to Europe, while cyber terrorism is becoming more and more dangerous with each passing day. [...]

France and Germany are the two member states most eager to take advantage of these opportunities. First of all, because a European Defence Union is the living proof that every cloud has a silver lining: it is one of the things that is only possible in an EU without the UK. Moreover, for France, it is an ideal occasion to remind other member states that, with Britain gone, it remains the EU’s sole great military power. For Germany, instead, it is an opportunity to increase its influence in Brussels when it comes to appointing top personnel and to help the German arms industry in the markets of other EU countries. [...]

Some Eastern European countries perceive new EU defence plans as a challenge to NATO, which has recently agreed to station 4,000 troops on their territory and which is, therefore, considered essential to their security. “The European Defence Union does not mean duplicating what we have with NATO,” said Michael Gahler. He added, “We have difficult NATO partners who may try to bloc NATO resources. That’s why we must build up the capabilities to act independently.”

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BBC4 In Our Time: Baltic Crusades

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Baltic Crusades, the name given to a series of overlapping attempts to convert the pagans of North East Europe to Christianity at the point of the sword. From the 12th Century, Papal Bulls endorsed those who fought on the side of the Church, the best known now being the Teutonic Order which, thwarted in Jerusalem, founded a state on the edge of the Baltic, in Prussia. Some of the peoples in the region disappeared, either killed or assimilated, and the consequences for European history were profound.

With

Aleks Pluskowski Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading

Nora Berend Fellow of St Catharine's College and Reader in European History at the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge

and

Martin PalmerDirector of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education, and Culture

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Politico: After midnight: How the mobile roaming deal was sealed

The negotiations started at 6:30 p.m. and blew through the 10:30 p.m. deadline without dinner or an agreement. Parliament’s chief negotiator Miapetra Kumpula-Natri snacked on Haribo candies during the six-hour talks. [...]

The plan almost died last September, just days before Juncker’s state of the union speech, when an argument over the fine print broke out and pushed everyone back to the drawing board. [...]

As negotiations approached midnight, Malta defied two of the EU’s strongest members and push for a deal that benefited Baltic and Scandinavian nations at the expense of Germany and France, which wanted to protect their mobile operators and their high retail prices, according to people in the room. Although Malta is the EU member that would benefit most from the higher fees, the island nation wanted a deal.

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Politico: Why Trump Would Be Crazy to Give Putin What He Wants

Trump won’t be the first president to attempt to find common ground with Moscow. Everycommander-in-chief since the fall of the Berlin Wall has started his tenure with a fresh, positiveapproach to America’s former nemesis. Bill Clinton made a point to woo Boris Yeltsin. Afterthat, George W. Bush looked into Putin’s eyes and was reassured (because he saw a soul there).Most recently there was President Barack Obama’s 2009 “reset”—the first one to claim thename officially. [...]

The “reset” wasn’t a complete failure. Obama achieved some key objectives: the New STARTtreaty; a much-needed alternative transit route for troops and equipment to Afghanistanthrough Russia; a signed agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation; Russia’s abstention in theSecurity Council on the vote to bomb Libya in 2011; and Russia’s accession to the World TradeOrganization. But there were sticking points, too. Russia still refused to share intelligence oncounter terrorism or illicit narcotics trafficking, and even in the run-up to the Sochi Olympicswould not coordinate with U.S. security officials. And then in the aftermath of the ousting of theKremlin-backed Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich, Russia illegally annexed Crimea andstarted a war in the Eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. The reset was off life support; it was dead. [...]

Trump’s gains under this robust reset deal won’t, however, compensate for the giant harm itwould cause. If Putin gets everything he wants—including a free hand in Ukraine—the UnitedStates and the world would be in a far more dangerous situation. From the U.S. perspective,security, trade and political relationships with its closest allies would suffer a massive crisis ofconfidence and erosion of trust, which could lead to misunderstandings and miscalculationsamong them and with Russia—and in the worst case, to military clashes. A large scale war couldalso break out between Russia and its non-NATO neighbors, like Ukraine, whose governmentsand people will resist these new reset terms, adding to existing refugee flows and economicinstability in Europe. In cases like these, damage occurs quickly, but recovery—rebuilding trustand institutions—is difficult and slow work. That’s all for a few gains—increased trade with Russia, a re-negotiated Iran agreement, some cooperation fighting terrorists in Syria, reining in North Korea and China, progress on the INF Treaty and some kind words—which could easilybe undone by Moscow at any time.

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The Guardian: Unhappy Russians nostalgic for Soviet-style rule: study

A quarter of a century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, life satisfaction in Russia and other ex-Soviet states remains stubbornly low, with enthusiasm wavering for democracy and open market economics, according to a survey.

The study found that only 15% of Russians think their households have a better quality of life, compared with 30% in 2010 when respondents were last asked, and only 9% see their finances as better than four years ago.

Just over half the respondents from former Soviet states also thought a return to a more authoritarian system would be a plus in some circumstances, said the findings from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank said. [...]

They did find the “happiness gap” with western Europe had narrowed, thanks to improvements in central Asia, the Baltic states and central Europe, but also because of less satisfaction in parts of Europe, including Germany and Italy.

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RSA: US Election 2016: The Result | John Prideaux

US Election 2016: The Result with John Prideaux, US editor at The Economist. It may be a post-pollster, post-pundit, post-truth landscape – but can we predict where the world goes from here? An extraordinary US presidential election campaign has resulted in an outcome that few could have predicted at its outset: Donald J Trump will become the 45th US President of the United States.

The implications of this historic decision are, for now, highly unpredictable, and for many, deeply concerning, with many questions unresolved around the course of future US policy on the economy, security, environmental protection, and human rights.

Join our expert panel at the RSA to consider what a Trump presidency says about, and means for America and the world in the days, months and years to come.

Our panel of experts include: John Prideaux, US editor at The Economist; James O'Brien, LBC radio & BBC Newsnight; Professor Malcolm Chalmers, Deputy Director-General of RUSI; Melanie McDonagh, Leader writer, Evening Standard and contributor, The Spectator; Stephen Bush, special correspondent, New Statesman.

Jakub Marian: Mortality due to cardiovascular disease by region in Europe

Cardiovascular disease is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels, such as ischemic heart disease, hypertension, stroke, congestive heart failure, and many others. Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death in a majority of developed countries, but since most types of cardiovascular disease are directly influenced by lifestyle and nutrition, its incidence varies significantly among countries and regions.

The following map shows the standardized death rate due to cardiovascular diseases in European statistical regions (NUTS 2) and is based on data by Eurostat. The value of standardized death rate differs from the crude death rate in that the numbers are normalized with respect to the average population pyramid of the EU, which makes comparisons between regions easier. Thus, red colour does not necessarily indicate that more people die due to cardiovascular disease than in the green regions but rather that they tend to die younger.

The colouring scheme used in the map does not allow us to see the magnitude of differences in Eastern Europe, which is why it is shown separately (together with Baltic countries) in the following map. The data are the same as in the map above, but the values (and the corresponding colouring) range from 540 deaths per 100,000 people, which is the lowest value in Poland, to 1250, which is the highest value in Bulgaria.

The differences are highly worrying. Around twice as many Bulgarians and Romanians die of cardiovascular disease than Czechs and Poles, who are, in turn, three times as likely to die of a cardiovascular disease than the French. Differences in rates of cardiovascular disease are the major reason why the French live 4 years longer, on average, than the Poles, who live 4 years longer than the Bulgarians.

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The Spectator: Putin’s next move

A Russian invasion of Estonia and-Latvia would be complete in as little as 36 hours, according to a study by the Rand Corporation for the Pentagon. Russian tanks would be rumbling through Tallinn and Riga before Nato could so much as convene an emergency meeting to invoke Article 5 of its charter for mutual defence. The Rand study showed that it would take more than a week for Nato to get its tanks to the Baltics from Germany in response. By then it would all be over.So Nato has decided to send four battalions of troops to the Baltics, including one from Britain — exactly the kind of reinforcement that General Shirreff wants. The Baltic states have welcomed this. [...]

James Carden, a former adviser to a US presidential commission on Russia, agrees. ‘We have a habit of leading on these people who are along the periphery of Russia. Do the Baltics really think that we’ll get into a nuclear exchange if Russia runs over their borders? We won’t. We’re not going to go to war for them. De Gaulle knew this as far back as the 1960s, that the US would not trade New York for Paris in a-nuclear war.’ But he doubted that Russia really-wanted the Baltics back: it was just sending a-message to the West. [...]

Putin, then, may have adopted Richard Nixon’s ‘madman theory’ — the attempt to scare a potential enemy into thinking you might just go to war, might even drop the big one, if pushed. Others in the Russian federation are playing their part — it sometimes seems as if the whole country has been gripped by world war three hysteria. The state-controlled TV channel NTV took its cameras into a nuclear bunker, telling-viewers: ‘Everyone should know where the nearest bomb shelter is.’ The chairman of the Duma’s defence committee even appeared on television in his old uniform as commander of the country’s airborne troops and promised to fly to the US on a military-transport plane if ordered to by President Putin. ‘We need to stop apologising to the Westerners,’ he said.

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