Only following orders…

Sent this morning

To: The Ditchley Foundation
Subject: FAO Jeremy Greenstock

Dear Mr Greenstock,

I note that your review of the new Satow’s Diplomatic Practice claims that separating “duty from stupidity” and “finding the right words when the sword might be the alternative, are all part of the practice of diplomacy at its finest.”

As you concede, with a winsome reference to your part in “anticipating the facts” which weren’t factual about Iraq’s weapons of mass non-existence, this is not always easy.

So, were you just being stupid or doing your duty? The former stretches credulity, since there were no “facts” to be “fixed around the policy” of pushing for war.

Either way, your words served the sword, and neither defence would have saved you at Nuremberg.

Diplomacy at its finest? We’ve been framed.

Yours sincerely,

Daniel Simpson

–

Thanks to Steven Poole for alerting me to Greenstock’s article.

War Is Peace

Sent to Reuters journalists and editors this morning

To: Wojciech Moskwa, Mark Trevelyan
Cc: Sean Maguire, Matt Spetalnick
Subject: Obama and disarmament

Dear Mark and Wojciech,

I hope future coverage of Barack Obama’s Nobel prize award won’t just source scepticism to Islamic Jihad:

“Why should Obama be given a peace prize while his country owns the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth and his soldiers continue to shed innocent blood in Iraq and Afghanistan?” [asked Khaled Al-Batsh in Gaza, before being edited out of later updates.]

Perhaps Reuters could note high up in the story that for all his talk about disarmament (and media hype about “defence” cuts) Obama has increased American military spending (by four percent for 2010).

To quote a recent commentary, “it is wise to attend to deeds, not rhetoric and pleasant demeanor.”

In which case, how about asking the White House if Obama plans to spend his prize money on buying back some of America’s vast military exports?

It would make a nice kicker.

Best regards,

Daniel

–

UPDATE: For more on the American militarist future, see here:

Eventually, American decline will cut defence spending, but even those who want to see it yesterday can’t picture it happening inside a decade. Instead, the more things “change” under Obama, the more change it seems likely to cost. Some day, surely, those who finance the Empire will pull the plug. Obama seems powerless to do more than steady the ship as it sinks. Turning it round, or evacuating, would take radical shifts in priorities, of which there’ve been few signs. Instead of burning out in End Times, or fading away into autarky, he’s trudging a lonely path towards managed decline. History suggests it’s probably the least worst option, unless America’s suicide pact with militarism beats him to it. “We should take nothing for granted,” President Eisenhower warned in his farewell speech to the nation. “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper.” Instead, warns Chuck Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity, the U.S. remains racked by “a constant struggle between capitalism and democracy,” and “the fundamental reality is that most of the government’s decisions today are substantially dictated by powerful corporate interests.”

As we were then.

More News Not Fit To Print

Sometimes a story isn’t news. It might be important and insightful, even titillating. But there isn’t the time or space for reporters to tell it. Oddly enough, this often applies when stories revolve around them.

How else to interpret the silence when a former director general of the BBC says journalists are collectively “part of the problem” with how we’re governed?

“The evidence that our democracy is failing is overwhelming,” Greg Dyke told Liberal Democrat conference-goers this weekend, “yet those with the biggest interest in sustaining the current system – the Westminster village, the media and particularly the political parties, including this one – are the groups most in denial about what is really happening.”

They duly proved his point. The host of the meeting where he spoke, Liberal Vision, was a website run by the party’s ex-spokesman. It made no mention of Mr Dyke’s remarks. Neither did a single national newspaper, or broadcaster, with the exception of his old employer, the BBC, which got its retaliation in early by quoting itself as saying “its coverage was taken extremely seriously and was highly regarded by the public” and thus couldn’t possibly be part of Mr Dyke’s “Westminster conspiracy”.

To the corporation’s credit, however, it did at least report a string of quotes. Mr Dyke, who was fired in a fight with the government over its false Iraqi intelligence, said: “I tried and failed to get the problem properly discussed when I was at the BBC and I was stopped, interestingly, by a combination of the politicos on the board of governors,” plus “the Labour cabinet” and “the political journalists at the BBC.”

The former ought to come as little surprise. The BBC’s top executives are appointed by the government of the day. Like his chairman, Gavyn Davies, Mr Dyke used to be a donor to the Labour Party. As the corporation’s founder, Lord Reith, observed of the establishment: “They know they can trust us not to be really impartial.”

This is not the mantra managers usually spout. “The absolute first building block keystone of the BBC,” argues the current director general, Mark Thompson, “is delivering impartial, unbiased news.” In practice something different happens.

Media ineptitude? We’ve been framed

As views that frame stories shape their message, “free market” and “growth” propagandists control the news

[A version of this article appears in the current edition of the British Journalism Review. Owing to an editing error, which I didn't have the opportunity to review, one of the quotations has been misattributed in print. The reference to facts "being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq was made by the head of MI6, not MI5, as the print edition states. A formal correction is pending.]

By Daniel Simpson

When G20 leaders met in London this spring, it seemed there was only one question to ask: could they save the world? Whether you take your news salmon-tinted from the Financial Times, prefer it balanced by the BBC, or glean the basics by osmosis via The Sun, the story is the same. Understandable, perhaps, given the scale of global crises, and the lack of bright ideas on how to respond, at least among powerful G20 governments.

Their London summit solution, a $1.1 trillion bailout for the moribund financial system, was as preordained as the media chorus that hailed it, give or take the odd caveat. After two days of photo opportunities, the G20 agreed to pump less money into the International Monetary Fund than they spent last year on weapons. But to assuage journalistic doubts, their mantra was simple. The final communiqué made a dozen references to “restoring”, “supporting” or “sustaining” growth, apparently oblivious to the prospects of success, not to mention the hideous consequences. According to the philosopher John Gray: “The project of promoting maximal economic growth is, perhaps, the most vulgar ideal ever put before suffering humankind.” It is also the most suicidal. Because of the way we live, more growth means consuming more oil, coal and gas, and clogging the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, which stays there for a century, heating it up. Three days before the summit, an FT headline screamed: “Drive for growth ‘will ruin planet.’” This revelation was buried in the news-in-brief section. And it duly vanished down the memory hole, despite originating from government advisers, whose views are generally used to frame the news.

“Oh, East is fleeced and West is messed…”

Pipelineistan’s Great Game of Gas

“The problem – and the opportunity – was referred to by oil men as ’stranded gas’ … Russia and Turkmenistan fought bitterly over how the pipelines should be used. Their battles finally shut down the fields altogether. Until new pipelines were built, or the conflicts with Russia were resolved, Turkmenistan was stuck with 159 trillion cubic feet of gas, 32 billion barrels of oil, and no place to sell any of it.”

- Steve Coll, ‘Ghost Wars’ (Penguin, 2004)

[A slideshow accompanying this report is available here]

By Daniel Simpson

LONDON, May 2009 – For centuries, Caspian gas has been revered. In the Middle Ages, Zoroastrian pilgrims flocked to worship plumes of “Holy Fire”, fuelled by hydrocarbons beneath the Aspheron peninsula. By World War I, these fields were coveted by Brits, Turks and Russians. The latter prevailed, weathering even Hitler’s assault on the Caucasus. Then, in 1998, Dick Cheney said: “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.” Within three years, he was in the White House, armed with plans to “make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy.” Weeks after 11 September 2001, Uncle Sam parachuted Halliburton airbases onto Central Asia’s “Grand Chessboard”, and a “new Great Game” kicked off. It’s as baffling as Buzkashi, the indigenous mounted bloodsport, and even likelier to kill people. Picking winners is almost as dicey, for the reasons of geography that make Afghanistan a graveyard of Empires. The region’s landlocked, and mountainous, so getting its oil and gas to market means controlling territory to pump it across. As Bill Clinton’s energy secretary mused: “It’s very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right.” China thinks the same, as do Russia, India, Pakistan and Turkey, to say nothing of less influential transit nations, or producer states that want to call the shots, from Iran to the former Soviet “Stans”.

In Europe, there are further complications. More than a quarter of its gas comes from Russia, which buys up most of Central Asia’s exports and sends them west. The most logical route is via existing pipes in Ukraine, through which 80 percent of Russian imports flow, but the politics have come out all wrong. Backed by Washington (and the protest groups it’s funded), Ukraine’s president has stuck two fingers up at Moscow, which duly scrapped subsidised gas shipments. The two nations’ ongoing fight over prices, debts and contracts has sent shivers through the coldest parts of Europe, leaving people powerless in midwinter. With little hope of a deal, neither Russia nor its customers are satisfied, and both are now planning alternative pipelines to bypass Ukraine. Yet even if all of these were built – and big ifs hover over many of them – they’d struggle to cover import demand, assuming it doesn’t collapse. Curbing it completely would ensure independence, but that seems improbable. This year’s recession-induced decline should reverse, if the economy picks up. And there’s little prospect of a wholesale switch to alternative energy any time soon. Gas is the easiest substitute for coal to curb emissions, and its liquefied form (LNG) can be tapped from multiple sources, with lower fixed costs than fixed pipes. That’s probably the biggest threat to Russia.

Seen from Asia, the pipeline picture’s more straightforward. While Europe dithers over energy policy, and its governments pursue conflicting strategies, China’s dropping tens of billions of dollars on new developments. As one Caspian policymaker puts it: “When we hear the sentence ‘this project is a strategic priority’ from the Chinese, it means construction starts tomorrow. From the EU it means the Commission will write a Green Paper.” Barring the outbreak of peace in Afghanistan, or a U.S.-Iranian love-in of pre-Revolutionary proportions (neither of which looks imminent), the Central Asian Stans can’t send their gas south onto open markets. Most goes north to Russia, but more and more will flow east, to China and India, especially if deals with the West remain elusive, and Moscow keeps trying to stymie them. Some gas will reach Europe, whether via Gazprom’s pipes or other means, but Caspian states will primarily fuel the emerging Sino-Russian “co-prosperity zone”. And it’s hard to see what America, or anyone else, can realistically do to counter this.