The Power and the Money

Magersfontein, December 11th

  Eighty-five years and one-day ago, on December 11th, 1924, the Republic of Finland celebrated a very special anniversary.  The state and the military establishment hosted it at the Officers’ Casino Building in the Katajanokka neighborhood of Helsinki. The celebration commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Magersfontein, part of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902.

The conservative newspaper Uusi Suomi (New Finland) advertised the event on its front page, and the periodicals of the Finnish Civil Guard published articles on the conflict between the Boer republics and the British Empire.  The celebration opened with the the Finnish Naval Orchestra’s performance of “Kent gij dat volk,” the South African anthem. Among the guests of honor were Lauri Malmberg, the minister of defense, and Per Zilliacus, the chief of staff of the Civil Guard. The Finnish Civil Guard also sent a wreath tied with blue-white ribbons to South Africa, where it was laid at the monument on the battlefield of Magersfontein. 

Why did independent Finland celebrate a battle fought in a British colonial conflict in South Africa?  Simple:  Finnish volunteers had fought in the battle as soldiers of the Scandinavian Corps of the Boer forces.  The Scandinavian Corps was founded in Pretoria on September 23rd, 1899, supposedly as a testimony of loyalty felt by the Scandinavian immigrants towards the South African Republic. It included 118 men; 48 Swedes, 24 Danes, 19 Finns, 13 Norwegians and 14 other miscellaneous nationalities, mainly Germans and Dutch. In addition, three Swedish women served as nurses in a separate ambulance unit. The Scandinavians fought in the siege of Mafeking and the battles of Magersfontein and Paardeberg; of these, Magersfontein was the most significant.

After the war, a special Scandinavian monument was constructed on the battlefield. The monument consisted of four cornerstones, representing the four Nordic countries, each decorated with the Scandinavian valkyrie and national symbols of each country. The verse is from Johan Ludvig Runeberg’s March of the Pori Regiment, these days the ofificial Finnish presidential march: “On valiant men the faces of their fathers smile.”

The names of the fallen soldiers are engraved on the shield. Emil Mattsson died in Magersfontein; he’s buried in the field. The British captured Henrik Hägglöf, who died from his wounds at an infirmary near the Orange River. Johan Jakob Johansson — whose name is mistakenly written “Jakobsson” — died at the prison camp on St. Helena and is buried in grave number 18 at the Knollcombe cemetery. The name of Matts Laggnäs, another Finnish volunteer who died in captivity on St. Helena, is missing.

My very first peer-reviewed academic article concerned this very topic, and it was published in the Finnish Journal of History a few years ago. Afterwards, I was delighted to note that an Afrikaner fluent in Finnish had read my article and discussed it in his own blog. Reading my own text translated in Afrikaans was an interesting experience. The term “Boer War” was translated as Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, the “Second War for Freedom.”  The official term in the Afrikaner historiography for the wars against the British Empire in 1880-1881 and 1899-1901 were the First and Second War for Freedom, and the terms seem to still be in use.  Non-Afrikaner South Africans do not seem to use the phrase, understandably enough.

The history leaves us with three obvious questions.  What significance does the Anglo-Boer War have today, eleven decades after the war broke out?  What is the significance of the Finnish Republic’s 1924 commemoration of its citizens’ participation in that war?  And what are we to make of the fact that an event considered highly significant in 1924 has been almost forgotten in 2009?

For real, Economist, for real??

  First reaction to this:  Whoa whoa whoa whoa!  Is the Economist really castigating Catherine Ashton for belonging to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s?

Second reaction:  Are they really castigating her because, and I quote: 

“The Kremlin found CND and other ‘peace movements’ useful ways of undermining the unity of NATO, weakening the West’s defence posture and stoking anti-Americanism ... The ex-dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, an expert in Soviet penetration of the West, says, ‘the worldwide disarmament campaign in the early 1980s was covertly orchestrated from Moscow. To a substantial extent it was also funded by the Soviet bloc.’”

Third reaction:  Well, it didn’t appear in their print edition, but in a web-only column called Europe.view, so it doesn’t count.

Fourth reaction:  I’m not that old.  It counts.  Red baiting?  In 2009?  Really?

Fifth reaction:  Damn, the other columns in Europe.view are almost as crazy. 

Sixth reaction:  I’m still sick, but how often do you get to hear real funk music these days?  So I have other things to do, even though I will regret it. 

I leave you with a question:  has the rot from Lexington spread, or is this column just a one-off bit of teh crazy? 

The fall of the Soviet empire

   Kevin Drum repeats a claim that I’ve heard elsewhere:

“By 1989, the Soviet Union was so far in hock to western banks that they basically had Gorbachev by the balls.  He couldn't afford a repeat of 1956 or 1968, and when that became clear the jig was up.  Hungary went first, Berlin followed, and within a few months the Iron Curtain was on the ash heap of history.  In the end, it was hard currency, not ICBMs, that brought down the empire.”

 
I don’t understand this claim.  There are two premises behind it which do not make sense to me.  The first is that Western creditors would care if the Soviet Union cracked down in eastern Europe.  Why would they?  The only reason that I can think of would be if they believed that a crackdown made it more likely that Warsaw Pact regimes would default on their debts.  But why would a Soviet crackdown make default more likely? 

In fact, there seems to be some circular reasoning involved regarding Soviet debt.  The USSR had a reasonable debt burden until April 1989, when perestroika allowed Soviet enterprises to borrow in hard currency.  As a result, debt exploded.  But Moscow stopped taking Budapest’s calls in March!  The timing is off.

In 1990, the collapse of Comecon led to a collapse of Soviet trade with eastern Europe, worsening the problem.  Except ... if the tanks had rolled, then Comecon would not have collapsed.  See here and here for contemporary discussions of the debt problem. 

Nor do I buy the possibility that creditors would have moral qualms.  They didn’t care about Georgia last year; would they really have cared about Hungary in 1989? 

But let us grant that creditors might have been upset at a crackdown.  Violence in Eastern Europe might have been unsettling, I can imagine that.  Only that brings us to the second premise of the “bankers killed Communism” argument, which is that western creditors held some sort of special leverage over the Soviet Union. 

Considering the frequency of sovereign default, and the willingness to restart lending afterwards, I have trouble understanding what exactly that leverage would be.  Say the Warsaw Pact countries defaulted in 1990.  Why would regimes capable of using tanks against their own people have found the consequences so unpalatable?  Perhaps they would fear economic sanctions ... but that gets us to a version of an argument in which Western governments killed Communism by their implied economic threats, not one in which bankers did it.

Truth be told, I tend to think that neither creditors nor Western governments had all that much to do with the fall of the Wall.  (I did not always believe the latter, as some readers of this blog can attest.)  But I could easily be wrong.  I have, after all, heard the “bankers did it” story elsewhere. Is there a more sophisticated version that addresses my concerns?

Back to Angola

  The Portuguese empire collapsed in Africa under the worst possible conditions.  After 15 years of bloody conflict, a military coup in Lisbon replaced the existing government with one that wanted to get the hell out of Africa yesterday.  The result was a chaotic flight of a half-million Portuguese settlers back to the metropole.  Over the subsequent decades, Portugal attracted some immigration from its former colonies, but other the Cape Verde (a country that almost certainly would have preferred to remain united with the metropole) it was never great.  As of 2007, only 33,000 Angolans lived in Portugal.  The reasons were simple.  First, it cost a whole lot of money to get to Portugal from Angola, and most Angolans were poor and getting poorer.  Second, Portugal shut the door to the citizens of its former colonies.  Third, Portugal itself wasn’t exactly a glowing destination for immigrants. 

But now it looks like the Portuguese are headed to Angola.  And not in small numbers, either.  Something like 17,000 people moved to Angola in 2006, followed by 24,000 in both 2007 and 2008.  So far this year they’re moving at an annual rate of 31,000.  Of course, 31,000 people is only 0.3% of Portugal’s population and 0.2½% of Angola’s, but still.   

The question is whether they’ll stay.  I tend to doubt it.  First, while Angola’s economy is exploding, it is pretty much all due to oil.  Most of the growth pulling in Portuguese expats (and Portuguese capital) is construction-driven and paid for out of government revenues.  To be frank, I would bet that the boom will last for a while, but the challenge for Angola is making the growth permanent.  Not that Gabon is a terrible outcome, but turning into Gabon is something that happens once, after which the foreigners who came in to help build stuff turn around and go home. 

Second, some of the movement is driven by a crappy economy in Portugal.  That could also turn around.

Finally, it isn’t all clear that Angola will be that welcoming.  Expats from the developed world go to all sorts of places.  Relatively few of them settle down and raise families outside their home, and even then mostly in other developed countries.  (Right, Doug?)  The French in Gabon, for example, are clearly an expat community and not part of the local fabric.  In Côte d’Ivoire they’ve mostly gone home.

So while this is a neat story, I’ll bet that it won't have much lasting effect on Angola.  I would like to be wrong.  Thoughts?

Yglesias oversimplifies on the euro

  Matt Yglesias writes, “If anything euro membership seems harmful in the present circumstances. A fully independent small open economy like Ireland would have seen a swift and massive devaluation of its currency which would have reduced the need for a rise in unemployment.”

 
Unpack that statement.  What would have happened to a country like Ireland last year on a floating exchange rate?  A massive plunge in the currency.  What would that do?

1. Wreck the balance sheet of anyone who had borrowed in a foreign currency.
2. Caused large-scale bank failures.  (See #1 above.)
3. Fed inflationary fires.  Not always a bad thing, of course, but disruptive, and worse the smaller the economy.
4. Reduced real wages.  (See #3 above.)

Those things are not good.  What would be good?  More competitive exports.  Problem is, the recent crisis occured in the context of a worldwide recession and a worldwide crash in the demand for manufactured goods.  Sure, a large-scale depreciation would affect the demand for Irish exports on the margin, but there is not a whole lot of reason to believe that said increase would be large.  In fact, given as Irish firms aimed at the domestic market use lots of imported inputs, it isn't clear that the negative effect on those firms might outweigh the positive effect on more export-oriented ones.   

This is not to claim that I know whether the euro was good or bad for Ireland.  Nor is it to claim that joining a larger monetary union is everywhere a good thing for peripheral small economies.  It is to  claim that Matt really doesn't have any grounds to make the strong statement in the converse.

Too bad Edward Hugh can't be bothered to come around here ... hint hint.

Guest post #6: War and Remembrance

  These images show the medal that the Russian army minted to commemorate the 1831 conquest of Warsaw. You can occasionally still find these in Finnish antique shops; this one was provided courtesy of Jani Tiainen’s Finnmedals in Helsinki. 

Before we leave behind the Finnish soldiers who fought on behalf of Russia in Poland back in 1831, there are a few questions left to be answered.  What were the consequences of the war for Finland? What were its effects on Poland?  In the short term, the Polish campaign of 1831 undoubtedly strengthened the Grand-Duchy of Finland. In the context of the politically incendiary situation in 1830-1831, the Finnish Guard’s participation in the Polish campaign played an important role in securing Imperial favor for the Grand-Duchy’s autonomous status. At a  time of crisis, Finland demonstrated to the Russian Empire that (unlike Poland) she could be trusted.

For the Finnish officers who had distinguished themselves on the front, the campaign marked the beginning of some splendid careers. Adolf Aminoff, the young lieutenant from the painting in the fourth part of the story, rose to the rank of General of Infantry and ended his career as an adjutant of Alexander III. Henrik Lyra, whom the Poles captured at Długosiodło, became a General Major. The young Casimir von Kothen became the adjutant for Governor-General Aleksandr Sergeyevich Menshikov, and later the governor of the province of Viipuri. And finally, Colonel Ramsay, the commander of the Guard, became General of Infantry and a member of the Russian Imperial War Council.  In short, over the decades preceding the Crimean War, the government of the Grand-Duchy of Finland was in the hands of officers who had earned their ranks on the battlefields of Poland.

For the common people of the Grand-Duchy, the Guard’s campaign of the became the first concrete example of a developing Finnish patriotism that put love for the Finnish fatherland and loyalty towards the Russian Emperor into one and the same breath with no sense of contradiction. A belief in the virtues of the Finnish soldier instilled a special sense of devotion and enthusiasm, celebrated in popular broadside ballads that proclaimed the willingness of the younger generations to follow the example of their predecessors and take up arms under the banner of the Finnish Guard in defense of Finland and the Empire:

Canadian policy on captured pirates: let ‘em go. ¿¿De veras??

  As our few readers know, we've been covering piracy for some time on this blog.  Our first post on the topic, in fact, took on the myth that European navies refused to enforce the law against pirates.  Only now Robert Farley tells us that the Canadian and Dutch navies went ahead, captured pirates, and released them.  Er?

Well, NATO is not the problem.  It is true that NATO, which is not a sovereign state, does not have arrest powers.  But the national navies operating under NATO command do have such powers.  Now, I'd be happy with giving an international organization arrest powers, but I can see why some politicians might be reluctant to take that step.  That said, the truth is that not only do national militaries have the power to arrest pirates on the high seas, since December they've had the ability to do the same thing anywhere in Somali territory, sea or land.

So if this and this story are correct, something isn't working.  In the Dutch case, it seems to have been a low-level screw-up.  Ships under European command have standing orders to turn captured pirates over to Kenya for prosecution and punishment; ships under NATO do not.  There was a deputy from the justice ministry on board the Dutch ship (for precisely this reason), but whoever it was decided to let the pirates go.  Parliament appears to be annoyed.  At some point, I suppose, we'll find out who made the decision and why.  We might even find that circumstances made it a wise choice.  But it isn't Dutch policy, and it seems to be causing the government some headaches at home.

Canada seems to have a deeper problem.  The Globe and Mail has deeply misinformed its readers by reporting, contrary to fact, that “Canadian sailors, like their NATO allies, lack the authority to make arrests in international waters.”  Of course, the Globe and Mail is parroting what seems to be Ottawa's official line.  After all, the Prime Minister said in Port-of-Spain that the Winnipeg did the right thing by releasing the pirates.  “Those were the appropriate measures under the circumstances.”  Elsewhere, a Canadian admiral alluded to mysterious legal difficulties.  “There's the rule of law that needs to be applied, so we're not currently regularly detaining them, no. There are all kinds of challenges with that.” 

Now, I can understand why a country would fear becoming a dumping ground for pirates ... but it isn't as though hundreds or thousands of them are being captured every year.  Nor is organizing a piracy trial under normal criminal rules all that difficult.  (And they have, by definition, been caught red-handed.) 

So, Canadian readers, I ask you, what the hell?

Guest post #5: The Home Front on the edge of Empire

  In Finland, as we saw yesterday, the participation of local soldiers in the campaign against Poland ignited patriotic sentiments, at least among those who had served in combat:  “May our banner call the sons of Finland to perform the highest civic virtues still in the future, to fulfill their obligations and loyalty towards their sovereign.” 

Elsewhere in Europe, the bloody suppression of the November Insurrection aroused, well, different feelings. The Polish independence struggle became an immediate cause célèbre for European liberals. Casimir Delavigne, for example, celebrated the old Napoleonic brotherhood in arms between France and Poland in his exhilarating song La Varsovienne.  In the German-speaking countries, August von Platen’s 1831 sonet collection Polenlieder topped what later generations would call the charts.  

West European sympathy towards Poland, however, hardened Russian attitudes; even the Russian intelligentsia abandoned its criticism of the Tsarist régime and supported Imperial policy in Poland. The anti-European backlash culminated in Aleksandr Pushkin’s legendary (if somewhat unsubtlely-titled) poem, “To the Slanderers of Russia.”  Pushkin’s diatribe, in particular, should be familiar to a modern reader. 

(Uh, Jussi, you give us too much credit.  I’ve never heard of any of the works of music or literature that you’ve cited in here.  Then again, I hope nobody criticizes people in 2145 for their ignorance of, say, “Eve of Destruction” or “Bad Moon Rising.” Right?  Or am I excusing my ignornance?  —ed.) 

Russian officials still reference “To the Slanderers of Russia” in times of conflict.  During the 1999 Kosovo War, for example, the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, cited the poem in order to give a stern warning to the NATO countries.  Eight years later, in 2007, the Russians once again used the poem for propaganda purposes during the Bronze Warrior crisis between Estonia and Russia. 

Guest post #4: Heroes of the Empire

  The work of art that you see below is a painting by Robert Wilhelm Ekman, a pioneer of early national romantic art in Finland. Ekman is perhaps best remembered for his early attempts at the illustration of Kalevala, but this work, finished in 1848, invokes the memory of the Finnish soldiers who had fought and died in Poland seventeen years before. You won’t find this work on display in any museum; it is part of a private collection, and the owner prefers to keep it that way.

The painting depicts the young lieutenant Adolf Aminoff wounded on the ramparts of Tykocin on May 21st 1831. As you can see, the painting captures two ideals.  First, an officer who leads his men from the front, even at the risk of his own personal safety.  Second, his soldiers, equally ready to risk their lives by rushing to the aid of their wounded comrade. During the following decades, national romanticism claimed these universal ideals as quintessentially Finnish military virtues.  Emphasizing the importance of solidarity and camaraderie is always a natural choice.  After all, it doesn’t really matter what you’re theoretically fighting for, because putting your life on the line for your comrade is always a virtue.  

Greece in recession

  The Greek economy is slowing, but it is not in recession.  Yet Athens looks like a city in the midst of a severe recession. 

Not in this picture, of course.  This picture is lovely.  Albeit not really because of Athens.

But on the drive in from the airport, you pass myriad empty storefronts, abandoned buildings, and what appear to be stopped construction sites.  

Downtown, you see much of the same.  Even brand-new construction looks empty.  When the storefronts are filled, you can spot tell-tale signs of empty offices.  And then there's the petty vandalism that haunts downtown:  graffiti on private structures, cracked windows, run-down buildings.  All the telltale signs of property owners who have decided for whatever reason that proper maintenance does not pay a sufficiently high return.  

If it had just been the central city, we would have concluded that Athens suffers from a European version of the American disease.  Or that it was just the after-effect of the December riots.  The thing is, the signs of economic distress are worse in the suburbs.  It honestly looks like someplace that suffered from a real estate bubble that has now collapsed. 

Of course, the central city doesn't look so good either.  It looks like someplace where rioters might indeed attack businesses with petrol bombs. 

That said, downtown Athens is not out-of-control the way much of New York City was in the 1970s and 1980s.  For example, when we got off the bus, the first thing that greeted us was a police raid against African street merchants selling counterfeit luggage.  Yet the prevalence of graffiti also suggests that the police (and the public) is fairly lax about enforcing standards; it's not something you see in Boston or London or Paris, not to the same extent, and not on private property.  (Although, once again, much of New York's outer boroughs looked like this back in the 1980s.) 

In other words, while the Greek economy might not yet officially be in recession, our careful powers of observation lead us to predict that the numbers are going to get much worse very quickly, as the statisticians catch up with reality.

So what's happening?  And what is to be done?

¡Viva ... uh ... Texaco?

  A while ago, insecure Americans got themselves all worked into a stupid dither about a Mexican vodka ad.  Now, in a sign of great maturity, Mexicans are refusing to get worked up about a European hamburger ad for something called the “Texican” that Burger King has run in the United Kingdom and the madre patria. 

Burger King is going to pull the ad anyway, just like Absolut pulled its.  You be the judge.

Hat tip:  Ganchoblog.

Observatorio Argentino 10: French lawyers declare war!

  It seems as though some French lawyers have decided to do a Rogers on the Argentine Republic. 

A few years ago, in 2005, Argentina repudiated a big chunk of its foreign debts.  Since then, the jilted bondholders have been trying to get it back.  On April 7th, the famous NML-Elliott announced that their lawyers managed to get a French bailiff to put a stay on all Argentine accounts in the country.   “The frozen assets in France are not diplomatic, and therefore are not protected by sovereign immunity,” said an Elliott spokesperson. 

Well, Buenos Aires wasn't going to take this lying down.  Elliott had already tied up funds held in France by the Banco Hipotécario and Banco Central.  The Argentine embassador to France, Luis Ureta, complained to the French foreign ministry.  The French diplomats were not happy to hear the news.  “On Monday night, a bucket of cold water landed on the heads of the diplomats at the Latin American Desk of the French foreign ministry,” was how La Nación described it.  The Argentines asked France to unfreeze the accounts “by any means necessary.”  (Argentines are not Filipinos:  I don't think the phrasing was deliberate.)

The French response?  Well ... it was rather American, actually.  A spokesman expressed support for the Argentine position, and then told the Argentine government that if they didn't like it, it was up to them to appeal.  In the interim, the Argentine embassador is paying for burnt-out light bulbs and the like out of his own pocket.  I suppose the embassy employees are getting paid back in Argentina and withdrawing their salaries out of ATMs, or some such.  The account itself is only a million euros or so, but man is it a pain to have to run a big office without any access to, you know, modern finance. (Although many Argentines have some recent experience of doing exactly that.)

Anyway, it's a bit of mess.  Argentina has already lost access to several hundred million dollars worth of bank accounts and all of the nationalized pension funds held abroad.  About the only bright light in the legal firmament is that a New York judge just declared that the recently-nationalized Aerolineas Argentinas is “not an alter ego or agent of the Republic, and the recognition of Aerolíneas’s independent status won't serve as a fraud or injustice against the Republic’s creditors.”  So that's one bright spot.  

In other news, I've added an “empire” tag to this blog.  I'm still not sure what I mean by it, but once I figure that out, I'll try to reclassify past posts appropriately.  Suggestions?

Oh, and go listen to Will.  I need help with this stuff!

Guest post #3: Battle for the Empire

  The soldiers of the Finnish Guard joined the other units of the Russian Imperial Life-Guard in Białystok on April 11th, 1831. By this time, the Polish-Russian war had been raging for two months, and the insurrection was spreading, with violence and mayhem escalating on daily basis. On the same day as the Finnish soldiers listened Colonel Ramsay’s lecture on the Russian War Articles and the letters of protection issued to the Polish civilian population, one Russian cossack regiment massacred civilians in the small Lithuanian village of Oszmiana. The event was subsequently commemorated in Adam Mickiewicz’s epic poems.  

The Polish-Russian war was fought on two fronts.  In the south, on the eastern side of the Vistula, the main 100,000-man Russian army (under a Baltic German field-marshal, Hans Karl Friedrich Anton von Diebitsch) advanced directly towards Warsaw.  Meanwhile, in the north, Grand-Duke Mikhail Pavlovich’s units of the Russian Imperial Life-Guard (the Finnish Battalion included) approached the Polish capital from the northeast, through the dismal woodlands between the Narew and Bug rivers in Mazovia. You can get a rough view of the surroundings from the map.   (Click on it for a larger image in a new window.)

Diebitsch’s army crossed the frontier on February 5th, fully prepared to crush the Polish rebellion. Resistance, however, proved to be a good deal tougher than anticipated; as mentioned before, the Congress Kingdom had a large, professional standing army, which now proved its mettle. On February 25th, the Poles halted the Russian advance in the bloody battle of Grochów.  The Poles then began a counteroffensive. Lieutenant-General Ignacy Prądzyński, the Polish chief of staff, defeated the Russians at Dębe Wielkie on March 31st, and again at Iganie on April 10th. 

But wars, like baseball games, aren’t over until they’re over. 

Guest post #2: The Guardsmen of the Empire

   We continue the story from December 14th, 1830, when the Finnish Guard received its mobilization orders and started to prepare for a long and arduous journey to the Polish battlefields, on behalf of the Emperor and the Fatherland. [The “Fatherland” would be Finland, not the Russian Empire, right? In our hemisphere, we’re not used to those distinctions, except maybe the Canadians.  And the West Indians. And the Puerto Ricans.  And the Colombians.  And … oh, never mind.   —ed.]  However, before we describe the Finnish participation in the suppression of the Polish independence struggle in any further detail, it’s perhaps best to describe those men who ended up serving as tools of the Imperial Russian war machine in the said campaign. What kind of a unit was the Finnish Guard, and what do we know of its officers and soldiers?   

Guest post #1: Empires and nationalities

  Hello, everyone. For those who don’t know me, and for those who are wondering why I’m posting here, it’s perhaps best to start with some details.  [No pix of you with a dangling cigarette and sunglasses? —ed.]

Who am I? My full name is Jussi Olavi Jalonen. I’m a single man on my thirties, and after a long residence in the city of Tampere, I now live on the Western Seaboard of Finland. Why am I posting here? Well, because Noel suggested it. I’ve done all sorts of things for living, but these days I’m basically a free-lance researcher and writer. Guest posts on a high-quality weblog are just as good a way to kill time as anything else.  [We’re high quality! —ed.] 

I write about history. As said, I’m single, but Clio is a very demanding mistress. [My wife is very understanding of that, and it's one of the many reasons I love her. —ed.]  As for my field of study, you could probably say that I’m more interested in Power than Money.  [One often begats the other. —ed.]  I specialize in military history, in a very broad sense. Two months ago, an article that I wrote on the interned Polish soldiers in Finland in 1940-41 appeared in a publication of the Finnish National Archives, and just recently, Studia Historica Septentrionalia published another article that I wrote on the theme of comradeship-in-arms. In particular, however, I’m interested in soldiers who have, for one reason or another, ended up serving in the military establishments of foreign powers — usually, in the service of their Imperial master, occasionally in the service of its enemy, or sometimes even in conflicts where there appears to be no vested national or ideological interest whatsoever. I’ve written articles on the Finnish volunteers in the Boer War, Finnish volunteers in the Waffen-SS, and also a biography of jäger colonel Eino Polón, Knight of the Mannerheim Cross. For those who don’t know, the term “jäger” refers to the Finnish independence activists and volunteers who served in the Imperial German Army against Tsarist Russia in 1915-17.

One particular thing that I find fascinating is the historical contrast between Finland and Poland in their relations towards Russia; as the most recent example, you may remember that during the South Ossetian war last August, Poland sided openly with Georgia, while Finland, as the head of the OSCE, attempted to mediate the conflict and maintain communications with Russia. These contrasts between Finland and Poland have very deep roots. Consider the Finnish Guard’s participation in the 1831 Polish campaign. (Last year, I wrote an article on this topic for the Polish weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.) 

But what was this so-called “Finnish Guard?”  What exactly happened in Poland in 1831?  And how did it create such long-standing differences between the two border countries?

A modest proposal

  I have really got to start cross-posting on AFOE.  They've given me permission; I just don't feel like my Europe stuff lives up to their standards.

Anyway, the Economist had an interesting column about Iceland and the European Union.  The conventional wisdom is that Iceland would like the euro.  But there are political difficulties.

So why not associate with the United States?  I don't mean become a state, that would be stupid.  Icelanders aren't Americans, and truth be told, they don't seem real likely to become Americans.  They don't listen to reggaetón or country, they don't build malls, they don't put neon-tubing on the underbodies of their cars or shoot guns for fun.  (Cue Jussi telling me that I'm a nationalist.  I am coming around to his point of view.  That is not a good thing.)  But what about becoming a Commonwealth, like Puerto Rico or the Northern Marianas?  They'd have to give up membership in the European Economic Area, but what has that ever gotten them?  They wouldn't have to give up membership in all those Nordic agreements, although they would have to allow Americans to become Icelandic citizens after one-year residency, same as Puerto Rico does. 

So what would this magnanimous move cost the American taxpayer?  Nothing!  Icelanders over age-65 wouldn't qualify for social security under current law; they haven't paid anything in.  But let's say the U.S. waived that, and paid Icelandic pensioners the minimum benefit, just to be nice.  What would be the cost?

A back-of-the-envelope calculation:

Data I'd like to have

  Where can I find time series on:

1. Gazprom's revenue, by market;
2. Russia's transit fee revenue, by originating market;
3. The average wholesale price per standardized unit for Russian gas and other gas, by market.

Get me that data, and I might be able to make some sense out of Russian policy.  I will say that current events make me think that Russia doesn't want to snarfle off bits of Ukraine.  You can extract a lot more surplus out of a neighboring vassal than you can out of your own citizens.

The resource curse doesn't exist, and please stop talking about it

  My friend Will hopes that oil prices stay low, in order to insure that the Russian Federation remains behaved.

My response:  Please get the stupid, and I mean truly monumentally stupid, idea of the resource curse out of your heads?  It's a well-accepted idea, but it's just plain wrong.  No matter what Tom Friedman writes about it.

Stephen Haber and Victor Menaldo have a paper coming out that shows that there is no, squat, zero, ningún relationship between democracy and oil resources.  Haber and ... uh ... me ... will eventually have a paper showing the same thing for civil war. 

But hell, maybe Russia is different.  So my question for you all is simple.  Why would an authoritarian government, no, why would a dictatorship give up power because its export revenues went down?  That makes no bloody sense.  It could default on foreign debtors.  It could blame foreigners for any crisis.  It could shoot dissidents, you know, the way Panama did under Noriega. 

Is there any reason to believe that a fat Russia would be more democratic and less expansionist than a lean Russia?  No.  F@&k no.  There isn't any reason to believe the opposite either, of course ... but by God do I wish that people would stop fooling themselves.  Resource money has fueled democratic transitions and dictatorial takeovers, foreign expansion and foreign engagement.  Those who know Russia better will be able to predict that country's idiosyncratic political reaction to declining export revenues ... but why any of the information in this story, about governments trying to crack down on the bearers of bad news, would make an observer hope for sustained bad news is beyond me. 

Ah, here comes my first AFOE cross-post.  But your reactions first.  At least until I can find the damned keys to that blog.

L’énergie atomique

  The Economist has an interesting article on French nuclear energy.  You read about it here first.  Be sure to check out the comments if you click the link. 

I have a terrible feeling that the emerging potential depression has changed the economics of nuclear power, such as they were.  First, the cost of traditional energy sources has plunged along with the overall demand for energy.  (I don't think today's low prices will outlast the downturn, but the fact remains.)  Second, the credit markets are pretty messed up at the moment.  How would you finance a project based on the idea that energy prices will rise in the long term?  In the long term, everyone is bankrupt.  Third, nuclear power plants as they are currently designed seem to be pretty bad as a Keynesian fiscal demand boost.  The lead times are far too long; it'd be years before a project leads to a dime of actual purchases.  That means that governments will be ill-advised to include subsidies to nuclear power in the capital projects that they are going to undertake over the next few years. 

Still the energy of the future.  Perhaps the article's relative optimism will prove justified.  I hope so, but it isn't how I'd bet. 

Imperialism can really pay

So there's Panama.  Well, what about Suez?

The Suez Canal started under very different political conditions, inasmuch as the Egyptian government was on-board with the project.  So on board, in fact, that it not only put in 45 percent of the initial capital (£1.5 million), it promised the Compagnie de Suez the free use of forced labor to build the thing. 

That wasn't nada.  In 2007 pound sterling, the Egyptians put in £149 million.  But as I've mentioned elsewhere, the world was poorer then:  relative to the growth of the British economy since then, that would be equivalent of plonking in £4.3 billion today.  That would be a lot of scratch for the current Egyptian government; it was an amazing amount of scratch for 1854's. 

So far, so non-imperialistic.  Awful for the poor people who had to live under Cairo's despotism, but that'd be like blaming Russia for the shortcomings of the Kazakh government.  (Wait ... no, I'll leave that to those who know more.)

The story gets better, though.  It's an amazing bit of imperial skullduggery ... and perhaps the coolest thing about it is that it could easily happen today.  I mean, it's not like world powers scarf off strategic parts of nearby states for strategic gain these days.

So, with the caveat that what I'm about to tell you is pieced together from primary sources and could well be wrong, the story is below.

Who cares about Georgia? Not the markets.

There has been a lot of talk recently about how the markets are punishing the Russian Federation for its actions in Georgia.  Dan Drezner, for example, writes:  “An estimated $21 billion left Russia last month, and the RTS Index has declined by more than seven percent this month ... this is a pretty high price to Russia to pay for creating two unrecognized buffer states.” 

It isn't just political scientists.  Investors also believe that the markets punish aggressors on their own.

I am not so sure.  No, let me be stronger.  I am almost positive that Dan Drezner is wrong about the economic damage that Russia is taking from its actions, even if I agree with his assessment of Russia’s weak political position. 

Markets do not punish successful aggressors.  Other countries can impose sanctions that punish aggressors, and that will hurt the markets.  That logic, however, runs exactly the other way from the sanguine belief that our brave new world of globalized markets contains automatic mechanisms that contain interstate war.

This chart shows the evolution of four different Russian equity indices.  The RTS-1 that Dan referred to in his post is in dark red.  The date that the Georgians started the war (August 8th) is represented by the bright red vertical bar.

Russian indices were in decline well before the war started.  If anything has happened since, it is that the decline has slowed.  This is not consistent with the hypothesis that the markets are punishing Russia for the war.

Below the fold is a closer look at the same data.  The closer look makes it even clearer that the markets are not punishing Russia for invading and carving off chunks of Georgia.

WTF moment

Slate is running a travelog about an American's trip through Germany's “eco-empire.”  I have to say that TPTM got there first.

Anyway, as I was reading it, I came across two moments that startled me.  The first was when our protagonist's Dutch-Bolivian travelling companion praised Mein Kampf.  This doesn't surprise me at all from the Bolivian side.  Mexicans aren't Bolivians, but I've heard middle class Mexicans say “At least he organized the youth,” in praise of Hitler, and I've seen young female middle class Mexicans reading and speaking well of Mein Kampf in upscale bars.  But ... the woman in the Slate piece was half-Dutch, and the author gave the impression that she had been raised in the Netherlands.  So either I'm in denial about Dutch culture, or the author should have specified that his female friend was much more Bolivian than Dutch.

But that wasn't the WTF moment.  The WTF moment came here:

It was time to leave Bremen. Mymza had to get back to Amsterdam, and I was going to head deeper into Germany in a hybrid. We arrived at the Eurocar rental agency, and the attendant said, “Guten Morgen. Le puedo ayudar with something, s'il vous plaît?”

I knew this E.U. custom: Jam all your languages into a sentence and let the other person answer according to their preference.

I have never come across this.  Now, admittedly, most of my E.U. experience has been in the Romance zone, which may be different.  But is this really an E.U. custom?  Information wanted, please. 

Doug across Africa, but first Brussels

This post goes out to my friend Doug Muir, over at HDTD.  Doug is going to Burundi.  Burundi, unlike neighboring Rwanda, is still at risk of relapsing into violence, although I wouldn't want to exaggerate it.  Doug writes, “I don't know if Burundi is the sort of place that stimulates blogging,” which I don't understand, and “nor whether the work will allow much time for it,” which I most certainly do.  Anyway, here's a vote for some reportage on what the situation looks like on the ground. 

Before that, he is going to Brussels.  Brussels is interesting.  The two main train stations are strangely chaotic, a throwback to the 1980s in New York.  The smaller one smells of vomit and has a population of rather hostile-looking teenage runaways.  But the architecture is pleasant. 

The larger one, Midi, closely resembles Penn Station in New York, save that it's rare to have to break up a screaming match between a dude in a leather jacket and a tall slender woman in Penn Station these days.  The strange thing, to an American, was the lack of reaction.  I ran towards the guy yelling, "Llame seguridad!" but an Algerian and a British dude (both of whom seemed to work in the bar) got there first and grabbed him, telling him ... something.  Meanwhile, all these other people stood around and watched.  Ignore it completely, that I understand, jump in, that I understand, but gawk?  A little odd.

I don't suppose that this will be obvious to people who don't know me, but I like the above kind of thing.  At least now that my city of birth no longer has it.  Brussels is a real city, and I very much like the place.  Quite a bit. 

Outside Midi is an immigrant neighborhood well worth visiting.  More below the fold.

Volando el avión el la madre patria

We managed to travel from Barcelona to Sevilla and back without showing any identification at all.  Travelling from Brussels to Berlin wasn't quite so easy, but the security check could best be called perfunctory.  Even returning to the U.S. of A. from Heathrow wasn't that bad ... it's amazing what a difference not needing to take out your laptop or remove your shoes will make.

I'm far from the first person to complain about airport security theater.  I'm certainly not the first person to point out that most of the measures don't seem to make flying any safer.  Hell, I'm not even the first person to point out that the TSA blog manages to consistently undercut it's own objection to the idea that most of the measures are just for show.  (Love the badges and blue uniforms!  Of course, that doesn't mean that the TSA people have police powers, but it sure makes it look like they do.  But it ain't theater, no.) 

I will, however, put in a brief for the defense.  Given that so many people have an irrational fear of flying, there may in fact be an economic return to security theater.  After all, if it makes people feel safer, they may be more likely to fly.  In theory, the return should even be calculable.

Has anyone tried to calculate it?

Piratas atacan la madre patria

Newsflash:   pirates just captured a Spanish fishing boat off the coast of Somalia.  A Spanish frigate has been dispatched from the Red Sea and Madrid has requested assistance from NATO countries with a naval presence in the area. 

Considering as I just posted about pirates, I figured that it'd be remiss not to mention that the French raid doesn't seem to had an immediate deterrent effect.  Not that there's anything surprising about that.

Pirates!

In a scene of most superior uber-cool, the French military arrested the Somali pirates who’d captured a cruise vessel returning from the Seychelles on April 4th. 

So, of course, the New York Times would take the opportunity to publish an op-ed blaming namby-pamby British cupcakes for failing to enforce international law by arresting Somali pirates.  Why did the author claim that the Brits were wussing out? Because they were all worried that these scurrilous lawbreakers might claim asylum if they were brought back to the U.K.  Worse yet, the Somali government might violate their human rights if they were turned over to Mogadishu.   

“The British attitude has come a long way since the days when pirates were chained to pilings at Wapping and left there until the tidal water of the Thames ebbed and flowed over the bodies three times. So much for Britannia ruling the waves.”

Sounds good, right?  Fits a whole narrative of European decline, although, well, the part about French military prowess doesn’t quite fit.   

Too bad it’s all complete crapola.  Details below the fold.

Sabiduría del occidente para los griegos

Doug recently wrote in A Fistful of Euros, “The Macedonia name issue is so stupid that it’s almost physically painful to write about it.”  I have to agree.  I made the mistake of scrolling down the comments thread.  Jee-sus.

Viewed from the extranjero vecino, the whole thing is incomprehensible.  Let me recap.  A smaller weaker country on the northern border of another has the same name as a province of the latter.  The larger stronger country fears that as long as its neighbor claims that name, it might also claim the province.  How the whole smaller-weaker versus stronger-larger thing would be overcome is left unexplained.

Somebody from the Spanish-speaking part of this hemisphere needs to take a Greek minister aside at a U.N. meeting and say something like:  “Listen, buddy, I understand your problem with northern neighbors and names.  We have a larger stronger northern neighbor that claims our entire continent in its name.  And, you know, periodically invades.  Like, recently, not umpty-scrump centuries ago.  But you don’t see us making a public fuss about it, so will you get over yourself already?”

Conversely, they could just go with Alta and Baja Macedonia.  Don’t even translate “Alta” and “Baja,” just transliterate ‘em.  I’m sure they sound fine in Greek, exotic like.  Be good for tourism. 

Doug, can it really be about the name?