Today’s post comes in a lull in the writing. I’ve reached the stage of having nearly everything down but the book is by no means complete. Anyway, this is a minor landmark and means that I’m pretty much on target for my current deadline. If I don’t feel too pleased about it, I think it’s down to the weather. We keep being promised sunshine but we’ve had none in this part of the country this week. Consequently, there’s not been a lot of incentive to get out for walks.
I’ve been out in the garden picking stuff and the grass has carried on growing like ususal this August. At the back of our garden is some waste ground. Large parts of this are completely impenetrable at this time of year because of thick brambles and nettles.; the actual garden looks manicured by comparison. I’ve been out there several times picking the blackberries but a lot of them are beyond reach.
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I’ve been following developments in the Black Sea region with interest. This morning, David Miliband acquitted himself well in an interview with John Humphries. BBC interviewers have been persevering with a ‘devil’s advocate’ line of questioning which boils down to ‘do we want to provoke the Russians?’. To which the answer is presumably that the western governments are not trying to provoke Russia but are aiming for some kind of stand-off, and that requires tough talking.
The situation from the point of view of the Russian government is not looking that bright. They are having to play on some very old fashioned (and ultimately sterile) ideas, just like the 19th century tsars. In the longer term there is a strong possibility that these attitudes will conflict with the best interests of their own people. They should be building an economy that is more than just extraction industries. Russia would do better to be more inviting to foreigners and foreign businesses.
Although the crisis with Georgia has swelled very rapidly, that doesn’t mean that the West can expect the resolution of multiple difficulties that it has caused to come quickly. European leaders have plenty of hard work to do in overcoming their difficulties in achieving anything in foreign relations and the Russians may only concede that they need the rest of the world as much as we need them if they see strenuous efforts being made to reduce reliance on oil and natural gas. That will take a lot of time and determination.
In terms of economic relations with Russia, politicians and business leaders on both sides seem to be unduly complacent about the opaqueness and lack of accountability in Russian investments. Russian companies wanting to be quoted on the London Stock Exchange and large numbers of wealthy Russians living in London are not good signs. Westerners need clearer heads about just what they are getting into when they invest in Russia. When Neptune, the fund manager, launched its ‘Russia and Greater Russia’ fund a while back it looked like it was saving investors the trouble of learning what all the new countries were called. Of course, Greater Russia could have been their take on the long-term future of Georgia, Moldova, Kazakhstan and the rest; more probably they just didn’t want their investors to bother with the political realities on the ground. However, that’s just what investors need to do. After all, they don’t want to be left holding worthless paper like Russian bonds after 1917.
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Asif Zardari for President of Pakistan seems like a bad idea. Surely, having the de facto leader of the biggest party as President is bound to make the government of Pakistan more presidential. He looks like a divisive candidate and Nawaz Sharif was right to leave the coalition over these ambitions.
