Results tagged “africa”

A few days ago, the CEO of the Italian energy group Eni told everybody he felt calm and "serene" with regard to Gazprom's decision to cut off all gas flowing through the Ukraine, leaving half a dozen countries freezing.  Naturally, Paolo Scaroni explained, Italy started to diversify its supply sources after the first cutoff in 2006 from places such as North Africa (Eni owns 98% of Italy's natural gas storage facilities).

However what the Italians failed to mention is that the Russians have already pre-empted the North African gas market - going so far as to develop cooperation agreements with both Algeria and Libya, and are even proposing to build a mega-pipeline up to Europe all the way from Nigeria. It seems that you aren't going to escape the grip of Gazprom no matter where you look.

One reason why Eni might want to diminish fears about Gazprom is because they have gotten so deep into bed with the company, and are relying on their joint venture with the Russian state firm in order to further penetrate Libya - which is about to receive its first American ambassador in some 36 years.  According to a story in the Washington Times, the Americans don't like it one bit that Italy is working so hard to help Russia control Libyan gas exports to Europe through their asset swap deal (which could put the pipelines to the continent under Russian control), as it reflects a decrease in competition and ever more political influence for Moscow over Europe.

The French daily newspaper Le Monde has published a profile of Robert Amsterdam.  The original article can be viewed online here - below is an English translation.

Le Monde, Portrait, January 8, 2009

Robert Amsterdam, Lawyer without bars
By Piotr Smolar

Since 2003, the Canadian business lawyer has been defending Mikhail Khodorkovsy, former CEO of Yukos, the Russian Oil Group. In the name of efficiency, he spends most of his time out of the court mobilizing his networks.

One must be cheeky to declare oneself 'communist' at the age of 12. Especially, when, as a lawyer, one specializes in defending big industrial groups against state interests. For Robert Amsterdam, this is the story of his life. He is audacious, hyperactive, he has no complex. He thinks fast and speaks even faster, some "f" words slip off his tongue from time to time when he feels at ease, just as if the word was the label of a true New Yorker.

I don't often link over to the mainstream blogs, but we do regularly read what may be a surprising diversity of them.  This one comes from Matthew Yglesias (on the situation in Gaza) which I thought was insightful.

For my part, I think having supported the Iraq invasion is very much worth regretting and over the past five years I've changed a lot of my thinking about national security policy and war and peace in general. I was skeptical of the merits of Israel's attack on Lebanon, skeptical about Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia, skeptical about Georgia's attack on South Ossetia, and skeptical about Russia's furious counter-attack on Georgia. Long story short, I'm strongly inclined to believe that political actors are much too eager to believe that the aggressive use of military force will accomplish their objectives, and also inclined to believe that political actors are much too eager to believe that bloodshed is morally justifiable.

Perhaps the same could be said about Russia's eagerness to believe that the cutting off of the energy supply to Europe will also be just as effective in accomplishing their goals.  It has worked to perfection so far.

The death of long-time conservative scholar Samuel Huntington has kicked off a lively discussion in various quarters on his legacy, his ideas, and his enduring argument - made much more popular after 9/11 - that the fundamental source of conflict in global politics will not be ideological or even economic, but rather cultural.  Later on we of course had his anti-immigration writings which I prefer to ignore.  However, I thought that Francis Fukuyama's respectful piece was rather thought provoking in terms of viewing Huntington's ideas in light of what has occurred in Russia over the past number of years.  Culturally, the disputes with the Georgians, Ukrainians, and Baltics aren't very convincing of the clash of civilizations, but on the other hand, Huntington's warnings that a rush to adopt liberal political and economic models could result in illiberal authoritarianism - a bullseye for Russia.

While I fully appreciate the power and durability of culture, and the way that modern liberal democracy was rooted in Christian cultural values, it has always seemed to me that culture was more useful in explaining the provenance than the durability of democracy as a political system. Sam, in my view, underrated the universalism of the appeal of living in modern, free societies with accountable governments. His argument rests heavily on the view that modernization and Westernization are two completely separate processes, something which I rather doubt. The gloomy picture he paints of a world riven by cultural conflict is one favored by the Islamists and Russian nationalists, but is less helpful in explaining contemporary China or India, or indeed in explaining the motives of people in the Muslim world or Russia who are not Islamists or nationalists. Nation-states and not civilizations remain the primary actors in world politics, and they are motivated by a host of interests and incentives that often override inherited cultural predispositions.

Last week, China unceremoniously pulled out from an EU summit after French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to meet with the Dalai Lama in Poland, a diplomatic blunder suggestive of the two regions' increasingly distrustful relationship. The summit was to have clarified China and Europe's fallout from the global financial crisis, and identified areas of common interest, like trade, Africa, and the environment.  Yesterday the US had more success, at least on the financial level: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson kicked off the final round of his Strategic Economic Dialogue in Beijing, three days after the yuan experienced its biggest dip in three years.

Apparently the government of the Sudan is prepared to offer Russian energy companies special benefits and terms to make sure that this country is the "gateway" for Russia's entrance to continent:

Mudawi further said that Sudan does not see Russia's economic partner only and, but an ally to security. He pointed out that there are some areas on the African continent in which Russian soldiers take part in peacekeeping operations, including Darfur.

The Russian official, Margelov, stressed that Russia sees that all the problems in Sudan and African countries that suffering from internal conflicts should be solved with the help of the international community but without direct intervention.

Last month Sergei Lavrov visited New York for a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, where explained the military intervention in South Ossetia as a humanitarian prevention of genocide under the UNSC principle of "responsibility to protect."

But the Janjaweed need to buy their arms from somewhere...  One hopes that any Russian oil workers will have better luck than the Chinese.