Anne Applebaum

Watch Your Mouth!

Anne Applebaum

Fredag, 3 December 2010 15:37

I'm sure the Russian people will be shocked-shocked!-to discover that U.S. diplomats think the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, "plays Robin to Putin's Batman."
Italians will be equally horrified to learn that their prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is considered "feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader," just as the French will be stunned to hear President Nicolas Sarkozy called "thin-skinned and authoritarian."

As for the Afghans, they will be appalled to read that their president, Hamid Karzai, has been described as "an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts."
And anyone perusing the semi-secret diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks this week will find more of the same. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is a "crazy old man." Muammar Qaddafi of Libya travels with a "voluptuous blonde" whom he describes as his "senior Ukrainian nurse."

In the coming days, there will be many things to say about the specific details of these newly public documents. But before we get into all that, let's not lose the main point: Above all, this leak contains a treasure trove of things people regularly say off the record that they never say in public. These aren't records of human-rights abuses, they are accounts of conversations. And-just like July's WikiLeaks about Afghanistan-this one confirms much that was publicly known, openly discussed, and even written about before.
The cables "reveal," among other things, that the United States is (surprise!) lobbying others to organize sanctions against Iran, that South Korean diplomats have discussed what would happen if North Korea collapses, that U.S. diplomats have been bribing other countries to accept ex-prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. (I suppose it is "news" that the United States spies on the United Nations, but forgive me if I am not as horrified as I should be.)

Germany's Der Spiegel concludes, furiously, that the United States "seeks to safeguard its influence around the world." I'd be a lot more worried if the opposite were true.

What is truly novel is not the information, much of which has been reported before, but the language.
Normally poker-faced diplomats are quoted making unflattering and occasionally amusing assessments of their interlocutors. Not all of them are Americans: The Saudi king thinks the Pakistani president is "rotten"; France's top diplomat thinks Iran is a "fascist state"; Britain's national bank chairman thinks his prime minister is "shallow"; and so on.

This is certainly embarrassing for those who made the remarks. I am less sure whether their revelation gets us anywhere: On the contrary, it seems that in the name of "free speech" another blow has been struck against frank speech. Yet more ammunition has been given to those who favor greater circumspection, greater political correctness, and greater hypocrisy.

Don't expect better government from these revelations, expect deeper secrets.

Will the U.S. ambassador to Country X give Washington a frank assessment of the president of X if he knows it could appear in tomorrow's newspaper? Not very likely.
Will a foreign leader tell any U.S. diplomat what he really thinks about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if he knows it might show up on WikiLeaks? I doubt it.
Diplomatic cables will presumably now go the way of snail mail: Oral communication will replace writing, as even off-the-record chats now have to take place outdoors, in the presence of heavy traffic, just in case anyone is listening.

In the modern world-at least the sloppy, open, hackable Western world-any other form of frank discussion will soon be impossible.

The State Department isn't the first to learn this: No American general will ever again give a journalist full access, as did the hapless Stanley McChrystal. Because he revealed that-like every other general in history-he sometimes disagrees with the politicians back home, and because his interlocutor chose to publish his grumbling, he had to resign.

The result: Very soon, only authoritarian leaders will be able to speak frankly with one another.

A Russian official can keep a politically incorrect statement out of the newspapers. A Chinese general would never speak to a journalist anyway. Low-level officials in Iran don't leak sensitive information to WikiLeaks because the regime would kill them and torture their families. By contrast, the soldier who apparently leaked these diplomatic cables will probably live to a ripe old age.

In fact, the world's real secrets-the secrets of regimes where there is no free speech and tight control on all information-have yet to be revealed. This stuff is awkward and embarrassing, but it doesn't fundamentally change very much. How about a leak of Chinese diplomatic documents? Or Russian military cables? How about some stuff we don't actually know, like Iranian discussion of Iranian nuclear weapons, or North Korean plans for invasion of South Korea Korea?

If WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange is serious about his pursuit of "Internet openness"-and if his goal isn't, in fact, embarrassing the United States-that's where he'll look next.

Somehow, I won't be surprised if he doesn't.

The Spies Who Came In From the Cold War

Anne Applebaum

Onsdag, 14 Juli 2010 11:45

Along with many other things, the spy novel did not survive the end of the Cold War.

There are still thrillers, of course, but it isn't the same: James Bond has become just
another action hero, and John le Carré had turned into yet another British writer who
doesn't like George Bush. When communism collapsed, the dead-letter drops, the invisible
ink, and the microfilm concealed in hollowed-out pumpkins mostly disappeared from
fiction, too.

Yet these things have not, it seems, disappeared from real life.

This week, the FBI arrested 10 people?an 11th was detained in Cyprus?who stand accused of
working as "illegals" on behalf of the Russian government. Like the Kevin Costner
character in the movie No Way Out, several of them are Russians (as the Russian
government has now confirmed) who have lived in the United States for many years, slowly
acquiring American identities. Although they kept in regular touch with their Russian
bosses?"Moscow Center"?they have American university degrees, American professions, and
American children.

They also have American friends.

One of these friends may have been Alan Patricof, a Democratic fundraiser and friend of
the Clintons. Patricof had occasional conversations with a tax expert, Cynthia Murphy,
with whom he discussed ? taxes. Following one of these chats, an excited Murphy?a
Columbia Business School graduate with an unidentifiable accent?told Moscow Center she
had made contact with a "prominent New York-based financier." Moscow Center, equally
excited, told her to listen carefully for his "remarks re US foreign policy," as well as
"roumors" (sic) from the White House "kitchen."

Which leads us to the central mystery: Why on earth would the Russian government spend
years of its time and millions of its dollars on the education, upkeep, and housing of a
spy who might someday be able to collect some "roumors" from a Democratic fundraiser and
friend of the Clintons? There must be several thousand people who fit that description in
New York City alone, and I bet not a single one of them knows a single piece of
information that cannot also be found somewhere on the Internet. Rumors, White House
gossip, foreign-policy tidbits?these are things you can find on the Web sites of the
Washington Post, the Brookings Institution, and several dozen other institutions, all of
whose blogs and articles can be thoroughly examined from an armchair in Moscow.

Explanations have been offered for the apparent cluelessness of these illegals.

Maybe they were "sleepers," agents living under deep cover because they might someday be
useful. Perhaps they were "talent scouts," whose job was to identify others with greater
potential. Or perhaps they were couriers, who carried cash and information on behalf of
more senior figures.

My guess is different: I think the instructions they were given reflect the mentality of
the current Russian elite, many of whom were once members of the KGB.

In its time, the KGB did not believe that elections could be truly free?so-called
"bourgeois democracy" was always held to be a fiction?and neither does a part of the
current Russian ruling class. In its time, the KGB did not believe in the free
circulation of information?the so-called "free press" was always held to be a tool of the
capitalist exploiters?and neither does a part of the current Russian ruling class.

By contrast, secret information, according to the old KGB way of thinking, is better, or
at least more reliable, than anything the U.S. government would make public.

Hence Moscow Center's pleasure when one of its U.S. spies sent an analysis of the gold
market?even though such analyses are freely available in the Wall Street Journal. Hence
Moscow Center's enthusiasm for contacts in American think tanks?even though American
think tanks compete to publish their best information as quickly and as prominently as
possible. Hence Moscow Center's desire to befriend Harvard professors?as if a Harvard
professor wouldn't share his views with any old Russian diplomat who knocked on his door.

The illegals themselves apparently knew better.

In a conversation recorded by an FBI wiretap, one of them complains that Moscow wants
sources for the information he is providing. "Put down any politician from here," his
partner tells him. (Moscow Center will believe anything.) Murphy, meanwhile, persuaded
her handlers to buy a house in suburban New Jersey, arguing that in a society of
homeowners, they had to keep up with the Joneses. (Why get a mortgage if Moscow Center
will pay for your house?)

A darker version of the story may yet emerge, of course, this being the world of
espionage.

But in the meantime, I recommend reading the court documents.

If nothing else, the stories of money handoffs, secret radio transmitters, bank
transfers, and, yes, invisible ink make great beach reading and help fill the hole in the
culture where the Cold War spy novel used to be.

Another Tragedy in the Haunted Forest

Anne Applebaum

Onsdag, 14 April 2010 14:05

On Saturday, the Polish president, the Polish national bank chairman, the chief of the Polish general staff, and a host of other military and political leaders, some of whom were my friends and my husband's colleagues, die in a tragic planecrash in the forest near Smolensk, not far from where 20,000 Polish officers were secretly murdered by Stalin 70 years ago. But this time around, nobody suspects a conspiracy.

Of course, a few fringe Web sites might make that claim, and the odd politician might voice it. But the Russian and Polish governments, the Russian and Polish media, and the vast majority of Russians and Poles believe the culprits to be pilot error and fog. More to the point, discussion of these potential causes has been open and frank. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk immediately flew to visit the crash site, accompanied by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Polish forensic investigators were on the ground within hours. The Russian government is offering assistance and waiving visa requirements for all families who want to travel to Russia. There are TV cameras everywhere. Russian airport officials have been speaking in public, answering questions, talking to journalists.

To the Western reader, none of this will seem unusual: Those kinds of things are expected to take place after plane crashes, especially those involving prominent public officials. But in this part of the world-and especially in this particular piece of haunted forest-the open discussion of a tragedy represents a revolutionary change. The woods around Smolensk are filled with unmarked graves. Not only do they contain the bodies of the Polish officers murdered at Katyn and other sites nearby, they may also contain victims of Stalin's purges, as well as those of partisans and rebellious peasants. Nobody knows for certain. For decades, the history of these gravesites has been concealed, denied, or deliberately manipulated for political purposes. At times, Western leaders went along with these lies: Though they knew the truth, British and American judges allowed the Soviet Union to falsely list the Katyn massacre among the crimes of Hitler at the Nuremburg trials.

In this part of the world, the sudden death of a politician has often sparked conspiracy theories. Poland's wartime leader, Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski, also perished in a plane crash. His death in Gibraltar in 1943 removed Poland's most trusted and competent leader at a crucial moment, easing the way for the Soviet takeover of the country. The lack of a proper investigation at the time and the sinister course of subsequent events mean that, rightly or wrongly, an air of mystery hangs over the incident even now.

If they were just bones of contention for cranks and historians, these secrets and distortions might not matter. But they are more than that. For half a century, the failure to tell the truth about Katyn created a profound lack of trust between Poland and Russia, one that continues to hamper political, economic, and cultural ties between the two neighboring countries even today. The ongoing distortions of Russian history have helped create a climate of public apathy and cynicism in Russia, too. The official lack of frankness in the past and about the past helps to explain, for example, why so many Russians doubt that their government has told them the truth about the terrorist attacks that periodically shatter the peace. Indeed, Russian officials are showing more transparency in the wake of this tragedy than they have shown following some of their own.

And yet there is no law that says the past has to strangle the present: Countries can change, political cultures can grow more open, politicians can learn not to shroud difficult events in mystery and deceit. Over the last 20 years, Russian and Polish officials have begun to acquire the art of speaking with the public, even if they don't always choose to do so. This is a real change, and we have seen what kind of impact it can have over the last few days.

Although there is not much to be grateful for this week, I am thankful, at least, that the families of the dedicated public servants who died on that plane will not have to wait 70 years to learn what really happened. This terrible disaster, in that strange and bloody forest, contains eerie echoes of the past. But it is not destined to become yet another "blank spot" in this region's dark history.

ps. Anne Appelbaum är gift med Polens utrikesminister Radek Sikorski

The Candidate’s Wife

Anne Applebaum

Tisdag, 30 Mars 2010 13:56

The stylist looked over my clothes. "Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing I thought you would have in your wardrobe," he said, eyeing my modest collection of suits with barely disguised disdain. He picked up a blue jacket gingerly, as if the dye might rub off in his hands. "This is a very ... difficult color," he said. He grimaced, and removed it to another chair.

That was it: My first, last, and only meeting with the sort of person who spends his days dressing celebrities. By the time it took place, it was already clear that my husband would not, in fact, be his party's candidate for the presidency of Poland. (He's called Radoslaw Sikorski, he's still the Polish foreign minister, and he conceded on Saturday.) This meant that I would not, in fact, be the candidate for the first lady of Poland. Which was just as well, really: I didn't like the pink jacket the stylist picked out for me, and I never wore it.

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The future is greek

Anne Applebaum

Måndag, 1 Mars 2010 10:55

I have seen America's future, and it is Greece.

By this I do not mean that the Midwest will soon be covered with ancient ruins or that Texans will swap hamburgers for feta cheese.

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När muren hade öppnats

Anne Applebaum

Torsdag, 12 November 2009 12:09

Under en längre tid nu har jag försökt komma underfund med vad det är som irriterar mig när det har varit tal om Berlin och festligheterna kring 20 år sedan murens öppnande.

Det är förstås inte fel att hålla dussintals konferenser, och jag talar också varmt för alla de nya böckerna.
I Washington talade också förbundskansler Angela Merkel inför Kongressen. I Los Angeles hade man byggt upp en fabulöst kitchig "mur" som sedan sparkades ner av inbjudna dignitärer. (Med tanke på invånarnas liv och leverne hade dock tidpunkten för denna ceremoni i LA flyttats från eftermiddagen till midnatt så att den inte skulle störa trafiken).

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Vem bryr sig om Nobelpriset?

Anne Applebaum

Måndag, 19 Oktober 2009 10:39

Varför fick han det? Förtjänade han det? Borde han ha tackat nej? Vem borde ha fått det i stället? Vad skulle han säga?

Nationen talar bara om President Obamas fredspris. Här kommer en bättre fråga som vi bör ställa till oss själva: varför skall vi bry oss?

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