Timothy Garton Ash's Blog, page 19

Whether it's hacking or the NSA, some of us don't accept that privacy is dead

The common threat here is a massive, digitally enabled erosion of the individual citizen's private life

What a week this was. It has seen David Cameron's former communications director, Andy Coulson, going on trial in connection with phone hacking by journalists during his time as editor of the News of the World, German officials storming off to Washington to read the riot act about the bugging of Angela Merkel's phone, the medieval mumbo-jumbo of the Queen accepting a royal charter underpinning a system of press self-regulation that much of the press doesn't accept, and the EU threatening internet giants like Google and Facebook with a data protection directive that could end up splitting the internet into separate US and European clouds. One thing unites these apparently disparate stories: the revolutionary development of technologies that massively increase our power to communicate with each other, and as massively erode our privacy.

"Privacy is dead. Get over it," a Silicon Valley boss once reportedly remarked. Some of us don't accept that. We still want to keep a few clothes on. We believe that preserving individual privacy is essential, not just to basic human dignity but also to freedom and security.

2014 is not 1914, but Europe is getting increasingly angry and nationalist

While Germany focuses on forging a government, populist anti-EU parties look set to do well at next year's elections

Now the German elections are over, Germany and France will launch a great initiative to save the European project. Marking the centennial of 1914, this will contrast favourably with the weak and confused leadership under which Europe stumbled into the first world war. Before next May's elections to the European parliament, the Franco-German couple's decisive action and inspiring oratory will drive back the anti-EU parties that are gaining ground in so many European countries.

In your dreams, Mr and Ms Pro-European, in your dreams. Now for the reality. We will not even have a new German government until just before Christmas. In the German coalition negotiations, which are meant to be concluded next week, European affairs are being handled in wait for it a sub-group of the working group on finance. That sub-group is called "Bank regulation, Europe, Euro". For all the three participating parties, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, the Bavarian Christian Social Union and the opposition Social Democrats, the hot-button issues are domestic. The introduction of a minimum wage, energy policy, dual citizenship, a proposed motorway toll  all count for more than the future of the continent.

Ukraine stands on the brink and Europe must bring it back

This is no velvet revolution, but nor is it an uprising of fascist Cossacks or a zero-sum game with Russia. Europe must intervene on the side of democracy and human rights

Ukraine has not yet died  as the country's anthem observes. But the face of Ukraine today is that of the bloodied, scarred opposition activist Dmytro Bulatov. Comparisons with Bosnia are still far-fetched, but think of this as a political Chernobyl.

I have no idea what will happen in Ukraine tomorrow, let alone next week. But I know what all Europeans should want to happen over the next year and the next decades. In February 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the Yalta agreement, Ukraine should again be a halfway functioning state. A corrupt and rackety one, but still the kind of state that, in the long run, forges a nation. It should have signed an association agreement with the EU, but also have close ties with Russia. In February 2045, on the 100th anniversary of the Yalta agreement, it should be a liberal democratic, rule-of-law state that is a member of the EU, but has a special relationship with a democratic Russia. "Pie in the sky!" you may say. But if you don't know where you want to go, all roads are equally good. This is where we should want to go.

Cameron's student visa policy is a disastrous own goal

The prime minister's careless immigration pledge is putting off some of our brightest visitors and damaging Britain

Stupid. Incoherent. Short-sighted. Cack-handed. Intrusive. Counter-productive. One thesaurus is not enough to describe the folly of the British government's policy towards foreign students. Working in a British university, I see its dire effects every day. Kafkaesque, intrusive bureaucracy. Everyone treated as a suspect. A high-flying Singaporean civil servant turned down on the grounds of inadequate language skills (Singapore's administration works in English). Daughters and sons unable to go home to visit their aged parents because the dysfunctional UK Border Agency hangs on to their passports for months. Talented, idealistic students packed off back to India or America the day after their courses end, though they are exactly the kind of creative yeast we need in this country's dough.

And that's not counting the ones who have been deterred from applying to study here in the first place. According to official Home Office figures, student visas from India were down 24% in the year to the end of September 2013, on top of a decline of over 50% during the preceding year. Yet the British government has made relations with India one of its top external priorities.

At stake in Ukraine's drama is the future of Putin, Russia and Europe

Ukraine may yet show us that the default model of revolution has changed to one of negotiated transition

Beyond the burning barricades and the corpses in the streets, here are five big things that are at stake in Ukraine's insurrectionary drama. They mean that what happens in Ukraine will affect not just the Ukrainians, but also Russia, Europe and our sense of what makes a revolution.

The focus is on Crimea, but next is the fight for Ukraine

Despite today's shooting, the west must not forget that the pivotal struggle is over control of the eastern heartlands

Remember, remember: this is about the whole of Ukraine, not just Crimea. Vladimir Putin knows that. Ukrainians know that. As the reported killing of a Ukrainian soldier shows, there is nothing the government in Kiev can do to restore its control over Crimea. The crucial struggle is now for eastern Ukraine. If the whole of Ukraine, including the east, participates in peaceful, free and fair presidential elections on 25 May, it can survive as one independent country (minus Crimea). It will also be back on an unambiguously democratic, constitutional path. In everything the EU and the west does over the next two months, that should be our first priority.

Only the criminally naive or the hardened fellow-traveller could maintain that the pro-Russian groups now working to produce chaos, disorientation and violence in cities such as Donetsk and Kharkiv are not actively supported by Moscow. In Tuesday's New York Times there was a fine eyewitness account of one such stage-managed demo in Kharkiv. At the base of a giant Lenin statue, a huge banner read: "Our homeland: USSR!" As the reporters pointed out, this was all made for Russian television. Whatever Putin finally decides to do, the media narrative will be prepared: whether for an escalating intervention or, as he would undoubtedly prefer, to blackmail the whole country back into the Russian sphere of influence.

The focus is on Crimea, but next is the fight for Ukraine | Timothy Garton Ash

Despite today's shooting, the west must not forget that the pivotal struggle is over control of the eastern heartlands

Remember, remember: this is about the whole of Ukraine, not just Crimea. Vladimir Putin knows that. Ukrainians know that. As the reported killing of a Ukrainian soldier shows, there is nothing the government in Kiev can do to restore its control over Crimea. The crucial struggle is now for eastern Ukraine. If the whole of Ukraine, including the east, participates in peaceful, free and fair presidential elections on 25 May, it can survive as one independent country (minus Crimea). It will also be back on an unambiguously democratic, constitutional path. In everything the EU and the west does over the next two months, that should be our first priority.

Only the criminally naive or the hardened fellow-traveller could maintain that the pro-Russian groups now working to produce chaos, disorientation and violence in cities such as Donetsk and Kharkiv are not actively supported by Moscow. In Tuesday's New York Times there was a fine eyewitness account of one such stage-managed demo in Kharkiv. At the base of a giant Lenin statue, a huge banner read: "Our homeland: USSR!" As the reporters pointed out, this was all made for Russian television. Whatever Putin finally decides to do, the media narrative will be prepared: whether for an escalating intervention or, as he would undoubtedly prefer, to blackmail the whole country back into the Russian sphere of influence.

It would be equally naive, however, to pretend that there are not real fears among many in eastern Ukraine. Start by abandoning the labels "ethnic Ukrainians" and "ethnic Russians". They mean almost nothing. What you have here is a fluid, complex mix of national, linguistic, civic and political identities. There are people who think of themselves as Russians. There are those who live their lives mainly in Russian, but also identify as Ukrainians. There are innumerable families of mixed origins, with parents and grandparents who moved around the former Soviet Union. Most of them would rather not have to choose. In a poll conducted in the first half of February, only 15% of those asked in the Kharkiv region and 33% around Donetsk wanted Ukraine to unite with Russia.

In the same poll, the figure for Crimea was 41%. But then take a month of radicalising politics and Russian takeover, with Ukrainian-language channels yanked off TV. Add relentless reporting on the Russian-language media of a "fascist coup" in Kiev, exacerbated by some foolish words and gestures from victorious revolutionaries in Kiev. Subtract Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians living in Crimea, who largely boycott the referendum. Season with a large pinch of electoral fraud. Hey presto, 41% becomes 97%.

It is not just Russian "political technology" that changes numbers and loyalties. What happens in such traumatic moments is that identities switch and crystallise quite suddenly, like an unstable chemical compound to which you add one drop of reactant. Yesterday, you were a Yugoslav; today, a furious Serb or Croat.

So everything that is done in and for Ukraine over the next weeks and months must be calculated to keep that identity-compound from changing state. Shortly before President Putin's amazing imperial rant in the Kremlin on Tuesday, another speech was broadcast on a Ukrainian TV channel. Speaking in Russian, the interim Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy Yatseniuk, said that "for the sake of preserving Ukraine's unity and sovereignty" the Kiev government is prepared to grant "the broadest range of powers" to the mainly Russian-speaking regions in the east. This would include giving cities the right to run their own police forces and make decisions about education and culture.

That was exactly the right thing to do. Now he and his colleagues should go to these places, and say it again and again – in Russian. They should support Russian as an official second language in these areas. They should not dismiss talk of federalisation simply because Moscow also favours it. They should actively want there to be a pro-Russian candidate in the presidential election. And they should do everything they can to ensure that election is free and fair, including diversified media coverage in Russian and Ukrainian – unlike the vote in Crimea.

The west in general, and Europe in particular, can support this in numerous ways. The OSCE, EU and other international organisations should flood the place with election monitors. Western governments must make sure Ukraine's authorities have the money to pay the bills right now. Political parties and NGOs can send advisers. The west can also up the ante. It can make the medium- to long-term economic offer of relations with the EU more attractive. It can threaten Moscow with sanctions far worse than those currently imposed, not just if Putin takes his marked or unmarked forces anywhere else in eastern Ukraine, but if he keeps on trying to destabilise it by proxy.

The time has also come to talk turkey with Ukrainian oligarchs such as Rinat Akhmetov, who is as powerful as any state institution in eastern Ukraine. Quietly but firmly they must be shown carrot and stick: a rosy future for your businesses in the world economy if you help Ukraine survive as an independent, self-governing state; financial strangulation and endless court proceedings if you don't. (One of the eastern oligarchs, Dmitro Firtash, has already been arrested in Austria on an FBI extradition request. It's all about an investment project back in 2006, they say; nothing to do with current politics, you understand.) If Putin's Olympic sport is hardcore wrestling, we cannot confine ourselves to badminton.

None of this is to suggest that what has happened in Crimea does not matter in itself. In his Kremlin speech, Putin scored a few telling hits on US unilateralism and western double standards, but what he has done threatens the foundations of international order. He thanked China for its support, but does Beijing want the Tibetans to secede following a referendum? He recalled Soviet acceptance of German unification and appealed to Germans to back the unification of "the Russian world", which apparently includes all Russian-speakers. With rhetoric more reminiscent of 1914 than 2014, Putin's Russia is now a revanchist power in plain view.

Without the consent of all parts of the existing state (hence completely unlike Scotland), without due constitutional process, and without a free and fair vote, the territorial integrity of Ukraine, guaranteed 20 years ago by Russia, the US and Britain, has been destroyed. In practical terms, on the ground, that cannot be undone. What can still be rescued, however, is the political integrity of the rest of Ukraine.

Twitter: @FromTGA

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At stake in Ukraine's drama is the future of Putin, Russia and Europe | Timothy Garton Ash

Ukraine may yet show us that the default model of revolution has changed to one of negotiated transition

Beyond the burning barricades and the corpses in the streets, here are five big things that are at stake in Ukraine's insurrectionary drama. They mean that what happens in Ukraine will affect not just the Ukrainians, but also Russia, Europe and our sense of what makes a revolution.

1. The future of Ukraine as an independent state-nation

Intense violence inside a state, still falling short of civil war, can go two sharply different ways. It can tear the state apart, as in Syria and former Yugoslavia, or, if people join hands to retreat from the brink, it can weld a state-nation together – as in South Africa. (A state-nation is one in which a shared civic national identity is created by the state, rather than a single ethnic national identity being embodied in it.)

One reason that recent months in Ukraine have been so chaotic is that Ukraine, despite being an independent country for more than two decades, is neither a properly functioning state nor a fully formed nation. President Viktor Yanukovych is a thug, but he is also an ineffective thug. Effective, disciplined security forces would not be shooting demonstrators dead almost at random one minute, but abandoning the same streets to them the next. Similarly, Ukraine's administration, parliament and economy are nothing like those of a normal European state. They are infiltrated and manipulated to an extraordinary degree by oligarchs, camarillas and the president's family, aka the Family.

This is what many Ukrainians are so angry about, and what some have now given their lives to change. But if yesterday's proposed deal – for a coalition government, constitutional reform to give parliament back more powers, and a presidential election before the end of the year – can be made to stick, then these bloody days could yet go down in history as a decisive chapter on the path to independent state-nationhood. If not, further disintegration looms.

2. The future of Russia as a state-nation – or an empire

With Ukraine, Russia is still an empire; without Ukraine, Russia itself has a chance to become a state-nation. The future of Ukraine is more central to Russia's national identity than that of Scotland is to England's. Centuries ago, people who lived in the territory that is now Ukraine were the original Russians. In this century, the people who call themselves Ukrainians will shape the future of what is now Russia.

3. The future of Vladimir Putin

An independent Russian journalist has observed that the most important event in Russian politics during the last decade happened not in Russia but in Ukraine. It was the Orange Revolution of 2004. So, with considerable skill, Putin's "political technologists" developed techniques to counter such developments. When the Kremlin trumped the EU's rule-rich but cash-poor association offer to Ukraine with a cool $15bn, one well-known Russian political technologist, Marat Gelman, tweeted: 'Maidan installation sold for 15 billion – most expensive art object ever.' (The Maidan is Kiev's Independence Square.)

But it didn't quite go according to plan. So last Monday Russia released another tranche of the $15bn, and on Tuesday Yanukovych's militia started using live ammunition against increasingly desperate and sometimes violent protesters. The fact that Putin was prepared to risk international blowback during his treasured Sochi Olympics shows how vital Ukraine is to him. Now he has retreated tactically, faced with the facts on the ground – but have no illusions that he will stop intervening.

4. The future of Europe as a strategic power

Just as Ukraine is not simply split between east and west, so the geopolitical issue here is not whether Ukraine joins Europe or Russia. It is whether Ukraine becomes increasingly integrated into the political and economic community of Europe, as well as having a very close relationship with Russia. It is also whether the EU will stand up for basic European values on its own front doorstep, as it failed to do in Bosnia.

The EU miscalculated by delivering an "us or them" ultimatum last autumn, without offering Ukraine desperately needed ready cash or a clear perspective of EU membership. As the Ukraine expert Andrew Wilson notes, the EU took a baguette to a knife fight. In recent weeks, it has done better. Friday's proposed compromise is a tribute to the personal engagement of the German, Polish and French foreign ministers. But does a Europe weakened by the eurozone crisis have the resolve and strategic imagination for the long term?

5. The future of revolution

I have argued that, in our time, 1989 has supplanted 1789 as the default model of revolution: rather than progressive radicalisation, violence and the guillotine, we look for peaceful mass protest followed by negotiated transition. That model has taken a battering of late, not only in Ukraine but also in the violent fall that followed the Arab spring. If this fragile deal holds, however, and the fury on the streets can be contained, Europe might again show that we can occasionally learn from history.

Twitter: @FromTGA

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Cameron's student visa policy is a disastrous own goal | Timothy Garton Ash

The prime minister's careless immigration pledge is putting off some of our brightest visitors – and damaging Britain

Stupid. Incoherent. Short-sighted. Cack-handed. Intrusive. Counter-productive. One thesaurus is not enough to describe the folly of the British government's policy towards foreign students. Working in a British university, I see its dire effects every day. Kafkaesque, intrusive bureaucracy. Everyone treated as a suspect. A high-flying Singaporean civil servant turned down on the grounds of inadequate language skills (Singapore's administration works in English). Daughters and sons unable to go home to visit their aged parents because the dysfunctional UK Border Agency hangs on to their passports for months. Talented, idealistic students packed off back to India or America the day after their courses end, though they are exactly the kind of creative yeast we need in this country's dough.

And that's not counting the ones who have been deterred from applying to study here in the first place. According to official Home Office figures, student visas from India were down 24% in the year to the end of September 2013, on top of a decline of over 50% during the preceding year. Yet the British government has made relations with India one of its top external priorities.

Why this folly? Because in January 2010 David Cameron offered a careless, populist election promise to reduce net migration "to the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands". He made a rod for his own back. Net migration is those who enter minus those who leave, but the Home Office cannot manage the number of British people who choose to leave the country in a given year (of course, the government could make Britain such an unpleasant place that millions decide to pack up and leave. Mission accomplished). Moreover, this target lumps together all categories of migration: asylum, family reunification, EU and non-EU, for work and for study. The beginning of wisdom would be to distinguish between them, and especially to separate students from others.

Since I am critical of government policy, let me start by recognising the problem. In some political theorist's hypothetical universe it may be illiberal to control immigration, but in the real world, controlling immigration is a precondition for preserving a liberal society. Immigration is now among the top concerns of voters, in Britain as in most western democracies. (Witness the recent Swiss referendum vote to limit the number of EU citizens entering Switzerland) Fears are stoked to hysteria by irresponsible media and politicians, but the underlying concern should be taken seriously.

That being so, it is all the more incredible to find just how poor is the evidence on which these decisions are being made. The government is only now introducing the procedures and technology to count the numbers leaving Britain. Along the way the Home Office has lost track of hundreds of thousands of people, including many students or former students.

Only in 2012, did the International Passenger Survey (itself just a sample survey) start to ask those who are leaving whether they originally came here to study. Using the latest available figures – for the year to the end of June 2013 – Dr Scott Blinder, a specialist at Oxford University's Migration Observatory, calculates the difference between the number who arrived here to study and those departing who say that they originally came here to study at some 99,000. If that is even roughly right, then it is a huge chunk of the annual net migration figure, which for that period was 166,000 using the same survey source (and 182,000 on the official figure).

So if Cameron is to come anywhere near his "tens of thousands" goal by the next election, in May 2015, he must either organise a St Bartholomew's Day massacre of the foreign students or, as his own universities minister has quietly suggested, acknowledge that students are different. For policy purposes, student numbers would then be treated separately, although they should be counted as regular immigrants if and when they stay on to work here. In his book The British Dream, David Goodhart, an outspoken critic of past failings of British immigration policy, also suggests this.

The problem of bogus students is serious, but ultimately a red herring. Even if we eliminate all fraud on student visas, we will still have to decide, as a country, whether we want to take in, say, 100,000 or 300,000 wholly legitimate students a year.

So the student question must be addressed on its own merits, not thrown into a demagogic hotpot marked "immigration" (aka "bloody foreigners"). Obviously, hosting foreign students has a cost. Many do stay on, even now. And we have a lot of them. In 2008 Britain had the second largest cohort of foreign students of any OECD country. There are good reasons for this. We have the best universities in Europe, as well as some good further education institutions and language schools. We have historic worldwide connections. We speak English, the global language.

This brings a cost, but a larger benefit. In 2011/12 international students spent an estimated £10.2bn on tuition fees and living expenses. The gains in terms of human connections, ways of thinking, cultural affinities and international goodwill are incalculable. A study done last year for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills found that 84% of former students retained links with Britain and 90% had their perception of this country changed – for the better. Imagine if sometime Oxford students Bill Clinton, Benazir Bhutto, Aung San Suu Kyi and Manmohan Singh had all been thoroughly alienated by the kind of treatment that my foreign students are now routinely experiencing.

This is a vital part of Britain's soft power, along with film, literature, music, sport and the BBC. With all respect to our soldiers, diplomats and bankers, I don't think they do more for Britain's standing in the world than our actors, broadcasters, writers and academics. JK Rowling is worth ten aircraft carriers. As we go deeper into the 21st century, this soft power is likely to hold up better than Britain's dwindling military and economic power. Oh, and we also educate human beings, citizens of the world. Should we apologise for that to the prime minister?

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Ukraine stands on the brink and Europe must bring it back | Timothy Garton Ash

This is no velvet revolution, but nor is it an uprising of fascist Cossacks or a zero-sum game with Russia. Europe must intervene on the side of democracy and human rights

Ukraine has not yet died  as the country's anthem observes. But the face of Ukraine today is that of the bloodied, scarred opposition activist Dmytro Bulatov. Comparisons with Bosnia are still far-fetched, but think of this as a political Chernobyl.

I have no idea what will happen in Ukraine tomorrow, let alone next week. But I know what all Europeans should want to happen over the next year and the next decades. In February 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the Yalta agreement, Ukraine should again be a halfway functioning state. A corrupt and rackety one, but still the kind of state that, in the long run, forges a nation. It should have signed an association agreement with the EU, but also have close ties with Russia. In February 2045, on the 100th anniversary of the Yalta agreement, it should be a liberal democratic, rule-of-law state that is a member of the EU, but has a special relationship with a democratic Russia. "Pie in the sky!" you may say. But if you don't know where you want to go, all roads are equally good. This is where we should want to go.