Timothy Garton Ash's Blog, page 23

The road to Damascus may well run through Moscow | Timothy Garton Ash

The killing of civilians is horrendous, but direct military intervention is unlikely to succeed. Try carrots and sticks instead

I hope that one day ex-president Bashar al-Assad will stand before the international criminal court charged with crimes against humanity. None of the violence used by other forces in what has become Syria's civil war can diminish his primary responsibility.

Remember that this started as a wave of non-violent demonstrations, in the best manner of the original Arab spring. Assad had the option of responding with significant reforms, which he toyed with; of opening negotiations; or of allowing a peaceful transition, with an honourable, comfortable exit for himself and his family. Instead, he chose to retain power by brutal repression, as his father did before him, including the indiscriminate shelling of civilians. While his elegant, British-educated wife, Asma, trod marbled floors in her Christian Louboutin heels, his soldiers and shabiha militia thugs battered innocent women and children into the dust.

Syria's popular opposition maintained non-violent discipline for a time, in the face of extreme repression; then lost it. With defections from the army, and weapons coming in from outside, this became first an armed rising, then a civil war – with an embattled regime, fractured opposition, Alawites, Sunnis and their external supporters, all facing off in a complex, sometimes murky conflict. As well as the massacres of civilians, we now learn, sickeningly, that the army and militia have used children as human shields. Some rebels, too, have reportedly recruited underage soldiers. But as Assad himself said in a TV interview before this all started, the responsibility for what happens in Syria comes back to him.

If he had not chosen the path of repression, his country need not have descended into civil war. Perhaps he cried about it in private, on Asma's perfumed shoulder – he looks to me like a weak man trying to be strong. But as the poet WH Auden once wrote, inverting a famous line: "And when he cried, the little children died in the streets".

Understandably, we hear ever more cries for intervention to stop the bloodshed. Speaking at Washington's Holocaust Museum in April, the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel asked if anything had been learned from history, adding: "If so, how is it that Assad is still in power?" Promoting his new film about the Libyan intervention at the Cannes film festival, the French philosopher-activist Bernard-Henri Lévy said: "I made this film for Syria. It is time for us to intervene." William Hague, the British foreign secretary, recently compared it to Bosnia.

If the scale of killing and wounding of innocent civilians were the sole necessary condition for humanitarian intervention, Syria has reached that point. But the UN-approved doctrine of R2P – the responsibility to protect – which is the most rigorous and even-handed way we have to think about such challenges in today's world, also requires the action to have a reasonable prospect of success. On an informed judgment of probabilities, a feasible intervention must be more likely to make things better rather than worse in the country concerned.

That condition is, alas, not met in Syria. Bernard-Henri Lévy may airily declare "it is feasible and it is doable", but what does he know? There are complications and dangers in every intervention, but most experts on Syria, the region and its wider geopolitics point to difficulties significantly larger than in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone or Libya.

This is not just a question of the size, equipment and training of the forces of repression at Assad's disposal, and the regional and sectarian fault lines inside the country. There is also the direct involvement of regional and global powers, which overtly and covertly support different sides in the civil war. Most obviously, Shia Iran and Putinite Russia are directly sustaining Assad's regime, with its Alawite power base, while Sunni powers such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are reportedly funding arms for the rebels. The Iranian foreign minister yesterday said Tehran and Moscow are "very close" on the Syria issue, at a joint press conference during which the Russian foreign minister accused the US of supplying arms to the Syrian opposition.

He was responding to Hillary Clinton's charge that Russia is supplying attack helicopters to the Assad regime. Meanwhile, calls for military intervention grow ever louder in the US Congress and media, though not in the Pentagon, which makes a sober assessment of what it would involve. In Turkey, Syria's neighbour, there is animated discussion of no-fly zones and humanitarian safe havens, but Turkey's leaders have also become more cautious as they work through what that would mean. One step could so easily lead to another; what starts as a minimal humanitarian intervention could morph into a messy, drawn-out partial occupation, or even a kind of war by proxy.

At the same time, the purely political options being canvassed seem either feeble or impossible. Kofi Annan's peace plan is in tatters. Tighter sanctions on the Assad family and its henchmen may mean a dip in online orders for Harrods and Christian Louboutin; they will not stop a dictator with his back to the wall, fighting to avoid the mob-death of Muammar Gaddafi. Some suggest an international popular front for peace in Syria, with the United States and Saudi Arabia working hand-in-glove with Iran and Russia. This seems as likely as the pope announcing his impending marriage to Madonna. A more united Syrian opposition, committed to a non-violent, negotiated transition, is a great idea for yesterday and tomorrow, but not a solution for today – in the midst of a civil war.

The Russian position on Syria is shocking, mendacious and indefensible. The Russians have repeatedly blocked efforts to get UN authority for stronger peace-making measures, using hypocritical arguments that barely conceal their own national interest in keeping their military, economic and political foothold in the Middle East. They trained the Syrian army that is killing civilians and now – if Clinton is to be believed – they are supplying attack helicopters to help Assad's forces kill even more.

Have they no shame? In the case of Putin's Russia, this question answers itself. Have they no other national interests, which might eventually outweigh this one? Now that's a question worth asking. If we are really serious about our commitment to stopping the slaughter in Syria, we in the west have to consider if there are any larger carrots and sticks we can still show Russia, even at some cost to ourselves, so as to achieve a shift in its position. The road to Damascus goes through Moscow, and Putin's conversion will not be worked by any God.

Twitter: @fromtga

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Britain needs more free speech. Change this law now | Timothy Garton Ash

Intended to protect us from harassment, the public order act has become a licence for the harassment of ordinary citizens by the police

Earlier this week a man stood up in the centre of London and sang a song about a guy who murders his girlfriend in a jealous rage. The lyrics seemed to blame it mainly on the woman. Watching the singer from a nearby spectator stand were the prime minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury and much of the royal family. They rocked or even sang along with the refrain, "Why, why, why, Delilah?" Some of them also waved little Union Jack flags, to endorse this enjoyable little ballad of murder ("I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more"). One question this raises is: why did the police not immediately arrest them all – princes, prime minister and archbishop – under section 5 of the Public Order Act?

Don't be absurd, you say. But would it be any more absurd than a student being arrested under section 5 for saying to a mounted policeman: "Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?", or the 19-year-old Kyle Little, charged and convicted – though then cleared on appeal – for delivering what was described as a "daft little growl" and a woof at two labradors? Or a 15-year-old summonsed for holding up a sign outside the Church of Scientology's central London headquarters saying: "Scientology is not a religion. It is a dangerous cult"? (I repeat those exact words here, as my own. Officer, you know where to find me.)

Then there was the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, arrested and charged for shouting slogans and displaying placards condemning the persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people by Islamic governments, during a protest at a Hizb ut-Tahrir rally. And an evangelical Christian preacher who was convicted and fined for holding up a home-made sign that, beside the motto "Jesus is Lord", proclaimed: "Stop immorality, stop homosexuality, stop lesbianism."

All these are real cases of British police abuse of a law so loosely worded that it invites such abuse. That is why a campaign to reform section 5 was recently launched by an unusual coalition of Christians, atheists, gay rights activists and politicians of all stripes. But if we want a transparent, secure platform for freedom of expression in Britain, we need to go further.

Section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act says a person "is guilty of an offence if he (a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby".

There are two things wrong with this catch-all wording. First, unlike section 4 of the same act, and Britain's legislation on incitement to hatred on grounds of religion or sexual orientation, it does not require evidence of an intention to cause harassment, alarm or distress. The standard is just "likely to". Who decides what is "likely to" be caused harassment, alarm or distress? On the street, the police do.

Yes, the Crown Prosecution Service may then choose not to prosecute, or the court may throw the case out – this is not Ukraine – but the 15-year-old making an entirely reasonable point, or the student telling a bad joke, will in the meantime themselves have been subjected to unwarranted alarm and distress. A law that aspires to prevent harassment has become a licence for the harassment of ordinary citizens by the police.

Then there is the word "insulting". The government has opposed its removal partly on the grounds that the courts would have the invidious task of distinguishing between the merely insulting and the abusive or threatening.

In a legal opinion written last year, Lord (Ken) Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, comprehensively demolishes this objection. It is perfectly possible to distinguish between the meanings of words; that is what judges do all the time; and "insulting" is a word too far. In a free society, we should be free (though self-evidently not obliged) to insult, but not to threaten or abuse.

To make this country's free speech laws clear, liberal and consistent, we should not only remove the word "insulting" from section 5: we should repeal section 5 in its entirety. (Arguably, we should also remove the word "insulting" from section 4, although that quite rightly deals with real threats of violence.) We should also restore the requirement of proving bad intention (which was there until 1976) to the wording on incitement to racial hatred, making it consistent with the law on incitement to hatred on grounds of religion or sexual orientation. A mature, multicultural country must be capable of free speech laws that consistently require that, whatever the human difference at issue, the harassment, alarm or distress should be both intended and likely.

There's a wider context here. A Guardian editor has begged me not to write another word on the royal jubilee, which this republican newspaper has covered so extensively, but I must. I thought I would be wholly indifferent to it. Instead, I was strangely stirred – feel free to insult me – by the concert in front of Buckingham Palace (including Tom Jones and his Delilah), the service of thanksgiving in St Paul's cathedral, and those magnificent British valkyries of the Royal College of Music chamber choir, rain-soaked to the skin on top of their orchestral barque on the River Thames, yet belting out, with a smile, "Land of hope and glory, mother of the free!"

But that mother is ancient history now. We, her great-grandchildren, are not as free as we usually think we are. We're less free because of heavy, half-submerged chains such as the power of Rupert Murdoch's media, its full extent now at last being revealed, and the over-mighty police, who have been locking up harmless protesters while themselves nestling in Murdoch's pocket.

We must cut them back to their proper size and place. This is not a party-political issue. It is about freedom. And it is about what it means to be British.

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Cameron mustn't visit Ukraine while Tymoshenko remains imprisoned | Timothy Garton Ash

Every EU leader must make up their own mind, but the aim should be to punish the president and not the people

Should European leaders attend football matches in Ukraine, as part of the Euro 2012 championship that kicks off next week? Or should they boycott them in protest at the political imprisonment of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, the mafioso-type corruption poisoning that country, and violent racism among its football fans? Or should they attend, but insist on meeting Tymoshenko or add some other protest gesture?

It all looked so different five years ago, when the championship was awarded jointly to Poland and Ukraine. Ukraine was still identified with the "orange revolution". The hope was that Euro 2012 would encourage it to follow Poland in a successful "return to Europe". Instead, Ukraine has travelled steadily in the wrong direction.

Tymoshenko is no angel, but her show trial and imprisonment in Kharkiv, one of the Euro 2012 host cities, has been an example of pure political thuggery. Ukrainian political analyst Mykola Riabchuk says president Viktor Yanukovych is pursuing "mafia-style revenge". One could also say "Donbass-style revenge", this being the style of politics he grew up with in that tough, industrial region of eastern Ukraine. To hear Yanukovych justifying the imprisonment in terms of an independent judiciary and the rule of law, as I did at a meeting earlier this year, was to listen to a homo sovieticus who was not even good at lying. In earlier, private conversations, he had assured Polish and other European leaders that he would change the law or find some other solution to the Tymoshenko issue – so he knew, and we knew that he knew, and he knew that we knew he knew, that he was lying through his teeth.

Or was it lying like an oligarch? It's a moot point how much Yanukovych's failure to deliver on his private promises reflects his own at once fearful and pig-headed determination to eliminate a political rival, and how much rather the implacable hostility towards Tymoshenko of the oligarch Dmitry Firtash, who is said to be among the president's principal financial backers. It was Firtash whose RosUkrEnergo outfit was – pardon my Ukrainian – screwed by the gas deal with Vladimir Putin for which Tymoshenko is in jug. Of course he would argue that he was acting purely as a businessman, and in Ukraine's best interest.

More serious even than the dirty past, and dirty revenge for it, is the dirty present. One EU official privately comments that this is indeed a country in transition: from an oligarchical economy to a mafia one. According to a Forbes rich list, Yanukovych's oldest son, Oleksandr, reportedly a dentist, is worth about $99m. Even by US standards, that must make him the world's most expensive dentist. But of course he's a businessman too, and all this may be the product of honest toil and matchless acumen.

The alleged corruption – alleged! oh well-rewarded London lawyers of messrs Firtash & Yanukovych – extends all the way down to the extortionate hotel prices in some Euro 2012 host cities which prompted Uefa president Michel Platini to speak of "bandits and crooks". And, as a recent BBC Panorama report vividly demonstrated, any football fan with a darker skin should steer well clear of Ukrainian football hooligans. "Stay at home, watch it on TV", exclaimed the former England captain, Sol Campbell, after watching the programme's shocking footage of racist violence in the FC Metalist stadium in Kharkiv.

Now you might think that Poland's post-Solidarity leaders, remembering their 1980s experience of being sidelined by west European and especially German politicians visiting their oppressors, would be the first to support the case for not going to Ukraine. How wrong you would be. Instead, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk returned from last week's informal EU dinner summit saying he had persuaded "almost all" his fellow European leaders to attend matches in Poland and Ukraine. "Almost" is a stretch. While most EU leaders are reserving their position, the presidents of the European commission and council have said they won't go. Both French president François Hollande and German president Joachim Gauck have given strong indications that they are unlikely to attend.

So it almost seems as if the Germans are behaving like Poles, and the Poles like Germans. Keep engaging constructively; quiet diplomacy is better than the megaphone kind; otherwise the country will be driven back into Moscow's arms. All those arguments we heard from German politicians back in the 1980s as they cold-shouldered Polish dissidents.

Yet the Poles also have some better arguments today. One is peculiar to their own position: they can hardly boycott a championship which they co-host. It does not follow that they should urge other EU leaders to visit Ukraine.

Here, the Polish argument is that you have to find measures, both symbolic and practical, that visibly distinguish between Yanukovych and Ukraine. Some Ukrainians agree. "Boycott Yanukovych, not Ukrainians!", writes the distinguished historian and commentator Jaroslav Hrycak. Even Tymoshenko herself told a visiting Polish MP that she is against a boycott – but then, you have to wonder what else she could possibly say without worsening her own plight, and enabling Yanukovych to paint her as a traitor in the eyes of the Ukrainian public.

The difficulty is: how do you actually mark this difference between thuggish president and noble country? Go to the match but not shake hands with Yanukovych or sit in his stand? Diplomatic protocol will hardly allow that, and regime-friendly Ukrainian TV will have all it needs with your visible proximity to the beloved leader. Go, but give a press conference robustly addressing the Tymoshenko case, human rights and corruption in Ukraine? Fine, but how much would your average Ukrainian see of that on TV? Or try the balancing act proposed by German interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich: go, but only on condition that you can meet with Tymoshenko?

There is no universal rule to determine whether or not to boycott a particular sporting or cultural event, be it Euro 2012, the Moscow or Beijing Olympics, or the recent Eurovision song contest in even more oppressive and corrupt Azerbaijan. Because of Poland's unique dilemma, there can be no single EU position on this one. So every leader will have to make up his or her own mind.

David Cameron and William Hague may be spared these agonising moral dilemmas by the performance of the England team. But if they goes through to a quarter-final in Ukraine, and Tymoshenko is still in jail, I think they should not go. Such political sport tourism is of dubious value anyway, a kind of chillaxing with diplomatic veneer, and they have more important things to do back home, such as saving the British economy. What do they risk by staying away? Perhaps president Yanukovych will boycott the London Olympics in revenge? If only he would.

Twitter: @fromtga

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The Greek people now face a stark choice: in or out? | Timothy Garton Ash

It's just another election in the birthplace of democracy, but the future of Europe may turn on this one

When Germany's chancellor Hannelore Kraft met France's president François Hollande in a sunny Berlin earlier this week, they agreed on a compelling strategy to save the eurozone. With no elections in any eurozone country for the next two years, they were able to stretch the austerity timeline for Greece, Spain and Italy, add some elements of growth stimulus, including increased demand in Germany itself, but also keep up the essential pressure for fiscal discipline and structural reform. As a result, even devastated Greece began to glimpse light at the end of the tunnel.

In our dreams, fellow Europeans, in our dreams. The reality is different. While François Hollande and Angela Merkel – not Kraft, the Social Democratic victor in last Sunday's North Rhine-Westphalia elections and possible candidate for chancellor in 2013 – meet under thunder and lightning-torn skies, there is capital flight from Greece (more than €5bn since the 6 May election), fear and trembling in the markets, self-reinforcing talk of Greek exit from the euro and another month of uncertainty until another election in Athens. Meanwhile, back in Berlin, Germany's finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble still preaches the gospel of Ordoliberalism as if it were revealed truth. And everywhere, all the time, there is that tiresome old Greek invention called democracy.

I recently heard a line attributed to the former Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker, now the head of the euro group, to the effect that "we know exactly what we should do; we just don't know how to get re-elected if we do it". It's not entirely clear that Merkel and Schäuble do know what is needed, since their economic doctrine is flawed. But even if they did, or if it were already federal chancellor Kraft, there would still be the problem of an election imminent somewhere in Europe, and the chronic difficulty politicians find in telling home truths to people whose votes they are courting.

Each country has its own home truth that its politicians are failing to tell. Britain's untold home truth is that it cannot have its cake and eat it, being a semi-detached member of the EU while continuing to enjoy all the economic benefits of membership. France's untold home truth is that it is no longer an equal partner of Germany.

Germany's untold home truth is that it is going to pay for this mess anyway, one way or another. Many of Greece's bad debts have already been socialised via the European Financial Stability Facility, the IMF and the European Central Bank (ECB). Germany has a major share of each of them, but particularly of the last. "Target 2" may not yet be a household phrase in Germany, but it should be.

Through the ECB's so-called target 2 liquidity system, Germany had – at the end of last month – some €644bn of claims on other eurozone central banks, a sum equivalent to roughly a quarter of German GDP. If Greece exited the euro, what would happen to its central bank's target 2 liability to the ECB, and through the ECB to Germany? Nobody knows, but in all probability, the ECB would just write it off. That wouldn't break the bank, but Germany would end up footing part of the bill. If Greek default had a knock-on effect on other weaker eurozone countries, Germany would have to reach into its pocket to shore them up – directly or indirectly – or face wholly unpredictable consequences.

Greece's untold, or only half-told, home truth is that its only alternatives now are bad, worse or worst. Worst is clearly an unplanned, chaotic exit from the euro. That may still happen. If it doesn't, then Greek voters have a month to work out which they think is bad and which worse: a planned, careful departure from the euro or remaining in on the best terms Hollande can help them squeeze out of Germany.

I am not ready to join the chorus of commentators confidently urging Greece to jump one way or the other. I simply don't know which would be better for Greece. I'm not an economist – and, by the way, the economists don't know either. I'm also not ready because I'm not Greek. Democracy means people working out what government and policies are best for them. There is no European demos, therefore no proper EU-wide democracy, so the Greeks have to work out what is good for the Greeks.

Their 6 May election was a howl of anguish at the suffering the country has been put through. It involved a majority rejection of the two main parties that have dominated the country's politics for decades and of those parties' support for the so-called "memorandum" – the agreement on austerity in return for European bailout.

The next election will be a moment of truth: in or out. Should the country gamble that after the initial shock and losses of "Grexit", its economy could grow again with the help of devaluation? Or should the new government negotiate the best deal it can get inside the eurozone, taking hope from the impact of Hollande and others? Merkel trailed her coat a little , telling CNBC: "If Greece believes that we can find more stimulus in Europe in addition to the memorandum then we have to talk about that." Yet even the best possible deal would mean a long, painful slog out of the valley of despair.

These alternatives need to be placed as honestly as possible before Greek voters. Then they have to decide. Actually, that was the extraordinary idea people came up with in Athens about 2,500 years ago. Free citizens gathered in the place of assembly. "Tis agoreuein bouletai?" cried the herald – "Who wishes to address the assembly?" Then any free man (yes, it was only men) could make the best case for his favoured policy choice, with democracy and free speech being seen as two sides of the same coin.

The future of the eurozone now depends on the choice to be made in Greece, the future of Europe on that of the eurozone, and that of the west to a significant degree on that of Europe – so, with slight hyperbole, we can say that the future of the west now depends on the birthplace of the west. Is it too much to hope that, in such a moment, Greek politics will rediscover some of the grandeur and simplicity that was present in Athens at the creation of democracy? Probably it is.

Twitter: @fromtga

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Hollande and Merkel can't save the eurozone by old methods alone

Europe's leaders still make the crucial deals behind closed doors – but Europe's peoples now demand to be heard

This week I talked to an audience consisting mainly of young Europeans in an ancient and delightful Dutch city that is becoming a little worried about its place in the history books. It's called Maastricht. Looking back over the story of how the Maastricht treaty that led to today's eurozone was negotiated, I find a vital lesson. The framework of Europe's economic policies has changed fundamentally over the past 20 years, but the way in which those policies are arrived at has not.

Now, as then, the crucial deals are thrashed out between a few key national leaders, and their advisers, in negotiations behind closed doors, often over good food and wine. Back then it was France's François Mitterrand and Germany's Helmut Kohl, with an important role played by the Italian prime minister, Giulio Andreotti. Next week it will be François Hollande, France's first Socialist president since Mitterrand, making his post-inauguration pilgrimage to Angela Merkel in Berlin, with a significant role played by today's Italian prime minister, Mario Monti. From François to François: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Today, with published documents augmented by journalistic and academic research, we can see exactly how the Maastricht cake was baked. Or, rather, half-baked: that is, the monetary union made without the fiscal union necessary to sustain it. Here, for example, is Mitterrand writing to Kohl in December 1989: "Under the Irish and Italian presidencies, the economic and finance ministers can refine the suggestions for the co-ordination of budgets." Co-ordination of national budgets! Hold your sides and laugh out loud, otherwise you'll have to cry.

And now glimpse those two old foxes, Andreotti and Mitterrand, getting together at a hotel outside Maastricht on the evening before the December 1991 summit, to work out over dinner how they will pin Kohl down to a timetable for a monetary union that was clearly intended to bind a newly (and, for them, alarmingly) united Germany into a tighter European framework. Answer: by making entry automatic, provided certain rigorous German-style conditions are met, such as budget deficits under 3% of GDP and public debt under 60%. Hold your sides again, and laugh so as not to cry.

I hope to live long enough to read the official French and German records of next week's conversation between Hollande and Merkel in Berlin, and first-hand accounts of the relevant conspiratorial dinners. By these well-tried methods, Europe's leaders will reach a compromise. It will probably involve a watered-down but then dressed-up Hollandesque "growth pact" to complement Merkel's fiscal pact, with European funds, banks and so-called mechanisms allowed to provide an added element of stimulus.

I don't recall whether back in 1991 people quipped about Kohlrrand or Mitterohl, as everyone now does about Merkozy giving way to Merde. But well they might have, although Kohlrrandeotti would have been more exact then, and perhaps Merkhollti today. (The economic competence, integrity and reported influence on the German chancellor of Mario Monti merit at least a letter or two.)

More seriously, the fundamental politics of this decision-making have not changed. Since Maastricht, the European parliament has gained more powers, but that has not produced European politics to shape European economics. Now, as then, these are national leaders, pursuing national interests, as defined by their own national elites. They justify their conduct to still overwhelmingly national media. The elections that matter are national ones, most recently in France and Greece. Even some sub-national elections – such as Sunday's in North Rhine-Westphalia – can be more important than the European ones.

What has changed since the days of Maastricht, however, is the voice of Europe's peoples. There was always a grain of truth in the jibe that the EU was built by a "conspiracy of elites" – but it was only a grain, not a loaf, because in most countries those elites could base their pro-European policies on a solid, if largely passive, consensus in their populations. Now no longer. The Greeks have just cried "enough is enough". There is a danger that the eurozone could fall apart chaotically as a result.

If, thanks to effective action by Merkhollti, it does not, the people of Europe still need to be persuaded of the case for continued integration. Even in solidly pro-European Poland, where I am now,, doubts are growing. And that brings me back to the young Europeans I just spoke to. One came up to me afterwards and said roughly this: "I agree with almost everything you said, but how am I going to persuade my dad, who's a German worker in a small town, and doesn't see why he should pay to bail out feckless Greeks." To which one answer is: if you think Europe is worth it, it's your job to convince your dad. And, harder still, to persuade the one out of every two young Spaniards who are now unemployed.

The actual policies to save the eurozone, and with it the European project, will still be shaped by a handful of national leaders over dinner. But for them to succeed will now need the engagement of millions of other Europeans, in their own national languages, media and politics, in their pubs, clubs and cafes. Without that – and there is not much sign of it at the moment – the rescue will fail, and then the name of Maastricht will take an unhappy place in the history books.

Twitter: @fromtga

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Hollande and Merkel can't save the eurozone by old methods alone | Timothy Garton Ash

Europe's leaders still make the crucial deals behind closed doors – but Europe's peoples now demand to be heard

This week I talked to an audience consisting mainly of young Europeans in an ancient and delightful Dutch city that is becoming a little worried about its place in the history books. It's called Maastricht. Looking back over the story of how the Maastricht treaty that led to today's eurozone was negotiated, I find a vital lesson. The framework of Europe's economic policies has changed fundamentally over the past 20 years, but the way in which those policies are arrived at has not.

Now, as then, the crucial deals are thrashed out between a few key national leaders, and their advisers, in negotiations behind closed doors, often over good food and wine. Back then it was France's François Mitterrand and Germany's Helmut Kohl, with an important role played by the Italian prime minister, Giulio Andreotti. Next week it will be François Hollande, France's first Socialist president since Mitterrand, making his post-inauguration pilgrimage to Angela Merkel in Berlin, with a significant role played by today's Italian prime minister, Mario Monti. From François to François: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Today, with published documents augmented by journalistic and academic research, we can see exactly how the Maastricht cake was baked. Or, rather, half-baked: that is, the monetary union made without the fiscal union necessary to sustain it. Here, for example, is Mitterrand writing to Kohl in December 1989: "Under the Irish and Italian presidencies, the economic and finance ministers can refine the suggestions for the co-ordination of budgets." Co-ordination of national budgets! Hold your sides and laugh out loud, otherwise you'll have to cry.

And now glimpse those two old foxes, Andreotti and Mitterrand, getting together at a hotel outside Maastricht on the evening before the December 1991 summit, to work out over dinner how they will pin Kohl down to a timetable for a monetary union that was clearly intended to bind a newly (and, for them, alarmingly) united Germany into a tighter European framework. Answer: by making entry automatic, provided certain rigorous German-style conditions are met, such as budget deficits under 3% of GDP and public debt under 60%. Hold your sides again, and laugh so as not to cry.

I hope to live long enough to read the official French and German records of next week's conversation between Hollande and Merkel in Berlin, and first-hand accounts of the relevant conspiratorial dinners. By these well-tried methods, Europe's leaders will reach a compromise. It will probably involve a watered-down but then dressed-up Hollandesque "growth pact" to complement Merkel's fiscal pact, with European funds, banks and so-called mechanisms allowed to provide an added element of stimulus.

I don't recall whether back in 1991 people quipped about Kohlrrand or Mitterohl, as everyone now does about Merkozy giving way to Merde. But well they might have, although Kohlrrandeotti would have been more exact then, and perhaps Merkhollti today. (The economic competence, integrity and reported influence on the German chancellor of Mario Monti merit at least a letter or two.)

More seriously, the fundamental politics of this decision-making have not changed. Since Maastricht, the European parliament has gained more powers, but that has not produced European politics to shape European economics. Now, as then, these are national leaders, pursuing national interests, as defined by their own national elites. They justify their conduct to still overwhelmingly national media. The elections that matter are national ones, most recently in France and Greece. Even some sub-national elections – such as Sunday's in North Rhine-Westphalia – can be more important than the European ones.

What has changed since the days of Maastricht, however, is the voice of Europe's peoples. There was always a grain of truth in the jibe that the EU was built by a "conspiracy of elites" – but it was only a grain, not a loaf, because in most countries those elites could base their pro-European policies on a solid, if largely passive, consensus in their populations. Now no longer. The Greeks have just cried "enough is enough". There is a danger that the eurozone could fall apart chaotically as a result.

If, thanks to effective action by Merkhollti, it does not, the people of Europe still need to be persuaded of the case for continued integration. Even in solidly pro-European Poland, where I am now,, doubts are growing. And that brings me back to the young Europeans I just spoke to. One came up to me afterwards and said roughly this: "I agree with almost everything you said, but how am I going to persuade my dad, who's a German worker in a small town, and doesn't see why he should pay to bail out feckless Greeks." To which one answer is: if you think Europe is worth it, it's your job to convince your dad. And, harder still, to persuade the one out of every two young Spaniards who are now unemployed.

The actual policies to save the eurozone, and with it the European project, will still be shaped by a handful of national leaders over dinner. But for them to succeed will now need the engagement of millions of other Europeans, in their own national languages, media and politics, in their pubs, clubs and cafes. Without that – and there is not much sign of it at the moment – the rescue will fail, and then the name of Maastricht will take an unhappy place in the history books.

Twitter: @fromtga

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From Chongqing to Chipping Norton, money and politics have got too cosy | Timothy Garton Ash

Scandals in Britain and China show the need for the separation of powers and the independence of professions

Let us consider the tale of Murdoch Xilai and little Bo James. I mix them up like this since both Britain and China are roiled by scandals involving corruption, spying, intimidation, cover-up and collusion at the highest levels.

Of course such affairs do not unfold in quite the same way in one of the world's oldest democracies and in the world's oldest autocracy. Imagine a fiercely independent judicial inquiry, a cross-party parliamentary committee and a largely free press all investigating the Bo Xilai case in Beijing. Imagine opposition politicians interrogating president Hu Jintao in angry parliamentary exchanges at what, by analogy with Westminster's PMQs we might call CPGSQs (Communist party general secretary's questions). They order things differently in China.

Yet any complacency in Britain would be entirely out of place. What has happened over the decades during which Rupert Murdoch became the second most powerful person in Britain has been profoundly corrosive, not only of our domestic politics but also of our foreign (especially European) policy, our media and our public morality. Far too many of our politicians have been craven lickspittles, cowed not just by hope of office and fear of political attacks in powerful mass media, but by personal fears of tabloid-style exposure of real or alleged features of their private lives.

It should never have happened here. It must never happen again.

Underlying these very different stories is a deeper lesson about two universal keys to good and open government. The first is the separation of powers: not just the classic public powers of executive, legislature and judiciary but also the separation of private from public power, including that of the media ("the fourth estate") from ruling parties and the state. The second is the independent ethos, codes and self-confidence of separate professions – lawyers, journalists, politicians, civil servants, soldiers, academics – without which even the most elaborated formal separation of powers is not worth the paper it is written on.

Britain does not have the classic separation of powers seen in the US. Government and parliament are too closely intertwined, although the House of Commons has recently reasserted a little more independence, especially through select committees such as the one that just produced its damning report on the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal. The judiciary, however, has largely kept its independence through these murky times. If you want a great example, just watch Lord Leveson, head of the judge-led inquiry into part of this scandal, treating Rupert Murdoch as if he were just another unreliable witness.

With the fourth estate it's a mixed picture. One peculiarity of contemporary Britain is that it can plausibly claim to have some of the world's worst and some of the world's best journals and journalists. (Beside "journalist" perhaps only the word "dancer" covers such a wide range.) It's for others to assess the performance of papers like the Guardian, or public service broadcasters like the BBC. But there have been moments when even the Murdoch-owned Times has been quite brave in reporting the scandal dragging down its proprietor and the grotesque wrongdoings of its tabloid sister papers.

The heart of darkness in Murdoch's Britain has been the incestuous relationship between private and public power: more specifically, between money and politics. (The same is true in the US, with a significant part played by Murdoch-owned Fox News.) Both Britain's largest parties, Labour and Conservative, have been craven in their wooing of Murdoch and other media barons.

In this, as in so much else, following the trail blazed by Tony Blair, David Cameron, while leader of the opposition, flew specially to meet Murdoch off the island of Santorini, on a yacht called Rosehearty. (So when someone makes the Murdoch version of the movie Citizen Kane, the weary newspaper mogul must die with the mysterious word "Rosehearty" slipping from his lips.) Cameron's subsequent criticisms of the BBC bore an uncanny resemblance to those advanced by the Murdochs, who supported his election bid. With all we have now learned, I personally find it impossible to believe that his culture secretary Jeremy Hunt was then rigorously impartial in assessing News Corp's strategic bid for control of BSkyB.

The interwining of private and public power, of money and politics, is also at the heart of China's scandal. There are intriguing small connections between the two countries' affairs.

One question in the Bo Xilai case is how he and his wife Gu Kailai got their son Bo Guagua – the James Murdoch of Chongqing – into Harrow school and then Oxford university, and how they paid the fees. If a report in the Daily Mail is to be believed, Gu Kailai approached a British company called Vistarama to supply a giant helium balloon observatory for the city of Dalian, of which her husband was then mayor. She suggested an "extra payment" of £150,000 for the air freight, explaining: "We pay the company, you pay the school." Vistarama reportedly declined the unconventional offer. One trusts they word things more delicately in Chipping Norton, where Murdochs and Camerons used to hang out together – and where, more seriously, the political, legal and economic context is quite different.

The Chinese-British connections also run the other way. For the first decade of this century, Murdoch's strategic dream was to break into the China market. According to a superb book on the Chinese Communist party by the Financial Times's Richard McGregor, Murdoch wooed the then Communist propaganda chief Ding Guan'gen as assiduously as he himself was being wooed by Blair and Cameron. Later, and here's the most revealing part: "Murdoch joined forces in an expensive business venture with Ding's son in an effort to find a way around China's tight restrictions on foreign broadcasting, all to no avail."

In Britain and the US, the problem is an incestuous relationship between money and politics, but at least these are still recognisably two separate powers. In China, after 30 years of Leninist capitalism, the two seem to have become deeply intertwined – often in the same families. That, when taken together with the lack of the classical separation of public powers, and the enforced weakness of China's media, is obviously a much larger obstacle on the road to open, good government.

But I say it once again: no complacency please, we're British. Let us put our own house in order before lecturing anyone else about the state of theirs.

Twitter: @fromtga

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This Chinese blockbuster thriller might end in reform | Timothy Garton Ash

Universal fascination with the Bo Xilai scandal is mixed with a few cautious hopes for political change

What is happening in China? That's about the most interesting political question on the planet just now, and the most difficult to answer. The officially acknowledged or otherwise plausibly attested facts of the Bo Xilai affair are worthy of a blockbuster political thriller. Its deeper causes, however, go to the heart of the weird, unprecedented system of Leninist capitalism that has emerged in China over the past 30 years. Its possible consequences for change in, perhaps one day even of, that system will do more to shape the 21st-century world than anything currently happening in Washington, Moscow, New Delhi or Brussels. Behind the walls of the Communist party leadership compound, next to the old Forbidden City, the ghost of Hegel has somehow got mixed up with Robert Ludlum.

Like everybody I meet, I do not know what is actually going on inside those walls. Outside those walls, there's a clear pattern. Every single conversation I have in Beijing turns sooner or later, with a 100-volt tingle, to Bo, Bo, Bo. How did his son Bo Guagua get into Oxford university? Was Guagua a good student or a playboy? Was the mysteriously deceased British businessman Neil Heywood a spy? Was madame Bo, aka Gu Kailai, having an affair with him? What does it all mean?

Then people start telling you things themselves, in excited if sometimes lowered voices. For instance, multiple credible sources have confirmed that there was indeed an armed stand-off outside the US consulate in Chengdu, where former Chongqing chief enforcer Wang Lijun had sought asylum, apparently fearing for his own life and ready to dish the dirt on his former boss. Paramilitary forces sent by Bo from Chongqing, to snatch him back to an unpleasant fate, faced off against central security forces summoned, with American help, from Beijing. Talk about fact outdoing fiction.

If, however, an ordinary Chinese netizen searches not just for the specific name Bo Xilai but simply for the family name Bo on the immensely popular microblogging site Sina Weibo, she or he finds the following message: "In accordance with relevant laws, rules and policies, the search results for Bo are not shown here." The official media are full of exhortations to national, social and ideological stability, under the wise and united leadership of the party. Those Bos were just two rotten apples in an otherwise healthy orchard. Now they will face the full and famously impartial rigour of China's rule of law.

A reassuring piece from the official news agency Xinhua, prominently published in the English-language China Daily, reports that "Chongqing municipal police have vowed better protection of foreigners" after Heywood's death. But worry not, for in 2010 only 1.5 people per 10,000 visitors reported being victimised in the megacity. And the forces of order were swiftly to hand. "In October, for example, police recovered a Nikon camera stolen from a Zimbabwean student in one day." So have no fear, oh visiting British businessman. Not only will you not be murdered at the behest of a politburo member's wife; the police will even get your camera back.

Beside this lurid, titillating and, for the poor Heywood family, also tragic and distressing conversation, there is a far more wide-ranging and consequential one going on. The two are, however, connected. It is possible that such a horrible crime, if that is what it was, would anyway have led to the fall of the rising star Bo. What is certain is that this has played out in the context of factional and ideological competition within the Chinese party-state-military power structures in the runup to this year's leadership transition, in which Bo was a controversial candidate for the supreme nine-member standing committee. What is even more certain is that the lurid, spectacular and now quite widely known circumstances of his fall will affect the outcome of the transition, both in personalities and in policies.

So far, official propaganda has been careful to distinguish between the man and his so-called Chongqing model, with its crypto-Maoist slogans of "smash black" and "sing red", and its populist claim to provide welfare, housing and work for the masses. That's understandable, given that so many party leaders, including future president Xi Jinping, were down in Chongqing praising it not so long ago, and some of its social welfare and public housing components will probably remain part of the country's policy mix.

An optimistic view, however, is that this unforeseen event will end up strengthening the hand of those – identified at the very top with Premier Wen Jiabao and future Premier Li Keqiang – who believe that China needs not red songs but further economic, legal and also political reforms. It needs reform for a host of reasons, from the slowing of economic growth (that is, 9% going down towards 8%, then maybe 7%), through inequality, rural-urban disparities and an ageing population, all the way to the cancerous spread of high-level corruption (witness the Bos' own lavish, champagne-Maoist family lifestyle), the need for innovation, and rising expectations among the educated youth who connect on Weibo.

What I find so striking on this visit is that I hear such sentiments not just where I always have, among liberal academics, free-market economists, thinktankers, writers and students, but also in more unexpected places, including the Communist party's central party school and even the party-state television mouthpiece, CCTV.

I definitely wouldn't bet on it happening. The counter-forces of caution, consensus and vested interests are massive, both because of the top-level family and clan intertwining of political and economic power, which the Bos exemplified, and because former leaders such as Jiang Zemin (and soon Hu Jintao), will remain very influential "behind the bamboo curtain", in the wonderful old Chinese phrase. But the fallout from the affair will surely increase the pressure on the party leadership to do something decisive, both to restore its own tarnished reputation and, in the longer run, to deliver more of what most Chinese might regard as progress.

If that were to happen (and it remains a very big if); if the result of the mysterious and tragic death of an obscure British businessman were in the end to be a better, more durably stable China, and therefore a safer world; then this would be a stunning example of the law of unintended consequences.

Twitter: @fromtga

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Europe has left Syria to a distinctly Ottoman fate | Timothy Garton Ash

On Syria there's a moral case for intervention – but with the west reluctant, Turkey and other powers will be the ones to decide

The day I arrived in Istanbul, they buried the last Ottoman. Her Imperial Highness Fatma Neslisah Sultan had been born in a royal palace overlooking the Bosphorus when her grandfather still notionally reigned over the remnants of a vast, intercontinental realm. The day after I left, gunfire from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's troops killed several people inside Turkey. Their shots crossed a frontier that did not exist until the demise of the Ottoman empire.

On the face of it, these two events seem quite unrelated: the first, a mere historical curiosity, the second, among the most urgent political and humanitarian challenges of the day. Upwards of 9,000 people have now reportedly been killed in Syria. Tens of thousands more have been wounded and, according to some estimates, up to a million men, women and children are internally or externally displaced. French and British-led intervention in Libya was triggered by Muammar Gaddafi's credible threat to kill civilians in Benghazi en masse. Assad has actually done it in Homs.

At the time of writing, he has ignored the deadline agreed with former UN general secretary Kofi Annan for the withdrawal of Syrian forces. The chances of an effective ceasefire seem vanishingly small. If the scale of mass killing of civilians were the sole trigger for humanitarian intervention, we should have done it weeks ago.

Yet these horrors and the passing of that last scion of empire are more closely related than you might think. For Turkey, it makes a world of difference that the territory now called Syria was, until the first world war, as much an integral part of the Ottoman realm as Ireland was of the British. This historical awareness is especially important for Turkey's moderate Islamist government, whose deputy prime minister attended the funeral ceremony for the last granddaughter of the last sultan. Its doctrine of "strategic depth" sees Turkey as a regional power, straddling Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, like … guess who.

Its voluble and hyper-energetic foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has, to be sure, formally rejected the charge that he is a "neo-Ottoman"; but he has also said "I am not a minister of a nation state only". A former university professor, he talks often, eloquently, and at length about the Ottoman legacy. After one such performance, delivered to assembled foreign ministers of the European Union, one of them joked that the EU was being invited to join the Ottoman empire. But this is, of course, a modernised, slimmed-down, republican version, rather as the last princess ended her life officially called plain Mrs Osmanoglu – that is, roughly, Mrs Ottoman. (Think Mrs Windsor, formerly of Windsor Castle, in the British republic that I shall not live to see.)

More materially, the dynamic Turkish economy has major business and trading interests in Syria, while the chequerboard ethnic legacy of the partitioned Ottoman realms means that restless Kurds live on both sides of that Turkish-Syrian frontier. Not to mention the sheer, immediate pressure of refugees, which has led to increasing talk of the Turkish army imposing a buffer zone or humanitarian corridor inside the Syrian frontier. Some even suggest that Turkey could cite a violation of article 1 of the 1998 Adana agreement between the two countries, which states that "Syria … will not permit any activity that emanates from its territory aimed at jeopardising the security and stability of Turkey". (This originally referred to support for Kurdish groups such as the PKK.) In Istanbul, I also heard unconfirmed reports of former members of Turkish special forces fighting with the Free Syrian Army.

But there's a larger story here. When I write, in relation to humanitarian intervention, "we should have done it long ago", many readers' default assumption will be that my "we" refers mainly to western powers, preferably acting with some UN authority and politely called "the international community". And it is true that if the west's leading military powers, above all the US, then Britain and France, do engage with armed force – as they eventually did in two other unhappy corners of the former Ottoman empire, Bosnia and Kosovo – that has a transformative effect. But none of them, least of all Washington, show any intention of doing so here.

US president Barack Obama and French president Nicolas Sarkozy have elections to win. British prime minister David Cameron is too busy eating cold pasties and drumming up trade in the Far East. They will express outrage, and try to ratchet up economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure through the UN, but don't expect any Libya or Kosovo-type intervention any time soon.

In these circumstances, it is other powers that will determine the fate of the Syrian people. In the near future, Turkey will be more important than Britain, Iran than Germany, Saudi Arabia than France, Russia than America. In Syria, all these regional powers pursue their own national interests, defined not just in economic and military but also in cultural and ideological terms. So there's a struggle between Shia, post-revolutionary Iran and Sunni, reactionary Saudi Arabia, post-imperial Russia and neo-Ottoman Turkey, not to mention distant but mighty China – a vital swing vote among the permanent members of the UN security council.

If some weary pasha had gone to sleep in 1912 and only woken up today there would of course be much to surprise him, from post-colonial states to Facebook, democracy and mobile phones. But after a few weeks of adjustment, he might feel quite at home. Ah yes, he would say, here are great powers pursuing their very different values and interests, openly and by stealth, in the familiar great game. In fact, many of them are reduced, partially modernised versions of the same old powers: Turkey now under sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia yoked to tsar Vladimir Putin, China in the last months of emperor Hu Jintao, Britain with Her Majesty's pink-cheeked first minister, and so on.

The balance of forces around Syria would be different if the historically new, shared sovereignty model of the EU had reached out to embrace Turkey, as it has been promising to do – incredibly, in both senses of the word – for nearly 50 years, since the association agreement of 1963. But it has not. Europe, as Europe, is inaudible on Syria as on so many other issues. And so the fate of that country's brave resisters and suffering civilians depends on the old-fashioned regional competition of diverse sovereign powers.

Twitter: @fromtga

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The Burmese spring is still far from high summer | Timothy Garton Ash

Aung San Suu Kyi has finally found a partner on the side of the regime, but true democracy will take longer

If Aung San Suu Kyi is elected to Burma's parliament this Sunday, the world will inevitably ask: has Asia's Nelson Mandela finally met her President FW de Klerk? Or, if you prefer a European comparison, has Asia's Václav Havel met her Mikhail Gorbachev? Cue episode three in the "from prisoner to president" saga. I do believe that day will come, but let us have no illusions: there are still major obstacles ahead. Wisdom and strength, inside and outside Burma, will be needed to surmount them.

Whatever happens, Aung San Suu Kyi has long since earned the Havel and Mandela comparisons. Like Mandela, she has endured decades of imprisonment, emerging with an extraordinary lack of rancour. Like Havel, she has not only been her country's leading dissident but also analysed its political and social condition. Listen to the BBC Reith lectures she delivered last year. Read the personal free speech manifesto she has just contributed to the 40th anniversary issue of the magazine Index on Censorship. These are classic texts of modern dissident political writing – with a new dimension, since she speaks always as a devout Buddhist.

Intellectually and morally, there is no comparison between her and Burma's (aka Myanmar's) military leader in a civilian suit, President Thein Sein. Politically, however, the opening he has led is remarkable. Not just Aung San Suu Kyi but hundreds of other political prisoners have been released, including some from the important 88 Generation student movement and monks who were active in the "saffron revolution" of 2007. The military junta has retreated behind a cloak of civilian politics. Freedom of expression and assembly has exploded, though the legal basis for it is still insecure. Activists have been catapulted from the darkness of a prison cell to the blinding flash of paparazzi bulbs.

Remarkably, Thein Sein has risked the wrath of China, Burma's would-be big brother, by suspending construction of the Chinese-funded Myitsone hydroelectric dam. (The energy would have gone mainly to China, the environmental cost to Burma.) He has sought ceasefires with insurgent minority groups, though some armed conflict continues. The National League for Democracy (NLD) has been allowed to register as a party. In this 1 April byelection, they have put up candidates for 47 out of 48 available seats in the lower house of parliament. Large crowds hail one of those candidates as a saviour wherever she goes.

If you had told anyone this four years ago, when the supremely nonviolent, monk-led protests of 2007 had just been crushed with extreme brutality, they would not have believed you. Every velvet revolution, every negotiated transition, requires figures in both regime and opposition who are ready to take the risk of engagement. At last, Burma seems to have its two to tango.

Now for the warning notes. Both leaders are taking a big risk. The regime's chief astrologer – Burmese rulers have long favoured astrologers over economists – has reportedly predicted that president Thein Sein will fall ill this summer. That illness may be political, if the grossly self-enriched military feels its vital interests are threatened. Just a few days ago, the head of the army warned that the military's special position, enshrined in the 2008 constitution, must be respected.

For the NLD leader, the risks are also great. She recently had to suspend her campaign, apparently worn out by the heat, crowds and exertion. If some on the regime side add electoral fraud to media manipulation, what will she say? Even if the NLD gets a clean sweep of the 47, it will still only have just over 10% of a lower house dominated by a combination of the military-created Union Solidarity and Development party and 110 seats (one in four!) reserved for military appointees. The next general election is not till 2015.

Popular hopes of her miracle-working powers are exceeded only by the scale of the country's economic and social problems. Central to those problems, as in Egypt, are the economic privileges of the military. "I don't want to ask what you need before the election," she told voters at an orphanage, "but I will afterwards; I promise to come back soon." But what if she can't, being stuck in parliamentary committees in the remote, artificial government city of Naypyidaw? What if she knows the people's needs but cannot supply them? Sympathetic observers say she risks exchanging one kind of powerlessness for another.

Then there is the complex relationship with the ethnic minorities that comprise around one third of the country's population. And there is China, which is hardly going to promote the emergence of a shining, western-oriented democracy on its own doorstep.

Against this, however, there are grounds for optimism. The NLD may not have the kind of organisation the ANC had in South Africa but, as Havel showed in Czechoslovakia, mass organisations can emerge with remarkable speed in velvet revolutionary times. There is the social and moral force of the country's Buddhist monks. (I challenge any Burmese general to sneer "how many divisions has the Buddha?") The regime is clearly keen to get European and American sanctions lifted, so there is some leverage there. Then there is the country's other mighty neighbour, India, which might at long last choose to encourage next door what it practices at home: democracy. There is the popular momentum that such processes acquire, once begun. And there is The Lady herself, a treasure without price.

Astrologers do, after all, make mistakes. Even political scientists have been known to err in their predictions. On what we know today, it still looks as if her road from prison to presidency has some difficult turns and harsh gradients ahead. 2015 may be a more realistic target date than 2013. And that end will itself, as Havel and Mandela discovered, only be a beginning.

Twitter: @fromtga

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