Dramas Forming Sweden

Today is the National Day of Sweden.

It’s been sort of celebrated as such for years, but since 1982 it is official that it is the National Day, and since last year it’s also a public holiday.

Why the 6th of June?

Well, there were competing offers when the choice was made in the late 19th century – the age of awakening nationalism – but June 6th seemed to be the least complicated option.

It was the day in 1523 when Gustav Vasa was crowned as King of Sweden, and it was the day in 1809 when the constitution that was in force until 1809 was promulgated.

But these were also years of drama and traumatic events in our part of Europe.

From 1397 the three nations of Norway, Denmark and Sweden had been united in what was called the Union of Kalmar after the castle in present south-eastern Sweden where it had been agreed.

But from the late 15th century nationalist feelings in Sweden started to question this arrangement. And when the Danish king Christian II – who was King of the Union – answered with repressive measures, the situation become rife for open rebellion.

This came under the leadership of the young nobleman Gustav Eriksson Vasa. He allied himself with the Hanseatic German traders in Lubeck in order to finance his rebellion against the Danes and their local allies. The more romantic mythology however attaches greater importance to him rallying the peasants of the Dalarna province for a march against the foreign occupiers in Stockholm.

Gradually he won the battles, and it was in Strängnäs on June 6th that Sweden left the old union and pronounced him king as Gustav Vasa. Thus emerged Sweden as a true nation state for the first time.

At that time Stockholm was still in Danish hands, although Gustav Vasa could enter the city on June 23rd. But large parts of Finland were not under his control, there was fighting in the South and Gotland was well beyond anything.

It took until a meeting in September in Malmö – then Denmark – for there to be some sort of provisional border settlement. It was one that Gustav Vasa was deeply dissatisfied with.

It was not a harmonious divorce after the ”war of liberation”, and Sweden and Denmark continued to see each other as archenemies for a couple of centuries. It’s really only since the 19th century that things have normalized.

June 6th 1809 is also associated with a traumatic realignment of the politics of Northern Europe.

These were the years of the Napoleonic upheavals across Europe. At a meeting in Tilsit, Napoleon had given tsar Alexander a free hand in northern Europe.

The resulting war – one in a series between Sweden and Russia during primarily the 18th century – had seen the armies of the Tsar defeating the Swedish armies on the battlefields of Finland. The mighty fortress of Sveaborg outside Helsinki had fallen into their hands.

And the disastrous conduct of the war had lead to a coup d’etat in Stockholm in March supported by an advancing rebellious army. The somewhat tragicomic king had been arrested.

At that time Cossack units had briefly been within just a day or two of the capital after having crossed on the ice from the Åland islands. And in June a Russian army was standing in and controlling northern Sweden.

A brief battle in the vicinity of Umeå in northern Sweden in August ended in another Swedish retreat, and in September the peace that separated Sweden and Finland, and later made Finland an autonomous nation within Russia until 1917, could be concluded essentially on Russian terms.

In the meantime the then Parliament had dismissed the king and his entire family and hastily written the new constitution. This, I understand, is what we are celebrating.

So the two June 6th are dates associated with very major geopolitical shifts and changes in Northern Europe.

The first broke down the Union of Kalmar, and there emerged the continued union between Denmark and Norway and a Sweden that at the time included also Finland. But the wars between the two large states would continue on and off for two more centuries.

The second broke down all of this.

Sweden and Finland were separated after having been one entity since the early Middle Ages. A reduced Sweden had to seek a new identity, and Finland with its wide autonomy inside Russia could start to emerge as a nation in its own right, acquiring its independence in 1917.

Denmark had sided with Napoleon in the wars of those years, and had to accept the loss of Norway, which was given to Sweden as some form of compensation for the loss of Finland. But it never worked that way, and in 1905 the two dissolved the union and Norway gots its independence.

In a wider sense, this is what June 6th is all about.

The birth of nations is often bloody, messy and not always that glorious affairs.

I leave to others to judge whether Sweden is an exception.

Welcome Serbia!

On Saturday evening, Montenegro declared its independence as a result of its May 21 referendum on the issue.

And today it was the time for Serbia to do the same.

Montenegro becomes independent of Serbia – and Serbia becomes independent of Montenegro.

We see two new state entities on the map of Europe. But I hope that Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic was right when he said that it is ”a state separation – not a separation of Serbia from Montenegro”. The human and other bonds remain strong.

And on June 12th it is expected that the European Union will officially recognize the existence of the two sovereign states of Serbia and Montenegro in place of the former state union.

It was at an extraordinary meeting of the Serbian Parliament that it was proclaimed that, according to the constitutional charter, the international-legal subjectivity and jurisdiction of the former federal union will now be taken over by Serbia. This has been agreed before.

Serbian Parliamentary Speaker Predrag Marković said that the parliament will make the government aware of the fact that all state bodies must, within a deadline of 45 days, take all measures to make sure that all jurisdictions of the federal union are transferred to the state level, in order to avoid any problems or conflict in the separation from Montenegro.

This is easier said than done. There are numerous small issues that could become very big if not handled in a constructive and generous way. Control over the armed forces – up until now a joint responsibility – is just one among them.

For Serbia as well as for Montenegro there will be the need for new constitutions. In the case of Serbia that’s been on the agenda for years, and was a key issue when the present Kostunica governmernt was formed. But progress so far has been exceedingly slow.

For all of the problems of separation, Serbia has all reasons to look with optimism to the future.

Its constitutional structure will be far more straightforward after the separation. The Serbian economy is already doing rather well with growth rates of 5 – 6% – substantially better than Montenegro in the last fe years. And Belgrade is gradually on its way back as one of key hubs of most things in the region.

There are substantial issues that needs to be handled – Mladic and Kosovo. Neither is simple. And there needs to be statesmanship and generosity in handling all the state divorce issues.

But once out of the way, there is every reason to believe that Serbia could become one of the pillars of growth and one of the foundations of stability in the region.

Flat Tax Elections

Although not necessarily the deciding issue, the question of a flat tax was an issue in the just held parliamentary election in the Czech Republic and is also debated leading up to the Slovak elections on June 17.

It’s really the success of the Slovak flat-tax reform with a 19 % income tax, profit tax and VAT that has changed the terms of the debate on the issue throughout large parts of Europe.

It was all of course started by Estonia in the early 1990′s, and then followed by Lithuania and Latvia, but it was Slovakia that took the concept to Central Europe.

Mikulas Dzurinda and his centre-right government has been ruling Slovakia since 1998, being re-elected in 2002, and taking the country from an unreformed virtual outcast in Europe to one of its true star performers.

Its economy is booming with growth rates above 6% and with very rapid increases in industrial production and exports. Once sleepy Bratislava has suddenly become a very popular place. Its airport is emerging as one of the hubs for low-cost airlines.

This year Slovakia will produce more cars per capita than any other country in the world – it was only years ago that its main export effort was in old-style Soviet tanks.

But also the Czech Republic is doing very well with growth rates above 5% and also impressive developments in industry.

In the Czech election debate, centre-right ODS said it wanted to introduce a flat income tax of 15 % if it won, thus trying to give new momentum to the economic development of the country.

That election ended with ODS gaining 81 seats versus the 74 seats of the CSSD of the Prime Minister. But the centre-right bloc ended up together with 100 seats in the 200 seat Chamber of Deputies, thus producing a perfect tie.

It reminds me of the 1973 Swedish election. In 1970 we had introduced a new unichamberal system with 350 members, but no one had contemplated the possibility of the two ”blocs” each getting 175 seats, which is exactly what happened.

Well, Sweden survived, although the quality of economic policy deterioated substantially in the years of parliamentary maneuvering that followed. We subsequently changed the constitution so that the parliament now has 349 members. Nations do learn.

Tomorrow President Klaus is likely to start some sort of talks with ODS leader Mirek Topolanek to see whether he can form a government. But how far such a government can carry its program – including the flat tax proposal – is of course a very open question.

In Slovakia the opposition party Smer – Third Way – is complaining heavily against the policies of the Dzurinda government, but as far as I understand their proposal for changes are rather modest.

On income tax, they will retain the 19% tax, although they will introduce an even lower bracket of 15% for low-income earners. And on VAT they will introduce differentiated VAT rates, with some higher and some lower.

The outcome is still open.

Smer is well ahead as an individual party in the opinion polls. But it is far from excluded that Dzurinda will manage to forge a new coalition of the different parties of the centre-right.

The flat tax model seems there to stay in Slovakia – and it might have been gaining ground in the Czech Republic.

Stalin and Hitler

There are events that change history – and there are books that do a wonderful job of describing them.

John Lukacs is among the very best of historians of modern Europe. His ”Five Days in London – May 1940″ is only one of the classics from his pen.

Now he’s back with a masterful small book on the relationship between Hitler and Stalin and the former’s decision to go to war with the later on June 22nd 1941.

This was, in his opinion, the most important turning point of the Second World War, since ”the Anglo-American alliance, for all its tremendeous material and financial and industrial and manpower superiority could not have really conquered Hitler’s Germany without Russia.”

How the two courted each other up to their infamous pact on August 23rd 1939 is a story documented elsewhere but worth repeating. And they both derived immense immediate benefit from it.

Hitler got the possibility to attack Poland, thus starting the Second World War. And Stalin got the possibility to get back territories that had been lost in the collapse of the Russian Empire at the end of World War II. He took back parts of Poland, the three independent Baltic states and tried to do the same with Finland.

Up until June 1941 Hitler’s armies had done whatever they wanted across the continent of Europe. The German military machine was without parallel. And the expectation was obviously that it would succeed to crush the Red Army as well.

History turned out differently. And whether Lukacs gives a completely convincing answer to the question why Hitler attacked Stalin can be debated. He was obviously less certain of success than most of his generals. But perhaps breaking the back of Russia was the only way he saw of breaking the resistance of Britain and of Winston Churchill.

For Lukacs, June 1941 is also proof that individuals do matter in history.

In June 1941 Hitler wanted war with Russia, but Stalin certainly did not want war with Germany. Others around both of them were more apprehensive towards the policies pursued.

Hitler decided for war. And that decision eventually sealed his fate and set the course of European history for the following half century.

It’s a book worth reading

Welcome Fridtjof Nansen

Yesterday the new frigate Fridtjof Nansen arrived for the first time in Norway and entered the harbour of Oslo to much fanfare.

A lot of money and effort has gone into the five high-tech frigates that Norway ordered with a shipyard in Spain and with the US firm Lockheed Martin.

In a wider sense they can be seen as a symbol of the new importance of what in Oslo is often referred as the High North.

Once an area of military confrontation during the Cold War, it is now developing into an area of increasing also economic importance.

Estimates that probably are wildly optimistic are saying that up towards a quarter of oil and gas reserves not yet found might be located up in the Arctic area.

But even if that is the case there is little doubt that there are vast resources up there. Apart from – of course – those related to fisheries.

Statoil of Norway is close to getting the Snöhvit gas field in production up there, and these weeks there is intense speculation on when and how the Russian authorities will announce their decision on foreign partners in the development of the gigantic Shtokman gas field on the Russian side of the sea border.

It’s natural that Norway is then investing into the assets needed to survey and police that vast areas of the North Atlantic.

It’s obviously in the interest of Norway – but it’s also in the wider European interest.

So we all have reasons to say our welcome to the frigare Fridtjof Nansen.

The Conflicts of Europe

In the mail yesterday was this year’s edition of IISS’s respected Military Balance.

For decades, it has been the standared international reference work on these issues.

Since some years back, it also includes a Chart of Conflicts giving details on the ongoing as well as recent violent conflicts around the world.

I looked with particular interest on the estimates made of the number of fatalities in the different conflicts.

It is interesting to note the estimates for the Balkan conflicts of the 1990′s.

For the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995 the number of faralities is estimated at 95 000. That’s considerable lower than the figure of 200 000 often referred to public discussions and even somewhat lower than other equally serious attempts to get to the true scale of that conflict.

It will not be until there is a new census in Bosnia that we will start to get a more exact view of this. The last one was in 1991. But I’m fairly certain that the figure then will turn out to be in the vicinity of the IISS estimate.

As for the Kosovo war between 1998 and 1999, the figure IISS uses is 4 000, which is less than half of the figure of 10 000 one often hears.

The Bosnian war is still the by a wide margin worst conflict in Europe since World War II.

For the Chechen war since 1999, IISS has the estimate of 16 000 fatalities, for Nagorno Karabach between 1992 and 1994 22 000 fatalities and for the conflict over Abchazia during the same years 6 000 dead. Further back in history, it notes 4 000 fatalities on Cyprus in 1974.

The Balkans and the Caucasus region are obviously the places to watch.

It’s here that there is a risk that the ethnic mosaic left by a rich past will ignite tensions that escalates into conflicts.

An Answer to the Letter

In a very major policy shift, Washington has now said that it is prepared to sit down on the negotiating table with Teheran and discuss also the nuclear issue.

This was – as I have written – somewhat predictable, but is nevertheless a major move. There was a risk of Teheran capturing the high ground in the debate with its letters and initiatives.

There are important caveats in the initiative.

Washington will sit down together with London, Paris and Berlin. And that’s a wise move. It presents a broader but still obviously united front.

And the demand is that Teheran suspends enrichment and reprocessing activities. This is the ”foundation stone” of the initiative.

Fair enough. The EU3 are saying the same thing, although they talk about enrichment. I have not seen reprocessing being an issue – I’m not aware of any signs of them doing that.

The initial reaction from Teheran has been critical rather than negative, and has tried to avoid taking a clear stand on the conditions for talks. The Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki said that Iran ”will not give up our nation’s natural right” to enrichment, but what is demanded isn’t really that they give up what they consider their right, only that they don’t exercise it. That’s a huge difference.

After some maneuvering I would not be surprised that a formulae of technical suspension or something of that sort is found.

In effect, we are now entering a period of discreet negotiations over the conditions for negotiations.

And that’s progress – of sorts.

Not everyone in the US is happy with what the Washington Post describes as ”perhaps the biggest foreign policy shift” of the Bush presidency.

In its editorial, Wall Street Journal was lukewarm – at best – in its support for the move:

”Iran’s relentless drive for a nuclear weapon is a difficult problem, and perhaps Ms. Rice is right that direct diplomacy is essential to expose Iran’s real purposes. But given Iran’s track record, we’d say the Secretary has walked her President out on a limb where the pressure will soon build on him to make even more concessions. If this gambit fails, she’ll have succeeded mainly in giving the mullahs more time to become a terrorist nuclear power.”

Time will tell who’s right.

But not to explore all options in a situation as serious as this can be sound policy.