Kaczyński' casus.

Division of Poland according to Prof. Radoslaw Markowski

The most difficult and most important part of the political weather forecast for Poland is the PiS further destiny, as well as the domestic and foreign policy of that party. Division of the PiS policy into domestic and foreign has the same reasoning as such division of policy for the state. The thing is that Kaczyński — for the first time in Polish and perhaps in the European history of politics — attempts to conduct his own international policy (contradicting the official policy of governing coalition), being in the opposition to an acting government. However, we’d still start our analysis and prediction of the PiS policy from the internal state of affairs both in the party and in the country.

Kaczyński' casus. Part 7

Forecast for tomorrow

     

Changes in the Polish politics that took place during last six months are too great to forecast the future from the scratch even for me, although I have been watching after the polititical situation in Poland for years. In order to project the political development of the country I need to analyze the realignment of the Polish political forces once again, estimate their prospects and attempt to figure out what may come out from their competition. 

Georgia begins to miss Russia

   

                   Mikhail Saakashvili is being interviewed by "Le Figaro"

     

On the 22^nd of November „Le Figaro” published an interview with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili with a title “Georgia stretches its hand to Russia”. The next day Saakashvili held a speech at Euro-Parliament, having reported his readiness to start the negotiations with Russia “at any given place and time, on any level and without any preconditions whatsoever”.  

New security architecture, born at the safe haven of Lisbon.

In antique Phoenician language “Lisbon” meant the “safe haven”.  This beautiful city has already been a cradle of one historical agreement — the Lisbon Treaty, which revived the European Union. Now we may say that Lisbon also became a place of birth for the new European security configuration. New Strategic Concept of the Northern Atlantic Alliance — accompanied by the new configuration of partnership with Russia — has without doubt become a main achievement of the NATO summit, which took place this weekend. From now on, NATO and Russia are the strategic partners.

Homework for the Summit in Lisbon

Meeting in Baku

Today’s NATO summit in Lisbon is so important for its participants that each side — having expected certain results — didn’t hesitate to do its part of the homework in order to demonstrate their true intentions to their partners. American President publicly given his Russian colleague to understand that he remembers all of their preliminary oral arrangements. He gathered some sort of an Advisory Council and — in the presence of his aides, including Henry Kissinger (creator of the „shuttle diplomacy” term) — held a speech regarding the START treaty. Railroading the latter through the Congress after his failure at the mid-term elections wouldn’t be a piece of cake this time.

Georgia puts up…Russian WTO membership for an auction

Mr. Lawrence Summers

Negotiations over the Russian entry into World Trade Organization have been dragging on  since 1995, which seems to be record term for that. Not a single country in the world had struggled for the membership in this international club longer than Russia. Discussion among Russian economists on whether Russia needs WTO or not is still on and will seemingly last forever. It seems, though that those who oppose it are actually right. Mutual cancellation of customs tariffs will lead to the increase of margin on traditional Russian export goods, i.e. mostly raw natural resources (oil, gas, metals and fertilizers) but due to the traditional Russian export-trade model, these profits would still never leave various „tax havens” and would never get back into country

Kaczyński' casus. Part VI

The first blood was drawn today. What’s next?

On the 19^th of October Polish civil war stopped being a cold one. The first blood was drawn. 62-year-old taxi driver Ryszard Z. (Polish legislation prohibits publishing criminals’ last names before the court ruling to become effective) broke into the PiS office in Łódź, having shot one of the employees and heavily wounded the second one with a knife. This has never happened in the contemporary Polish history before. First political murder in the post-communist Poland has blown up already electrified Polish society. Most part of Poles has treated this incident in a rather adequate manner.  Every sane person understood even clearer that the PiS-inspired policy of hatred eventually hit those who were imposing it on the country.

Japanese defense abilities. Part 2

Evolution of Japanese army

With the end of the Cold War and decreased tension at the East-West line, Japan started to revaluate its defense concept. Previous system of defense against ground invasion ceded to BMD system and special military and navy operations. Due to that, amount of armored vehicles in Japanese army was reduced from 900 to 600. At the same time, in 2011 new Type-10 tank is to go into service. Japanese also plan to reinforce the Central Readiness Force (CFR) and set up the submarine patrols of Japanese and Eastern-Chinese seas.

Japanese defense abilities. Part 1

Recently emerged tension in the Russo-Japanese relationship brought us to the idea to analyze the defense abilities of Japan and other Asian-Pacific countries. But let’s start with Japan.

Pacifism constitution

Article 9 of the Japanese constitution states: “Japanese people forever denounce war as a sovereign right of the nation”. Thus, having been adopted in 1947, Constitution reflected an act of national penitence for the aggressive expansion policy that eventually brought Japanese people to unleashing of the Japanese-Chinese war of 1937-1945 and its participation in the Second World War alongside with Nazi Germany. During almost ten years Japan hasn’t even got its own army, although the Cold War logic made Japanese create the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF). Today they make one of the most advanced and well-equipped armies of the world. According to the Japanese Constitution, this army can only be used for the sake of defense of its own territory and only up to degree, necessary to repel the direct attack. Due to the same reason, Japanese military is not allowed to have intercontinental ballistic missiles, aircraft carriers and strategic bombers.

Temptation of Europe. Part II

Russian concept of the European security

During the last ten years Russia has dramatically changed its public image and now it doesn’t look like a “poor cousin” that humbly awaits his turn in the European reception room anymore.

The “upgrading” model of the state progress, proclaimed by Dmitry Medvedev, inevitably leads to the increasing role of Russia in a new global society.

Temptation of Europe

Deauville summit and Dmitry Medvedev’s promise to take part in the NATO summit in Lisbon makes us take a seriously different view of his initiative to create a new European security system

Security system that emerged after the Second World War was based on confrontation of two competing military-political alliances: NATO and the Warsaw Treaty — these agreements were personifying the bipolar system of the Cold War period. After the collapse of the USSR and, consequently, the Warsaw Treaty, there was a short period of the mono-polar U.S. dominion.