The joke - updated

EU foreign minister Cathy Ashton spoke at the London School of Economics (LSE) yesterday, and while here speech (mp3) was fairly general, she ended it with a joke that caught my attention.

She told the joke like this:

The Secretary of State of the United States goes to the President and says:

"Mr President, finally an answer to the question that Henry Kissinger raised. Which is: 'We want to talk to Europe - whose number do we ring?' We have one phone number; let's ring the number and see what happens."

They ring the number and my [Catherine Ashton's; JF] voice mail is answering: "Welcome to Europe! For the French Position press 1, for the German position press 2..."

I had read or heard this one before, but since the moderator mentioned ex-MEP and Finnish foreign minister Alexander Stubb as the origin of the joke and Cathy Ashton wasn't aware of that, I did a little research to check that claim.

According to the New York Times, it was indeed Stubb who told the joke at a NATO reform conference in early March (although we don't know whether he invented it himself).

The version reported in the NYT goes like this:

"President Obama learns with interest that Europe now has a phone number. He’s told that, responding at last to Henry Kissinger’s famous jibe, the European Union has appointed a President named Herman Van Rompuy from Belgium and given him a 24/7 phone line.

So, Obama decides to try out Europe’s phone number. Henry will be tickled. But the president forgets about the time difference and gets an answering machine:

“Good Evening, you’ve reached the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy speaking. We are closed for tonight. Please select from the following options. Press one for the French view, two for the German view, three for the British view, four for the Polish view, five for the Italian view, six for the Romanian view. ...”

Obama hangs up in dismay."

While the punch line is the same in both versions, there is an interesting difference: In Cathy's version, she is called by the the Secretary of State and the President of the USA, in the version reported from Stubb it is European Council President van Rompuy.

The question is: Which version of the joke will prevail, the one with Ashton or the other with van Rompuy...?

Update: According to Alex Stubb, he is not the one who invented the joke.

Picture: © european_parliament / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

One year ago: Russia and Georgia at war (supplemented)

One year ago, Russia and Georgia were at war - yet another war on the European continent, Europeans killing Europeans, because big men with big balls needed to compare the lengths of their penises.

This conflict between two very different but in a sense still very similar nations - both are marked by a lack of democratic culture and their politics are built upon nationalism and false assumptions about the need for power - showed us Europeans that the phantom of war has not disappeared from our shores, that the shadow of distrust and hate has not been washed away from our lands, and that power of evil remains strong.

Putin and Medvedev as well as Saakashvilli deserve our full disrespect for what they did; they are a shame for the European continent and for the values that their countries have subscribed to as members of the Council of Europe and the OSCE!

We also shouldn't forget that this is not just about politics, it is about human beings who have been killed, it is about families disrupted, about injured souls, about lives filled with fear and anger. War is not about big man with big balls, it is about man-made weapons cutting human bodies into pieces and burning human lives into ashes.

Now, one year later, tensions are rising again in the region, although not looking as dangerous as a year ago. It makes me angry seeing this, and so I will let some else speak more calmly on the matter.

Alexander Stubb, former MEP and now Finnish foreign minister, has been the chairman of the OSCE last year and was blogging in English when he went to the region.

Yesterday, a year later, Stubb has published an article on his blog looking back and into the future:

[...] The war in Georgia shattered the European security policy configuration also at a more general level. It created tensions and persistent insecurity. [...]

What does the situation in Georgia look like now on 080809?

Firstly, domestic turmoil in the country is continuing. [...] Secondly, the security situation in the conflict regions is alarming. [...]

The most significant step forward to date is the joint incident prevention and response mechanism, which involves regular meetings at local level to discuss incidents and their prevention. However, there have been stumbling blocks in its implementation. [...]

What should the EU then do to preserve stability and help Georgia out of the woods at some phase?

I see that political intervention can take place on three tracks. 1) The cease-fire must be monitored effectively and reinforced by international presence in the entire territory of Georgia. 2) The peace process must be supported and preconditions must be sought for a gradual restoration of confidence and concrete steps forward. 3) The EU must strengthen its overall support for Georgia. This will take place in the framework of the policy of the Eastern Partnership. [...]

What Stubb writes doesn't look too encouraging, it doesn't seem that there has been much progress, and it shows the slow speed with which diplomacy moves in such cases, spending time on useless words and declarations, trying to avoid saying what needed to be said.

Still, I hope for the people in the region, as well as for the whole of Europe, that our European politicians and diplomats, but even more the responsible actors in the countries and the region will be able to secure peace on our continent - and that all of you remain aware that what we have managed to create with the EU is not self-evident, but has to be defended every day and minute in order to live in peace and relative prosperity as we do right now.

Any alternative is nothing but frightening...!

Supplement: Carl Bildt, Swedish foreign minister, now co-responsible for the Swedish EU Council Presidency, and one year ago chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Council of Europe, has also written about the first "birthday" of the war.

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PS.: One year ago, this blog was still very young, and so the Russian-Georgian crisis pretty much dominated its early times as you can see in a number of articles from last year:

• 10 July: Rising tensions in Abkhazia
• 08 August: South Ossetia, Georgia, and Russia heading towards war
• 09 August: Blogosphere coverage of the South Ossetia war
• 09 August: South Ossetia: Poland asks for urgent EU summit
• 10 August: Self-torture: Watching "Russia Today"
• 10 August: Finnish OSCE presidency: Russia cannot be a mediator!
• 11 August: Information war: Georgian ministry "blogging"
• 11 August: The EU's many voices - Kouchner, Stubb, and Bildt
• 12 August: Georgia as single issue for EU Council
• 13 August: EU Council on Georgia: Weak conclusions
• 14 August: That is so 20th century!
• 15 August: Human Rights Watch: Violations from all sides
• 22 August: Alexander Stubb (almost) live
• 24 August: Sarkozy announces urgent EU summit on Georgia
• 25 August: The separatist agenda
• 26 August: Medvedev's vision?

Finnish Foreign Minister Stubb: EU foreign policy co-ordination inefficient

In a blog post titled "Ten Theses on Europe", the Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb discusses the future role of the European Union and its relevance for Finnish foreign policy.

The whole text is not very revolutionary, but I would like to point to one paragraph:

3. A common policy and funding require joint preparation. To me, the External Relations Council of the European Union bears too much resemblance to international conferences where participating states complain about their own worries. We need a much more uniform and effective preparatory machinery that brings more specifically selected and better thought-out proposals to the negotiations. The quarrelsome and dispersed actors of Brussels must be forced, once and for all, to work in better cooperation. The EU foreign ministers should be able to concentrate on major policy lines rather than tinkering with minute details.

This paragraph highlights something that I have experienced myself in one of my previous employments: EU foreign policy co-ordination is not always oriented towards the common good, it is too much focused on little details, on individual countries' "mental state", and not designed to foster positive co-operation but rather inter-country bargaining. This is not only the case on the level of foreign minister represented, but apparently also on the levels below.

However, if a foreign minister (who is working for a country that has presided the EU Council only 2 1/2 years ago) is complaining about the work of the foreign relations Council, this seems to be a quite strong signal to me that the practical organisation of EU foreign policy co-ordination needs reform, not necessarily through a Treaty reform but maybe just by a change in procedures and, what could be even more important, by a change in spirit.

I am very glad that Alexander Stubb is raising this issue, and I hope it is heard among his colleagues and those working in the Council on the side of the member states and also on the side of the Council secretariat.

Greece with foreign minister Dora Bakoyannis takes over the OSCE chairmanship - updated

Since January, 1, Greece has taken over the chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) from the Finns.

Their foreign minister Alexander Stubb has been blogging several times during the Finnish chairmanship, notably during the Russian-Georgian crisis, which called my attention earlier this year. I doubt that Dora Bakoyannis, number 78 on the Forbes list of the most powerful women and first female foreign minister of Greece, will get the attention of the European blogosphere with extensive online appearance.

According to the OSCE press release - which is aggressively general - the most important issue seems to be Georgia:

In particular, we intend to proceed with a swift and co-ordinated course of action to try and find a compromise arrangement that would allow the Organization to continue its activities throughout Georgia, in order to assist all efforts for the peaceful resolution of the crisis.

The last time we have heard about the OSCE was in early December, when the Russian proposal to establish a new pan-European security strategy was rejected by the rest of the OSCE countries. The only remark in the press release is that Greece will "build on the discussions" at the ministerial OSCE Council in Helsinki, which means that on the diplomatic level they cannot bury the initiative but it won't come up politically.

The next OSCE presidency (2010) will be held by... Kazakhstan, a nation that ranks particularly low in all fields of democracy and good governance, according to the 2008 Freedom House "Countries in Transit" report.

Update (22 January 2009)

Oops, have I been deliciously tagged by Ms Bakoyannis personnally today...?

Alexander Stubb (almost) live

For most of you reading this blog (and therefore reading many more) this will not be real news, but all the rest should have a look at the blog of Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb.

In this function, he is now Chairman-in-Office of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and he is blogging (almost) live from his efforts and activities in and for the region. And the way he does it is quite something - I am not aware that anyone in a similar position has given comparable personal accounts [following the comment from Grahnlaw, I should add: in English language] out of such a crisis where s/he is directly involved.

And although it is nothing but a coincidence, it is striking that a Finnish chairman of the OSCE is in charge of preventing a new hot "Cold War":

The predecessor of the organisation, the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, founded in 1973) has led to the famous Helsinki Accords in 1975, which many scholars see as one of the major steps towards the end of the real "Cold War"...

Finnish OSCE presidency: Russia cannot be a mediator!

I have been asking for a tougher stand by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in a recent post, so I am glad that Alexander Stubb, Finnish foreign minister and currently the man in charge of the rotating OSCE-presidency, has said the following:

"Russia is at the moment a party in this conflict, not a mediator, and that has to be mirrored when ceasefire and peace talks begin."

"It is clear that there is no return to the status quo, to what was."

This is a clear statement towards Moscow, and I think that this more than appropriate!

Stubb has gone to Georgia together with his French colleague Kouchner, currently responsible for the French EU-Council presidency, in order to mediate in the conflict.