Juncker is EPP's candidate but still may not get the job

EPP elects Juncker as candidate for EC presidency - Political News | Irish & International Politics | The Irish Times - Fri, Mar 07, 2014

 

A funny sort of election took place in Dublin yesterday, when the luminaries and MEPs of the European People's Party gathered to select the man (for the candidates were all men) they want to put forward for President of the European Commission and who will be the face of the EPP's Europe-wide campaign in the European Parliament elections in a few months' time.


The EPP is the Christian Democrat (and largest) grouping in the European Parliament, and includes many several governing parties, such as Ireland's Fine Gael party, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's Civil Platform, and Greece's New Democracy.  (It doesn't include, of course, David Cameron's Conservative Party, who took the Tories out of the EPP's grouping and set up a more Eurosceptic grouping - European Conservatives and Reformists, which is basically the Tories with a smattering of of other odds and sods of European elections sitting like sprinkles atop the Tory Eurosceptic cake).  They selected former Luxembourgish Prime Minister and Eurogroup President, Jean-Claude Juncker as the man for the job meaning, in the normal run of things, that one could expect Juncker to be the new President should the EPP emerge as the dominant force in the European Parliament after May's elections.


The choice of Juncker has, interestingly, given rise to a certain amount of commentary about his smoking and drinking habits, about which I had previously been unaware.

Consider this:

Now they're talking... So Juncker drank? What a surprise: http://t.co/VdsyUnA5VD via @WSJ
— Pierre Briançon (@pierrebri) January 8, 2014

And then this gem from a Brussels gossipy twitter account:

AAahaha. Twitter timing at its absolute very best from @spiritsEUROPE . *hat-doff*. #EPPDublin #Juncker. pic.twitter.com/Je2WCnDKsK
— Berlaymonster (@Berlaymonster) March 7, 2014

It should be noted that Juncker's Eurozone successor belongs to the Party of European Socialists whose candidate Martin Schultz is Juncker's main opponent for the job of Commission President. Still...

Estonian FM: Maidan snipers were with the opposition

16H00 UPDATE: Both the Estonian Foreign Ministry and Olga Bogolomets have denied that she implicated the opposition in the sniper attacks in Kiev.

Russia Today (not generally a news source in which I would have a lot of confidence) has tweeted a story a link to a story, which appears to contain a genuine leaked telephone conversation in which the Estonian Foreign Minister tells the EU's foreign policy chief, Cathy Ashton, that Olga Bogomolets that it was the same snipers in Kiev who shot both protesters and police (jump to 8:22 for the relevant snippet).

Behind the snipers was not Yanukovich, but somebody from the new coalition.

It is pretty amazing that what appears to be a genuine phone conversation has been leaked.

Who would do so and why?  My guess is that it is a pretty underhand attempt to pushback on Washington's attempts to implement tough sanctions on Russia that would have an extremely detrimental effect on a number of European economies, Estonia's included.

And then, of course, there's the possibility that it was Russian intelligence.

What's certain, however, is that the (mis-)information war is heating up.

BREAKING: Estonian Foreign Ministry confirms authenticity of leaked call on #Kiev snipers http://t.co/RLfLl3x4CG pic.twitter.com/m9UJXJBdUG
— RT (@RT_com) March 5, 2014

Leaked tape of Estonian Foreign Minister & the EU's Catherine Ashton claimed by "Officers of SBU loyal to the ousted President Yanukovich."
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) March 5, 2014

Warning: some of the footage attached to the telephone conversation is graphic.

Putin and Nixon: birds of a feather

If you have been confused about what has been happening in Ukraine over the past week and went online or picked up a paper to try and find out, chances are you would come away not much the wiser.

Depending on what you read, Russian President Vladimir Putin is either a strategic genius, playing a long game of chess while the West plays marbles, or a short-sighted opportunist, constantly reacting to events but never able to control them.

Putin is either taking advantage of American weakness to throw Russian weight around, or is threatened by American and Western power pushing further against his borders.

Putin is either a hard-nosed realist, who will only respond to force and understands the importance of a balance-of-power, or an ideological Russian nationalist, prepared to risk Russia's material wellbeing and international standing in order to poke his perceived enemies in the eye.

In reading the multiple accounts and analyses of what is going on in Russia and Ukraine, I couldn't help but think of a comment by Henry Kissinger to TV presenter Dick Cavett, when discussing his former boss, Richard Nixon:

There are so many strands to his personality that almost everything you would say about Richard Nixon is true.