Olga Tokarczuk, Books of Jacob

At Amazon, Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob: A Novel.

Thirty-Five Killed as Russia Strikes Ukraine Military Base Near Polish Border (VIDEO)

War is hell. Bloody fucking hell.

At WSJ, "Russian Missiles Strike Ukrainian Military Training Base Near Polish Border":

Attack kills at least 35 and increases risk of war encroaching on NATO territory, after Moscow says arms shipments to Kyiv won’t be tolerated.

A Russian airstrike on a Ukrainian military training center close to the Polish border threw into sharp relief the hazards of the Western push to deliver arms support to Kyiv while avoiding direct conflict with a nuclear adversary.

The airstrike killed 35 people at the facility in Yavoriv about 10 miles from the Polish border early Sunday, far to the west of where the conflict has been concentrated, one day after Moscow warned the West that it would consider arms deliveries to Ukraine as legitimate targets.

A large portion of the military aid from the West—one of the largest transfers of arms in history—passes through Poland into western Ukraine, part of the fine line the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, allies are walking between aiding Ukraine militarily while steering clear of providing troops or enforcing a no-fly zone that Ukraine has called for.

The expansion of Russia’s aggression to a target close to Poland also increases the risk of the war encroaching on NATO territory, which the U.S. has warned would be treated as an attack on the alliance. Any strike on Poland would bring “the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding to it,” Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said in an interview Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said more attacks aimed at supply lines and foreign mercenaries supporting Ukraine were in the offing. Armaments supplied to Ukraine by the U.S. and its European allies—especially antitank and antiaircraft weapons—have played an important role in checking the advance of Russian ground troops, who have suffered heavy casualties in the north as they have tried to encircle the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that military aid alone might not be enough to enable Ukraine to fight off Russia’s invasion, and has made increasingly urgent calls for a no-fly zone that would protect the supplies entering the country and the refugees fleeing to neighboring countries.

The U.S. and its European allies have said a no-fly zone that involved other countries’ air forces risks escalating the conflict because it would only be effective if it were empowered to deter Russian planes. The U.S. also last week declined to support a Polish plan to give the U.S. Soviet-built MiG-29 combat jets after the U.S. had broached the prospect of Poland supplying the planes directly to Ukraine.

While the West aids Ukraine, Russia has asked China for military equipment and other assistance for its war effort, according to U.S. officials, who didn’t specify what Russia had requested.

News of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s request for help from Beijing, first reported by the Washington Post, comes as Mr. Sullivan heads to Rome on Monday to meet with a top Chinese official to discuss Ukraine.

Mr. Sullivan spoke on CNN on Sunday of the growing concern inside the Biden administration that Russia might be looking for help in the conflict, though he didn’t acknowledge a specific request from Russia to China.

“We are also watching closely to see the extent to which China actually does provide any form of support, material support or economic support, to Russia,” Mr. Sullivan said. “It is a concern of ours, and we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions.”

In addition to supplying arms, the Biden administration and its allies have shared intelligence with Kyiv and inflicted sweeping economic sanctions against Russia. But they are facing calls from some quarters to do more...

 

European Union Countries More Reluctant to Cut Off Russian Energy Imports (VIDEO)

Well, deal with the devil, you know?

Look how that's turning out. Under Moscow's thumb.

At Deutsche Welle, "European leaders wary of cutting off Russian oil and gas":

Quickly cutting off energy revenues with oil and gas embargoes would hit Moscow where it hurts. But European leaders have argued for a phased approach, openly admitting their dependency on Russian energy supplies.

The leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands on Monday said Europe was too dependent on Russian energy supplies to stop imports overnight as part of any eventual sanctions package in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Energy exports are a key source of income for Russia, and there are growing calls for oil and gas embargoes to increase pressure on the Kremlin.

However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that although Berlin supported tough measures against Moscow, Russian energy supplies remained "essential" for daily life in Europe.

"Europe's supply with energy for heating, for mobility, power supply and for industry cannot at the moment be secured otherwise," Scholz said in a statement.

Russia is the largest supplier of natural gas to Germany, currently accounting for more than half of imports, according to the government. Gas accounts for around a fifth of German power production.

A 'step-by-step' process

On Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said cutting dependency on Russian oil and gas was "the right thing to do," however it must be done in a "step by step" process.

"We have got to make sure we have substitute supply. One of the things we are looking at is the possibility of using more of our own hydrocarbons," Johnson told a press conference following talks with his Dutch and Canadian counterparts in London.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a halt to Russian oil imports last week. However, Canada is the world's fourth-largest oil producer and its imports from Russia were comparatively negligible.

Although the UK relies much less on Russian gas than other countries in Europe, Johnson said it was important that "everyone moves in the same direction."

"There are different dependencies in different countries, and we have to mindful of that," he said. "You can't simply close down the use of oil and gas overnight, even from Russia."

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told the press conference that weaning Europe off Russian energy would "take time" and it was a "painful reality" that Europeans were still "very much dependent" on Russian gas and oil...

 

Ukrainian Forces Destroy Russian Tank Convoy Near Kyiv (VIDEO)

At the New York Post, "Video shows Russian armored convoy caught in Ukrainian ambush on way to Kyiv."

And Sky News, "Ukraine war: Sky News examines drone video from village near Kyiv that shows Russian convoy 'ambushed'."

Mass Graves in Mariupol Ukraine (VIDEO)

The city's completely besieged and cut off from all supplies --- medicine, food, and water. It's a desperate situation. And there's been no progress in setting up humanitarian corridors to facilitate evacuation for civilians.

At Reuters, "Ukraine says Russia snubs plea for humanitarian access to besieged civilians."

And at the New York Times, "After a Week of Siege, Bloodied Mariupol Plans Mass Graves":

Under a relentless Russian barrage, there is no heat or electricity, and people are boiling snow for water. A 6-year-old died of dehydration, the authorities said.

LVIV, Ukraine — Marina Levinchuk said she received an alarming text message from the local authorities in the besieged city of Mariupol several days ago, before she decided to flee. “If somebody dies in your family,” she said, recalling the message in her own words, “just put the body outside, cover it, tie up the hands and the legs and leave it outside.”

“That’s what’s going on in Mariupol now,” she said of the city, currently ringed by Russian forces pounding it with bombs, missiles and artillery, and hitting a maternity hospital on Wednesday. “There are just bodies lying in the streets.

“There is no water, no heating, no gas,” she continued in a video call on WhatsApp on Wednesday. “And they are collecting snow, melting the snow, and boiling the snow.”

It has been seven days since Russian forces encircled the city, an important port on Ukraine’s southern coast, and began to lay siege to the roughly half a million people living there. Most communications with the outside world were severed, leaving primarily those with access to satellite phones to alert Ukraine and the rest of the world to the increasingly dire state of affairs.

Having failed to defeat the Ukrainian army in the war’s first weeks, and encountering stiff resistance in major cities like Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kyiv, Russian commanders appear to be resorting to tactics used in previous wars in Chechnya and Syria: flattening cities with overwhelming and indiscriminate firepower.

A video uploaded to Facebook on Wednesday evening showed the center of Mariupol after an aerial bombardment. It looked like a wasteland, with tree branches singed, windows blasted out of entire apartment blocks and the destroyed maternity hospital.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, condemned the strike on the hospital, berating world powers for failing to stop the killing and echoing his calls for NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

“Mariupol. Direct Strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital,” he wrote in a Twitter post Wednesday afternoon. “People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity.”

In all, 17 people were injured in the hospital attack, including staff members and maternity ward patients, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the regional governor, told a Ukrainian television station.

Efforts to negotiate a cease-fire to give civilians a chance to escape have failed repeatedly. For three days, the prospect of relief reaching the city though a “humanitarian corridor” fell apart in a hail of mortar and artillery fire.

The fighting around the city has been some of the most intense of the war, residents who managed to escape the conflict say...

Incompetent Anti-American Secretary of State Tony Blinken Flip-Flops on Poland's Plan to Transfer All of Its MiG-29s to Ukraine

Following-up, "Pentagon Rejects Poland's Deal to Send MiG-29 Combat Jets to the U.S."

At AoSHQ, "Bear in mind: Poland is a NATO member. So this is a NATO member transferring warplanes to a country fighting a war with Russia...And now, after having signaled his support of a transfer, Blinken reverses himself and says 'No'."

Pentagon Rejects Poland's Deal to Send MiG-29 Combat Jets to the U.S.

At the New York Times, "Pentagon says Poland’s fighter jet offer is not 'tenable'":

The Pentagon on Tuesday rejected an offer from the Polish government to send its MiG-29 fighter planes to a United States air base in Germany for eventual use by Ukraine, a rare note of disunity between two NATO allies as they confront Russia.

The disagreement underscored the pressures the United States and its allies are under as they seek to provide military aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia without getting pulled into a wider war.

Ukraine has been pleading for more warplanes, and American officials have raised the possibility that Poland could supply Ukraine with its older Soviet-era fighters in return for U.S. F-16s to make up for the loss. Ukrainian pilots are trained on the Russian aircraft.

Poland’s minister of foreign affairs said in a statement earlier on Tuesday that the country was ready to deploy its MiG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where they would be placed at the disposal of the U.S. government. In return, Poland expected the U.S. to provide it with used aircraft of comparable capabilities, the statement said.`

But a Pentagon spokesman, John F. Kirby, said Poland’s proposal to send the planes to a U.S. base in Germany, which caught American diplomats by surprise, was not workable...

 

U.S. Working With Poland to Send More Fighter Jets to Ukraine (VIDEO)

I was thinking about this as I was writing my earlier entry on establishing a "no-fly zone" over Ukaine. My thought's were more American F-16s than Russian MIGs, but hey, it's like a new cold war, right? 

At WSJ, "U.S., Poland Look at Providing Soviet-Era Aircraft to Ukraine":

The U.S. is exploring a deal in which Poland would send Soviet-era aircraft to Ukraine in return for American F-16 jet fighters, U.S. officials said Saturday, in the latest bid to help Ukraine respond to Russia’s invasion.

The deal would require White House approval and congressional action, U.S. officials said.

The disclosure of a possible deal followed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s impassioned plea to Capitol Hill for assistance in obtaining more lethal military aid, especially Russian-made jet fighters that Ukrainian pilots can fly. Mr. Zelensky also supported a proposal to ban U.S. imports of Russian oil, in a video call Saturday morning with members of Congress.

There were more than 200 House and Senate members on the call, said people who participated. Mr. Zelensky spoke for about 25 minutes before taking questions.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) asked Mr. Zelensky what one thing he needed most, according to two people on the call. The Ukrainian president replied with the need for jet fighters. He also brought up instituting a no-fly zone over Ukraine, but said, through a translator, “if you can’t do that, at least get me planes,” according to a person on the call.

Eastern European allies are in possession of Russian military jets that potentially could be transferred to Ukraine. Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said that the U.S. should help make possible the transfer of the aircraft. “We must eliminate every obstacle to providing every measure of support to Ukraine to include finding a way for the United States to compensate our Eastern European partners who wish to donate their Soviet-style aircraft to Ukraine,” he said in a statement.

Another lawmaker said in an interview that Congress could direct funds in a pending spending bill to replenish the stockpiles of European allies.

Mr. Zelensky said that the jets were more important than the Stinger antiaircraft missiles that the U.S. has greenlighted.

A U.S. defense official said other allied nations are seeking to provide Ukraine with Russian aircraft. The U.S. military would backfill with American aircraft...

 Keep reading.

Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men

At Amazon, Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.

Roger Moorhouse, Poland 1939

 At Amazon, Roger Moorhouse, Poland 1939.

The Szaber Bowl: Warsaw, Poland (VIDEO)

This is excellent.

Wages Are Rising in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic

Well, you don't say?

At WSJ, "Labor Shortage Lifts Wages on Europe’s Eastern Flank":

Unlike in some Western economies, wages are rising fast as workers grow scarce in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic https://t.co/kX0itdZkNo

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 29, 2018

Unlike in some Western economies, wages are rising fast as workers grow scarce in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.

BUDAPEST, Hungary—Akos Niklai says he has increased wages at his historic restaurant in downtown Budapest by around 20% in each of the past three years. He still struggles to retain staff.

The Hungarian businessman was recently forced to stop serving lunch on Sundays due to a worker shortage. Unemployment in this nation of 10 million people is at an all-time low of 3.6%, down from 10% five years ago.

“It is very hard to find labor in Budapest,” said Mr. Niklai. “Wages are still not high enough.”

In a half-dozen countries across Central and Eastern Europe, hourly labor costs are shooting up by 9% or more a year, defying a trend of weak wage growth that has bedeviled many advanced economies for years.

The increases seem to answer a question economists have been puzzling over for several years: Does low unemployment still cause wages to rise?

In many Western economies, that notion has been tested by slow wage growth despite falling jobless rates. But in places such as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, supply and demand appear to be pushing up wages as labor becomes scarce.

“These fundamental economic mechanisms are still working,” said Nigel Pain, an economist in Paris with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “If labor markets tighten we will see some pick up in price pressures.”

The wage increases are also putting pressure on Eastern European leaders—many of whom have called for stricter limits on immigration—to allow in more workers or risk lower future economic growth.

In Poland, for example, job vacancies are at a record high, and more than 40% of manufacturing firms say labor shortages are limiting production, according to a March OECD report. Poland’s ruling party has opposed immigration from Muslim countries, and the European Union has sued Poland and other countries for refusing to accept refugees under an EU-wide relocation plan.

“Wage pressure is rising,” said Andrzej Malinowski, the president of Employers of Poland, a business federation. Around 40% of large Polish companies employ workers from neighboring Ukraine, and 30% intend to hire Ukrainians in the near future, said Mr. Malinowski.

Migration patterns have been a major factor behind the wage boom. Labor is particularly scarce in the former communist states because workers have been migrating to Western Europe, where they can earn more. And limits on immigration from outside the EU add to the labor squeeze.

Low unemployment has also given workers more bargaining power. In the Czech Republic—where unemployment is 2.3%, the lowest in the EU—average wages grew by around 6% year-over-year in the three months through June, after adjusting for inflation, close to a 15-year high. Workers at Skoda Auto, the Czech unit of Volkswagen AG , recently got a pay raise of 12% and bigger bonuses.

Amazon.com Inc. announced in early August that it would sharply increase hourly wages for its workers across the region—by between 5% and 11% for staff in the Czech Republic, by up to 17% in Poland and by as much as 20% in Slovakia, a spokeswoman said.

“Eastern European countries are trying to persuade workers not to leave,” said Dan Bucsa, an economist with Italian bank UniCredit who focuses on the region...

Keep reading.

Last Known Nazi Death Camp Guard Deported to Germany

Good riddance to the fucker.

And ICE deported him. You'd think leftists would celebrate that, right?

At the Guardian U.K., "U.S. deports Nazi war crimes suspect to Germany."

Conservative Amnesia

Center-right parties in Europe have forgotten how to be conservative, argues Jan-Werner Mueller, at Foreign Policy, "Europe Forgot What ‘Conservative’ Means":

Whether or not to adapt to right-wing populism constitutes the major strategic dilemma for Europe’s center-right today, writes Jan-Werner Mueller. https://t.co/2hYxTYgKKd

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) March 21, 2018

Conventional wisdom has it that Europe’s social democrats are in terminal decline. In recent elections in Italy, Germany, and France, once proud left-wing mass parties have been reduced to at best getting a fifth of the vote. The obvious flip side of the mainstream left’s decline seems to be that populists but also the center-right are faring well. In fact, this picture is highly misleading. Center-right parties — European Christian democrats above all — face a real crisis. It is increasingly unclear what they stand for, and, unlike social democrats, they are in real danger of being replaced by the populist right.

Social democrats have been struggling because the “Third Way” pursued by leaders such as Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder during the late 1990s left them with an enormous credibility problem. They had not just tolerated but actively furthered finance capitalism; deregulation and increasing inequality happened under the watch of nominally left-wing governments, which today are perceived as having betrayed socialist ideals. But, importantly, it is not really in doubt what these ideals are. As the surprise success of Jeremy Corbyn in last year’s British general elections demonstrated, the left can still do remarkably well, under two conditions: Social democrats have to restore their credibility and reorient public attention away from the one issue that is most likely to split its core constituency — immigration. Whether one likes Corbyn’s ideas or not, it is remarkable that a grassroots movement, Momentum, largely captured the Labour Party and effectively erased its toxic association with the widely discredited Blairism.

In somewhat similar fashion, Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) has been trying to assert an agenda offering better protection for workers and more accessible health care. While this month’s decision to re-enter a grand coalition with the Christian Democrats has temporarily obscured this reorientation, the SPD will likely continue to sharpen its profile as a distinctively left-wing party in government.

If one asks, by contrast, what exactly Europe’s center-right stands for today, most citizens will be unable to articulate an answer. This has partly to do with historical amnesia — including forgetfulness on the part of center-right leaders themselves. After World War II, Christian democrats dominated politics in Germany, Italy, and, to a lesser extent, France. The circumstances were uniquely favorable for such moderate center-right parties, which claimed a religious, though nonsectarian, inspiration. Fascism had discredited the nationalist right; the horrors of the midcentury made many Europeans look for moral certainty in religion; and in the context of the Cold War, Christian democrats presented themselves as quintessentially anti-communist actors. Not least, they suggested that there was an affinity between the materialism of classical liberalism on the one hand and communism on the other — and that they were the only parties that clearly rejected both in favor of communitarian values. It is virtually forgotten today that Christian democratic parties had strong progressive elements — even if one occasionally gets a glimpse of that past: Matteo Renzi, who resigned as leader of Italy’s major left-wing party this month, had actually started his political life as a Christian Democrat.

Above all, Christian democrats were the original architects of European integration. They deeply distrusted the nation-state; the fact that, in the 19th century, both the newly unified Italy and the Germany united by Otto von Bismarck had waged prolonged culture wars against Catholics was seared in their collective memory. European integration also chimed with a distinct Christian democratic approach to politics in general: the imperative to mediate among distinct identities and interests. Ultimately, this quest for compromise among different groups (and, in Europe, states) went back to Pope Leo XIII’s idea — directed against rising socialist parties — that capital and labor could work together for the benefit of all in a harmonious society. Christian democracy had been a creation to avoid both culture war and class conflict.

Little is left of these legacies today. Christian democrats and other center-right parties continue to be pragmatists, but it is often unclear what, other than the imperative to preserve power, animates them in the first place. The European Union’s three main presidents — of the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Council — are all Christian democrats. Yet none of them has advanced a bold vision for the union as a whole. All seem to take it for granted that citizens are wary of further integration. To be sure, this is the narrative right-wing populists push, but evidence from surveys is far more ambiguous.

Whether or not to adapt to right-wing populism constitutes the major strategic dilemma for Europe’s center-right today...

Actually, Christian Democrats today --- think Angela Merkel --- are basically leftists. Yeah, they better learn how to be conservative again, or be relegated to the dustbin of history. They need to conserve their own societies, for one thing. Sheesh.

But keep reading.

Religion, Patriotism, Fatherland in Poland

At the New York Times, "Poland’s Nationalism Threatens Europe’s Values, and Cohesion":

SNIADOWO, Poland — The young mayor of this small town deep in eastern Poland is extremely proud of its new Italian fire engine, which sits, resplendent, next to a Soviet-era one. Nearby, the head of the elementary school shows off new classrooms and a new gymnasium, complete with an electronic scoreboard.

All of this — plus roads, solar panels, and improved water purification and sewer systems, as well as support to dairy farmers — has largely been paid for by the European Union, which finances nearly 60 percent of Poland’s public investment.

With such largess, one would hardly think that Poland is in a kind of war with the European Union. In recent months, the nationalist government has bitten the hand that feeds it more than once.

The European Union has accused Poland of posing a grave risk to democratic values, accusing it of undermining the rule of law by packing the courts with loyalists. Western leaders have also criticized Poland’s governing party for pushing virtually all critical voices off the state news media and for restricting free speech with its latest law criminalizing any suggestion that the Polish nation bore any responsibility in the Holocaust.

The tug of war has intensified as Eastern Europe becomes the incubator for a new model of “illiberal democracy” for which Hungary has laid the groundwork. But it is Poland — so large, so rich, so militarily powerful and so important geostrategically — that will define whether the European Union’s long effort to integrate the former Soviet bloc succeeds or fails.

The stakes, many believe, far outweigh those of Britain’s exit from the European Union, or Brexit, as the bloc faces a painful reckoning over whether, despite its efforts at discipline, it has enabled the anti-democratic drift, and what to do about it.

The growing conflict between the original Western member states of the bloc and the newer members in Central and Eastern Europe is the main threat to the cohesion and survival of the European Union. It is not a simple clash, but a multibannered one of identity, history, values, religion and interpretations of democracy and “solidarity.”

“It’s yes to Europe, but what Europe?” said Michal Baranowski, the director of the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund, noting that Poland’s support for European Union membership runs as high as 80 percent but can be shallow.

The Polish government, which is dominated by the Law and Justice party, itself dominated from the back rooms by the party chief, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, seems to have its own answer to the question.

It is more than happy to take European Union economic support, but worries that Poland’s share could dwindle if the member nations use the budget to pressure Poland to fall in line. The country is to get nearly 9 percent of the European Union budget for 2014 to 2020, around 85 billion euros, or $105 billion.

But the vague threats to apply the brakes to the gravy train are unlikely to push the Kaczynski government to change. It has responded to European criticism by accusing Brussels and Germany — until recently Poland’s greatest ally in Europe — of dictating terms to newer members and trying to impose an elitist, secular vision. It has also positioned itself at the forefront of central and eastern European nations opposing migration quotas, saying it is acting in defense of Christian values.

The governing party has campaigned on Polish national pride and “getting up off our knees;” it has also portrayed predominantly Roman Catholic Poland, which traditionally sees itself as a victim of history, as the “Christ of nations.”

After being squeezed between empires and occupied in turns by fascism and communism, Poland is ready to take its place as an equal, Mr. Kaczynski asserts, no longer relegated to serfdom or secondary status...

Still more.

'White Europe'

If it's a truly anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic outburst of racist hatred, then I'm out.

But I have a feeling that's just the way leftists are painting this. If it's a genuine nationalist patriotic outpouring for the mother country, then it's fine. Call me skeptical of leftists reports until I know more.

FWIW, at the Guardian U.K., "'White Europe': 60,000 nationalists march on Poland's independence day: Xenophobic phrases, far-right symbols and religious slogans mark event also attended by families and branded ‘a beautiful sight’ by the interior minister."

Eugen Joseph Weber, The Hollow Years

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Eugen Joseph Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s.

Piotr Stefan Wandycz, The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926-1936

At Amazon, Piotr Stefan Wandycz, The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926-1936: French-Czechoslovak-Polish Relations from Locarno to the Remilitarization of the Rhineland.

Although France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia were in jeopardy from a recovery of German power after World War I and from a potential German hegemony in Europe, France failed in her efforts to maintain a system of alliances with her two imperiled neighbors. Focusing on the period from 1926 to 1936, Piotr Wandycz seeks to explain how and why these three nations, with so much at risk, neglected to act in concert. Wandycz is the author of a well-known study on the series of alliances constructed by France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia in the years following the Treaty of Versailles. In this current volume he picks up the story after the Locarno Pact (1925) and follows the progressive disintegration of the alliance system until the time of Hitler's remilitarization of the Rhineland.

Through an examination of the political, military, and economic relations among France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, the author provides valuable insights into an era that contained the seeds of the future war and the collapse of the historic European system. By relying on French, Polish, and more selectively Czechoslovak and Western archives, and thanks to his intimate knowledge of Central and East European published sources, he has filled a large gap in the history of prewar diplomacy. He shows how the divergent aims of Czechoslovakia and Poland combined with a decline of French willpower to prevent a real cohesion among the partners.

Rise of the Populists: A Problem for Merkel and Germany

At Der Spiegel, "The state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania gave the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany a significant boost. It is a challenge for Chancellor Merkel and the entire country":

The rise of the right-wing populist AfD party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is a problem for Merkel and Germany: https://t.co/JSae52FwfS

— SPIEGEL English (@SPIEGEL_English) September 5, 2016

From a national political perspective, the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, with its sparse population of 1.6 million, is a lightweight and largely meaningless. Usually. But this time around, following state parliament elections held there on Sunday, the situation is different. This vote, after all, was essentially a referendum on Chancellor Angela Merkel and her policies, which makes it quite meaningful indeed.

The results of that referendum don't look good for Merkel. Her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) lost four percentage points relative to the last time the state's voters went to the polls in 2011 for a result of just 19 percent -- while the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) brought in fully 20.8 percent of the vote. The party didn't even exist five years ago.

To be sure, the CDU hasn't done particularly well in the state for 20 years, but it is home to the chancellor's own parliamentary constituency, which means that the AfD has essentially staged a revolution in Merkel's backyard. And it did so by turning the elections into a single-issue vote: Merkel's refugee policies.

The strategy was so successful that the CDU has been relegated to being just the third-strongest party in the state, behind the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the AfD. It marks the first time in Germany that the anti-Merkel party has come out ahead of Merkel's party -- and in some parts of the German leader's electoral district, AfD was the strongest party of all.

For the chancellor, it is a political debacle. Merkel must now come to terms with a challenge at least as monumental as the one which faced her predecessor Gerhard Schröder back in the mid-2000s. Back then, the SPD chancellor found himself trapped between, on the one hand, having to explain his cuts to social welfare benefits and, on the other, the rise of the Left Party, a political movement to the left of the SPD that was fueled by exactly those cuts. In the end, he failed on both counts.

The parallels to Merkel's situation -- a CDU that has been divided by her approach to the refugee crisis combined with the rise of a right-wing protest party -- are significant. But the end doesn't have to be the same. The Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania vote, after all, is only symbolically a debacle for Merkel. Her position as chancellor isn't (yet) at stake.

Emotions over Reason

But the returns on Sunday made clear that an increasing number of voters, at least in Germany's east, are turning their backs on the established, democratic party system. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to matter much if the economy is improving, cities are being renewed and the tourist sector is doing well, all of which are the case in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which has been structurally weak since German reunification in 1990. And it is possible for a party to campaign on fears of refugees even in a state that very few foreigners call home.

In short, emotions would seem to have triumphed over reason. Facts took a back seat.

It is precisely here that the challenge lies for Merkel, a politician who has always staked her political success on clear arguments based on facts and figures. She will have to do more explaining and more communicating -- and she will have to embed her policies within an approachable, meaningful framework in order to keep her party behind her. She may also have to take a few rhetorical steps toward the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), which has been sharply critical of her stance on the refugee issue. That could include admitting that she has made some missteps...

I expect her to double down, and she may well decide not to seek reelection, leaving office satisfied that her administration did the humanitarian thing. She'll leave to her successors to clean up the mess. Fortunately, Germany's wealthy and prosperous. It'll work out for them. Perhaps not so much for all the other European countries who were brought along for the refugee ride, largely against their interests.

More.

Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union Finishes Third in Regional Elections (VIDEO)

I've been waiting for this, and believe me, it's just the beginning.

German federal elections are scheduled for next year.

Meanwhile, from Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "UNEXPECTEDLY. German Electoral Shocker: Merkel’s Party Finishes 3rd in Regional Election."



Flashback: From August, "Angela Merkel's Popularity Plunges After Wave of Jihad Attacks in Germany — Unexpectedly!"