Europe, as both a place and a concept, has changed dramatically in its centuries of history. Once one of the world’s most war-torn places, it is now known for its remarkable peace. While a place of relatively great prosperity, it is also experiencing deep economic turmoil. Europe’s transformations are still ongoing, evident both at the […]
PRESIDENT BARACK Obama likes to say that America and the world have progressed beyond the unpleasantness of the nineteenth century and, for that matter, much of the rest of human history. He could not be more wrong. And as a result, he is well on the way to repeating some of history’s most dangerous mistakes. […]
Mr Erdogan and his political machine are both thoroughly modern, and as able as any other modern political machine to deploy sophisticated, well-organised, disingenuous and cynical methods, including demagoguery, spin, polling and gerrymandering to win votes. (Mr Erdogan can also boast real economic achievements, however problematic.) All this is a much different from the situation […]
Economic interdependence was supposed to defuse geopolitical tensions over time – or at least allow the two to be compartmentalized. But today the West is using Russia’s participation in the global economy to punish it for its actions in eastern Ukraine. The EU has announced sanctions that will hit Russia in the banking, oil and […]
Western leaders may think Vladimir Putin is crazy for threatening to annex Crimea and invade other areas of Ukraine. Most Russians, still bitter about the Soviet Union’s demise more than two decades ago, couldn’t be prouder. Read Here – Bloomberg
One of Pope Benedict XVI’s big concerns as pontiff was the decline of Christianity in Europe as secularization has spread. For instance, he regretted that, despite strong Vatican pressure, the drafters of the EU Constitution had not seen fit to include anywhere a reference to Europe’s Christian roots. Read Here – WorldAffairsJournal
Since the so-called Visegrad Four—the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia—shook off the Soviet yoke and topped a decade of successful political and economic reform by rejoining the West in its most exclusive clubs, the European Union and NATO, they have begun to pursue their own objectives, and they have distinguished themselves as actors on […]
Erdogan is now setting one side of Turkey against the other in a bid for greater power, although the AKP was founded on pragmatism and inclusivity. Its initial landslide on 3 November 2002 — with almost two thirds of the seats in parliament (363 out of 550) — included votes from middle-class Turks unemployed after […]
An iron law of effective diplomacy is that if you make public demands, your credibility depends on sticking to them. European Union foreign ministers saw fit to ignore that lesson yesterday when they formally lifted all sanctions on Burma except an arms embargo. Last year, the same ministers said this step would only be taken […]
This hardly seems like the moment to ask what type of state will emerge in Libya. Two years on from the uprising that eventually toppled Muammar Qaddafi, the country hardly has a functioning state at all. There is still no constitution and there may not be one for months. The parliament, elected less than a […]
looking beyond borders 