The two-day celebration of NATO’s 70th anniversary in London this week was a success. Neither the United States, France, nor Turkey quit the world’s longest-lasting alliance in a huff. This was without a doubt the lowest bar for accomplishment in…
The First Armageddon: The View from Berlin
A three-bell alarm is ringing in Germany, in the European Union, and in transatlantic relations. Yet so far, voters seem oblivious to the threat. That’s why the vote for the European Parliament (EP) next week – normally a sleepy affair…
Poland B vs. Poland A
President Andrzej Duda’s veto of two laws this month–they would have subordinated Poland’s independent courts to the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS)–delayed briefly the campaign of the Catholic right-wing PiS to bring all three branches of governance under its…
Gunfight at the Ukraine Corral
2016 promises to be a decisive year for Ukraine. The sudden resignation on 3 February of Economics Minister Aivaras Abromavicius – and the immediate sharp fall of Ukraine’s sovereign bonds – suggest that the showdown is at hand, much sooner…
Debunking an urban myth
It’s time to debunk the lingering urban myths that Germany has resisted imposing sanctions on Russia over its undeclared war on Ukraine and might once again desert the West in a flirtation with Russia. True, Chancellor Angela Merkel favors smart…
Harbingers of Transformation
A few bright spots on Europe’s troubled periphery Even as the future of the European Union’s neighborhood remains under threat, a few developments on the EU periphery – in Ukraine, Romania, and Serbia – show that civil society and rule…
A Useful Stalemate in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s undeclared war on once-fraternal Ukraine has destroyed Moscow’s influence on Kiev, forged genuine Ukrainian identity in resistance and ended in a roughly stable stalemate in the eastern 3% of Ukraine that Russia now controls. However bitter…
The Waiting Game
No, the West has not (yet) lost Ukraine in Vladimir Putin’s Russian roulette, and the fragile Minsk truce and Western sanctions on Moscow over its land grab in Ukraine have not failed. A more nuanced reading of the current state…
Russian Escalation in Donbas
Ever since Russia snatched the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine last March and ended Europe’s seven-decade ban on coercive border change, Moscow has possessed enough raw military might to occupy mainland Ukraine as well. Throughout 2014, however, for tactical reasons, the…
The Next Stage in the Ukraine Crisis
On Black Tuesday of this week soft economic power trumped hard military power for the first time since the Ukraine crisis began. The threatened meltdown of the Russian economy could put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to dial down…