China & Russia
Can the EU deal with its unruly neighbours?
21 December 2006
European Voice
What future security and defence challenges should the EU prepare for?Europe should be worried about the spread of weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD), failing states and terrorism. In fact it already is.
Failed EU entrance could mean stronger ties to Russia
26 November 2006
Zaman online
According to a British think-tank, the Centre for European Reform (CER), if EU membership negotiations were postponed, Turkey would look for a new alliance, perhaps in Russia.
What to do about Russia?
22 October 2006
The Guardian
Perhaps the most important challenge for EU foreign policy is to develop a more unified approach to Russia. The EU member-states have very similar interests in Russia.
At last, some hope for Ukraine
04 August 2006
The Guardian
The formation of a new government - four months after parliamentary elections - is good news for Ukraine. The coalition is broad-based: the party of President Victor Yushchenko, Our Ukraine, has strong roots in the rural west of the country; the Regions party, led by the new prime minister, Victor Yanukovich, dominates the east; and the Socialist party, the third member of the coalition, is popular among farmers in the centre.
What new transatlantic institutions?
01 June 2006
European Affairs
The last two years have seen a rapprochement across the Atlantic. The elevation of new personnel – such as Condoleezza Rice to the State Department and Angela Merkel as German Chancellor – has helped to remove some of the bitterness that the Iraq confrontation had left behind.
Belarus blue
15 March 2006
The Wall Street Journal
To a first-time visitor, the capital of Belarus seems normal. People look content, streets are clean and orderly, and cafés ring with lively and frank exchanges.
Drinking the Kool-Aid
01 February 2006
Prospect
Was the Iraq adventure doomed to fail or did the US administration mess it up? A new crop of books suggests that the nation-builders of Iraq were fighting the right war in theory but not in practice.
The Iraq war started as a war of ideas. It erupted from the most...
The Iraq war started as a war of ideas. It erupted from the most...
The great firewall of China will fall
26 January 2006
The Daily Telegraph
Google, the popular search engine that floated on the stock market last year, has not abandoned its corporate motto: "Don't be evil".
India tilts to the west as the world's new poles emerge
12 January 2006
The Guardian
Nothing is permanent in history, including America's domination of the global economic and political systems. Assuming China and India keep growing at their current rates, the unipolar world of recent years - topped by the US - will be replaced by a multipolar world within a few decades.
Once its "unipolar...
Once its "unipolar...
The geopolitics of 2026
02 January 2006
The Economist
History is traced not is straight lines but in jagged and discontinuous strokes. But what if the future follows a more predictable path?