Caucasus Archive

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Europe Decoder, which includes a look at the week’s top stories from and about Europe. Subscribe to receive it by email every Thursday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your inbox. European leaders are preparing for two big global summits taking place in Europe in the coming days: the G-20 Summit in Rome, Italy, and the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland. As the European Union strives to step up as a global power, this is […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Europe Decoder, which includes a look at the week’s top stories from and about Europe. Subscribe to receive it by email every Thursday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your inbox. European Union leaders have converged on Brussels today for their quarterly European Council summit. Featuring prominently on the agenda are Europe’s soaring energy prices (more on that below) and a resurgent migration crisis. But the issue that is certain to dominate conversations in Brussels, despite the best efforts of European Council President Charles […]

Four years ago, at a Track II dialogue between German and American diplomats and analysts, a German colleague of mine explained his firm belief that his country—and, by extension, Europe as a whole—could use geoeconomic tools to regulate and blunt Russia’s geopolitical ambitions. Europe’s need for natural gas, he said, was balanced by Russia’s need to sell. A European strategy of energy diversification would therefore give the West leverage over Moscow, which would not want to risk its access to European markets by making bold political plays. The plan was for European governments to encourage gas utilities to shift from […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Europe Decoder, which includes a look at the week’s top stories from and about Europe. Subscribe to receive it by email every Thursday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your inbox. The sudden and unexpected resignation of Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is causing shock waves across Europe, where the continent’s center-right was already reeling from the impending departure from the political stage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The ripple effects of Kurz’s ouster over a corruption scandal are still reverberating, complicating the already difficult calculations […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Europe Decoder, which includes a look at the week’s top stories from and about Europe. Subscribe to receive it by email every Thursday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your inbox. As the weather gets colder in Europe, policymakers are this week turning their attention to an increasingly worrying situation affecting energy prices across the continent. There are fears of a “winter of discontent” due to astronomical heating costs, saddling citizens with huge bills amid the ongoing recovery from the economic effects of the […]