Central & Eastern Europe Archive

The surprise election of Donald Trump as America’s 45th president has upset long-standing assumptions about America’s role in the world. It also calls into question the country’s future trajectory as the guarantor and administrator of the international order, a position that has been so carefully built and nurtured by Washington since the end of World War II. America’s European friends and allies are among those most worried about the future U.S. role in Europe, at a time when the continent is surrounded by instability and faces an increasingly aggressive Russia to its east. This unease is understandable if one considers […]

On Dec. 11, when Macedonians go to the polls in early parliamentary elections, foreign policy should weigh heavily on their minds. The government in power—a coalition of the predominantly Macedonian party known as VMRO-DPMNE and the Democratic Union for Integration, or DUI, the country’s largest ethnic Albanian party—has declared that its foreign policy and diplomacy over the past decade has been largely successful. But from relations with its neighbors, to progress toward membership in NATO and the EU, to Macedonia’s international reputation, how true is that? Any evaluation has to start with Macedonia’s fraught position in the Balkans. Serbia, to […]

BELGRADE, Serbia—It’s a strange time for Europe. In September, the European Union’s 28 member states formally accepted Bosnia and Herzegovina’s application for membership. Yet the next month, as rhetoric around local elections and a referendum in the Balkan state rose to a fever pitch, some analysts and politicians once again raised the prospect that the country’s very existence was under question. Pessimistic insiders in Sarajevo have been warning for years that Bosnia was on the brink of collapse, while optimists hope that an EU-led reform program will finally transform the country’s economy, society and stultifying political scene. A middle scenario […]

CHISINAU, Moldova—Most headlines about Moldova would have you believe this former Soviet republic of 3.5 million people is torn between East and West, the impoverished victim of a battle for influence on the European Union’s doorstep that pits Brussels against Moscow. To be sure, geopolitics is a major part of the picture. The two candidates in the ongoing presidential election here prove it: Igor Dodon, a pro-Russian socialist, says he wants to see Moldova’s hard-fought Association Agreement with the EU torn up, while Harvard-trained economist Maia Sandu pledges to support the country’s pro-European course. Since neither secured a majority in […]

In Istanbul last month, Turkey and Russia signed a strategic agreement for a stalled gas pipeline known as Turkish Stream. Running under the Black Sea to Turkey and then on to Greece, the pipeline would offer Russia a way to sell gas to Europe that bypasses existing pipelines in Eastern Europe, especially Ukraine. The Turkish Stream agreement seems like the culmination of a Turkish-Russian rapprochement that has been underway since the spring, as both countries tried to repair relations after Turkey downed a Russian fighter along the Syrian border nearly a year ago. First proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin […]