Europe Archive

Richard Weitz’ roundup of the nuclear agreement signed last week between the U.S. and Russia is the most thorough I’ve read so far. I’d been under the impression that the agreement threatened efforts to reduce Russia’s stock of weapons grade uranium. But Weitz points out all the other ways that the agreement opens up areas of cooperative counterproliferation. Among the most convincing is that by offering Russia access to both the American domestic nuclear market and, via cooperative mechanisms, various foreign markets, the agreement provides a lucrative alternative to Russia’s nuclear cooperation with Iran. Ironically, that’s the very sticking point […]

On May 6, during Russian President Vladmir Putin’s last day in office, the American and Russian governments finally signed their long-sought civil nuclear energy agreement. The accord facilitates the transfer of technologies, materials, equipment and other components used to conduct nuclear research and produce nuclear power. Putin and Bush originally announced their intent to negotiate a U.S.-Russia Agreement for Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation (known as a “123 Agreement”) at their joint news conference held on the sidelines of the July 2006 G-8 summit in St. Petersburg. Section 123 of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act requires the United States to negotiate a […]

Interfax has got a brief interview with American Ambassador to Russia, William Burns. I mention it mainly as an excuse to note that Burns isn’t the only Embassy staff who will be leaving Moscow imminently. ITAR-TASS is reporting that the Russians just asked two military attaches to pack their bags, ostensibly in response to two Russian diplomats expelled from Washington, one last year and one in April. Interestingly enough, though, America’s position on the risk of war over Abkhazia was the first question Interfax posed Burns. Talk about tough assignments. Is there anyplace outside of Baghdad that’s been more of […]

PARIS — One year to the day after his election as president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy strikes an increasingly lonely figure on the French political scene. Having referred to himself as the “buying power president” to emphasize his goal of increasing disposable income, he has instead become the object of a nationwide case of buyer’s remorse. His popularity has plummeted in opinion polls, and in the absence of any true political opposition (outside of an increasingly hostile press), he faces growing disenchantment within his own UMP majority. In a country where politics is a blood sport, and where the only […]

Amin al-Husaini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, remains a controversial figure. The Palestinian leader, who was born in 1895 and died in 1974, first sparked controversy during his lifetime. As an officer in the Ottoman army during the First World War, he implemented the German idea of organizing jihad and terror behind enemy lines. (See my discussion here.) Later, he led the resistance against the British mandate authority in Palestine during uprisings in 1929 and in 1936. He fiercely opposed Jewish settlement. But it is, above all, the Grand Mufti’s close ties to National Socialist Germany that are the subject […]

One of President Bush’s small victories at April’s NATO summit was the alliance’s vote of confidence, despite Russia’s very vocal opposition, for the American missile defense system based in Eastern Europe. But judging by how much the Polish military is expecting in return for hosting the interceptors, the deal is far from a sure thing. The Poles want $20 billion for a serious overhaul of their armed forces, whereas one State Department official dismissively put the upper limit at $20 million. That’s quite a bit of daylight. Twenty billion is a lot, even when you factor in Moscow’s threat to […]

Not a lot of added value in this post, but I wanted to flag some Russian news items of recurring or semi-recurring interest. French FM Bernard Kouchner used President Dmitry Medvedev’s inauguration yesterday to reiterate France’s desire for a “new tonality” in the EU-Russian relationship. In particular, Kouchner emphasized Europe’s willingness to take Moscow’s concerns into account, and called Russia “. . .a part of [Europe’s] future.” The declaration reads at the same time as a call for Russia to put aside its confrontational posture, but also as a reassurance of Europe’s good intentions. Also, the U.S. and Russia signed […]

As more and more of its unmanned drones wind up shot down over Abkhazia, withdrawing from a bi-lateral air defense treaty with Russia would seem like the sensible move for Georgia. With tensions this high on both sides of the border, though, it’s almost reassuring that the fictional transfer of power tomorrow in Moscow won’t create any instability in the Russian chain of command.

MOZAMBIQUE POLICE BLASTED — Police forces in Mozambique torture, murder and systematically commit human rights abuses with almost total impunity, according an April 29 report from Amnesty International. “Police in Mozambique seem to think they have a license to kill and the weak police accountability system allows for this. In almost all cases of human rights violations by police — including unlawful killings — no investigation into the case and no disciplinary action against those responsible has been undertaken, nor has any police officer been prosecuted.” said Michelle Kagari, deputy director of AI’s Africa Program, upon the report’s release. Mozambique’s […]

It looks like the summit meeting of EU foreign minsiters was something of a mixed bag for Russia-EU relations. On the one hand, Lithuania blocked a memorandum calling for the negotiation of a new cooperation agreement to replace the current one, which dates back to 1994. Its unmet demands ranged from the purely bilateral (repairing an oil pipeline to a Lithuanian refinery) to the more generalized trade-off variety that I’ll probably soon regret having declared obsolete (a commitment to peacefully resolve the frozen conflicts in Georgia and other former USSR territories). Moscow Times has a good overview here, and Kommersant […]

The rising tensions between Russia and Georgia, which I used yesterday to develop an abstract argument, are pretty alarming in more concrete ways. It’s easy enough to fall into the lethargic habit of saying, “Sure, there’s been a bit of sabre-rattling here, a downed drone there, but nobody’s going to actually go to war over this thing.” But as Richard Weitz makes clear in his latest WPR piece, we’ve actually got the makings of a hot conflict on our hands. Weitz concludes by advocating a global approach towards Russia: Instead, Russian-Georgian differences need to be managed within a wider context […]

WAR AND REMEMBRANCE — This week, Madrid commemorates the bicentenary of the city’s uprising against French occupation forces in the early 19th century. The celebrations include a parade, concerts of music of the period, theater productions, and a season of films on the subject, with the earliest produced in 1927. But the most vital link to the tumultuous events of May 2 and 3, 1808, is an exhibition at the Prado Museum of paintings by Goya, who was living and working in the Spanish capital at the time. The museum’s enormous exhibition “Goya en Tiempos de Guerra” (Goya in Times […]