Europe Archive

Last month, the Conference for Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) passed an historic milestone, as heads of state and ministers representing 36 Asian nations met for the first time outside of Kazakhstan for a summit meeting in Istanbul. The organization, Asia’s equivalent to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), boasts 22 member nations, ranging from Russia and China to Israel, India and Pakistan. Regrettably, Western media coverage of the summit focused almost exclusively on one sensational event: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s tirade against Israel’s interception of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. The flavor of this […]

Russia and the United States are about to learn how much international goodwill their renewed progress toward nuclear arms control, as manifested by the New START Treaty, will buy them in other WMD nonproliferation arenas. The two countries have recently confirmed that they will miss their already extended deadlines for eliminating their stockpiles of chemical weapons, as required by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). In principle, this failure could lead to bitter denunciations as well as concrete sanctions imposed by other countries. At present, though, it looks like Moscow and Washington will escape punishment, perhaps in part due to the […]

The debate over whether or not we have entered a “post-American world” has, at least in U.S. circles, become predictably stale. In one corner are those sneeringly referred to by their opponents as the “declinists” — a more neutral label might be “post-primacists” — who trot out all sorts of facts and figures demonstrating the debilitating costs of America’s imperial overstretch, and argue that the torch of global leadership is passing to new aspirants hungry for the job. In the other corner are the perennial optimists, who have their own statistics to show that even if the U.S. is facing […]

Reports of the imminent death of U.S. hegemony in world affairs go at least as far back as the Nixon administration, and to date, they have all disappointed. While challengers have risen and fallen, none have managed to make themselves full-spectrum superpowers capable of both diplomatic leadership and global military reach, in combination with indisputable economic heft and soft-power appeal. Now, with the “rise of the rest” — concentrated in, but not limited to, the so-called BRIC package of Brazil, Russia, India and China — we are presented with the argument of a collective challenge to American world leadership. Let […]

A growing population had long been considered a prime determinant of national strength — at least until the “population bomb” crowd commandeered the dialogue almost a half-century ago and declared such growth to be a threat to human existence. But since then, with globalization’s rapid expansion encompassing the bulk of the developing world — and specifically demographic behemoths India and China — we’ve seen industrialization and urbanization work their usual magic on female fertility. As a result, humanity is now projected to top out as a species sometime mid-century and likely decline thereafter. To the amazement of many from my […]

NewsHour’s Paul Solman speaks with French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde about France’s current financial state. The two discuss the balance between austerity and stimulus measures and the reforming of the French retirement system.

President Barack Obama used an interview with the Milan daily Corriere della Sera to counter his reputation for being indifferent toward Europe, and even anti-European. Relations between the Obama White House and Europe are worse than those of any recent American administration. But from what Obama told Paolo Valentino, the paper’s respected Washington correspondent, it’s nothing personal: In terms of influences on my life, Europe is probably stronger than anything else. I feel very comfortable in Europe. Everything feels familiar in a way that I cannot say when I travel in Japan or China, despite having been born and grown […]

Hillary Clinton’s inclusion of Azerbaijan in her current round of diplomatic visits, which also included stops in Poland and Georgia, reflects the need to balance the U.S.-Russia reset with symbolic reassurances to regional friends and allies. In particular, the Georgia and Azerbaijan stopovers underline the increased importance to the U.S. of good bilateral relations in the Caucasus and Central Asia. The reason? The Northern Distribution Network, the supply lifeline to U.S. and other NATO forces in Afghanistan, comprehensively covered in this CSIS report (.pdf). Azerbaijan is part of NDN South, the back-up route that starts at the Black Sea port […]

Almost everyone would welcome greater cooperation between Moscow and Washington on ballistic missile defense. But decades of frustrating experience have taught us that this is precisely the wrong issue to make the centerpiece of the U.S.-Russia reset, notwithstanding what Andrew Futter argues in his WPR Briefing from last week. Rather than waste additional time and goodwill on the endeavor, we need to think more creatively about deepening bilateral collaboration regarding other issues, including promoting regional security in Afghanistan and Central Asia. Nevertheless, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statements during her visit to Poland last weekend show that the Obama […]

Last month, members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met to discuss new rules for admission to the regional security group. In an e-mail interview, head of the Asia practice group at Eurasia Group and adjunct senior fellow for Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, Evan A. Feigenbaum, discusses the evolution of the SCO. WPR: What is the significance of the SCO’s newly articulated membership procedure, and what does it reflect about the organization’s approach to future expansion? Evan Feigenbaum: At their June 11 summit in Tashkent, the six SCO heads of state approved new rules for applications and […]

Having reached an agreement on the New START treaty in April, the Obama administration’s next step in its pursuit of a new strategic partnership with Russia appears to be establishing some type of joint collaboration on ballistic missile defense (BMD). These recent efforts should be applauded, as they hold the potential to reinforce trust and cooperation between the two powers, as well as to solidify a united defense against the growing threats from Iran and North Korea. Such an accord would also appear to be integral to the prospects of achieving further nuclear arms reductions agreements and working gradually toward […]

Having supposedly turned its back definitively on Israel, the EU, and the West in general, it turns out Turkey engaged in talks with . . . Israel and the EU. Go figure. I’m not going to belabor this point. Neither am I going to minimize the wild-card factor represented by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s temperamental reactiveness and his unrealistic conditions for Turkey-Israel reconciliation. And it’s useless to deny the fundamental shifts emerging in Ankara’s strategic calculus, both regionally and further abroad. But those shifts are based on a pretty clear-eyed and smart assessment both of Turkey’s upside potential […]

The United States and the European Union have signed a bank data-transfer agreement that will give U.S. authorities access to EU bank transfer data, under EU supervision, in an effort to combat terrorism. In an e-mail interview, Kurt Volker, a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and managing director of the Center on Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University, explains the importance of a U.S.-EU bank-data transfer agreement. WPR: What is the background of the current dispute? Kurt Volker: In the days and years after Sept. 11, 2001, the United States and Europe worked together to track terrorist financing, in order […]