Europe Archive

The conflict in Ukraine, which has raged for more than four years since the Maidan uprising of November 2013, is often portrayed as a clash between the West, which favors greater integration with Europe and the United States, and the East, which favors ties with Russia. But it is degenerating into a clash of egos jockeying for control of a corrupt, dysfunctional state that outside powers other than Russia are barely invested in anymore. Consider the case of Mikheil Saakashvili, the controversial U.S.-educated former prime minister of Georgia, who in May 2015 was appointed governor of the Odessa region on […]

Last month, the Court of Justice of the European Union, or CJEU, ordered Poland to cease logging activities in the Bialowieza Forest “to avoid serious and irreparable damage to the interests of the European Union.” Though the dispute has received less attention than the ongoing fight over judicial reforms, it is similarly contributing to tension between Warsaw and Brussels. In an email interview, Duncan Liefferink, a political scientist specializing in European environmental politics at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, analyzes the two sides’ positions and explains how EU environmental policy relates to the rights of member states over their […]

On Dec. 10, a coalition of nationalist parties on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica swept elections for the regional assembly, defeating traditional parties and French President Emmanuel Macron’s new centrist movement. Immediately after their victory, the nationalists called for talks with Paris over more autonomy. In an email interview, Andre Fazi, a lecturer in political science at the University of Corsica, discusses the roots of Corsican nationalism and the implications of the nationalists’ electoral triumph both for the island and for France. WPR: What are the main driving forces behind nationalism in Corsica, and how have they evolved in […]

It is the season for columnists to nominate their words, songs and people of the year. Here are mine. My word of the year is “defeat,” with a special nod to its derivative form “defeatist.” My song is “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” by the Rolling Stones. And my people of 2017 are British Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. I acknowledge that these are not immediately obvious choices. “Defeat” is not exactly a novel word or concept, to start with. Its first known use in English was in the 15th century. “You […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about press freedom and safety in various countries around the world. On Dec. 5, Russia designated two U.S. government-funded broadcasters, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, as “foreign agents,” under a new law signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in late November. The moves came in response, Moscow says, to the United States forcing the Russia-backed news broadcaster RT, formerly known as Russia Today, to register as a foreign agent on Nov. 13. U.S. intelligence agencies described RT as “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine” in their assessment earlier this […]

You can punch above your weight in statecraft as in boxing, and in today’s global security system, Russia is like an aggressive bantamweight. For the United States and the rest of the West, containing or moderating Russia’s sometimes damaging actions depends on understanding why Moscow can punch above its weight, and how that shapes its behavior. Until the late 1940s, Americans had never thought much about Russia and thus were deeply perplexed when the World War II alliance between Washington and Moscow devolved into the Cold War. In a famous Foreign Affairs article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” career diplomat […]

Hungary’s controversial prime minister, Viktor Orban, is facing down international criticism and restoring a commanding position at home as the campaign gears up for next year’s general elections, which are due to be held by May. The pugnacious populist has also managed to capture some of the regional and global zeitgeist in the era of U.S. President Donald Trump, making common cause with hard-line nationalists around him and seizing on the aftermath of the 2015 migrant and refugee crisis. However strong he appears, though, Orban’s power in Hungary is in no small part thanks to a divided and discredited opposition. […]

The month of November saw a marked increase in the phenomenon known in Japan as “ghost ships”—North Korean fishing vessels that wash ashore or into Japanese waters, often empty or filled with the remains of deceased sailors. It seems like a fitting image for a visit taking place half the world away in Brussels, where U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived yesterday for a European trip that will see him continue on to Austria and France. The parallels apply on a number of levels. Tillerson himself has been considered the political equivalent of a dead man walking—rumored to be […]

After President Donald Trump reluctantly signed legislation in August imposing new U.S. sanctions on Moscow for its interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Russia’s parliament last month drafted a bill that would try to shield Russian banks from further sanctions by obscuring their investments in the state-controlled arms industry. The United States and the European Union have imposed multiple layers of sanctions on Russia since 2014 for its actions in Ukraine. In an email interview, William Courtney, an adjunct senior fellow at the RAND Corporation and former U.S. ambassador to Georgia and Kazakhstan, discusses the impact of Western sanctions […]

Is Germany about to retreat from the world? Berlin has become an essential advocate for liberal internationalism in recent years. But it may turn inward again. Germany has long been a payer rather than a player at the United Nations and other multilateral institutions. While disbursing large quantities in foreign aid, and cautiously experimenting with stabilization missions in the Balkans and Afghanistan, Berlin generally avoided taking a real leadership role in global affairs. The priority for Berlin was always Europe, and that remains the case. But as Germany has become more powerful within the European Union, it has discovered that […]

BERLIN—Two months after Germany’s federal elections, the country is on the brink of an unexpected political crisis. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats, or CDU, and their sister party, the Christian Socialists, or CSU, ran first in the vote, but they finished without an outright majority. Since election night, they have been casting about for coalition partners—a process that has proven surprisingly more difficult than political pundits anticipated. The alternatives, if Merkel can’t form a coalition, are either for the CDU/CSU alliance to rule as a fragile minority government or, more likely, for new elections to take place. The latter […]

On Nov. 26, vandals attacked a Muslim cultural center and mosque in the Polish capital of Warsaw, smashing a dozen of its windows. Far from being an isolated incident, the attack came amid growing anti-Muslim sentiment in Poland, where the government has refused to admit refugees and asylum-seekers and far-right extremism appears to be on the rise. In an email interview, Kasia Narkowicz, a researcher of Islamophobia at the University of York in the United Kingdom, discusses anti-Muslim sentiment in Poland, what is behind it and what civil society groups are doing to oppose it. WPR: What is driving anti-Muslim […]