STRANGE BEDFELLOWS — President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was the rogue elephant in the room at last week’s summit of African leaders and the European Union. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly denounced his poor human rights record, but otherwise European participants simply tried to ignore him. Other African leaders had insisted no Mugabe, no summit, and the Europeans wanted to deepen their penetration of the continent more than they were willing to be high minded. “At the end of the day, to see him [Mugabe] strutting around was a bit irritating,” an official in Valetta commented dryly this week, “but [...]
The dispute over international monitoring of Russia’s recent parliamentary and upcoming presidential elections — underscored by President Vladimir Putin’s denunciations against foreign interference in Russia’s parliamentary elections — must be understood as a broader divergence in how Moscow and other member governments envisage the future of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest regional security institution. In particular, Russia and its allies want to rebalance OSCE both functionally and geographically. They seek to reduce the OSCE’s democracy promotion efforts while increasing its role in countering transnational security threats like terrorism and in advancing economic development [...]
Late last month, U.N.-sponsored negotiations on Kosovo’s final status came to a close — predictably without an agreement. The negotiations have been conducted under the auspices of a “troika” of envoys from the European Union, the United States, and Russia. Dec. 10 is the deadline set for them to complete their work and submit a final report to the U.N. secretary-general. The longstanding demand of the Kosovo Albanian side is well known to the general public: independence. But what has the Serbian government brought to the negotiating table? And what, if any, compromise solutions were proposed by the international mediators? [...]
