European, Ukrainian and Russian officials announce the agreement of a gas deal, Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 30, 2014 (European Union photo).

Yesterday, Russia and Ukraine reached a gas deal after months of tense negotiations against the backdrop of violence in Ukraine’s east that has left more than 3,700 people dead. The agreement took place just days after Ukraine’s snap parliamentary elections, which showed surprisingly robust support for pro-European parties. But challenges remain, both in the east, where pro-Russian separatists will stage their own unsanctioned elections this weekend, and in Kiev, where the government must overcome a legacy of corruption and dysfunction. The elections have been hailed as a triumph in the West, and for good reason. Ukrainians resoundingly rejected the far-right […]

Samantha Power, Permanent Representative of the United States to the U.N., United Nations, New York, Sept. 19, 2014 (U.N. photo by Amanda Voisard).

Editor’s note: Due to travel, Richard Gowan’s column will appear Wednesday this week. Vladimir Putin and Samantha Power both grumbled about the state of the international system last week. It is hard to know who is the more displeased. The Russian president told foreign dignitaries that American policy toward the United Nations and international law threatened to make the whole system “worthless, outdated and in need of immediate demolition.” But the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., embarking on a tour of the Ebola-ridden countries of West Africa, targeted other states for not fulfilling promises to fight the disease. Too many […]

President Barack Obama walks over to greet people after arriving in the snow at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in Manchester, N.H., March 1, 2012 (AP photo by Susan Walsh).

Editor’s note: Due to travel, Richard Gowan’s column will appear Wednesday this week. Nikolas Gvosdev’s column will appear Monday. How three presidents—Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin—and one institution—the European Union—grapple with and navigate the political challenges they will face this winter will have a profound impact in shaping global politics in the years to come. The decisions that are taken, or deferred, will determine whether current assumptions about the international order are reconfirmed or discarded. Those assumptions include the belief that most countries, including the rising and resurgent powers, still prioritize their relationships with Washington over bonding together […]

Paratrooper carrrying the Serbian flag, Batanjnica, Serbia, Aug. 2, 2008 (photo by Flickr user jetsetwilly licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license).

Yesterday, Kosovo’s Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj visited Serbia, the first minister of Kosovo to do so since it declared independence from Serbia in 2008. While 110 United Nations member states, including the United States, recognize Kosovo’s independence, Serbia does not. Neither does Russia, whose president, Vladimir Putin, received a hero’s welcome with a military parade in Belgrade last week. Kosovo’s closest ally is neighboring Albania, whose prime minister was supposed to visit Serbia this week but postponed after a drone carrying an Albanian nationalist banner flew over a soccer match in Belgrade earlier this month, sparking a brawl and a […]

Oil pumps work at sunset in the desert oil fields of Sakhir, Bahrain, Oct. 14, 2014 (AP photo by Hasan Jamali).

Oil occupies a special place in the world of international trade and in the public lore. No other commodity carries the political, strategic and tactical power of petroleum. Since it became the world’s primary fuel less than two centuries ago, oil has played a major role in shaping world events, triggering trade embargoes and colonial wars, making and breaking political alliances and always offering a justification, real or imagined, for international conflicts. It’s hardly surprising, then, that the recent precipitous drop in global oil prices has generated a flurry of conspiracy theories. Speculation about “the real cause” behind the current […]

Russian-speakers stand around the statue of a Red Army soldier protesting against the Estonian government’s plan to move it, Tallinn, Estonia, April 22, 2007 (AP photo by Timur Nisametdinov).

Nowhere does Russia’s policy of protecting its “compatriots”—Moscow’s loosely defined term for the Russian diaspora and Russian-speakers residing in the former Soviet republics—spell as much concern for the current post-Cold War order as in the Baltic states. All three Baltic states have significant numbers of Russian-speakers that are concentrated in territories close to the Russian border. In Lithuania, Russian-speakers make up 15 percent of the entire population; in Latvia 34 percent; and in Estonia the number might be as high as 30 percent. This has been a major source of worry for the Baltic states, because in the recent past […]

Members of the U.N. investigation team take samples from the ground to test for chemicals in the Damascus countryside of Zamalka, Syria, Aug. 29, 2013 (AP Photo/Local Committee of Arbeen).

A series of recent media reports have refocused attention on chemical weapons and highlighted the threat presented by their possible use by terrorists. Stories about the so-called Islamic State (IS) seizing the remains of Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons stockpile in Iraq; the large number of abandoned chemical weapons that U.S soldiers discovered during the post-Saddam occupation of Iraq; and the continued cases of chemicals being used as weapons of war in Syria have all generated concern and alarm. But they also highlight the ways in which the international chemical weapons regime must be updated to reflect the current nature of […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping talk during their meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Sept. 11, 2014 (AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Mikhail Klementyev, Presidential Press Service).

Russia and China are good friends these days. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Moscow last week and, by signing a bundle of economic agreements, demonstrated Beijing’s disregard for Western sanctions on Russia over Ukraine. Early in the Ukrainian conflict, American and European officials hoped that Beijing would take steps to penalize Russia over its annexation of Crimea. But it has confined itself to token complaints, while reinforcing its trade relations with its northern neighbor. This is not the first time China has disappointed Western officials by sticking close to Moscow in recent years. Throughout the Syrian civil war, American and […]

Boyko Borisov, former Bulgarian prime minister and leader of center-right GERB party, holds his voting papers in Sofia, Bulgaria, Oct. 5, 2014 (AP Photo/STR).

SOFIA, Bulgaria—Over the past 20 months, Bulgaria has seen four governments, ongoing anti-establishment street protests over living standards and corruption, a banking crisis and sanctions as well as other pressure from the European Union due to its close ties to Russia. Some hoped the country’s second snap election in two years on Oct. 5 might have provided impetus for change to a discredited and directionless political leadership overseeing the EU’s poorest economy, which has lost its emerging-market sheen since the 2009 financial crisis. But instead the poll produced the most fragmented parliament since the fall of communism in 1989. Haggling […]

Chinese workers walk past the No.1 reactor at the Ningde Nuclear Power Plant in Ningde city, Fujian province, China, April 18, 2013 (Imaginechina via AP Images).

As it enters middle age, the nuclear energy industry is facing a question common at this stage of life: Does it still have exciting possibilities for growth, or are its best days behind it? Optimists who see nuclear energy as an appealing low-carbon option for combating climate change praise its stability and reliability over decades of operating experience, as well as the cheapness and reliability of uranium fuel supplies. Organizations like the International Energy Agency foresee substantial increases in nuclear-generated electricity over the next few decades, with the number of nuclear plants worldwide—currently at roughly 400—perhaps doubling or tripling. Yet, […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 26, 2014 (AP photo/Kazakh Presidential Press Service, Sergei Bondarenko).

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the leaders of Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and other European countries at tomorrow’s 10th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Milan. The meeting, the third between Putin and Poroshenko since the latter took office in May, will include talks on Russia’s supply of gas to European countries via pipelines through Ukraine, which was a fraught issue even long before the ouster of Ukraine’s previous president, Viktor Yanukovych, in February. Russia shut off Ukraine’s gas supply in June, citing Ukraine’s failure to pay its debts, and the […]

A Latvian man casts his ballot papers at a polling station in Riga, Latvia, Oct. 4, 2014 (AP photo by Roman Koksarov).

Last weekend, Latvia’s ruling coalition maintained its majority in parliamentary elections that were held against the backdrop of continued harassment from Russia. Latvia and its two Baltic neighbors, Estonia and Lithuania—all former Soviet republics and current members of NATO and the European Union—have watched Russia’s intervention in Ukraine with escalating concern. While NATO’s Article 5 obligates the entire alliance to come to the defense of the Baltics in the event of a Russian attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been testing the limits of that commitment. In recent months, Russia has captured an Estonian intelligence officer in a cross-border raid, […]

An Iraqi Air Force Cessna 208 flies over Iraq on a training sortie, Nov. 9, 2008 (U.S. Air Force photo).

Earlier today, fighters from the so-called Islamic State (IS) shot down an Iraqi military helicopter. In an email interview, Rick Brennan, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and former senior adviser to the U.S. military in Iraq from 2006-2011 who led a RAND study entitled “Ending the U.S. War in Iraq: The Final Transition, Operational Maneuver and Disestablishment of United Sates Forces —Iraq,” discussed the current air capabilities of the Iraqi military and its significance for both internal security and external defense. WPR: What air assets does the Iraqi army currently have, and what purchases—on order and planned—are […]

Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, Aug. 15, 2014 (AP photo by Ivan Sekretarev).

Throughout the Ukrainian crisis, Russia has demonstrated a keen appetite for both territory and power. It has shown less concern for international agreements and institutions. While Moscow has largely kept the United Nations out of the conflict, it has permitted the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the situation on the ground. Even this looks like a mere ploy to deflect Western criticism: Russia has used OSCE peacemaking efforts backed by Germany as a cover for its efforts to destabilize Ukraine, and its proxies in the east of the country have menaced and kidnapped the organization’s observers. […]

Radoslaw Sikorski at a press conference, April 29, 2014 (photo by Mateusz Wlodarczyk licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Generic license).

Last month, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw “Radek” Sikorski left the position he had held since 2007, part of a major cabinet reshuffle by new Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz. His departure comes at a time of great turmoil for European foreign policy. Sikorski had become well-known as one of the more experienced foreign ministers in Europe and one of the toughest critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sikorski is also a longtime favorite in Washington, the subject of glowing media profiles emphasizing his Oxford education, his pro-American leanings and his marriage to Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, who writes frequently and […]