China & Russia
Russia: Analyst sees potential in Europe's new relationship
17 July 2007
Radio Free Europe
Katinka Barysch, the head of the Russia research program at the London-based Centre for European Reform, has written extensively about politics and economics in Eastern Europe and advised Britain's House of Lords and European Commission on foreign policy.
State of the Union: The good deal
25 June 2007
The Wall Street Journal
The deal in Brussels on a new treaty this weekend is good news for those who hope the EU can become a more confident and effective contributor to global security.
The EU's premier foreign policy is enlargement
09 February 2007
DW-World.de
At the annual security conference, which opens in Munich on Friday, Javier Solana will be awarded a prize for his efforts in promoting peace as the EU's foreign policy chief.
Can the EU deal with its unruly neighbours?
21 December 2006
European Voice
What future security and defence challenges should the EU prepare for?Europe should be worried about the spread of weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD), failing states and terrorism. In fact it already is.
Failed EU entrance could mean stronger ties to Russia
26 November 2006
Zaman online
According to a British think-tank, the Centre for European Reform (CER), if EU membership negotiations were postponed, Turkey would look for a new alliance, perhaps in Russia.
What to do about Russia?
22 October 2006
The Guardian
Perhaps the most important challenge for EU foreign policy is to develop a more unified approach to Russia. The EU member-states have very similar interests in Russia.
At last, some hope for Ukraine
04 August 2006
The Guardian
The formation of a new government - four months after parliamentary elections - is good news for Ukraine. The coalition is broad-based: the party of President Victor Yushchenko, Our Ukraine, has strong roots in the rural west of the country; the Regions party, led by the new prime minister, Victor Yanukovich, dominates the east; and the Socialist party, the third member of the coalition, is popular among farmers in the centre.
What new transatlantic institutions?
01 June 2006
European Affairs
The last two years have seen a rapprochement across the Atlantic. The elevation of new personnel – such as Condoleezza Rice to the State Department and Angela Merkel as German Chancellor – has helped to remove some of the bitterness that the Iraq confrontation had left behind.
Belarus blue
15 March 2006
The Wall Street Journal
To a first-time visitor, the capital of Belarus seems normal. People look content, streets are clean and orderly, and cafés ring with lively and frank exchanges.
Drinking the Kool-Aid
01 February 2006
Prospect
Was the Iraq adventure doomed to fail or did the US administration mess it up? A new crop of books suggests that the nation-builders of Iraq were fighting the right war in theory but not in practice.
The Iraq war started as a war of ideas. It erupted from the most...
The Iraq war started as a war of ideas. It erupted from the most...
The great firewall of China will fall
26 January 2006
The Daily Telegraph
Google, the popular search engine that floated on the stock market last year, has not abandoned its corporate motto: "Don't be evil".
India tilts to the west as the world's new poles emerge
12 January 2006
The Guardian
Nothing is permanent in history, including America's domination of the global economic and political systems. Assuming China and India keep growing at their current rates, the unipolar world of recent years - topped by the US - will be replaced by a multipolar world within a few decades.
Once its "unipolar...
Once its "unipolar...
The geopolitics of 2026
02 January 2006
The Economist
History is traced not is straight lines but in jagged and discontinuous strokes. But what if the future follows a more predictable path?
India joins the west
01 November 2005
Prospect
Last month saw a small geopolitical revolution: India backed the west against Iran.
One of the most significant geopolitical events of the decade has gone almost unnoticed in the west: at September's meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, India joined the US and the EU in backing a resolution condemning...
One of the most significant geopolitical events of the decade has gone almost unnoticed in the west: at September's meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, India joined the US and the EU in backing a resolution condemning...
United against Iranian nukes
14 September 2005
International Herald Tribune
Last February, a group of European and American foreign policy experts issued the "Compact Between the United States and Europe," a detailed proposal for trans-Atlantic cooperation on the key foreign policy issues of the day (IHT Feb. 17, 2005).
A beacon of liberty flickers: Observations on Georgia
18 July 2005
New Statesman
President Bush proclaimed Georgia a "beacon for liberty" when he visited Tbilisi in May. Georgia has certainly made great progress since people power overthrew the corrupt and incompetent regime of Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003. Nevertheless, clouds are dimming the light of that beacon.
There is something amiss, for example, when none...
There is something amiss, for example, when none...
The road obscured
11 July 2005
Financial Times
It is pre-modern, the kind of scene that westerners visit and photograph or encapsulate for later conversation: on Hainan Island, off the Leizhan Peninsula and a 50-minute flight south from Hong Kong, Chinese peasants toil in paddy fields. They wear straw hats and use water buffalo to plough the fields.
Then,...
Then,...
Europe - Don't write the obituaries yet. A new France could put Britain on the sidelines
06 June 2005
New Statesman
The gleeful obituaries are piling up, not just for the EU constitution, but for the country that torpedoed it. France is in a mess, we read; its politics are paralysed, its economy is over-regulated and it just can't accommodate itself to globalisation with an Anglo-Saxon face.
But before we gorge on...
But before we gorge on...
The UK should see enlargement as an opportunity to revive the Lisbon process
01 June 2005
Progress online
At the Lisbon summit in 2000, EU leaders signed up to an ambitious economic reform programme: the Lisbon agenda, designed to close the economic gap with the US.
The lure of Beijing
25 May 2005
The Guardian
China's foreign policy establishment likes the idea of the EU. In Beijing, senior ministers turn up to speak at conferences with titles such as "The Future of EU-China Strategic relations".