The border crisis between Poland and Belarus is more complex than a dispute between two sovereign nations. The extension of the EU border into the former Warsaw Pack area and towards the former border of the Soviet Union was always a source of tension as Poland was seen as a barrier to large armies […]
When Congress makes a mistake in determining important economic policy like setting the tax rate or implementing a new trade policy, the results can be pretty awful. Unexpected inflation might take place, jobs might be lost, and personal savings might crumble. In the most severe cases, these disruptions might result in economic recession, or worse, […]
When Angela Merkel took office as Federal Chancellor in 2005, she was more prepared for the challenges on the EU’s eastern border than any other West European head of government. However, Berlin had, already before Merkel’s take over of the chancellorship, sent wrong signals to the new neo-imperial leadership in Moscow by inviting Putin to the Bundestag in 2001 and starting the Nord Stream projects in 2005. Consequential missteps before and after Merkel came to power put German Ostpolitik on the wrong path in the new century. In 2014, there was only a partial correction of the Russia course set by Germany’s 1998-2005 Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Today, politicians, diplomats and experts in Moscow likely wonder what has gotten into the Germans since the annexation of Crimea: Weren’t Russian special rights in the post-Soviet space an unwritten law of post-Cold War Eastern European geopolitics accepted by Berlin?
On June 10, 2021, the president of France Emmanuel Macron announced the end of operation Barkhane in the Sahel region. It will be finished by the first quarter of 2022 in order to reconfigure French military engagement in Africa. More details appeared after a virtual video summit with the leaders of the G5 Sahel (Mali, […]
Several detainees reported that in ‘Izoliatsiia’, a health professional was present during their interrogations and torture. The man revived those who lost consciousness, and guided the perpetrators about how to torture to inflict maximum pain without causing death. He also examined detainees before the torture and asked about their medical conditions; measured their blood pressure or pulse; and gave injections.
The Russia-controlled East Ukrainian separatists have been operating a small concentration camp in the city of Donetsk, Ukraine, for more than six years now. Outside any regular jurisdiction, men and women are being physically and psychologically tormented on a daily basis, in ways reminiscent of Europe’s darkest times.
Whether it be the conflict in Syria, skirmishes in Crimea, Ukraine and Chechnya or the recent outbreak of conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the old disputes that were never fully resolved have often broken out into armed conflict since the end of the Soviet Union. While the Soviet regime often created some detente between conflicting […]
The enormous financial means that West Germany is still transferring to East Germany, 30 years after re-unification, suggest that Moscow’s grab of Crimea in 2014 has been an ill-calculated adventure. Sustaining over a long period of time the highly-subsidised economy of the annexed peninsula will be beyond the capacities of a more and more crisis-ridden […]
The Cold War dominated most of the pre-2000 era and formed much of the existing world order we live in currently. It made for a black and white vision for conflict in much of the developing world, seen from the point of view by a developed world that took the “us vs. them” perspective. It […]
Back in the 1980s there was the impression that technology and the United States could do anything. President Reagan announced at the time that the United States was developing a laser based anti-ballistic missile system that would be able to concentrate light energy onto a moving target in orbit and destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) […]
Seeking to merely “contain” Putin is not enough. We have been outplayed, outsmarted and outmaneuvered in Europe, the Middle East, Venezuela, Africa and the Arctic. And at home. Point by point “cost imposing” measures against Russia have not worked. And simply repeating the pattern of reacting, deterring, responding, defending will not work. Moscow–minimally as a […]
What He Doesn’t Want Us to Know About the “Great Patriotic War“ Avoidance, lies and accusations–somersaulting history–have undergirded Moscow’s aggression for centuries. Western ignorance, naivete and credulity have multiplied that asset, allowing Russia to enrich the former to weapons grade. In Nezavisimaya newspaper earlier this year, Putin advisor Vladislav Surkov wrote expansively of Russia’s success […]
