Yearly Archives: 2021

America Comes and Goes. Trans-Atlantic Tensions Are Forever

“First thing I’m going to have to do, and I’m not joking,” candidate Joe Biden said last September in a campaign interview about America’s European allies. “If elected I’m going to … get on the phone with the heads of state and say America’s back, you can count on us.” …

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The U.K.’s Incoherent China Strategy

Earlier this month, the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, delivered a speech in Parliament setting out measures to ensure that British businesses do not profit from what he called the “industrial scale” forced labor of minority Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region. However, Raab’s remarks made no mention of …

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Victims of the Balkans Wars Are Still Seeking Justice

It’s a cold morning in Rance, a mountainous village east of Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, and Isak Asllani is preparing to pay tribute at a memorial for his fallen family and friends. It is a painful ritual he carries out every Feb. 17 to mark the anniversary of Kosovo’s declaration of …

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Slovakia’s Reformists Face an Uncertain Future

A display of hubris by Slovakian Prime Minister Igor Matovic over a controversial Russian coronavirus vaccine has cost him his job and shaken a reformist government in which many Slovaks had invested so much hope. On April 1, Matovic resigned, just over a year after coming to power following an …

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Bulgaria’s Fractured Politics Marks the End of the Borissov Era

As a European Union and NATO member that borders Turkey, hugs the Black Sea coast and maintains cordial relations with Russia, Bulgaria is a strategically significant country. Yet in recent years, it has rarely made international news—except for the occasional domestic clash over Russian influence and periodic mass protests over …

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US Says Nuclear Talks in Danger if Iran Fools With IAEA Monitoring

The United States on Tuesday warned Iran not to mess with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s monitoring of its nuclear facilities, warning that such intervention would jeopardize negotiations currently being held in Vienna over a return to the 2015 nuclear deal. If Tehran were to “prevent the collection of or …

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Orbán’s EU Agenda Follows Populist Script

The image of the inward-looking populist who rejects international cooperation is inaccurate. On the contrary, populists engage quite actively in regional and international organizations, and the leadership of these organizations and their member states do not yet know how to respond to the populist challenge. In a new book, researchers …

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Le Hamas, premier parti israélien?

En 2005, le retrait de Gaza et l’espoir d’un règlement pacifique du conflit israélo-palestinien qu’il a suscité ont permis pour la dernière fois à une majorité modérée d’arriver au pouvoir en Israël. Mais la prise du pouvoir par le parti islamiste à Gaza a transformé ce territoire en usine de …

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Eritrea blames the US for ‘destablisation’ in Ethiopia’s Tigray

Eritrea’s foreign minister accuses Biden administration of ‘stoking further conflict and destabilisation’ in Ethiopia’s north. Eritrea’s foreign minister has blamed US administrations that supported the Tigray People’s Liberation Movement (TPLF) for the last 20 years for the current conflict in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, adding that blaming Eritrea for the …

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US air defenses shoot down drones near Iraq air base

Drones were intercepted and brought down near the air base that hosts US forces. US air defense systems shot down two drones near Ayn al-Asad air base shortly after midnight on Sunday, Iraq’s military said. The encroachment, knocked down by US counter-rocket, artillery and mortar systems (C-RAM), is the latest …

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