Serbia’s short-lived withdrawal of all of its diplomats from neighboring Macedonia in late August, following a narrowly avoided regional trade war, brought the timeworn phrase “Balkan tensions” back into the news yet again. Both events are a sign of how strained international relations in the Balkans can still be, and of the difficulties that lie ahead as the region’s countries look to integrate into the European Union—and with one another. However dramatic, the spat between Serbia and Macedonia was quickly smoothed over, at least on the surface. Serbian diplomatic staff returned to their embassy in Skopje four days after they [...]
From the start of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump had a clear and consistent culprit for many of America’s problems: China. As he pronounced from the lobby of Trump Tower when declaring his candidacy in 2015, the American dream was dead and China, a currency manipulator and intellectual property poacher, had killed it. It was a strange location for that statement, perhaps, since Trump Tower’s biggest office tenant is a major state-controlled Chinese bank. But then again, perhaps the irony suits. Despite overtures of collaboration with Beijing to counter North Korea, Trump has reinvigorated his China critique as president. Announcing [...]
Lately, it seems that every week Germany’s ties with Turkey hit another low point, and there are few signs of this trend reversing any time soon. The latest escalation came with the arrest last week of Dogan Akhanli, a Turkish-born German writer on vacation in Spain, following a warrant issued by Turkey. German officials decried the move as politically motivated and warned that the Turkish government may be using the multinational police organization Interpol to pursue political opponents abroad. Akhanli’s detention is the most recent in a string of arrests of German citizens both in Turkey and abroad. Since the [...]
