Europe Archive

On Friday, July 11, senior British and American leaders denounced China and Russia for vetoing a U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolution that would have imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and his closest supporters for using violence and other manipulations during last month’s presidential elections. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, criticized Moscow and Beijing for having sided “with Mugabe against the people of Zimbabwe.” In his remarks to the council after the vote, Khalilzad observed that, “The u-turn in the Russian position is particularly surprising and disturbing.” Khalilzad then made the stinging comment that, “The […]

To the Editors, Richard Weitz [“Unity of Guam States Threatened in Efforts to Realize Energy Potential,” July 10, 2008] is a correct that the GUAM Organization would be doomed to extinction without Azerbaijan, and that the organization’s future depends on Azerbaijan’s economic resources and transit potential. However, the portrayal of Azerbaijan as a member country that impedes GUAM’s democratic development, along with the fanciful notion that it is considering quitting the organization, is wholly inaccurate. One should not forget that the very idea of GUAM began with the late President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev who brought the initiative before his […]

“Syria and Lebanon are one country” — that is what a Syrian security officer said when a reporter of the Israeli daily Haaretz wondered why Lebanese journalists were attending a press conference with President Bashar al-Assad in Paris that was supposedly open “only for Syrian journalists.” It is this kind of thinking that made many diplomats and politicians question if French President Nicolas Sarkozy was right to invite his Syrian counterpart to Paris to attend the inauguration of a “Union for the Mediterranean” and to stay on to join the festivities for Bastille Day. But Haaretz analyst Zvi Bar’el seems […]

Some of the most important moments in modern diplomacy live on in photography. That’s why this weekend French President Nicolas Sarkozy — in the presence of news photographers — made sure to simultaneously grab the hands of the Israeli Prime Minister and the Palestinian Authority President and triumphantly stand as the link between the two. The image, symbolizing the power of diplomacy to bring enemies together could have made history, except that we had seen it countless times before. That was just one of the problems with Sarkozy’s weekend summit of Mediterranean nations, a gathering filled with potential, but light […]

It looks like Nicolas Sarkozy will have a full house on Sunday for the launch summit of the Union for the Meditaerranean. After weeks of uncertainty about Turkey’s participation, President Abdullah Gul just announced he’d be arriving in Paris tomorrow. His visit coincides with what Turkish FM Ali Babacan called “positive signals” from the EU regarding the opening of new negotiation chapters for Turkey’s EU accession. Turkey is increasingly tying its participation in the UM — which seems more and more crucial as Turkey’s regional influence (see this and thi on PM Erdogan’s visit to Baghdad) grows — to its […]

WARSAW, Poland — To defend against the potential threat of a nuclear attack from “rogue states,” the United States has been working to shore up support for deploying 10 silo-based long-range interceptors in Poland and a mid-course tracking radar in the Czech Republic by 2013. After months of shuttle diplomacy and intense negotiations, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice inked a deal with the Czechs on July 8 but failed to convince her Polish counterparts to host the project. For months, it appeared that Poland would easily accept U.S. plans. Undoubtedly, Poland is a strong U.S. ally and a vital […]

Since her spectacular liberation last week along with 14 other hostages, the former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt has been received in France as a “heroine” (as the cover of one French weekly put it). Over the last year, the French government and President Nicolas Sarkozy have publicized their efforts to obtain the release of Betancourt, who also has French citizenship and whose two children live in France. But how much did the French efforts ultimately contribute to the liberation of Betancourt and the other hostages? And what, more generally, have been the effects of French diplomacy upon the conflict […]

Iran’s missile test is getting a lot of attention, which is to be expected given the amount of posturing going on on both sides right now. (As an idea of how out of control the media “psy ops” have gotten, there’s this article in Press TV citing Iraqi press reports of Israeli war planes secretly based in Iraq in preparation for an attack on Iran.) To my mind, the missile test launch seems like the kind of signal you’d expect the Iranians to send following the much publicized “training operation” over the Mediterranean and Greece a few weeks back. What’s […]

Energy differences between Russia and European countries have created an opportunity for the GUAM states — Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova — to assume a more prominent role in Europe’s institutional architecture. Until now, the GUAM has been overshadowed by more prominent institutions such as NATO, the European Union, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Most recent attention has focused on how GUAM might help EU members pursue their energy diversification strategy. GUAM includes both energy-producing (Azerbaijan) and energy-transit (Azerbaijan again but also Georgia and potentially Ukraine) countries. The pivotal geographic location of GUAM members — which have direct access […]

Democracy Arsenal’s Max Bergmann takes the American foreign policy establishment to task for basically ignoring the EU, in a post he tiled, The EU and its Rise: While conservative foreign policy thinkers have always dismissed the importance of the EU, the progressive foreign policy establishment has really not been much better. Most still abide by the view that the EU should not duplicate or infringe upon NATO and will point to the importance of continued enlargement of the EU into the Balkans and Turkey, but few actually seem to think that Europe will have any real role in foreign affairs […]

FRENCH CONNECTION — France’s six-month presidency of the European Union, which began July 1, got an expected prestige boost last week with the release of Ingrid Betancourt from her six-year captivity in the hands of Colombian FARC terrorists. France played no part in the daring rescue operation: the significant supporting role belonged to the United States. But it was to Paris, not Washington, that Betancourt dashed within 24 hours after her release; and the next day footage showed her in the arms of President Nicolas Sarokozy, not President Bush. Betancourt had French family connections and is “culturally” French by background. […]

The annual summit of world leaders is the focal point of G-8-related activity. The sessions offer national leaders an opportunity to meet with their foreign counterparts and, due to now standard practices of limiting attendance and holding the summits outside national capitals, engage in direct multilateral and bilateral discussions with limited interruptions. Russian President Boris Yeltsin began attending the G-8 summits in 1994, but he was only allowed to attend the special sessions devoted to political affairs. He remained excluded from the main talks devoted to economic questions, where Moscow’s global influence was much weaker. At the Denver summit of […]

PARIS — After a 17-year-old Jewish boy wearing a yarmulke was brutally beaten by a gang of teenagers in Paris’s 19th arrondissement late last month, the reactions of both the French news media and French authorities were notably ambiguous. The boy, known only as “Rudy” in the French reports,was not only punched and kicked during the attack, but also beaten with what has been variously identified as an “iron bar” or a “crutch.” The beating occurred on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, in a neighborhood with a large orthodox Jewish population. It appears to have continued even after Rudy lost […]

Call it a coincidence, but on the same day that British Foreign Minister David Miliband backed Nicolas Sarkozy’s ambitions for EU defense, the French government awarded the job of dismantling the decommissioned, asbestos-laden aircraft carrier, the Georges Clemenceau, to an English shipbreaking yard. The trick with Miliband’s announcement, of course, is that it commits Great Britain to nothing. Still, while maintaining that NATO must remain the cornerstone of European defense, he echoed the argument of EU defense proponents: But as the Balkans wars in the 1990s demonstrated, unless Europe can develop its own capabilities it will be consigned always to […]

At their June 26-27 summit in the Siberian town of Khanty-Mansiisk, located in the heart of Russia’s energy industry, EU and Russia officially launched negotiations on a new EU-Russia Agreement. Although the formal agenda consisted mostly of economic and energy issues, the participants devoted considerable time to security questions as well as assessing how the presence of Russia’s new president, Dmitry Medvedev, might affect the negotiations. For the past few years, Russian-EU relations have been addressed within the framework of four “common spaces” — the Common Economic Space (covering economic issues and the environment); the Common Space of Freedom, Security […]

The French EU presidency is off to a rocky start, which is saying something since it’s only a day old. The most spectacular headline is probably more of a hiccup than a crisis. Polish President Lech Kaczynski called pursuit of the Lisbon Treaty “pointless” in the aftermath of Ireland’s rejection, and indicated (although I’ve yet to find a direct quote) that he wouldn’t sign the Ratification Act already passed by the Polish legislature, thereby blocking Poland’s approval process. Kaczynski explained his position as a defense of the EU’s principle of unanymity, which he said Poland was too weak to do […]