Europe Archive

Despite having enormous natural and human resource endowments, Ukraine has experienced severe difficulties during the past two decades transitioning from a Soviet republic subordinate to Moscow to an independent country with a democratic political system, effective liberal market economy and foreign and defense policies that meet the country’s unique national security requirements. Many of Kiev’s particular foreign policy concerns result from Ukraine’s status as both a bridge and a front-line state situated between the former Soviet empire and Western and Central Europe. Ukraine has increasingly tried to turn that status to its advantage. For now, though, it has yet to […]

Demonstrators furious at the severe injury of a protester during an anti-austerity march clashed with riot police in central Athens on Thursday, the second day of violence in the Greek capital.

Much has been written about the potential impact that the demise of Osama bin Laden and the possible disintegration of al-Qaida will have on U.S. foreign policy, beginning with the question of whether this will trigger a more rapid disengagement from Afghanistan. But bin Laden’s death could also change the foreign policy calculus of other states, notably Russia, which for the past 10 years has promulgated its own version of the global war on terror as a central organizing principle for international affairs. Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, Moscow had already seen bin Laden as a threat to the […]

Following the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the developments still unfolding in the region, several questions arise: Is the Arab Spring over? Have we reached a turning point where no new revolutions are likely and where the remaining autocratic leaders will reaffirm their power monopolies? And what do post-revolutionary developments in Tunisia and Egypt suggest about the pace and prospects of their political opening and possible democratization? In trying to answer these questions, the two waves of democratization in Eastern Europe and Eurasia provide useful analytical comparisons. The 1989 revolutions in the former communist bloc, as well as its […]

May 1 marked the end of a transitional period for the European Union, after which all existing members were required to fully open their labor markets to eight countries that joined the union on May 1, 2004. In an email interview, Herbert Brücker, an expert in European integration at the Institute for Employment Research in Germany, discussed the opening of the EU labor market. WPR: What was the logic behind the labor market restrictions that were recently lifted? Herbert Brücker: According to the “2+3+2” formula, the European Union agreed to suspend free labor mobility for up to seven years for […]

Driven in part by a recent article in Proceedings, the magazine of the United States Naval Institute, the debate over the nature and utility of aircraft carriers has once again erupted between naval analysts. In “Twilight of the $uperflous Carrier,” Capt. Henry J. Hendrix of the U.S. Navy and retired Lt. Col. J. Noel Williams of the U.S. Marine Corps argue that modern supercarriers are simply too expensive and too vulnerable to be usable weapons of war. They contend that the era of the supercarrier has come to an end, and that the future of naval power resides in warships […]

In what was described as a major milestone in the six-nation Multirole Medium Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) tender, the Indian Ministry of Defense announced the final contenders for the $10 billion, 126-plane purchase in April. Only the Dassault Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon were left in the fray, while Boeing’s F-18 E/F Superhornet, Lockheed Martin’s F-16, Saab’s Gripen and UAC’s MiG-35 were all eliminated. The selection of aircraft offered only by European manufacturers has been seen by many U.S. commentators as a political snub to the Indo-U.S. strategic partnership, despite the Indian government’s great efforts to frame the decision as a […]

U.S. and NATO officials are currently deciding what specific arms control measures they will seek regarding the remaining tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) in Europe. Although NATO officials have linked further reductions in the alliance’s TNW to reciprocal Russian reductions, NATO governments have yet to propose any formal TNW negotiations with the Russian government. Specifically, they must determine what objectives to seek, what negotiating forum to use, and how to verify any agreement regarding these weapons. When the U.S. Senate ratified the New START Treaty last December, it also enacted a resolution directing the Obama administration to begin negotiations with Russia […]

The Libyan debacle has been a major wakeup call for those thinking that Europe has a grip on its neighborhood or that the European Union might one day become a serious geopolitical actor. The point is now so moot, it’s barely worth making. What’s less obvious is that the fallout from the Libyan intervention will have a serious impact on the upstream energy landscape around Europe. That’s not just because the EU has lost around 1 million barrels per day of sweet oil production and around 16 percent of its gas supplies for the “EU 15,” but also because the […]

Exactly one year after explaining that a future Conservative government would be “highly active and activist in European affairs,” William Hague, now the British foreign secretary, signaled quite the contrary when he appeared before the U.K.’s House of Commons Defense Select Committee on March 9. His comments in Parliament showed a worrying misunderstanding of the capacities of the two key European institutions of which the U.K. is a member — the European Union and NATO. In response to questions on international alliances and the U.K.’s perspective toward them, Hague argued that NATO is singularly designed for national security whereas the […]