Europe Archive

On Dec. 25, 43-year-old Yevgeny Shevchuk was elected president of Transnistria by a landslide, winning nearly 80 percent of the vote in a runoff after outmaneuvering two powerful and seasoned opponents. It was a triumph for democracy in a remote corner of Southeastern Europe that few outside the neighborhood would have had any reason to notice. But it is worth taking note, not only because Shevchuk is a young reformer in a part of the world groaning under entrenched oligarchies, but also because his successful campaign offers a larger lesson at a time when popular democratic movements are shaking the […]

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s military-industrial complex sustained the massive Soviet military institution, which regularly gobbled up 15-25 percent of the nation’s GDP. In an odd and unexpected twist to the end of the Cold War, the Russian arms industry has turned to sustaining itself by arming a pair of Asian giants: Arms exports to China and India have proven lucrative for Russia — and have even had a synergistic and competitive quality. The unease each country has felt due to the other increasing its military capability has led to higher revenues for Rosoboronexport, the Russian state-owned arms […]

The past year was an eventful one for NATO, but despite the success of the alliance’s intervention in Libya, persistent problems will continue to affect trans-Atlantic defense relations in the new year. The United States will need to redouble its efforts in 2012 to make progress, with the NATO Summit in Chicago this May providing an opportunity for high-level attention to the issue. The alliance’s main problem is that European member states spend too little on defense. On average, their military expenditures have fallen almost 2 percent annually during the past decade, despite the continuing operations in Afghanistan. In the […]