Europe Archive

For years, many Western and even Russian analysts expected that a resolution of Iran’s nuclear dispute with the West would weaken ties between Tehran and Moscow. However, in the months since July’s nuclear deal, relations between Iran and Russia have strengthened, while Tehran’s ties with the West have stagnated. The Syrian war, as well as skillful Russian diplomacy, have short-circuited, at least for now, any anticipated Iranian geopolitical reversal after the nuclear deal. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Iran in late November, the first visit by a Russian president since 2007, was the latest indication of healthy ties. Although […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s Editor-in-Chief Judah Grunstein and host Peter Dörrie discuss the major trends that shaped 2015, a year marked by the re-emergence of borders and national approaches to transnational problems. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Trend Lines is produced, edited and hosted by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focussing on security and resource politics in Africa. He can be followed on Twitter at @peterdoerrie.

International conflict management is not necessarily a rewarding occupation for people who have neat and orderly minds. Well-made plans tend to fall apart in fast-moving crises. As I noted in a chapter in a book on the Security Council published earlier this year, the recent history of United Nations peace operations is basically a story of “one damn thing after another.” U.N. forces have repeatedly been caught off-guard by upsurges in violence and entangled in intractable struggles that they can help mitigate but cannot resolve. This is not only true for the blue helmets. In the United States, analysts once […]

Spaniards went to the polls last Sunday to cap an electoral campaign dominated by the economy, corruption charges and a stand-off between Madrid and the separatist region of Catalonia. The results broadly confirmed what many had predicted: a win for the incumbent government of Mariano Rajoy of the conservative Popular Party (PP), but uncertainty over whether Rajoy will be able to form a government. Despite being the clear winner with 28.7 percent of the vote—enough to score 123 out of 350 parliamentary seats—the PP lost its absolute majority. The social democratic Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) came in second with 22 […]

People who write about international politics inevitably make a lot of incorrect predictions. It is sometimes useful to look back and ask why our prognostications were wrong. At the start of this year, I asked, “Where will international stabilization forces intervene in 2015?” My best guesses were Ukraine, Nigeria, Libya and Syria. There has been much talk about deploying peacekeepers to these war zones over the ensuing 12 months, but markedly less action. In retrospect, it seems clear that governments and international organizations have taken a cautious approach to mounting new missions in high-risk environments in 2015. But there are […]

European leaders are meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday for the final European Union summit of 2015. Dominating the agenda is the refugee crisis. As of Dec. 17, more than 956,000 migrants, including refugees, have arrived in Europe by sea this year, according to the International Organization for Migration. The EU and its member states are still struggling to develop a common response. The latest idea, proposed by Germany and France earlier this month, is to create a standing, 2,000-member strong EU border and coast guard force. But like every other EU response to the refugee crisis, that has […]

More than any other outside power, France is currently investing the most military and political resources to combat terrorist groups in West Africa and the wider Sahel. Driven by a perception of a clear and present danger, French security policy in the region has undergone a fundamental shift in recent years, but not in the direction that many policymakers in Paris had hoped at the beginning of the century. Instead of slowly decreasing its military presence and political involvement in its former colonies’ internal affairs, France has stepped up both amid new realities and interests. Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of corruption and various countries’ efforts to combat it. Last month, the European Union released its annual progress report for Montenegro, which highlighted the need for further government reforms to tackle persistent corruption. In an email interview, Vanja Calovic, the executive director of MANS, a nongovernmental organization that fights corruption and organized crime in Montenegro, discussed corruption there. WPR: How big of a problem is corruption in Montenegro, and in what areas is its impact most felt? Vanja Calovic: Montenegro has been guided by the same […]

Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, announced yesterday that it would deploy a so-called Rapid Border Intervention Team to help manage the large number of refugees arriving on the Greek islands. The announcement followed one last week that the agency will send staff to Greece’s northern border with Macedonia to help register migrants there, and will supplement the 195 Frontex staff already working in the Greek islands in the Aegean that have been most affected by the refugee crisis. The moves come after officials from the EU and several member states accused Greece of not doing enough to protect its […]

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip to Kosovo last week was literally a “flying visit”; he didn’t leave Pristina’s Adem Jashari Airport. But that didn’t diminish the significance of the trip, which comes at a delicate time for Kosovo’s government. Prime Minister Isa Mustafa’s administration faces a domestic opposition so enraged that it has resorted to dropping tear gas in parliament, and a sharp worsening of relations with Serbia. Kosovo has also seen a larger proportion of its citizens join the self-proclaimed Islamic State than any other country in Europe, with high unemployment and disillusionment with mainstream politics making […]

Editor’s note: Judah Grunstein is filling in for Richard Gowan, who is out this week. Two elections yesterday, an ocean apart, upended politics in the nations that went to the polls, with implications for their surrounding regions. In Venezuela, the political opposition won parliamentary elections, dealing the first electoral setback above the municipal and provincial levels to the late Hugo Chavez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in more than a decade.* In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Front party (FN) topped the combined voting in first-round elections for regional governments, confirming the party’s entry into the mainstream of French […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the European refugee crisis and European Union member states’ approaches to addressing it. In November, Slovenia started construction of a fence along its border with Croatia to help control the flow of refugees entering the country. In an email interview, Katarina Vucko, a legal expert and researcher at the Peace Institute in Ljubljana, discussed Slovenia’s response to the refugee crisis. WPR: What policies is Slovenia pursuing on the national and European Union level to address the influx of refugees, and what is the government’s stance on the EU […]

World leaders are convening in Paris this week for COP21, the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference, in hopes of reaching an agreement on how to slow global warming. Although momentum toward clean energy and reduced greenhouse gas emissions has increased around the world, a real shift will require more coordination, better-enforced legal frameworks and a renewed focus on innovation. All of the articles linked below are free for nonsubscribers until Dec. 17. What’s at Stake in Paris? In Climate Talks, as in Syria, Half-Measures Must Do for France’s HollandeFrom managing security measures following the Paris attacks of Nov. 13 to […]

More than two weeks after the Paris attacks of Nov. 13, much still remains unknown about the terrorists—three have yet to be identified—and the nature of the organizational and logistical networks behind the plot. As details come to light, they will continue to inform a better understanding of the actual threat and the best ways to counter it. In the meantime, with the immediate shock somewhat faded, it is possible to weigh what we now know about the attacks in a more considered manner, and to draw some conclusions about France’s initial responses. The profiles of the attackers as established […]

Back at the end of September, when Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to intervene directly in the nearly five-year-old civil war in Syria, more than a few U.S. pundits and politicians bemoaned the negative impact of Russia’s intervention on U.S. interests in the region, while lauding the Russian leader’s willingness to use force to advance Moscow’s interests in the region. “A dramatic example of the diminution of . . . American influence in the region, particularly in Iraq,” said Sen. John McCain. “Putin is willing to back up his pursuit of his interests with force,” wrote Eliot Abrams, who seemed […]