Matthew Yglesias proves that Godwin’s law is attainable in 140 characters or less. Clever. Lord knows I picked a bad week to defend German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the EU. But if, as many observers are now arguing, the current EU-IMF package isn’t sufficient to keep Greece from eventual insolvency and debt restructuring, then nothing that was on either side of the table a few weeks ago was even remotely sufficient. Which is to say, Merkel did not single-handedly torpedo a workable solution. I understand, too, the importance of signaling when it comes to the markets. But once the signaling [...]
Early this morning, Turkey’s parliament passed a package of controversial constitutional amendments. The vote was just shy of the two-thirds majority needed to adopt the reforms outright and will now head for referendum. In an e-mail interview, Council on Foreign Relations’ senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies Steven A. Cook explains the controversy surrounding the reform package. WPR: What are these reforms responding to, domestically and in terms of EU accession? Cook: The constitutional amendments are in response to domestic politics. There is general agreement across the political spectrum that Turkey needs a new constitution. The present constitution was written [...]
The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group met today in a closed meeting to discuss the current state of negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In an e-mail interview, Thomas de Waal, senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, explains where negotiations stand today. WPR: What are the principle issues that still need to be resolved in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict? De Waal: The fundamental unresolved issue in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the same one that triggered the conflict back in Soviet times in the Gorbachev era in February 1988: the status of the disputed territory [...]
