Ivan Krastev (Continuación)

Macedonia at the Crossroads

“Have you ever been stuck in an elevator?” a Macedonian politician asked me recently. We were in Skopje, his country’s capital, where huge public protests have raged over the last year, including demonstrators occupying the government square and, in the Parliament, a nearly yearlong boycott by the political opposition. “Can you imagine being stuck like this for 20 years? This is what happened to us.”

He had a point. Macedonia, a Balkan country of some two million people, roughly 30 percent of them ethnic Albanian, managed to steer clear of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, but that doesn’t mean it has been tranquil.…  Seguir leyendo »

It was only a decade ago that Central Europe, in the American imagination, was Donald Rumsfeld’s “New Europe,” a collection of freedom-loving, heroic small nations — and America’s most loyal allies. Washington ushered them into NATO as a bulwark against Middle Eastern instability and Russian expansionism. Today, however, that perception has changed. Many fear that a number of these plucky, strategically vital states have become Moscow’s Trojan horses in the Western alliances.

The willingness of the Czech president, Milos Zeman, to attend the military parade in Moscow this spring marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany — an event boycotted by Western heads of state — was widely read as a symbolic break with Central Europe’s Western orientation.…  Seguir leyendo »

Hard lessons for the Ukrainian school of war

The ongoing turmoil in Ukraine has frequently been compared to the Yugoslav crisis of the early 1990s — and, indeed, there are many similarities.

But when it comes to understanding why the conflict between Ukraine’s government and Russian-backed separatists has persisted — and why, after a year of increasingly brutal fighting, a resolution seems so remote — the differences are far more important.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tactics in Ukraine do resemble those of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic during the breakup of Yugoslavia. Putin’s misuse of World War II references in propaganda, aimed at fueling intense Russian nationalism, is often said to be a cut-and-paste replica of Milosevic’s disinformation campaigns in the early 1990s, which stirred up anti-Croat sentiment among Serbs.…  Seguir leyendo »

Global temperatures are rising, but the former Soviet Union’s frozen conflicts show no sign of a thaw. On the contrary, the ice is expanding.

Russia’s support for the election held by separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk — key cities in Ukraine’s Donbas region — indicates that the Kremlin has decided to create another semi-permanent “mini-Cold War,” this time in rebel-controlled areas of Russia’s most important neighboring country. But freezing Ukraine’s legitimate government out of the region is potentially far more destabilizing than the Kremlin’s support for the other ex-Soviet breakaway territories: Moldova’s Transnistria and the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.…  Seguir leyendo »

Las temperaturas globales están en aumento, pero los conflictos congelados de la ex Unión Soviética no dan señales de querer derretirse. Por el contrario, el hielo se está expandiendo.

El respaldo por parte de Rusia de la elección llevada a cabo por los separatistas en Donetsk y Luhansk -ciudades clave en la región Donbas de Ucrania- indica que el Kremlin ha decidido crear otra "mini Guerra Fría" semipermanente, esta vez en zonas controladas por los rebeldes del país vecino más importante de Rusia. Pero hacerle el vacío al gobierno legítimo de Ucrania en la región es potencialmente mucho más desestabilizador que el respaldo que el Kremlin les pueda dar a los otros territorios ex soviéticos separatistas: Transnistria de Moldova y las regiones georgianas de Abjasia y Osetia del Sur.…  Seguir leyendo »

El Occidente ahora está viviendo en el mundo de Putin. Esto no se debe a que Putin tenga la razón, o incluso, no se debe a que él sea más fuerte, sino que esto ocurre porque él está tomando la iniciativa. Putin es “audaz”, mientras que el Occidente es “cauteloso”. No obstante que los líderes europeos y estadounidenses reconocen que el orden mundial está experimentando un cambio dramático, ellos no pueden llegar a captar dicho cambio en su totalidad. Los líderes continúan abrumados por la transformación de Putin, desde su papel de Presidente Ejecutivo de Rusia, Inc., a su actual papel de líder nacional impulsado ideológicamente que no se detendrá ante nada para restaurar la influencia de su país.…  Seguir leyendo »

Most people see Europe’s economic crisis as a cautionary tale of good and bad policy making, in which fiscally prudent countries, such as Germany, remain stable, while reckless ones, such as Greece, unravel.

So ingrained is this idea that it’s now common to hear analysts say Europe must become “German” to exit from the crisis, adopting Teutonic approaches to policy -- from fiscal tightening to labor- and product-market reforms. If only societies on Europe’s periphery can learn to do what the Germans do, the argument goes, the European Union and its single currency will have a stable future.

This is wrong and we already have evidence to show it.…  Seguir leyendo »

For a European these days, thinking about the future is disturbing. America is militarily overstretched, politically polarized, and financially indebted. The European Union seems on the brink of collapse, and many non-Europeans view the old continent as a retired power that can still impress the world with its good manners, but not with nerve or ambition.

Global opinion surveys over the last three years consistently indicate that many are turning their backs on the West and – with hope, fear, or both – see China as moving to center stage. As the old joke goes, optimists are learning to speak Chinese; pessimists are learning to use a Kalashnikov.…  Seguir leyendo »

El de los Balcanes es el caso de éxito de la Unión Europea del que no se habla. El compromiso de la UE de incluir esa región dentro de sus fronteras sigue  siendo firme. En septiembre, Catherine Ashton, la Alta Representante de la UE para Asuntos Exteriores, consiguió deshacer el punto muerto en las relaciones Servia-Kosovo al llevar a las dos partes a la mesa de negociación. El poder blando de la UE sigue tan visible como siempre.

Además, este mismo mes el muro de visados que ha rodeado esa región durante los dos últimos decenios ha caído por fin para todo el mundo (con la excepción de los albaneses de Kosovo).…  Seguir leyendo »

It was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who observed that relations between two actors really involve six "persons": each actor's self-image, each actor's image of the other and, finally, what each actor actually is. Under this rubric, the success of President Obama's "reset" policy with Russia will depend not only on getting U.S. actions toward Moscow right but also on getting insight into the way the Kremlin views the United States and its new president.

Unlike many of its critics, the new Obama administration is not inclined to view Vladimir Putin's Russia as a paperback edition of the Soviet Union. Russia today is not a democratic state, but it is not an ideology-driven tyranny, either.…  Seguir leyendo »

Well, there’s supposed to be a presidential debate tonight in Oxford, Miss. And it’s supposed to be about foreign policy. With that in mind, the Op-Ed editors asked leaders and writers from around the world to pose questions they’d like to hear John McCain and Barack Obama answer.

How would you work with America’s allies in the Muslim world to turn around the widely held misperception there, as evidenced in opinion polls, that the global war against terrorism is actually a war against Islam?

ASIF ALI ZARDARI, the president of Pakistan

Many developing countries — mine included — have made sacrifices to carry out tough economic reforms and have sought “trade and not aid.”…  Seguir leyendo »