Section: Atlantic Council (USA)
A Bold and Optimistic Strategy for Europe
US President Barack Obama recently derided critics of his foreign policies as offering merely mumbo-jumbo. Yet everyone can plainly see the administration’s shocking degree of across-the-board strategic incomprehension and incompetence in Europe and the Middle East. In fact, European Union diplomats publicly admit that confidence in US...
A Three-Pronged Strategy to Deal with Putin
Atlantic Council’s James L. Jones, Jr. recommends a toolkit that includes economic, political, and security components The United States must develop a three-pronged approach that includes economic, political, and security components to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “retrograde ambitions in favor of the peaceful and...
The Forgotten War: A View From Ukraine’s Frontlines
For a brief moment, it felt like déjà vu. As an officer with the Canadian Armed Forces, I visited several hot spots, witnessing my share of misery and destruction. Now I am in the Donbas, the war-torn region of eastern Ukraine.Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has struggled to shed its Soviet colonial past and the remaining vestiges of...
Evolution, Not Revolution, Is the Way to Save Ukraine, Says Leading Anti-Corruption Crusader
Russian President Vladimir Putin is pivoting and wants to withdraw from the Donbas but keep Crimea, according to Iegor Soboliev, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s anti-corruption committee.”He wants to give it back to us right now. He doesn’t need the Donbas,” he said in an interview on October 5.”Unfortunately,...
The Donbas Black Hole
What Russia hoped would be a small, victorious war has turned into the “geostrategic disaster of a new cold war,” writes Volodymyr Horbulin, a respected foreign policy analyst currently advising Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.In an article in Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Horbulin argues that the main participants in the war have exhausted...
Don’t Blame the Oligarchs: Why Have Ukraine’s Cultural Reforms Gone Nowhere?
The demonizing of Ukrainian oligarchs as major impediments to democratization and reform has become a shared mantra of Western and domestic pundits alike. Whenever explaining the slow pace of Ukraine’s changes after the Euromaidan, analysts argue that oligarchs only gained influence and that by controlling whole chunks of the state...
Testing Putin’s Intentions
The October 2 Paris Summit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and Russian President Vladimir Putin produced no breakthrough for peace in Ukraine. But it provided additional proof that, for the moment, Putin wants to lower tensions in the region. The parties spoke about...
How to Fight Corruption in Ukraine
We all agree: The greatest threat facing Ukraine, after its war with Russia, is corruption. But few agree how to do so, though it should not be that difficult.In 1998, Ukraine’s main gas importer, Ihor Bakai, stated that “all rich people in Ukraine made their money on Russian gas.” The technique was simple. A Ukrainian trader...
Radars for Ukraine: Obama’s Signal to Putin
A day after US President Barack Obama met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the United States announced that it will ship long-range counter-battery radars to Ukraine. Obama authorized $20 million to provide the country with radars, bringing US security assistance to Ukraine up to $265 million. Obama’s message is clear: the United...
Ukraine Must Embrace Radical Reform Now
If the Ukrainian government does not follow through with an ambitious reform agenda, public support will wane while dissatisfaction will increase, threatening political stability and the country’s future. “There is no time for slow evolutionary changes. Radical and revolutionary reforms are the only way to success,” warns a new...
