Section: The German Marshall Fund of the United States (USA)
Common Ground for European Defense: National Defense and Security Strategies Offer Building Blocks for a European Defense Strategy
Momentum is growing behind a European defense strategy. Initial plans for the European Global Strategy review process did not foresee a military dimension. However, the violent conflict to Europe’s east and south, as well as terrorist attacks at home, have underlined that the role of military power in international affairs, specifically in...
Is Europe’s Foreign Policy Under Threat from Its Economic Dependence?
Transatlantic TakeBERLIN—As Europe struggles to deal with the refugee crisis, it seems like a long time ago that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras threatened to undermine EU sanctions against Russia. His flirtation with Russian President Vladimir Putin last year was widely seen as a way for Greece to increase its leverage in negotiations with...
How Economic Dependence Could Undermine Europe’s Foreign Policy Coherence
For nearly all EU member states, trade with other member states is decreasing as a share of total trade. Intra-EU exports have declined as a share of the EU’s overall exports from 68 percent in 2000 to 63 percent in 2014. This shift away from intra-EU trade raises difficult questions about the future of European integration. EU member...
Moldova Needs Us to Support Reforms, Not Governments
Transatlantic TakeBUCHAREST, Romania—History repeats itself, giving us the chance to avoid repeating our mistakes. The Ukrainian story should have taught us a lot about the short-sightedness of supporting a bad government for geopolitical reasons. Now, as protests against Moldova’s newly formed government are drawing many thousands, is the...
Turkey and Russia’s Proxy War and the Kurds
The Perfect Pretext Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian jet has resulted in dramatic changes between those two states. But while it was an extraordinary development, the paradigmatic shift between Turkey and Russia is not a result of this incident. Both countries had already been heading in different and opposing directions in foreign...
Russia’s Ruble Dips to New Lows, But Moscow is Managing
The ruble plunged to new lows today, exceeding 80 to the U.S. dollar for the first time ever. The slump in oil prices – now at $28 per barrel compared with over $100 two years ago – has dragged Russia’s currency down with it. Russia’s government depends on oil earnings for about half of its tax revenue, and commodities constitute the...
Pride and Pragmatism: Turkish-Russian Relations after the Su-24M Incident
Introduction One framework proposed in order to analyze the Middle East treats it as a penetrated regional sub-system. As such, the Middle East is subject to exceptional influence and intervention from the outside world, especially by the great powers operating at the international system level. As Russia’s military posture in Syria has...
Israeli Gas: Too Soon to Declare Victory
Israeli gas might not be developed for years to come without at least partial resolution of a number of challenges, including uncertainty about export markets and high risks for potential buyers. To facilitate the development of Israeli gas, the government should promote an honest and open national public conversation about gas and should replace...
An Expensive Fight for Russia and Turkey
Transatlantic TakeWASHINGTON—It was “a stab in the back,” Russian President Vladimir Putin declared. Turkey’s shooting down of the Russian jet over Turkish airspace in late November sparked angry denunciations from Moscow. But rather than “stab in the back,” the more relevant bodily metaphor is “shot in the foot.” For both Russia and...
A Stubborn Optimist’s 2016 Forecast of World Affairs
Forecasts of the year ahead tend to reflect the general mood of the year before and, for Americans, fears about the world around us. So it’s no surprise that after a most depressing 2015 in geopolitics, doom and gloom dominates 2016 predictions thus far. As if the ongoing civil war in Syria was not bad enough, the self-proclaimed Islamic...
