Section: The American Interest (USA)
Russia’s Imperial Amnesia
In a provocative March 27 column in the Financial Times entitled “Brexit and Imperial Amnesia,” Gideon Rachman chided the English for, as one reader put it, “a serious misunderstanding of [Britain’s] oppressive imperial past.” Aside from generating a lively and entertaining discussion of the issue, Rachman’s piece gave me a framework...
Election Eve
The presidential run-off takes place on Sunday, and nearly everyone in France is sick of both candidates. Wednesday’s debate didn’t help: Marine spent two-and-a-half solid hours shrieking like a fishwife addled by menopause. Macron faced the obvious political problem. No matter how unprepared and hysterical she sounded, there’s...
Who Killed the Liberal World Order?
At last September’s G-20 summit in Hangzhou, China, Barack Obama put the fear of God into Vladimir Putin. Or at least he tried. Two months earlier, American intelligence officials informed the President they had “high confidence” it was Russian hackers who had broken into computer servers belonging to the Democratic National Committee and...
The Raucous Caucasus
The news from the Caucasus that reaches the United States these days is mainly bad news. We hear reports of widespread corruption, human rights violations, or clashes between warring nations. In the case of the Russian North Caucasus, jihadi terrorists fight regional governments run by pro-Russian thugs. Why, then, should such a small sliver of...
Lukashenko Doubles Down
It was to become one of the defining images of the recent recrudescence of Belarus’s autocratic crackdown on civil liberties.“What are you doing?!,” the lady shrieks as riot police in helmets and armour drag an elderly man across the street, his face streaked with fear under a brown beret. “He’s an old man,” she pleads, as he is...
Poland Finds a Friend in US Shale
American shale gas is, at long last, penetrating into Eastern Europe. Poland just purchased its first cargoes of U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG), an important milestone in Europe’s quest to reduce its dependence on Russian energy imports. Bloomberg reports: Poland’s state-owned PGNiG SA bought a spot liquefied natural gas cargo from...
Following the Trail of Dead Russians
Former FBI special agent Clint Watts, testifying at the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing on Russian meddling in last year’s elections, had an arresting message for his interlocutors: “Follow the trail of dead Russians”, he said. Watts, who admits to not being much of a Russia expert, was probably referring specifically to the...
Gazprom Gloats Over Its European Dominance
Fresh off the news this week that Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline secured 50 percent of its funding through loans from five European companies, the CEO of the Russian state-owned natural gas firm was positively glowing. “Today, in 2017, we are beating our 2016 record highs by around 10 percent. So we can expect new records this year and...
China’s New Carrier (Almost) Ready for Launch
China’s much-anticipated, home-built aircraft carrier is about to make its debut, reports South China Morning Post: China was making final preparations to launch its first domestically built aircraft carrier as it marked the 68th anniversary of the founding of the PLA Navy on Sunday. The scaffolding around the ship, temporarily named the...
Russia Works Around Western Energy Sanctions
Back in 2014, a raft of Western sanctions stifled Russia’s Arctic oil ambitions, but three years later Moscow is looking to kickstart its own homegrown oil renaissance to try and match America’s shale boom.At the time, those sanctions were carefully calculated to hamstring Russia’s future energy production without immediately...
