Section: The American Interest (USA)
Ukrainian Government on the Ropes?
Ukraine’s government took another hit today when a senior prosecutor resigned because he believed the government had become too corrupt. Reuters: The resignation, the second exit of a Western-backed reformer in under a fortnight, came a day before a possible no confidence vote in parliament that could topple Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk...
Obama’s Failed Legacy in Afghanistan
Last year Foreign Affairs ran a special section on President Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy. The section included essays on the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, terrorism, Europe, Asia, and a pair of dueling assessments of the Administration’s overall performance. Curiously, the entire section was almost entirely silent about...
Follyanna? A Coda
Less than 24 hours after finishing “Follyanna?” the U.S. government, along with other Western and Russian officials, announced a ceasefire in Syria, supposedly to be discussed and detailed further in preparation for implementation next week. Does this disprove my skepticism about the futility of the Geneva process? We’ll find out fairly...
Predators on the Frontier
Revisionist powers are on the move. From eastern Ukraine and the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea, large rivals of the United States are modernizing their military forces, grabbing strategic real estate, and threatening vulnerable U.S. allies. Their goal is not just to assert hegemony over their neighborhoods but to rearrange the global...
Eastern Orthodox Cacophony in America
On January 22-23 there took place a meeting (technically called a synaxis) of all Eastern Orthodox primates (presiding bishops or patriarchs in different parts of the world). The meeting took place at the Orthodox Center in Chambesy, near Geneva, and was presided over by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who (rather uncomfortably) resides in...
Brussels Moves to Counter Gazprom
It looks like Brussels is finally awakening to the strategic disadvantages of its heavy reliance on Russian energy supplies—specifically, its imports of natural gas from state-owned Gazprom. Of particular concern in recent years has been Gazprom’s ability to divide and conquer the bloc by selling its gas to different countries at different...
A Fresh Blow to Ukraine’s Government
One of Ukraine’s most-respected reformist ministers, Aivaras Abromavicius, resigned yesterday because, he said, the corruption of President Petro Poroshenko’s government had become too much. Over at Bloomberg View, Leonid Bershidsky reports: The unofficial view has been of Ukraine’s reformist ministers as the public faces of a...
Will Gazprom Start a New Price War?
Russia’s state-owned natural gas company Gazprom for some time enjoyed the benefits of having a reliable market to its west. For years, Europe has depended heavily on overland imports from Gazprom, and Moscow has used that dependence as geopolitical and economic leverage, forcing its European customers to sign long-term take-or-pay...
How the West Misjudged Russia, Part 4: Mad about Medvedev
Editor’s Note: How do Russia and the West see one another? What are the experts’ views on the confrontation between Russia and the West? How do the pundits explain the Russo-Ukrainian war and Russia’s Syrian gambit? What are the roots of the mythology about Russia in the West, and why has the West failed to predict and...
NATO Spending Still Shrinking
Despite the ongoing Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine and the conflicts in Syria and Libya that are driving millions of refugees into Europe, the European members of NATO still cut their defense spending overall last year. Reuters reports: NATO’s defence spending as a share of economic output fell 1.5 percent in 2015, the sixth straight...
