Section: The American Interest (USA)
East Asia 2015 Is Not Europe 1914
The Next Great War: The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China ConflictRichard N. Rosecrance and Steven E. Miller, eds.MIT Press, 2015, 320 pp. The Improbable War: China, the United States, and the Logic of Great Power Conflict Christopher CokerOxford University Press, 2015, 240 pp. In June the U.S. government accused the Chinese...
Ukraine’s Cabinet Reshuffle
In a development that dismayed many reformists, last week’s local elections in Ukraine saw oligarch-backed candidates win the mayorships of most of Ukraine’s major cities, beating out the candidates allied with President Petro Poroshenko’s reformist bloc. The turnout was not as high as reformists would have liked, and anecdotal...
Erdogan Divides and Rules
The politics of division and fear win a big victory in Turkey. Reuters reports: With 99 percent of votes counted, the AKP was on 49.4 percent, according to state-run broadcaster TRT, giving it 316 of parliament’s 550 seats. The main opposition CHP was at 25.4 percent.[..]The pro-Kurdish HDP, which scaled back its election campaign after its...
A Lull in the East
A new turn in the Minsk negotiating process has accompanied the sharp drop in fighting in Ukraine’s east over the past six weeks. Both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, the changes have come from a growing realization in the Kremlin that its policy of aggression Ukraine is failing.Since it launched its undeclared, hybrid war...
No, the Sky Isn’t Falling
Few elections in Europe of late have elicited as much uniform editorial commentary and speculation in Western media as the recent parliamentary election in Poland. Several op-eds have flirted with an alarmist view that the era of stability and progress in Poland is coming to an abrupt end as the “right-wing roars back,” the “euroskeptics claim...
The Failed Promise of European Shale
One by one, Europe’s shale dreams have evaporated. Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and even the UK have all seen oil majors throw in the towel on fracking projects that were once seen as a path towards a European energy renaissance. The FT reports on how mismanagement and unfavorable conditions both in energy markets and the natural world have...
Turkey Takes Gazprom to Court
Last December, Vladimir Putin announced Russia would no longer be pursuing the construction of the so-called “Southern Stream” gas pipeline, meant to connect Gazprom with its southern European customers through the Black Sea, through Bulgaria. Southern Stream’s scuppering was seen as a diplomatic defeat for Putin and a win for the West—the...
India Putting Down Roots in Contested Territory
Over fifty years ago, India and China fought a war over Arunachal Pradesh, a remote northeastern state now administered by India, though China still lays claim to the territory. About 1.4 million people live in the Himalayan region, a population India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi hopes will grow substantially. According to Bloomberg, Modi...
Ukrainians Head to the Polls
Ukrainian elections are this weekend, and they look like they will bring bad news for President Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko isn’t on the ballot himself, as the elections are local, but any hopes he may have had of consolidating power look dim. AFP: The public’s frustration at the West’s refusal to arm Ukrainian forces and only...
The $117-a-Barrel Alliance
Russia and Iran have been teaming up to give the U.S. fits in the Middle East, but can this alliance last? A good piece in the WSJ examines the question: For Moscow, the Syrian war fits into its global strategy of creating a “multipolar” world in which Russia would re-emerge as one of the key powers alongside a declining America. The Kremlin is...
