Geopolitics / Europe

• Europe’s Ongoing Ambivalence Towards Turkish EU Membership

  Amidst the European Union’s many problems, from the tanking of the economies of a number of its poorer member states to trying to prop up the euro, an issue from its hoary past continues to gnaw at the fringes of its collective consciousness. Is Turkey a part of Europe or not, and if it is, should it receive EU membership? The issue has bedeviled EU-Turkish relations for decades, rooted as it is in centuries of mutual admiration, apprehension, and out and out fear. The question however is one that should occupy the best and brightest minds in Brussels however, as…

• Can the IMF Save the European Union

  A debt-choked Europe is concentrating its limited economic resources on a floundering Greece. But the nature of the euro is that one country’s economic problem is everyone’s economic problem, and an IMF bailout will detrimentally impact all of the other euro zone players—most notably Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, who are already struggling to keep their heads above water. IMF has already made loans over the course of the last year that are some of the largest in history. Now they are considering providing the European Union with half of their available euro stabilization fund. This fund will be utilized in…

• Turkeys Booming Economy and Newfound Self Confidence

  The Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of current-day Turkey was once called “the sick man of Europe”.  This was during the First World War when the Ottoman Empire was increasingly controlled by Europe and lost war after war successively. This epithet seemed to stick to Turkey in its course of development especially in discussions regarding its application for membership in the European Union where it became a pivotal argument. Somehow these words also seemed to be attached to the political, economic, and international image of Turkey, even though Turkey was no longer being controlled by European powers and it was no…

• Transforming Europe: Is the Swiss Model the Way to Go

  Calls for the transformation of Europe into something resembling a larger version of Switzerland have grown louder of late. Although European “neutrality” was a periodic Cold War bugbear, it now seems less offensive. Who would object to a prosperous, peaceful, stable and relatively liberal, multilingual polity? For centuries Europe and Europeans warred with one another and with the rest of the world in between exploiting large portions of it. Wouldn’t a Swiss model be better for all concerned? Switzerland is officially neutral but it is well armed and not as well insulated from the rest of the world as it…

• EU Unveils its Energy Strategy for the Next 10 Years

  BRUSSELS -- The European Union's energy commissioner has unveiled the main outlines of a proposed joint EU energy strategy for the next 10 years. Presenting his "Energy 2020" strategy paper in Brussels today, Guenther Oettinger called for investment of up to a trillion euros ($1.4 trillion) to strengthen infrastructure across the bloc. He also pleaded for a common external energy policy, saying member states pursuing their own interests weaken the EU's collective negotiating position. Reforming the energy sector is one of the crucial challenges facing the EU as it attempts to modernize its economy and consolidate its foreign policy stance.…

• Azerbaijan Expands its Energy Options Following Further Nabucco Delays

  With the Nabucco pipeline project still stuck on the drawing board, Azerbaijan is busy trying to broaden its energy export options. Over the past three months, Azerbaijan has made a number of deals to position itself to prosper in a wide variety of scenarios. First, in August, Azerbaijan announced that Turkmenistan had agreed to ship a small volume of oil via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Officials in Baku did not provide specifics, but did say that Turkmen exports would account for up to 5 percent of BTC’s overall volume, which amounts to 800,000 barrels per day. Later, in early September, President…

• Bosnian Elections See Moderate Gains, but Little Hope for Change

  More than 8,000 candidates from 39 political parties and 11 coalitions competed for seats in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s central parliament and tripartite presidency during 3 October elections. The Bosnian Croat and Bosniak seats look set to go to supporters of a unified Bosnia, while the Bosnian Serb representative is vowing more strength for entities – a situation that has created deadlock in the work of the presidency over the past four years. The moderate Social Democrat Party’s (SDP) Zeljko Komsic won the presidency's Croat seat, beating ethno-nationalist Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) candidate Borjana Kristo. The Bosniak front-runner was Bakir Izetbegovic, of the…

• Russia-Germany Nord Stream Pipeline Under Way

  Russia has succeeded in getting funding for the Nord Stream gas pipeline (formerly North European Gas Pipeline, NEGP), which will go under the Baltic Sea to Germany. It obtained environmental approvals from the littoral states concerned rather easily and earlier this year began to lay the pipes undersea. ANALYSIS: The deal is another indicator of ever-growing German-Russian cooperation and reorientation of German diplomacy, even as this takes place against the interests of Germany’s EU partners. • Russia obtained funding from European financial institutions with surprising ease. It was accomplished through Germany’s lobbying of the EU to include the pipeline as…

• Floating Alternative to Nabucco Pipeline Materializes

  The “floating alternative to the US-sponsored Nabucco” pipeline network to bring Central Asian gas supplies to Europe and the Mediterranean has begun to materialize, further transforming or limiting the prospects for the Nabucco project which has been emerging as an expensive option led by the US strategy to bring Turkey into the European mainstream. See: Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, April 6, 2010: A Floating Alternative to Nabucco Undercuts Potential Disruptions to EU Energy Supplies and Reduces Turkish Leverage Potential Against the EU. The EU website Euractive reported on September 20, 2010: “Two EU members, Romania and Hungary, have…

• Rebuilding the Greek Economy

  The way we talk about the economy has changed dramatically in the past few months. Before our own debt crisis erupted, public discourse was not very different from that in western countries. We would discuss the merits of public vs private, of boosting demand vs cutting expenditure, of liberalism vs social democracy. A few observers did insist on Greek specificities. For example, on how the public sector is not public when it has been captured by private and what I will call ‘syntechnic ‘[*] interests – there is no English equivalent for the Greek word ‘syntechnia’ in its current usage;…