The Todd That Failed
The Nation has a cracking, snarky and sharply reported, story out about Rick Davies (John McCain’s campaign manager) and his role in the run-up to Montenegrin independence. Read the whole thing, as...
View ArticleOur new monetarist overlords
The Board of the International Monetary Fund yesterday approved a $16 billion loan facility for Ukraine, with $4.5 billion being drawn immediately. Perhaps the main news, at least for anyone not...
View ArticleUkraine kicks to touch on gas crisis
The Wall Street Journal (subs. req’d) is reporting that Ukraine is to settle the $2 billion debt to Gazprom via loans to the public gas company Naftogaz from two state-owned banks. As Edward...
View ArticleGas row latest: forceful European diplomacy
In a joint letter, Martin ŘÃman, the Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, and Andris Piebalgs, European Commissioner for Energy, have warned Moscow and Kyiv that the credibility of...
View ArticleWhite Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies
Just a few short weeks after the end of World War I on the Western Front, Poland and Soviet Russia started fighting again, skirmishing on their poorly defined border that built into full-scale...
View ArticleOrange sunset?
So, President Yanukovych. I don’t always agree with the folks at Foreign Policy, but I think they nail this one: Ukrainians were absolutely correct to stand up and defend their democratic rights back...
View ArticlePress freedom in Ukraine: bad, worse
Just three months ago I wrote this about Ukraine’s new President: Yanukovych’s young administration is interesting for two things: what he’s done, and what he hasn’t… [S]o far, he hasn’t...
View ArticleFinalité Revisited
Shortly after the big round of EU enlargement in 2004, I took a look at future prospects for enlargement. At the time, I called prospective members, “largely a collection of the poor, ill-governed and...
View ArticleA Little More Finalité
Thanks to everyone who commented on the Finalité Revisited essay. So much substance in the discussion that I wanted to highlight some of it in a post, instead of just replying in comments. Three...
View ArticleOf fish, flowers, AKs, offshore banking, and now horsemeat
The horsemeat scandal has taken an unexpected, and possibly very significant, turn. So the Cyprus company controlled by Dutch meat merchant Jan Fasen, who was caught last year passing off South...
View ArticleWas the Ukraine shambles avoidable?
With Saturday bringing news of police in Kiev brutally breaking up what had been a peaceful pro-EU protest, it’s even clearer now than before the botched partnership summit in Vilnius that things could...
View ArticleLvov Offensive
In 1990 prosperity levels equal in Poland & #Ukraine. Today Poland 3 times more prosperous. And that’s only the economic dimension — Herman Van Rompuy (@euHvR) January 25, 2014 Does Herman van...
View ArticleThose Ukraine speeches really knocked him out
As the expression has been put back in the news, here’s the text of what became known as the Chicken Kiev* speech of President George HW Bush (the elder) in 1991. The title speaks to the changed times:...
View ArticleUkraine: it’s a thing
This piece of Galrahn’s has a great title: US Soft Power in Ukraine is Missing Hard Power’s Escalation Control. It then wanders off into generic stuff about how Obama is lacking resolve and a...
View ArticleA question
A question: did the so-called “revolution consultants” do any work with the Ukrainian military, or did Colonel Mamchuk come up with the idea independentantly?
View ArticleCrimea: meet the family
Here’s something interesting: the pro-Russian paramilitary leader in the Crimea is the son of the pro-Russian paramilitary leader in Transnistria. As that empire was pushed out of Eastern Europe,...
View ArticleTerritorial integrity
The UN General Assembly declares the Crimean referendum invalid, 100-11. Russia absorbing Crimea will be the first time since 1945 that a country other than Israel has taken over a part of a...
View ArticleStress test
Reports from eastern Ukraine that pro-Russia (perhaps one should write pro-Putin or pro-annexation) protesters have seized local government buildings in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk. The protesters in...
View ArticleRight on schedule
Last night, I noted that staged takeovers of local government buildings in eastern Ukraine are one of the shoes that everyone keeping track of the crisis has been expecting to drop (Odessa and the...
View ArticleOld habits die hard
Occasionally, representatives of Germany’s Left party (Die Linke) will complain about being tagged as the successors to East Germany’s communist party. Well. Yesterday, the Parliamentary Assembly of...
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