On 1-3 February 2016, Dr. Pauli Järvenpää, Senior Resercher at ICDS, delivered panel remarks at a symposium in Cambridge, UK, sponsored by RAND Corporation and RAND Europe on “Russia, European Security and ’Measures Short of War’. The symposium was a non-attribution, by invitation only, event to bring together senior practitioners and scholars to examine nontraditional security challenges to Europe.
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Literally in the final days of 2015, a new political constellation has emerged on the center-right of Moldova’s party spectrum that might yet open a way out from state failure. But such a rescue, while still possible, requires a certain time for organizational work. For now, Moldova stands at a crossroads with three directions in sight, each of them a shortcut toward some form of state failure: either 1) outright collapse of governance, or 2) takeover (“state capture”) by the financial-political operator Vladimir Plahotniuc, or 3) snap elections, which pro-Russia parties would win against the governing Alliance for European Integration.
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We Are Those That Wish the Old Situation to Continue.
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What is Austria’s historical experience and self-perception like in the context of the migration crisis?
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The refugee problem might be the most complicated question in post-war Sweden.
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The Islamist terrorist assault in Paris on November 13, traced in part to the Syria crisis, has conclusively broken what the Barack Obama administration had claimed to be Russia’s international isolation over its aggression in Ukraine. The Paris attack was the turning point in a series of events (all against the backdrop of failed Western policies) that turned Russian President Vladimir Putin from a controversial, uncomfortable, downright adversarial, or rogue figure (as the full gamut of Western perceptions ran) into a potential ally against international terrorism. Moreover, Russia’s military intervention in Syria turns Putin into a major regional stakeholder.
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The newest CEPA report, “Frontline Allies: War and Change in Central Europe,” describes how Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries find themselves in a fluid and diplomatically jittery landscape where NATO still reigns, but fears of Russia and doubts about Western reliability continue to grow.
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Pauli Järvenpää: Europe does not just have one security problem; it has at least two major shortcomings.
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On Tuesday 17 November 2015, France invoked Article 42.7 of the Treaty of the European Union (the “Lisbon Treaty”). Shortly thereafter, the French action was unanimously approved by the EU defense ministers. Thus, the EU demonstrated that it stood firmly behind the French and ready to move into action after the multiple terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday 13 November.
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Kalev Stoicescu, a research fellow at the International Center for Defense and Security in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, says that Russia is using the Paris attacks “to again split European solidarity in terms of sanctions and the promulgation of sanctions.”
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