One can only feel sorry for Greece. For more than five years, the “troika” (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) has made it the object of a failed experiment with austerity that has exacerbated the country’s e

The “new” Middle East is now on daily display. Unlike the old Middle East, whose fate was determined by the dominant Western powers (the United Kingdom and France after World War I, and the United States from the 1940s until recently), the new one has no external heg

In the last two weeks, the two crises confronting Europe — in Ukraine and Greece — both escalated. In each case, Germany and its chancellor, Angela Merkel, were at the heart of efforts to achieve a diplomatic resolution. This is a new role for Germany, and the count

The euro crisis, it is said, is over.

“War,” said the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, is the “father of all things”.  In view of the bloody — indeed barbaric — events in the Middle East (and in Iraq and Syria in particular), one might be tempted to agree, even though su

Grand political strategy and everyday experience often have a lot in common. Try, for example, to swallow a salami whole, and you will probably choke to death. In the world of high politics, people behave no differently: they slice their salami before consuming it.

For far too long, the West has harboured illusions about Vladimir Putin’s Russia — illusions that have now been shattered on the Crimean peninsula. The West could (and should) have known better: Ever since his first term in office as Russian president, Putin’s

This year marks the centennial of the outbreak of World War I, which is reason enough to reflect on what this seminal European catastrophe teaches us today. Indeed, the Great War’s consequences for international relations and the global system of states continue to be