Category: Analysis

Balkans: Putin’s next playground or E.U.’s last moral stand?

     

The Balkans has once again become a playground for great power politics, says analyst Ivan Krastev. European Union policy toward the Balkans is more driven by ideology than in any other… Read more »

Defending democracy from ‘identitarian onslaught’

     

Europe is facing a threat “greater than any since the 1930s: a challenge to liberal democracy and its values,” according to 30 leading European intellectuals. “In response to the nationalist and… Read more »

How Guaidó united Venezuela’s fractured opposition

     

Despite Venezuela’s economic collapse and dictator Nicolás Maduro’s plummeting popularity, opposition leaders had not been able to present a united front in a long time. Now, they are all backing… Read more »

West must identify, exploit asymmetric advantages over autocrats

     

With the re-emergence of great power competition,  Russia and China are pursuing asymmetric strategies against the West, using the advantages of authoritarianism—secrecy, deception, a lack of legal or moral constraints—to… Read more »

‘Revolution in Ruins’: Venezuela ‘on brink of lasting change’

     

In less than a month, Juan Guaido has gone from a virtual unknown in Venezuelan politics to the country’s most-watched figure, assuming the presidency of the opposition-controlled congress and briefly… Read more »

Putin’s Russia is at ‘a dead end’

     

When the Ukrainian Orthodox Church broke from Russia’s, it dealt a blow to President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to portray his country as one people with a single identity, argues Michael… Read more »

New intelligence strategy highlights threats to liberal democratic order

     

The United States will be challenged in coming years by nations that exploit “the weakening of the post-WWII international order and dominance of Western democratic ideals” and “increasingly isolationist tendencies… Read more »

‘Democratic dream’ in South Caucasus?

     

Democratic bright spots are emerging in Armenia and Georgia despite their being wedged between less-than-democratic regional powers—Iran, Russia and Turkey, note analysts Denis Corboy, William Courtney and Kenneth Yalowitz. Both countries seek… Read more »

Are social media platforms ‘rotting democracy from within’?

     

  Facebook has entered a new era of cautious glasnost, inviting researchers to look ‘under the hood’ of various aspects of its operations, and understand how it formulates and implements… Read more »

‘Springtime for Strongmen’? Explaining the rise of populist authoritarians

     

How are we to understand the resurgence of authoritarianism? What form does it now take? What responsibility do elites bear for its success? These are among the most important questions… Read more »