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231. Gazprom: The Octopus in Europe's Energy Market

Author:
Stuart Weaver
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
European Affairs
Institution:
The European Institute
Abstract:
Gazprom, the Russian monopoly, has been on a shopping spree to acquire commercial interests (and political leverage) in "downstream" gas and energy companies and distributors in Europe. Here is a partial list of those European holdings gleaned from the chapter entitled "Buying Europe: Purchase as Politics" in a new book on this monopolistic strategy by Janusz Bugajski.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

232. Talking Business Facts about Europe's Gas Problems

Author:
J. Robinson West
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
European Affairs
Institution:
The European Institute
Abstract:
A practitioner in the oil and gas business warns that Europe's worst weakness regarding natural gas supplies comes from the absence of a free internal market in natural gas among the EU nations. Freeing up the flows in Europe would drastically reduce the rigidities that Gazprom exploits. A good investment would be gas storage facilities, but such infrastructure is costly.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

233. A Talk with Michael Chertoff: U.S. and EU Agendas Converge

Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
European Affairs
Institution:
The European Institute
Abstract:
Following his acceptance of The European Institute\'s Transatlantic Leadership Award at a December 2008 ceremony in Washington, DC, Chertoff sat down with European Affairs to reflect on his relations with European governments - which proved much more productive than many observers initially feared. He also shared his views on future challenges from Guantanamo to failed states, including the need for a new consensus on dealing with states that tolerate international terrorists on their soil.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

234. Ethical Leadership in an Unethical World

Author:
William J. Peterson Jr.
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
European Affairs
Institution:
The European Institute
Abstract:
Savage Century: Back to Barbarism By Thérèse Delpech, Translated By George Holoch Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 211 pages, $21.24 Reviewed by William J. Peterson Jr.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and North Korea

235. Who? – or What Tectonic Shift? – Created the Special Relationship

Author:
Michael D. Mosettig
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
European Affairs
Institution:
The European Institute
Abstract:
The King and the Cowboy By David Fromkin The Penguin Press, 256 pages, $25.95 Reviewed by Michael D. Mosettig.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

236. An Ambassador\'s Diary in Post-Communist Hungary

Author:
Thea Backlar
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
European Affairs
Institution:
The European Institute
Abstract:
Vera and the Ambassador: Escape and Return By Vera and Donald Blinken SUNY Press, 350 pages, $24.95 Reviewed by Thea Backlar
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

237. Barack Obama and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This section is intended to give readers an overview of President-elect Barack Obama's positions on the Middle East peace process as he begins his tenure. The baseline for gauging Obama's views may be his failed 2000 race for Congress. At that time he made statements viewed as pro-Palestinian because they urged the United States to take an "even-handed approach" toward Israeli-Palestinian peace-making. As an Illinois state senator, Obama had cultivated ties with Chicago's Arab American community, which was partly concentrated in his state senate district. He won a U.S. Senate seat in 2004 with significant support from Chicago's Lakeside liberals, who included leading Chicago Jewish Democrats. His position on the Arab-Israeli conflict remained an issue during the 2008 presidential race, however, and Obama made a point of laying out his positions at several points during the campaign, in contrast to his Republican challenger Sen. John McCain, who did not detail his positions.
Topic:
Security and Government
Political Geography:
United States, America, Middle East, Arabia, and Chicago

238. Forget Bretton Woods II: the Role for U.S.-Japan-China Trilateralism

Author:
Yoichi Funabashi
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Washington Quarterly
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
In this age of globalization, nations rise and fall in the world markets day and night. Europe, Germany in particular, may at first have indulged in a certain amount of schadenfreude to observe the abrupt fall from grace of the U.S. financial system. But not for long. As of November 2008, the euro zone is officially in a recession that continues to deepen. Germany's government was compelled to enact a 50 billion euro fiscal stimulus package. The Japanese economy, though perhaps among the least susceptible to the vagaries of the European and U.S. economies, followed soon after, with analysts fearing that the downturn could prove deeper and longer than originally anticipated. The U.S.—Europe—Japan triad, representing the world's three largest economies, is in simultaneous recession for the first time in the post-World War II era. China, meanwhile, is suddenly seeing its 30-year economic dynamism lose steam, with its mighty export machine not just stalling but actually slipping into reverse.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and Government
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Europe, and Germany

239. The Myth of a No-NATO-Enlargement Pledge to Russia

Author:
Mark Kramer
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Washington Quarterly
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
In the latter half of the 1990s, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was preparing to expand its membership for the first time since the admission of Spain in 1982, Russian officials claimed that the entry of former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO would violate a solemn ''pledge'' made by the governments of West Germany and the United States in 1990 not to bring any former Communist states into the alliance. Anatolii Adamishin, who was Soviet deputy foreign minister in 1990, claimed in 1997 that ''we were told during the German reunification process that NATO would not expand.'' Other former Soviet officials, including Mikhail Gorbachev, made similar assertions in 1996—1997. Some Western analysts and former officials, including Jack F. Matlock, who was the U.S. ambassador to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1990, endorsed this view, arguing that Gorbachev received a ''clear commitment that if Germany united, and stayed in NATO, the borders of NATO would not move eastward.'' Pointing to comments recorded by the journalists Michael Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, former U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara averred that ''the United States pledged never to expand NATO eastward if Moscow would agree to the unification of Germany.'' According to this view, ''the Clinton administration reneged on that commitment . . . when it decided to expand NATO to Eastern Europe.''
Topic:
NATO and Government
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, North Atlantic, Moscow, Germany, and Spain

240. Obama's Existential Challenge to Ahmadinejad

Author:
Abbas Milani
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Washington Quarterly
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Two countries, ''both alike in dignity,'' have for too long been the Capulets and Montagues of our days. Grudges like the 1979 hostage crisis and the U.S. role in the overthrow of the popular Mossadeq government in 1953, ill feelings stemming from the clerical regime's nuclear program and help for organizations like Hezbollah, and the Bush administration's ham-fisted policy of ''regime change'' have combined to make the Islamic Republic of Iran one of the most intractable challenges facing the United States.
Topic:
Government, Islam, and Regime Change
Political Geography:
United States and Iran