| 03 June 2009
At one point during my adolescence, an elder of my church took me aside to speak to me about walls. Walls, he said, are a protection against things on the other side, the same way religious rules and regulations are a protection against the world outside. Hence, you should feel protected within our community and not fight against these walls. Although I wasn’t able to express it properly at the time, I felt very much at unease with this metaphor. And my unease has continued. Of course, he was right; walls can and oftentimes do offer protection from outside forces, for instance forces of nature. This, with insistent endurance, the three little piggies built their houses until finally the big bad wolf, a symbol of nature, was kept at bay.
| 01 June 2009
Unilateral implementation of the Stabilization and Association Agreement?
The Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) between the European Union and the Republic of Serbia was signed exactly one year ago. It is a comprehensive and binding document with clearly defined bilateral obligations. Although the commencement of the SAA ratification process and the concurrent application of the Interim Trade Agreement (ITA) have been awaiting the green light of the EU Council of Ministers, the Serbian government formally started implementing the trade part of the SAA from 30 January 2009. Full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague is a formidable precondition set by the EU. Unsatisfied with the level of such cooperation on the part of Belgrade, the Netherlands have been blocking, so far at least, ratification of the SAA.
| 25 May 2009
Receiving President Medvedev and the Russian Security Initiative
When President of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, visited Finland in April, he gathered a relatively mild interest compared with the attention that meetings of the presidents of the two neighbours usually got during the Cold War. Stiff appearances and official communiqués were not needed, when the smiling President visited the small idyllic town of Porvoo to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the event when Sweden lost Finland to Russia and the Czar Alexander I addressed Finnish Estates promising the country a far-reaching autonomy as a Grand Duchy. That occasion, but also the later repressive policies of Russia, paved the way for Finland’s independence 108 years later. Like his two predecessors, but unlike the Soviet leaders, Medvedev also laid wreaths on the grave of Finland’s national hero, Marshal Mannerheim and on the cross of the military cemetery in Helsinki that still reminds the Finns of the battles against the big eastern neighbour, 1939-1944.
| 22 April 2009
START-1 treaty forms to this day the cornerstone of the prevailing nuclear arms control regime. The treaty will expire at the end of the current year. It needs to be reviewed and updated. Renegotiating START-1 was not a priority for the previous US administration; an attitude that bothered Moscow. The Kremlin shows a greater interest in negotiating cuts as both its launchers and the nuclear warheads carried are considered as becoming obsolete. Nevertheless, Russia continues to be a nuclear superpower equipped with a global capacity of launching nuclear weapons from multiple locations.
The Quest for Bases
Kyrgyzstan
To be sure, the controversy over the deployment of the US missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic epitomizes a much more real than perceived Russian aversion to Western infiltration in the former Soviet space of the last decade or so. In actual fact, Moscow reasserts itself in the former Soviet space with an accelerating pace. The latest manifestation of Russian resurgence took the form of a generous aid package offered to the Kyrgyz. The huge financial package - $2bn in discounted loans and another $150m in aid - came at a time when Washington showed lack of understanding to Bishkek’s financial requests. Moscow also agreed toKyrgyzstan's $180 million debt. write off