Eram un stat. Ne-au transformat în populație. Cândva, aveam cea mai puternică și stabilă monedă din Estul Europei. Parlamentele țărilor vecine cereau lui Ferdinand să-și extindă coroana. Regina Maria și-a căsătorit fiicele cu junii familiilor domnitoare din regiune. Visa la un Commenwealth balcanic.
While attending the recent Shangri-La Dialogue on Security in Singapore, Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio stressed the need to oppose unilateral changes to the status quo by force, no matter where they occur. “I myself have a strong sense that Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,” he warned. Needless to say, Kishida was referring to the possibility of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Date: 22 June 2022
Time: 12h00 – 13h30 SAST (GMT+2)
Venue: Online via WebinarJam, register to attend online
An enterprising data platform leads the way in helping Africa overcome its human security challenges and achieve its vast development potential. Integrated forecasts cover 14 sectors for all countries and regions, following the African Union’s Agenda 2063 timeline. Insights are grounded in academic literature and use benchmarks to map ambitious but realistic forecasts that are regularly updated.
Kyiv’s Theory of Victory
As Russia’s all-out war of aggression in Ukraine drags on for a fourth consecutive month, calls for dangerous deals are getting louder. As fatigue grows and attention wanders, more and more Kremlin-leaning commentators are proposing to sell out Ukraine for the sake of peace and economic stability in their own countries. Although they may pose as pacifists or realists, they are better understood as enablers of Russian imperialism and war crimes.
President Macron’s aspiration to mediate between Putin, who does not respect him, and Ukraine, which does not trust him, is damaging French influence at a time when European leadership is critical.
French President Emmanuel Macron has once again put himself forward as the leading voice for a negotiated end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that does not ‘humiliate’ President Vladimir Putin. In this he echoes an increasingly regular drumbeat of articles in the New York Times and other broadsheets emphasising the risks of an open-ended conflict with Russia and the inevitability of eventual compromise.
In the gathering war of attrition in Ukraine, Russia has the upper hand – and Ukraine’s only hope is for international support to now be stepped up.
The Russian war in Ukraine is entering its third stage and is finally becoming a war of attrition. This requires readiness not only on the part of Ukraine, but also its international partners. The short initial race is over, and now the winner will be the one who has not only the will to win, but also enough resources to continue to maintain the current dynamics of the confrontation. It is obvious that despite international sanctions, the Russian economy is in a much better condition than the destroyed Ukrainian economy. Wars of attrition are won by the rear, and the only rear left in Ukraine is the international coalition in support of Ukraine, which was formed in April 2022 in Rammstein, Germany.
In recent years, hard-line views once limited to ultra-nationalist Russian politicians like Vladimir Zhirinovsky have increasingly been espoused by the highest levels of the country’s leadership. How has this happened?
Can the West still provide the arsenal of democracy?
The war in Ukraine has proven that the age of industrial warfare is still here. The massive consumption of equipment, vehicles and ammunition requires a large-scale industrial base for resupply – quantity still has a quality of its own. The mass scale combat has pitted 250,000 Ukrainian soldiers, together with 450,000 recently mobilised citizen soldiers against about 200,000 Russian and separatist troops. The effort to arm, feed and supply these armies is a monumental task. Ammunition resupply is particularly onerous. For Ukraine, compounding this task are Russian deep fires capabilities, which target Ukrainian military industry and transportation networks throughout the depth of the country. The Russian army has also suffered from Ukrainian cross-border attacks and acts of sabotage, but at a smaller scale. The rate of ammunition and equipment consumption in Ukraine can only be sustained by a large-scale industrial base.
At the June summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, maintenance of support to Ukraine, the applications for NATO membership by Finland and Sweden, and the rollout of the new Strategic Concept will appropriately be front and center. But, if NATO is to maintain its long-term capacity for deterrence and defense, it will be equally important to take actions to implement four key operational priorities, each derived from initial lessons underscored by the Russia-Ukraine war. Specifically, effective deterrence and defense requires: upgraded force capabilities immediately focused on readiness and sustainability, and supported by the requisite funding; additional forward force deployments, including a substantial European component; enhanced cybersecurity resilience based on zero-trust architectures for critical infrastructures necessary for defense mission assurance; and long-term limitations on trade with Russia to limit its capacity to modernize its armed forces.
NATO should have a few objectives for its summit in Madrid later this month, said former NATO Secretary General George Robertson: “weapons, weapons, weapons—and a free, democratic Ukraine.”
Robertson joined three other former NATO chiefs—Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, and Javier Solana—at an Atlantic Council Front Page event on Wednesday where the group discussed NATO’s response to the war, enlargement, and the next plays in Alliance’s playbook.