Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone too far with his challenging of Greece's sovereignty and territorial waters, former US Ambassador to Greece Nicholas Burns told the online 31st annual Greek Economic Summit of the American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday.

President Trump’s grand plan to invite Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to meet at the White House on June 27 may be falling apart before it begins, after the Kosovo Specialist Chambers announced on Wednesday indictments against Thaci and others on war crimes charges.

The pandemic is forcing the European Union (EU) and its member states to address the economic and social consequences for them. And yet, the pandemic has accelerated transformation processes of the international system which will impact the ability of the EU and its members states to manage those consequences.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken our economic and political institutions. Less detectably, the crisis also rattles our ideals of democracy and individual freedom. Public health imperatives have collided with democratic principles as fundamental as the freedom to come and go. We have every reason to believe that the exigencies of the moment will also come into conflict with privacy.

Hong Kong is unique. While the writer Han Suyin’s description—“a borrowed place, on borrowed time” —seemed redundant upon the return of the territory to China on July 1, 1997, the former British colony appears to be perpetually exposed to uncertainty over its future. Despite long months of sociopolitical crisis and violence, Hong Kong has once again shown that it has lost none of its personality. Amidst the climate of upheaval and faced with a Chinese regime determined to obstruct any hopes of democracy, the people of Hong Kong have managed to attract international and media attention, marking them out from any other Chinese territory—including those that enjoy special status: Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Macao, and even Xinjiang, where nearly a million people from the minority Uyghur ethnic group are confined to “re-education” camps. No other Chinese region has been able to attract such attention.

President Trump has strongly criticized NATO and European countries on defense spending, publicly hectored European leaders, upset summits meetings, and pressured traditional allies with economic sanctions.  Transatlantic tensions have been called a “crisis”.  Yet the current situation echoes a certain historical continuity.  In its seventy years of existence, NATO has weathered more severe crises and proved itself capable of extraordinary resilience.  Then, as now, the alliance found renewed purpose in ambitious programs of adaptation.  In adapting to today’s challenges, Europeans and Americans have a shared interest in looking back to the future.   

President Trump’s Iran policy, even if it does not lead to war, is one of the worst examples of self-inflicted harm and collateral damage to the international community in the history of US foreign policy.

This article identifies the importance of NATO’s role as a facilitator of multinational collaboration. The Alliance’s established processes and standards worked well, enabling countries whose available resources might otherwise prohibit their participation to fully-contribute to the mission in Afghanistan.