EU: Balkans Still Plagued By Crime, Corruption And Censorship

20:43, October 9, 2014Organized crime, corruption, and pressure on media continue to be major barriers to countries hoping to join the European Union (EU). A set of European Commission reports released on Oct. 8 warn that aspirants’ intentions to fight crime are not enough, and that countries need to “need to build up credible track records of…

Analysis: Blowback from the Syrian jihad has begun

  By Lisa LundquistJune 4, 2014   As the Obama administration seeks to invest more heavily in training and arming ‘vetted, moderate’ rebels in Syria’s three-year civil war, a conflict that has already claimed over 150,000 lives and drawn the largest-ever concentration of foreign jihadists, the wisdom of this course becomes increasingly questionable. The US’…

Vladimir Putin’s long—and very dangerous—game

Leon Aron | American Enterprise Institute May 01, 2014 Reuters Key points in this Outlook: Vladimir Putin is exploiting the Ukrainian revolution—specifically, by manufacturing “crises” in Crimea and eastern Ukraine and nationalist euphoria and anti-Western paranoia at home—to fashion a more repressive and increasingly unpredictable Russian dictatorship for life. With the Russian economy heading for…