cepa.org

Cross-posted from: feddit.de/post/9916015...

“Western allies can work around toxic decision-making in small countries such as Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia. But Germany is too big to ignore”, writes Edward Lucas, non-resident Senior Fellow and Senior Adviser at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)....

Finland, despite its status as the newest NATO member, is in a better condition than most of the other 28 European alliance members. Empty stockpiles and slow armaments production are causing concern elsewhere in Europe, but not so in Finland....

Thanks to growing Nordic-Baltic cooperation, and their outsize contribution to Ukraine’s defense (the region accounts for eight of the top 11 contributors by share of GDP), a region that was NATO’s Achilles heel until this decade is now one of the alliance’s most well-prepared and capable. It is united by a shared threat...

“Europeans must take serious and sustained action against rampant sanctions evasion by European companies contributing to arms production in Russia,” writes Nico Lange is a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). “Sanctions need to be made watertight, and companies that continue to supply Russia...

“I understand that most Western people have busy lives and don’t have time to think about all this”, writes Lera Burlakova, Democracy Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) who served in combat from 2014-2017 after joining the Ukrainian army following the Russia invasion of Crimea....

Ukraine has reasons for insisting on tech independence. China partners with Russia and supports Russia’s war effort. It needs to remember that Chinese vendors are cheaper in part because Beijing subsidizes them in an attempt to create dependency on its high-tech....

Tuzla, in the Kerch Strait, was the first hybrid Russian operation against Ukraine, setting in motion a train of events that resulted in 2022’s full-scale invasion. It also established a pattern of Russian interference in other neighboring countries....

Kremlin-endorsed propagandists celebrated the fighting as a distraction to tear the West’s eyes from Ukraine, produced new conspiracy theories to explain the news, and delighted in the discomfort and fear of Russian Jews who have emigrated to Israel....

While the necessity of supporting Ukraine, at all costs, should be obvious to all (it’s the best long-term investment the West can make against an expansionist Russia), it is a hard sell to electorates. But there is another way of doing this — we can make Putin pay. Even the populists in Europe and the U.S. would struggle to...

Suppressing nationwide uprisings has become a regular event for the regime in Iran, and its tactics are now well-honed: portray the protests as foreign in origin, pit the country’s ethnic groups against each other, and deal savagely with anyone who remains on the streets.

Europe’s telecommunications operators have long held that some big Internet companies are driving a surge in Internet traffic and hogging their networks. A 2022 report by ETNO, Europe’s telecommunications operators lobby, claimed that more than half of the global data traffic originates from the servers of six US firms:...

Congress and Ukraine Aid — Reasons to Be Cheerful By Catherine Sendak October 3, 2023...

“There can be no pax russica. This is what would result from a surrender to the self-described peace lobby, a disparate grouping that never specifies just how many Ukrainian concessions would be possible and acceptable,” says Nicolas Tenzer, Chairman of the Center for Studies and Research on Political Decision (CERAP) and...

“EU integration is the only way to keep our democracy safe,” Moldovan President Maia Sandu says. While the tiny ex-Soviet republic, which is landlocked between Romania and Ukraine, remains committed to democracy and its plans to join the EU, Russia has been trying to undermine that goal. "Russia wants to keep us in the grey...