Poland
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Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), famously remarked in the early 1950s that the purpose of the nascent alliance was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The conclusion of the recent NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, provides a propitious opportunity to…
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I was asked by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) to contribute a short piece for inclusion in a compilation of expert opinion on the recent NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. The longer article, in which my analysis of the Czech participation at the summit is included, can be found here.
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I have recently been working on a longer, analytic piece for the think tank world. The subject, highlighted in the title above, has been percolating in my Central European-centric brain for some time. The article went live yesterday at Delphi Global Research Center, a new think tank out of Wilmington, DE that was founded by…
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Sitting in a comfortable rental apartment in Liptovský Mikuláš, looking out on the majestic Vysoké Tatry (High Tatras) mountains in north central Slovakia, it is hard to imagine that less than two hundred miles to the east, a savage, and at this stage seemingly pointless, war continues to engulf Ukraine. Currently on a short “sabbatical”…
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Given the significance of the recent (April 12) Hungarian elections, I put together a quick analysis for the Foreign Policy Research Institute of their ramifications for Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. The piece went live today and can be accessed here. I will also be posting a second article—for the local papers—on this blog…
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While the Beatles feature in the title of this commentary, the lyrics from another British rock and roll band offer a practical framework as the warring sides in the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe probe for an acceptable offramp after four years of bloodshed. You can’t always get what you want But if you try…
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In a Mar-a-Lago press conference on the morning of January 3rd, President Trump stated that the United States would “run” Venezuela until a proper transition to a new government can occur. The president’s announcement came in the wake of a lightning U.S. military raid on Caracas, leading to the apprehension on drug-related charges of Venezuelan…
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The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), the Philadelphia-based think tank for which I write periodically, yesterday published my latest analytic missive on political developments in the Czech Republic. For anyone interested, the article can be accessed here.
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In an interview in the June 2025 edition of the Atlantic magazine, President Trump boasted of his second term, “I run the country and the world.” While our putative American Caesar may believe he possesses illimitable power on the global scene, a series of international elections since his inauguration have cast doubt on the veracity…
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