http://tkvogel.com Writings on the Balkans Sun, 25 Nov 2007 15:47:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en International policy has failed to keep Pakistan and Palestine from inching closer to the brink: both are potential failed states and both could take their entire region down with them, especially nuclear-armed Pakistan. For once, the intellectually lazy response – to blame it on the Americans – is correct. The basic ... http://tkvogel.com/2007/11/22/european-voice-failing-states-fashioned-from-bush%e2%80%99s-coat-tails/ NATO’s response to a possible flare-up of violence in Kosovo could be hampered by bad communication with the EU, diplomats in Brussels have warned. Communication between NATO and the EU, which have largely overlapping membership, is good in the field but dysfunctional at the political level, according to officials and experts. This ... http://tkvogel.com/2007/11/22/european-voice-diplomats-warn-over-poor-eu-nato-communication/ Serbia will not be able to sign a pre-accession pact with the EU if it continues interfering in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, Olli Rehn, the European commissioner in charge of enlargement, has said.The commissioner also urged Bosnia’s politicians not to listen to the “siren calls from Belgrade or Moscow”. The warning ... http://tkvogel.com/2007/11/15/european-voice-rehn-tells-serbia-to-stay-clear-of-bosnia/ As an alliance of states built on ‘soft power’, it is perhaps not surprising that the European Union has had ambivalent feelings about sanctions from the very first time it imposed them – against the Soviet Union in response to the suppression of democratic stirrings in Poland in December 1981. The ... http://tkvogel.com/2007/10/18/european-voice-smart-sanctions-prove-not-so-clever/ The killing of ten African Union (AU) peacekeepers in Darfur on 29-30 September has given military planners and analysts pause to consider the dangers of a forthcoming EU deployment to neighbouring Chad. A source of particular concern is that the EU operation in Chad will have to work closely with a ... http://tkvogel.com/2007/10/11/european-voice-darfur-killings-leave-eu-no-easy-options/ It may be Srebrenica's special misfortune that to the people interested in it, it has been far more than just a small town in eastern Bosnia. Its fall in July 1995 was a great military triumph for the Bosnian Serbs, but the systematic killing of thousands of Muslim males that ... http://tkvogel.com/2007/07/09/rferl-newsline-end-note-reaching-a-breaking-point-over-srebrenica/ The international community has put a strong personality at the helm in Bosnia after a failed experiment in laissez-faire leadership. In the past, Bosnians and Bosnia-watchers would carefully vet an incoming high representative for signs that he might depart from his predecessor’s policies or take dramatic steps in implementing the mandate ... http://tkvogel.com/2007/05/18/transitions-online-our-take-switching-off-the-cruise-control/ Die vielleicht wichtigsten Bücher über den Irak-Krieg haben bisher nicht Politologen mit geförderter Forschung, sondern Journalisten wie George Packer oder Anthony Shadid geschrieben. Die Wissenschafter wetzten noch ihre Analysewerkzeuge, als die Reporter bereits ihre Buchmanuskripte ablieferten. Doch was deren Recherche zutage gebracht hat, bedarf oft einer systematischeren Auslegung, und allenfalls ... http://tkvogel.com/2007/04/20/neue-zurcher-zeitung-das-scheitern-des-staatsaufbaus-im-irak/ When the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), a consortium of 55 governments and international organizations that oversees peace efforts in Bosnia-Herzegovina, met in Brussels on February 26-27, the mood was grim. Last year, the PIC announced that the top international body in Bosnia, the Office of the ... http://tkvogel.com/2007/03/06/rferl-newsline-end-note-another-missed-opportunity-in-bosnia-herzegovina/ On February 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague cleared Serbia of genocide charges in connection with Belgrade's support to the Bosnian Serbs during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The ICJ confirmed, however, an earlier ruling by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), also ... http://tkvogel.com/2007/02/27/rferl-newsline-end-note-judgment-at-the-hague-fighting-old-wars/