Articles by: "Carl Bildt"
Ukraine gets its chance

Suddenly, opinion polls find that Ukrainians are more optimistic about their future than are citizens of most other countries. That will come as a surprise to many, given Ukraine’s manifold challenges. And yet it is …

Remembering the miracle of 1989

This month marks 30 years since Europe—and human civilisation generally—began to undergo a miraculous transformation that is now etched in the world’s memory. By the summer of 1989, the Soviet Union was already in terminal …

Europe’s only decision

As the European Parliament election approaches, Europe is abuzz with speculation over who will lead the main European Union institutions for the next five years. Among the positions up for grabs are those currently held …

The Kremlin’s little green duds

Five years ago this month, a small force of ‘little green men’—soldiers wearing no national insignia—seized control of a police station in Sloviansk, a small village in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. Thus began the second …

Towards a new global charter

In August 1941, even before the United States had entered World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt met secretly off the coast of Newfoundland to discuss how the …

Showdown in Munich

It was at the 2007 Munich Security Conference that Russian President Vladimir Putin first signalled a cooling of Russian–Western relations. Soon thereafter, Russia invaded Georgia; and in the years since, it has annexed Crimea, launched …

The Trump administration’s farewell to aims

Every now and then, a US political leader descends on Cairo to deliver an address outlining America’s policy objectives in the ever-challenging Middle East. In June 2005 the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, made waves …

Are EU troops on the way?

Suddenly, the debate about creating a joint European Union army has gained real momentum. After French President Emmanuel Macron recently proposed the idea, US President Donald Trump disparaged it (in a tweet, of course), but …

The end of Scandinavian non-alignment

Having debarked from ports in western Sweden, military convoys from various NATO countries are crowding Swedish streets and prompting the police to issue traffic warnings. They are on their way to Norway, where some 50,000 …

The case against climate despair

Heat waves and extreme-weather events across the Northern Hemisphere this summer have brought climate change back to the forefront of public debate. Early analyses strongly suggest that natural disasters such as Hurricane Florence—which barreled into …