A while back I started a series on “frozen conflicts” in the former USSR. The first two (on Transnistria) can be found here and here. I was planning to do them in order from least bad to worst (which would put South Ossetia next) but decided to jump ahead a bit to Nagorno-Karabakh.
What [...]

Narrow — it’s about 51%/49% — but sure.
I’ve already posted on what this means. I’ll confess I was half hoping for a Nikolic victory, if only to shake things up; it would have been bad in the short run, but might have opened up new possibilities further along.
A couple of notes below.

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Is doomed to be overtaken by the tech-fuelled surgeosity of US vitality, right?
Well, perhaps. Where would you decide to put a factory for the mass-production of Li-Ion batteries, the key technology in getting oil out of cars? California? China? Brazil? Try France: that’s what Johnson Controls is doing. Or how about launching 150kg satellites into [...]

Last week, the EU peacekeeping force for Chad/the Central African Republic/and anywhere else in the general mess left of Darfur looked all set; after the French government offered to pony up more troops, and specifically enough Transall cargo planes and Puma support helicopters to assure the force’s mobility, the EU foreign ministers signed off the [...]

In honor of the wedding…

Kind of unfair she’s usually “former model Carla Bruni”.

Serbia votes tomorrow. Some observers are casting this as a choice between Good (the EU) and Evil (wicked nationalism). Eh, not really. From the point of view of most Serbian voters, it’s more like a choice between “Not so great, stumbling along, more of the same” and “What the hell, this sucks, [...]