“We’re vulnerable to bullshit thrown in the fan,” an eastern European diplomat said, requesting anonymity so as to speak undiplomatically.
New Europe
Everybody in the West used to assume the countries behind the Iron Curtain were little copies of the Soviet Union, with sausage shortages, tank parades and unbeatable women’s weightlifting teams.
I backpacked across the former East Blocs the summer after the Berlin Wall came down. After college, I taught English in a Czech school, traveling to Slovakia to witness Czechoslovakia’s peaceful dissolution in 1993. I hung out with journalists in smoky cafes and dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent.
Today a generation is coming of age that learned about communism in history class. But New Europe is in no danger of getting old.
Cold War 2.0: The US Military Is Beefing Up Its Presence in the Former Soviet Bloc
The United States has quietly begun expanding its military footprint in a region that during the Cold War was deep inside the Soviet-controlled Warsaw Pact.
What Brexit Looks Like to the Rest of Europe
A colleague from Poland advised his British-born wife to get a Polish passport. It was high time to make some coffee.
NATO Is Holding the Biggest Exercise in Poland in a Decade, And Russia Is Not Happy
“I expected to go to Iraq or Afghanistan,” said Sergeant Malcolm McEwen, manning a Humvee with mounted Stinger missiles on the banks of the Vistula River.
How NATO Really Provoked Putin
From the Kremlin’s point of view, it’s infinitely worse to be ignored than to be considered a worthy rival.
For Europe, the Party’s Over. It’s Not Clear What Comes Next.
The promise of Europe is over. Paradoxically, German hubris carries a good deal of the blame.
Want to Move Your Tank Battalion to Take on a Threat? NATO’s Got a Form for That.
“What we want is like a military Schengen zone,” Lieutenant General Hodges said. “Right now refugees can move across Europe faster than military convoys.”
Why Estonia’s Not Worried, Despite Its Neighbor to the East
Estonian President Ilves doesn’t like to dwell on the supposed Russian threat to his country after Putin’s annexation of Crimea. His thing is technology.
The Hitler-Stalin Pact Still Divides Setuland
You won’t find it on any map, but Setuland really does exist. The place is inhabited by the Setus, an agrarian people who have distinguished themselves as singers of marathon epics about their legendary king and fertility god, Peko.
