... environment and the nature of the Austria-Italy relations. By the time of the South Tyrol deal, both Austria and Italy considered themselves organic parts of a greater European family of nations. This is despite the fact that Austria, even now, is not a NATO member and only joined the EU in 1995, 24 years after the agreement on South Tyrol had been reached.
Neither country had a fundamental identity problem that could feed radical nationalism and block a settlement. Their respective national identities ...
... with global reach. Nor is there any going back to 2013, just before the Ukraine crisis. In any case, that was hardly a happy time in Russia-EU relations, with intense feelings of malaise on both sides.
Despite the ongoing U.S.-Russia confrontation, the NATO-Russia military standoff in Europe is still relatively low-level. While preparing for various contingencies, neither side seriously believes that initiating a military conflict with the other in that part of the world would give it any advantages....
... pro-Western paradigm and lead the country towards collaboration with international financial bodies, the European Union and NATO. Russia–Ukraine relations will largely depend on the general trends in U.S.–Russia relations, and I think gradually moving ... ... the self-proclaimed republics would be out of the question. This can be interpreted as a step towards non-compliance with the Minsk agreements. Additionally, since Ukraine is a parliamentary-presidential republic, and since V. Zelensky does not have his ...
... level of an artificially dramatized phantom challenge, it may prove to be a unifying factor in the EU. However, it is hard to predict the reaction of the public opinion in various political circles in Europe if this threat becomes real.
How to make the Minsk agreements work?
The Obama Administration today is not interested in re-initiating the conflict, although it is not publicly expressing any readiness to take new steps or make serious compromises to settle the crisis either.
Behind NATO’s aggressive rhetoric and John Kerry’s assurances given to Kiev there is no glimpse of any decisions concerning the future of Ukraine. While at the initial stage of the Ukrainian crisis there were
calls
for “a new Marshall Plan,...
