Russia-instigated violence has returned to Ukraine.

“One must Europeanise the Balkans, in order to avoid the Balkanisation of Europe.”I wrote those words with the French political scientist Jacques Rupnik in 1991, just as war was breaking out among Yugoslavia’s successor states.The fighting would last until the end of the decade,

Today’s popular television programmes have become the equivalent of the feuilletons that began appearing in newspapers in the nineteenth century. Series like “Game of Thrones” and “Downton Abbey”, like Balzac and Dickens before them, serve as a sour

When I heard the news about the assassination of the Russian politician Boris Nemtsov in Moscow, I was reminded of a conversation I once had with a Soviet dignitary before the fall of the Berlin Wall. We were walking alone in the park at Versailles, talking in general terms abou

Once again, Europe seems to have reached a fork in the road.

“France’s September 11.” In the immediate aftermath of the massacre at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the comparison with Al Qaeda’s 2001 attack on the United States has taken hold across France. Indeed, the January 7 attack was the most murderous

At the end of the 19th century, the British empire pursued a policy of what it called “splendid isolation”, reflecting its leaders’ determination to stand aloof from international engagements. With the strength of its economy and the superiority of its navy, th

Former British prime minister Harold Wilson once said that a week is a very long time in politics. If that is true, France’s 2017 presidential election is an eternity away, and any speculation at this point is premature, even imprudent. Nonetheless, some interesting preli

Two hundred years ago, on September 25, 1814, Russia’s Tsar Alexander I and Friedrich Wilhelm III, the King of Prussia, were greeted at the gates of Vienna by Austria’s Emperor Franz I. The start of the Congress of Vienna ushered in the longest period of peace Europe