Category: Europe

Can Poland’s ‘authoritarian turn’ be stopped?

     

Poland’s populist Law and Justice Party appears intent on imposing quasi-authoritarian control over its unruly democracy, analyst Max Boot writes for Commentary.   A new draft Law on Higher Education… Read more »

West’s Iron Curtain ‘would be most effective tool against Putin’s kleptocracy’

     

There is a major difference between former Soviet leaders and senior Russian officials today, including Russian President Vladimir Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister [Sergey] Lavrov, whose families are abroad, former… Read more »

Partnership in Peril: how to repel populist assault on transatlantic community

     

The threat of authoritarian populism will not recede unless a new generation of political leaders offers a credible agenda for improving people’s lives that is more appealing to the public… Read more »

Disinformation: Facebook uncovers new active influence operation

     

Facebook said Tuesday that it had discovered a sophisticated coordinated disinformation operation on its platform involving 32 false pages and profiles engaging in divisive messaging ahead of the U.S. midterm… Read more »

Is Poland Retreating from Democracy?

     

For the past twenty-five years, Andrzej Nowak, a decorated historian of Poland and Russia, has been conducting regular interviews with Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Law and Justice, the conservative political party that… Read more »

Populist International: Europe-wide super-group sparks alarm

     

Although it is commonly assumed that democratic backsliding starts with electoral problems, other political elements—such as the infringement of individual rights and the freedom of expression—are at the core of… Read more »

‘One-man Marshall Plan’: Was Soros wrong to bet on liberal democracy?

     

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, philanthropist George Soros [inspired by Karl Popper’s Open Society] poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the former Soviet-bloc countries to… Read more »

Strategic Reset for NATO? Check alliance’s anti-democratic members

     

Few NATO summits have captured the attention of this one—but for all the wrong reasons, according to analysts Julianne Smith and Jim Townsend. Any distraction from what will be a substantive NATO agenda… Read more »

Why Putin abandoned Russia’s Western orientation

     

Less than a decade ago, it seemed self-evident that Russia, despite all of its cultural and political differences, was reclaiming its rightful place as part of the Western world. In… Read more »

Orban’s chilling demand: ‘reconstruct European democracy’

     

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has issued a chilling message to EU leaders ahead of today’s crunch European Council summit, saying that European democracy must be ‘reconstructed’ in order to… Read more »