Opinion pieces

  • India joins the west, by Mark Leonard
    Prospect, 01 November 2005

    Last month saw a small geopolitical revolution: India backed the west against Iran.

  • The real crisis for Europe, by Charles Grant
    Newsweek, 10 October 2005

    So, is Turkey to start membership talks with the European Union? The reception could hardly be more hostile. As the public sees it, the EU is big enough already. Political leaders from France's Nicolas Sarkozy to Germany's Angela Merkel are opposed.

  • Slow train from Istanbul, by Katinka Barysch
    The Wall Street Journal, 27 September 2005

    The talks on Turkey's accession to the EU are scheduled to start on Monday. But public support for Turkish EU entry continues to fall: less than one-third of voters in the "old" EU support Turkish membership, according to the EU pollster Eurobarometer.

  • United against Iranian nukes, by Charles Grant
    International Herald Tribune, 14 September 2005

    Last February, a group of European and American foreign policy experts issued the "Compact Between the United States and Europe," a detailed proposal for trans-Atlantic cooperation on the key foreign policy issues of the day (IHT Feb. 17, 2005).

  • Turkey offers EU more punch, by Charles Grant
    European Voice, 01 September 2005

    Rather than undermine the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy, Turkish membership of the Union could boost the bloc's power in trouble spots across the Middle East and Central Asia, argues Charles Grant.

  • A beacon of liberty flickers: Observations on Georgia, by Charles Grant
    New Statesman, 18 July 2005

    President Bush proclaimed Georgia a "beacon for liberty" when he visited Tbilisi in May. Georgia has certainly made great progress since people power overthrew the corrupt and incompetent regime of Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003. Nevertheless, clouds are dimming the light of that beacon.

  • The road obscured, by Mark Leonard
    Financial Times, 11 July 2005

    It is pre-modern, the kind of scene that westerners visit and photograph or encapsulate for later conversation: on Hainan Island, off the Leizhan Peninsula and a 50-minute flight south from Hong Kong, Chinese peasants toil in paddy fields. They wear straw hats and use water buffalo to plough the fields.

  • Variable geometry, by Charles Grant
    Prospect, 01 July 2005

    The end of enlargement would be a tragedy. Perhaps it can be saved by "variable geometry".