Eurasia Center

Natural gas pipeline would connect Russia to Europe

Opposition to Nord Stream 2—a pipeline that will transport natural gas from Russia to Germany while bypassing Ukraine—is building on both sides of the Atlantic.

On December 11, the US House of Representatives passed a bipartisan resolution expressing opposition to Nord Stream 2. The nonbinding resolution calls on European governments to reject the pipeline and expresses support for US sanctions on entities involved with the project.

• New Atlanticist
• Russia
• Germany
• Original
• Eurasia Center
• Agnia Grigas

UK Prime Minister Theresa May survived a December 12 attempted coup to unseat her by her own Conservative Party. But with no clear path ahead concerning Britain’s exit from the European Union, she’s only navigated the first few yards of a mile-wide minefield. 

On Brexit, her own party is split, parliament is split, and the country is split. There is no prospective outcome – whether for May’s deal to leave the EU, or for some putative new deal, or for no deal whatsoever, or for remaining within the EU – that commands a natural majority. 

• United Kingdom
• Original
• Eurasia Center
• Global Energy Center
• John Roberts

British Prime Minister Theresa May on December 10 decided not to call a long-expected vote on her plan to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union (EU). The underlying reason is continued controversy over the so-called Irish backstop—a fall-back plan that would maintain an open border on the island of Ireland if the UK leaves the EU without securing a deal. But while there is a mountain of controversy over the backstop mechanism itself, and whether it might lock the UK, against its will, into a near permanent customs union with the EU, there is virtually no discussion of the underlying political—and security—rationale for the backstop.

• New Atlanticist
• European Union
• Original
• Eurasia Center
• Global Energy Center
• John Roberts
• Beyond Brexit

George H.W. Bush, the forty-first president of the United States, died on November 30. He was ninety-four. In addition to serving as president, Bush was a vice president, director of Central Intelligence, US ambassador to the United Nations, and representative for Texas’ seventh congressional district in the US House of Representatives.

• New Atlanticist
• Original
• Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security
• Eurasia Center
• Barry Pavel
• John E. Herbst
• David Wemer

US President Donald J. Trump and several other world leaders are gathering in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for the 2018 G20 Leaders’ Summit. Here’s a quick look at the organization and the upcoming summit.

• New Atlanticist
• Original
• Eurasia Center

‘Better no meeting than a bad one,’ says the Atlantic Council’s Daniel Fried

Hours after the Kremlin confirmed a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald J. Trump on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires on December 1, the US president cancelled the appointment with his Russian counterpart citing the continued detention of Ukrainian naval vessels and their crew by Russia.

“Better no meeting than a bad one,” said Daniel Fried, a distinguished fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative and Eurasia Center.

Fried was referring to the last Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki in July.

• New Atlanticist
• Russia
• United States
• Original
• Eurasia Center
• Future Europe Initiative
• Ashish Kumar Sen
• Mark D. Simakovsky
• Michael Carpenter
• Daniel Fried

US President Donald J. Trump is expected to meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, at the Group of Twenty (G20) summit in Buenos Aires later this week. Is that a good idea in light of Russia’s latest aggression toward Ukraine and the somewhat stymied success of past meetings between the two leaders? In an interview with The Washington Post, Trump left open the possibility that he might, after all, cancel the meeting over the incident in the Kerch Strait. “Maybe I won’t even have the meeting,” he said.

Daniel Fried, a distinguished fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative and the Eurasia Center, said: “A meeting would make sense if, but only if, Trump is willing to send the right message to Putin, and the president’s track record doesn’t lead to confidence.”

Anders Åslund, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, flatly said a Trump-Putin meeting was a terrible idea.

• New Atlanticist
• Russia
• United States
• Original
• Eurasia Center
• Future Europe Initiative
• Ashish Kumar Sen
• Anders Aslund
• Daniel Fried
• Sea of Azov

The seizure by Russian forces of three Ukrainian naval vessels near the Sea of Azov on November 25 highlights Moscow’s strategy of broadening its “creeping annexation” beyond Ukraine’s land borders and into the Black Sea. Russia’s refusal to abide by agreements providing Ukraine rightful passage and access to the Sea of Azov is an attempt to pressure Ukraine and undermine its economy and national security.

Rising tension between Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea reinforces how dangerous the Ukraine-Russia conflict remains for the region and for the world.

• New Atlanticist
• Russia
• United States
• Original
• Eurasia Center
• Ukraine
• Mark D. Simakovsky
• Sea of Azov

Escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine in the Sea of Azov bear eerie echoes of Russian provocations that led to the war with Georgia in the summer of 2008.

“For months, Russian forces have been working to make the Azov Sea an internal Russian body of water in order to both cut off Ukraine’s eastern ports and cement Moscow’s hold on Crimea,” said Damon Wilson, executive vice president of the Atlantic Council.

“Moscow’s incrementalist approach is like the ‘creeping annexation’ we witnessed in Georgia in 2008—any single move tends not to be dramatic, but in the aggregate Russia makes strategic gains. Today, the Russians escalated with the aim of intimidating Ukraine into backing off its own effort to assert its access to its own territorial waters and its own ports,” he added.

• New Atlanticist
• Russia
• Original
• Eurasia Center
• Damon Wilson
• Ukraine
• John E. Herbst
• Ashish Kumar Sen
• Anders Aslund
• Alexander "Sandy" Vershbow
• Michael Carpenter
• Sea of Azov

On November 11, 1918, World War One, the Great War, ended. Amid the chaos that followed—revolution, the fall of empires, and rise of nations—the United States attempted to build a rules-based world which favored freedom. American power had won the war, and President Woodrow Wilson was trying to shape a peace along the lines of what we now call a rules-based or “liberal” world order. Wilson’s Fourteen Points, presented the previous January, challenged the imperial, balance-of-power system of the European powers (on both sides) which had started the war, and at the same time took on Lenin’s revolutionary alternative. Wilson’s ideas were a rough draft of American Grand Strategy in what has been called the American Century.

• New Atlanticist
• United States
• Original
• Eurasia Center
• Future Europe Initiative
• Daniel Fried