Global Policy Journal - Comment & Opinion

Rethinking Turkey

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 8 May 2012

In the past year or so, Turkey’s major headlines in the international press were about its fallout with Israel, its brokerage of a nuclear deal with Iran, and its warming to Russia on energy que...Read more

Wanted: An "overwhelming offer" for the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme

Cornelius Adebahr — Wed 18 Apr 2012

On April 14, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (the P5+1) met in Istanbul for another round of talks about the country’s nuclear programme. Generally, t...Read more

More than just sanctions: The EU needs to be smarter on Iran

Cornelius Adebahr — Mon 23 Jan 2012

With an escalation of threats and chest-beating potentially leading to a war over the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has again become one of the most critical issues in international politics. Clearly, the ti...Read more

Putting a Face to Europe in North Africa: Why the EU needs a Special Representative to respond to the Arab Spring

Cornelius Adebahr — Wed 29 Jun 2011

The European Union and its member states continue to struggle to find a response to the Arab Spring. Past policy approaches had little impact on the area’s regimes, if anything doing more to sup...Read more

Commodity boom and commodity blues

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 10 May 2011

Rarely were the price increases so enormous, rarely was the helplessness of the industrialized countries so great as in the rare earths sector. While precious metals like silver or energy sources s...Read more

Responsible Leadership in the Face of Disaster

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 12 Apr 2011

Following the earthquake and the nuclear catastrophe in Japan, a state of shock, intuitive defensiveness and frantic political activity of those in charge of utility companies as well as in governm...Read more

A Fitness Regime for the European Union

Cornelius Adebahr — Fri 18 Feb 2011

It started the New Year at 53, hopelessly out of shape and in the midst of an existential crisis of such terrible complexity the Greek Gods would wonder whether they hadn’t missed a trick or ...Read more

Why Cairo concerns us

Cornelius Adebahr — Fri 4 Feb 2011

The Egyptian dream of a peaceful revolution may have vanished under the cudgels of goon squads loyal to the Mubarak regime – the dream of freedom certainly hasn’t. That is what unites t...Read more

Global resources, European confusion - time to re-think raw materials

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 25 Jan 2011

For tomorrow, 26 January, the European Commission had announced to present a revised EU raw materials strategy. Based on the 2008 raw materials initiative, the new document was intended to provide ...Read more

The Involuntary Union: European Economic Governance and the 'Union State'

Cornelius Adebahr — Fri 10 Dec 2010

The political reaction to the economic crisis shows two things: First, in moments of great crisis, the nation-state is the first port-of-call. With economic stability at stake and large quantities ...Read more

Europe, the G20, and the Dynamic Dozen

Cornelius Adebahr — Wed 10 Nov 2010

You may be forgiven if in some parts of Europe, in particular in Germany, you think that the crisis is over. Some people already talk of a new Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle). However, the fin...Read more

How to think strategy in Europe?

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 21 Sep 2010

The European Union and strategy – it’s not exactly a contradiction in terms, but still a difficult story. In a way, the EU itself has never behaved strategically: There was a vision, ri...Read more

Europe and the new scramble for resources

Cornelius Adebahr — Fri 23 Jul 2010

One not-so-obvious trend of the financial and economic crisis is a renewed competition for resources. The current debate about debt and depression has somewhat obscured the memory of the 2007-08 fo...Read more

It's strategy or bureaucracy in the EU's foreign service, again

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 6 Jul 2010

Imagine you are a would-be global power with a (limited) number of foreign policy instruments. You are about to completely overhaul – and indeed strengthen – your diplomatic machinery w...Read more

The EU's foreign service: From structural blockade to strategic ambition, please

Cornelius Adebahr — Wed 23 Jun 2010

At last, an agreement to build the European External Action Service (EAS) has been reached: On Monday, June 21, negotiators announced a compromise on how the new EU foreign service should operate, ...Read more

A new Third Way between the State and Markets

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 8 Jun 2010

The crisis of the common currency has merely paused, not petered out when EU heads of state and government will meet for their regular (i.e. calender-, not crisis-driven) summit next week. Two majo...Read more

The crisis coming to the German government

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 1 Jun 2010

When you read about Germany in the international press recently, it was probably a report on how the government pursued seemingly unilateral policies in the Euro crisis. Yesterday morning, for a we...Read more

Europe 2030 - (not) thinking ahead

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 18 May 2010

At a time when the focus of leaders in Europe is on the breaks of the stock markets; on how the latter respond, within hours rather than days, to political decisions that – under normal circu...Read more

The Euro bailout

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 11 May 2010

For once, Europe positively surprised – the markets, other countries, maybe even some of its citizens. By agreeing on a comprehensive financial stability package to the hitherto unheard of tu...Read more

Europe losing its share in global financial governance

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 4 May 2010

"China overtakes Germany" - for the second time in four months, German newspapers ran this headline. The year started with the news that China had surpassed Germany as the world&rsqu...Read more

It's the debt, stupid

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 27 Apr 2010

After weeks and months of soothing the markets and stitching a rescue mechanism, the Greek overture to the European debt crisis played out in full. With Prime Minister Papandreou asking both the In...Read more

National Parliamentarians' international caucus on European security ends

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 20 Apr 2010

If you have been deploring narrowly national deliberations in your legislature when it comes to international security issues, things may get worse soon. To say “it’s Lisbon’s fau...Read more

The "EU necessity" in transatlantic relations

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 13 Apr 2010

These days in Washington, the European Union must look more like a nuisance than a necessity. The new Lisbon Treaty, hailed by Europhiles as the end of a prolonged period of navel-gazing, has broug...Read more

A Balkans' view on the crisis

Cornelius Adebahr — Fri 9 Apr 2010

Meanwhile, in a different corner of Europe… The old town of Sarajevo is buzzing. People are promenading along the old stalls selling traditional jewellery, mobile phones, and homemade Ä‡e...Read more

Europe and the Crisis: Only Past the First Post

Cornelius Adebahr — Tue 30 Mar 2010

In the wake of the Great Recession, Europe is embroiled in its own financial crisis. The debt crisis that has now flared in Greece threatens to hit the whole continent, from the Mediterranean to th...Read more