Romania-US and Romania-EU relations. The meeting between the Romanian President Klaus W. Iohannis and the U.S. President Doland J. Trump on June 9 confirmed the bilateral strategic partnership between the two countries. The U.S. announced a 40% increase of the spending for the European Reassurance Initiative, mostly dedicated to NATO’s Eastern Flank and began the modernization process of the U.S. base in Kogalniceanu in Romania, indicating that its interest for the Eastern Flank and the bilateral relations with countries like Romania remains constant, if not growing. The Romanian president also toured Berlin and Paris where the discussions focused on the EU current problems. Romania, similarly to the other Eastern Europeans, see the strength, the unity of the EU to be key to their development, considering the Western Europe model was the model to follow since the 90s. In the same time, taking into account Romanians’ work-related migration to the West, discussion with both Germany and France also encompasses the larger topic of migration, with respect to the labor market. Common security is also a sensitive topic which Romania, and other European countries in the East, will increasingly include in their conversations with the Western countries. The EU Commission recently launched the common defense and security pack, aiming at increasing the integration among the European member states, but which currently holds at an advantage the Western defense industry and business clusters. As the pack needs to be endorsed by all the members of the EU, it is likely that the Eastern countries – which hold a strategic relationship with the U.S. and whose defense industries development patterns differ from those in Western Europe, increase their dialogue with Brussels over the issue.
The US and the EU renew sanctions against Russia. On June 28, the EU has prolonged sanctions against Russia as a response to the Ukraine crisis, after the U.S. had taken the same decision on June 15. As a response, Russia said it is working on counter-measures, while keeping discussion channels open for communication with the U.S. In Eastern Ukraine, fighting has increased during the last two weeks. The Baltic has also seen an uptick in military tension: on June 19, a Russian fighter jet came within 1.5 meters of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance plane and on June 20 a NATO fighter jet tailed the Russian aircraft on which the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu traveled. There is speculation that risk of renewed conflict on the European Eastern borderline has increased after the sanctions were renewed. The renewal would give an opportunity to Moscow to use the sanctions as an excuse to wash away, in the public’s eye, some of the internal economic problems. But Moscow doesn’t have an interest in large military actions. It already lost Kiev and upping military action on the borderline would increase Western retaliation, which in turn, would potentially lead to more Russian losses. Moscow has an interest in maintaining pressure over Ukraine and keep the de facto frozen conflict in the East – for this goal, it conducts more military exercises in both the Baltic and the Black sea, painting on a more aggressive stance, while employing cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns to its advantage.
Nord Stream 2 losing ground yet again. The EU Commission has officially submitted the request for a mandate from the EU Council about discussing the Nord Stream 2 directly with Moscow. This postpones any decision on the project until October 2017, at the next reunion of the Council. The mandate would come after the elections in Germany, allowing the next chancellor to give the EU a politically burdening project for the leadership in Berlin. In Germany, this is seen as a business deal – in Brussels, it is seen as going against the logic of the EU energy union goals and, more, not in line with the EU regulation. Of all the member states, 13 have spoken openly against the project. The others remain to be convinced one way or another, and Germany is key to the process. If such a mandate is given, the already low chances that the project be implemented will turn to minimum.
Cyberattack on critical infrastructure. The GoldenEye (or NotPetya or StortaPetya – or whatever else the ransomware attack is called) attack on June 27 has been more focused than any similar attack so far. Wannacry cyberattack last month, with which it was compared in the media was way faster in spreading around the globe. Microsoft said that GoldenEye was reportedly designed to reboot in 60 minutes which limited the time that the threat could do lateral movement and exploitation of other machines and reduced the reach of the attack. In the same time, industry experts have reported that, based on technical evidence, the ransomware campaign might not have targeted financial gains but rather data destruction. The event posed the larger question of what makes for a cyber attack to be geopolitical significant. I came up with the answer that, as the subject of geopolitics is the nation state, anything that affects the ability for a state to conduct its affairs is of geopolitical significance. Ukraine was most affected: a number of banks, Kiev metro and the airport were hit along with others in the country. Other geopolitical significant targets have been the Russian oil company Rosneft and the Danish shipping company Maersk. Rosneft is key to Russian economy, considering oil revenue makes for about half of the country’s budgetary needs. The attack against Maersk cut down on the operations of major global ports in India, Thailand, Europe and the U.S., having a direct effect on global business. While more than three decades passed since the birth of the internet, such events highlight that we’re yet at the beginning of understanding how cyber cuts into geopolitics and, ultimately into daily life.
Albania: last elections in the Balkans for the summer. Albania’s Socialist Party (PS) won the parliamentary elections in June and is now able to govern without a partner, breaking the rule for the last 10 years: the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) has been the kingmaker in Albanian politics for the last decade. This comes after the main opposition party – the Democratic Party (PS), has boycotted the parliament and refused to register for the elections since February. It was after the U.S. Department of State and the EU representatives pressured both PS and PD leaders to talk that the elections were scheduled in June. While most campaign promises were populist: lowering taxes, a swift economic upswing and waging war on corruption and cannabis production, the key question is how successful will the PS be in its promise to get EU membership for Albania. Apart from the EU enlargement fatigue, the main measure that Brussels insists on is the reform of the justice system. Albania passed a law focusing on this aspect last summer, but it is still not implemented and not producing effects. As many of the justice sector civil servants are thought to be corrupt and politicians are reportedly heavily involved in the web of corruption within the system, the reform is a difficult undertaking and a test case for the ruling party.
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