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The troubled birth of Kosovo

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As the crucial Eurasian swing state, Russia is fast emerging as the twenty-first century 'decider'. Early globalists took it as a foregone conclusion that Russia would swing toward the West. But increasingly it has 'turned East', striking a fate-ful alliance with China and other authoritarian regimes by way of a resuscitated 'Second World'. By buttressing Putinism, globalization is helping to perform what amounts to a democratic abortion. Yet these policies are not set in stone. This study holds that another globalization is possible, and another Russia as well. To prevent the consolidation of a new Second World, every effort must be made to convince Russian leaders that democracy, far from being Russia's nemesis, could be its best geopolitical ally.
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During the past five years, the economies of the West Balkans have been experiencing a period of sustained economic recovery with strong GDP growth, declining price inflation, increasing foreign direct investment (FDI), and the prospect of EU membership in the medium term. With Bulgaria and Romania having joined the European Union in January 2007, the terms of reference and institutional dynamics are changing for countries in the Western Balkans. Croatia is an accession country currently negotiating with Brussels the complex catalogue of membership requirements. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has been an EU candidate country since December 2005 and Montenegro completed a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the Commission in October 2007, while Serbia’s SAA was adopted in the summer of 2008 but is currently on hold. The economic progress achieved in the Western Balkans and the European perspectives raise the question over the region’s continued ability to take full advantage of this rather favourable mix of developments. This article explores the countries’ varying success in confronting political and economic challenges and seeking opportunities on their road to Europe.
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This paper revisits the status prospects for Taiwan in light of recent events in Kosovo and Tibet. In both cases, and certainly in Taiwan itself, the long standing contest between claims for self determination and the tenacious defence of the principle of the territorial integrity of states has emerged once again to dominate the analysis of these cases. This contest is particularly dramatic in the divided international response to the independence of Kosovo. In the case of Tibet, widespread international support for Tibet is in sharp contrast to the furious and determined resistance of China. Taiwan’s anomalous status remains that of a legal sovereign state, the Republic of China, enjoying some measure of recognition and formal diplomacy and a de facto state whose international relations are confined to paradiplomatic channels, extensive though they are. The paper considers the prospects for changes in the current anomalous status of the island state.
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