Center for Liberal Strategies

Small wars and small coalition partners: This is really what should worry NATO. Small wars are difficult to win; small coalition partners are difficult to ignore. On Saturday, as coalition forces were fighting their way in a make-it-or-break-it offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Marja, the Dutch government was carrying on a make-it-or-break-it fight of its own. In terms of the latter, however, they opted to break it—the government collapsed after a final effort to keep Dutch troops in Afghanistan failed miserably. Bad timing, to say the least.

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The older postings of Ivan Krastev you can find here.

Postings of other participants in the blog you can find here.

Winston Churchill famously observed that the Kremlin’s political struggles are like a fight among bulldogs under a carpet: Outsiders hear plenty of growling, but have few clues who is winning until the fight is over. Unfortunately, not much has changed in Russian politics since this observation was made. American political scientist Stephen Holmes recently noted that we had a better idea of the role of Stalin’s show trials than we do of the elections’ role in the current Russian political system.

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