Welcome to the first newsletter of Cross-border Talks! We will be sending weekly digest of our articles and uploading our newest podcast episodes here.
In our first digest we look at the protests in China and Iran, at the future course for Germany and the EU and the Romanian foreign policy vector towards its Eastern neighbourhood.
Winter has definitely come to our Central-European homelands, and we all follow the news with anxiety: will the energy crisis get combined with bad weather and hit us really hard? Do our leaders have a plan, or at least a vague idea, what to do? Uncertainty about politicians' actions and a desire to have a say is growing stronger elsewhere, as well. Surprising the world, Chinese workers and students protested in the streets against the extremes of zero-COVID policy, and local grievances added up. As Lina Sankari writes, "The demonstrations coming from the middle classes of the big megacities as well as from migrant workers from the countryside (mingongs), from the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, the main assembler of the iPhone in China, attest to the fact that the anger transcends social classes".
Protests in Iran are also very far from fading away, even though the government officials claim to stand firmly. To grasp the atmosphere of Teheran, but also Qom or Isfahan these days, we recommend the five-part story written by Bulgarian independent journalist Kaloyan Konstantinov, one of the rare foreign reporters who was actually able to see the protests with his own eyes. In Iran, he talked to engaged citizens, to believing Muslims who are at the same time strongly critical of the Islamic Republic, and to those who would not stand against the Islamic Republic. He was able to uncover the deep reasons for popular discontent, such us the chilling corruption and inequalities.
Although the protest movement rose spontaneously and could not have been planned by a foreign power, like Iranian officials suggest, it does not mean that Iran's rivals do not want to profit from unrest. Iranian-Russian military cooperation has been the object of particular attention of the US, and not only - writes M. K. Bhadrakumar. The Americans are also carefully observing Iran-Russia talks about potential implementation of the nuclear deal, the same deal which was torn down by Donald Trump, which in turn paved the way for Iranian Conservatives to win Iranian elections.
Will there be protests in Germany, too? We asked this question to Łukasz Dąbrowiecki, a Polish journalist specializing in Germany and energy market, two extremely hot topics nowadays. He tries to be a cautious optimist when assessing Germany's options to reorganize energy policies after old Merkel's policy has so spectacularly failed. Wandel durch Handel, or democratizing Russia through economic ties to Europe, brought an opposite effect. Germany still has resources to secure alternative gas and energy sources, so the blackout Armageddon feared by some business circles may still be avoided. Not all European countries, however, can say the same, and if Germany follows a strictly self-oriented policy, the consequences might be disastrous for all the continent, our expert suggests.
An even harsher sum-up of the Ampelkoalition's first year comes from Wojciech Albert Łobodziński, a regular contributor to Cross-Border Talks. In his commentary, he argues that 'business-with-Russia-as-usual' attitude has not disappeared at all from German leaders' thinking, and that Germany's dream of seeing things as they were before 24 February might be a key danger to EU unity since Brexit. Germany's unwillingness to adapt, he writes, plays only to the American hands - and this is not a really good news for Europeans wishing for more economic and strategic autonomy for the continent.
If the European center is not able to think in an inventive way, how about the periphery? In the past, the most courageous and/or audacious social projects came not from the wealthy empires. Instead, they came from peripheral states, where social contradictions were far greater and far more unbearable. In our video hosted by Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat, Veronika Sušová-Salminen and Giuseppe Celi explain how the EU is divided into centre and peripheral regions, how the division was established historically and what contradictions are to be found behind the banner of ‘European integration’.
If you want to explore the periphery-centre division in even more detail, check out the study that Veronika and Giuseppe co-authored: Hundred Shades of the EU — Mapping the Political Economy of the EU Peripheries.
We finish our first newsletter with Iulian Mareș’s analysis of the Eastern policies of Romania. Romanians have traditional interests towards their Eastern neighbourhood, especially the Republic of Moldova, but also Ukraine. Mareș studies the issues of infrastructure connectivity with these Eastern neighbours and makes some prognoses about what the Romanian future foreign policy towards them in the conditions, when Klaus Iohannis will no longer be the Romanian president. Challenges that Romania is facing are of unprecedented scale and importance: it is the support from Bucharest that is securing Moldova from energy collapse. What Romanian politicians say and do is watched in both East and West. In the video below, Vladimir Mitev discusses the energy problems of the Republic of Moldova, following the Russian destruction of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and Romanian capabilities to provide support with Eugenia Gusilov, Romanian expert on energy issues.
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