Belgium took over the rotating chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on January 1. In the coming twelve months it will now be up to Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht to restore consensus on the OSCE's institutional structure and remit, which seems to have...

Belgium's 2006 OSCE Chairmanship ends with the Ministerial Council on December 4 and 5 in Brussels and is therefore a good opportunity to take stock of the OSCE's activities over the past year-even if the picture is rather grim. The organization's activities in the field of the 'human dimension'...

The present debate on the renewal of the three mandates dispatching German troops to Afghanistan reveals the public's increasing difficulty to comprehend why the Bundeswehr, Germany's Federal Armed Forces, are currently operating under three different mandates in the same country - each with...

Since January 1, 2011, Germany has been a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. It was elected to the most important UN body for a two-year term, together with Portugal, India, Colombia, and South Africa. As a member of the Security Council, Germany takes on a special responsibility...

Now that the opposition Syrian National Council has begun calling for international military intervention and an arms embargo, further military escalation of the crisis appears inevitable. This exacerbates the dilemma for international politics: Either Western governments accept the failure of...

On 20 January 2014 the foreign ministers of the EU member-states approved EUFOR RCA Bangui. The six-month mission with about 800 troops is to be deployed as quickly as possible to the Central African Republic. In recent months CAR has witnessed growing inter-religious violence, the displacement...

The aftermath of the political turmoil in February and the Russian annexation of Crimea in March leave Ukraine politically, economically and militarily weakened. A lack of cohesion within Ukrainian society and centrifugal forces in its regions only serve to complicate matters even more. The...

A key aspect of the NATO summit in Newport (Wales) was the reaction of the alliance to Russia's annexation of Crimea and its destabilisation of Eastern Ukraine. However, apart from the decision to create a high-readiness force, and an action plan for Eastern Europe, heads of state and government...

A wave of new foreign policy and security challenges have made certain aspects of earlier European Union strategic thinking obsolete. In response, Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, has announced her intention to prepare a...