Donatienne Ruy – författare

U.S. strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean is long overdue for revision. Today’s strategy was conceived 70 years ago and is no longer fit for purpose despite the continued strategic importance of the region for U.S. interests. To account for the dramatic changes that have occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean in the past two decades, it is time for the United States to create a new regional strategy that builds on common transatlantic interests, ensures European unity and security, provides greater stability in the Middle East, and safeguards state capacity against a myriad of strengthening nonstate actors. This report aims to offer such a new strategy, focusing on two priority areas: resolving the Syrian conflict, and recalibrating the relationship with Turkey. Much is at stake for the United States, and it must take a new strategic approach to the region or risk losing influence for the foreseeable future.

In recent years, Europe has seen its largest influx of migrants and refugees in decades, with 1.9 million arrivals to the continent between 2014 and 2017. Peak arrivals in 2015, and sustained flows since then, have found the European Union and its 28 member states unable to face what has been called the “European migration crisis.” Part of their response has focused on cooperation with third countries of transit or origin, by leveraging development, humanitarian, and foreign policy tools to try and reduce migrant flows to Europe, including through many funding and budgetary decisions. This report attempts to quantify, through budgetary analysis, what shifts occurred in the external dimension of Europe’s migration policy following the crisis, and in three member states (Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands). These short-term shifts, representing policy priorities, carry long-term consequences for the European Union’s role as a foreign policy and soft power actor.

In The Kremlin Playbook 2: The Enablers, the CSIS Europe Program and the Center for the Study of Democracy explored whether some of these jurisdictions and companies could be enabling forces that amplify Russian malign economic influence in some countries in Europe. The study analyzed the following case study countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, Montenegro, the Netherlands, and Romania. The report shows that some countries facilitate or enable Russian malign economic influence, and by doing so these enablers actively participate in the weakening and discrediting of their own democratic structures. The Kremlin Playbook 2 concludes that Russian malign economic influence and illicit finance operate in a financial gray zone that is a clear and present danger to U.S. national security as well as transatlantic security. To push back against this threat, the United States and its European allies must take decisive action to limit Russia’s malign behavior in their financial systems. Only transparency and enforcement of our rule of law can guarantee trust in the system and rebuild confidence in democratic institutions.

This latest and final report in the Kremlin Playbook series explores how the United States and its European allies can protect the religious beliefs and values of their citizens from malign influence at a time when transatlantic societies are grappling with the speed of societal change. Societal anxiety and fear related to these rapid economic, demographic, and generational shifts—and the subsequent politics and political figures that seek to capitalize on them—have fueled societal divisions around the so-called cultural wars in Western societies. Through two main channels, the Orthodox world and the traditional values ecosystem, the Kremlin has taken advantage of these fears to accentuate societal wedges in Europe and Eurasia.