Happy 20 TTs guys.
I’ll be trying something new with this one and changing the format so the top level post only contains an explanation of the thread, like we do with Wellness Wednesdays and Fun Fridays. The country-specific coverage will be placed in separate comments where people can respond to them directly, or start their own threads as separate comments. This is part of my hope that long term this will become more of a permanent thread that sustains beyond me, because I likely won’t be around long term. In the short term as well, I’ve been trying to produce a lot of the user content but there will be weeks where I'm too busy, and it would be nice to have a stickied thread where people who want to can still chat foreign policy without me.
So:
This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. In the past I've noticed good results from covering countries that users here live in, and having them chime in with more comprehensive responses. In that spirit I'll probably try to offer more snippets of western news (but you'll still get a lot of the global south). I don't follow present day European politics all that much so you'll have to fill in the blanks for me.
But also, no need to use the prompts here, feel free to talk about completely unmentioned countries, or skip country coverage entirely and chat about ongoing dynamics like wars or trade deals. You can even skip the present day and talk about IR history, or just whatever you’re reading at the moment - consider it very free form and open to everyone.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Poland
Speaking of inter-European squabbles, Poland has recently been in a bit of hot water over allegations that Polish bureaucrats have accepted bribes in exchange for visas, apparently as many as 250,000. The Polish government (which prides itself on a strong anti-migrant stance) has scrambled to fire / arrest anyone involved and the EU has demanded answers..
All of this is of course made more dramatic by the upcoming election on the 15th. See last week’s commentary by @do_something for a helpful breakdown of the top three parties, the ruling PiS, the more liberal Civic Coalition, and the libertarian-nationalist Confederation. KO’s leader, former PM and President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, has tried to make as much as hay as possible out of the visa scandal. He also just held a gigantic “Million Hearts march” rally of (allegedly) over a million people in Warsaw.
Recently PiS’ rhetoric has turned seemingly pretty hostile against Ukraine - it remains to be seen whether this is just drumming up the base for an election or if the rift will continue. Despite recent tensions, Poland has now finally hammered out a deal with both Ukraine and Lithuania to expedite grain deliveries to at-need countries.
Some optimistic energy news: in contrast to Germany shutting down its nuclear power plants, Poland seems to be going the opposite direction and has now completed an agreement with the United States for the construction of a new nuclear power plant in warsaw.
Feel free to ping me if anyone wants more frustrated biased rants on some topic concerning Poland!
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That was planned before, signing was just before elections. I will wait to be excited. They notably failed at building coal power plant (Ostrołęka C, 250 000 000$ wasted)
PS power plant will not be in Warsaw, plan is more reasonable.
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