Publications

On the surface, the Cyprus crisis was about money, but actually it was the result of conflicting political cultures: European, Greek Cypriot and Russian. The fissures exposed during the March 2013 crisis will leave a legacy of mistrust and enmity far beyond the eastern Mediterranean island that staged the drama. The underlying problem was that Europe had accepted a non-European entity (Cyprus) into its institutions and then failed to enforce upon it Europe’s standards of financial governance. Russian money became fuel for the catastrophe, but was not itself the cause. Money laundering and bank insolvency are both deplorable but are not the same thing.

Last week the Chinese Foreign Ministry all but confirmed that it plans to sell its longtime ally Pakistan a new 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor. The deal, reportedly signed in February, is a cause for concern in Washington. Though nominally a U.S. ally, Pakistan already has the world's fastest-growing nuclear-weapons arsenal and one of the world's worst nuclear-proliferation records. It is a country perpetually under threat from religious fanaticism, political instability and economic mismanagement.