Ústav mezinárodních vztahů

In January, Jan Eichler did an interview about the key points of the meeting of the U.S. Minister of Foreign Affairs John Kerry and French President François Hollande, and he also analyzed the U.S. - French relations in general. The interview is available here.

Later, Jan Eichler published an article titled “French and Americans Do Not Give Anything to Each Other for Free”. It is a brief analysis of the political and economic U.S.-French relations since the end of the Second World War until now, and of how two countries' rivalry can be changed into a cooperation against one enemy.

Meanwhile, Jan Daniel analyzed the current Syrian situation and its probable future development. In the article titled “Syria 2015: the Fading of Asad´s Regime and Restraint of Expansion of the Islamic State”, he highlighted the actual trends in the development of the Syrian regime after the negotiations in Geneva, and the question of whether there is any chance that peace will be established in Moscow at the end of January.

At the same time, Marek Čejka wrote an article called “Troubles of Islam and Contemporary Europe”, in which he analyzed the main weak points in the mutual relationship of Europe and Islam.

In the meantime, Petr Kratochvíl, the director of the IIR, took a part in an online interview on various topics related to contemporary international affairs, in which he replied to questions posed by the readers of the website Aktuálně.cz (the title of the interview is “Tightening of the Immigration Policy Can End Tragically”). The readers were concerned about the fighting against the Islamic State and also about the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, and some of them were interested in whether the Czech Republic should join the eurozone.

Petr Kratochvíl also served as the consultant for the article “Ukraine and Lard Are Testing the European Unity against Russia” by Václav Trejbal. He pointed out that European states would test their united opinion on this matter when voting about the sanctions against Russia in April 2015.

Petr Kratochvíl commented on the current situation in Ukraine for various Czech and Slovak media. He replied to many questions concerning armed battles, the battle of ideologies, the position of Russia in the conflict, and, of course, the possible future order after this conflict. The text of one of the interviews is available here. You can also access his interviews for ČT, TA3, and Český rozhlas.

Petr Kratochvíl was also interviewed for Český rozhlas for a second time. This time he talked not only about the sanctions against Russia themselves, but he also mentioned the opinions of the member states of the EU regarding these sanctions.

In the same time period, Pavel Barša published his new essay titled “The Return of (Geo)Politics”, in which he analyzed the current situation in international relations and claimed that the new arrangements of the relations could be more dangerous than those during the Cold War. In the article, he considered many important actors and recent events such as the intervention in Libya, the Ukrainian crisis and the Russian position in this case, the rise of the Islamic State, the terrorist attacks in Paris, etc.

Michal Šimečka, meanwhile, wrote an article called “Europe Is Like a Whale Which Is Not Aware of Its Strength” containing his thoughts about the sanctions against Russia and the possible future development in this case. What will happen if the EU cancels the economic embargo on Russia? Will Vladimir Putin cooperate and agree on establishing peace in Ukraine? And if not, is there any other solution besides sanctions that the EU could apply?

In February, Vladimír Handl answered some questions about the potential partnership between Hungary and Russia and its possible benefits.

At the same time, Vít Beneš published an article called “Putin´s Figure Skating Continues”. This article is basically a polemic against the opinions of those who are trying to understand Putin´s intentions without even being concerned about the interests of Ukraine, or trying to excuse the Russian aggression by referring to and comparing it to U.S. crimes.

Recently, Michal Kořan, in cooperation with Botond Feledy and Milan Nič, published a set of articles titled “What Will 2015 Hold for Central Europe?”. The authors mentioned and analyzed the main key points of the future V4 cooperation agenda, such as the economic initiatives of the new EU Commission, the foreign policy towards Russia, etc.

Petr Kratochvíl, at the same time, took part in a debate with Michael Romancov, Pavel Gruber and Martin M. Šimečka on the topic of the current security situation in the world. How secure is the world nowadays, and how active is the Czech Republic in dealing with the security challenges?