Divisions in Europe are nothing new, and a continent without them would be bland and uninteresting. But that is no reason to exaggerate them, or to make them more significant than they are. The desire to pigeonhole countries is deeply rooted: Catholic versus Protestant Europe, or Western Christian versus Orthodox; …
The Nordic and Baltic states are increasingly worried about Russia. Discussing NATO membership in Sweden is a bit like discussing sex at a church youth club. Everyone agrees the subject is important, but you have to tiptoe round some taboos. I have just been in Stockholm courtesy of the terrific Free …
Will the émigrés return? Countries between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, which have lost millions of their people in the past 20 years, certainly hope so. I have just been to two ‘émigré’ events at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) – one organised by …
A tiny Estonian outfit offers a way out of the credit crunch and, possibly, a way to rebuild banking I have started making loans to total strangers – scores of them. I am not mad, rich or philanthropic. The loans are tiny. The safeguards are good. So far, the borrowers …
Reinventing banking and revising capitalism in Estonia Read More »
Russia is poised to gain technical superiority over NATO in areas that are crucial to the defence of the Baltic states. Scandinavian defence pundits are a sober bunch. But the latest report by the Swedish Defence Research Agency is a gripping read. Its 115 pages offer the first comprehensive and …
Edward Lucas: The Baltic states – defending the least defensible? Read More »
Edward Lucas is the International Editor of The Economist, the London based global weekly news magazine, and also oversees the paper’s political coverage of Central and Eastern Europe. He has been covering the region of Europe since 1986, and was the Economist’s Moscow bureau chief from 1998-2002. Lucas has been visiting Estonia …