“What do you know about Belgium?”, I recently asked a friend.

Looking slightly bemused, she dug into her mental recesses of 10th grade world history and replied, “WWI… no wait WWII… well something with Germany at any rate right? ummm… a city with a weird name– Sprouts?… no… Brussels! And…oh oh oh! Waffles!!!”

She gets full points because lets be honest, unless you are an international affairs geek like myself, most Americans probably couldn’t come up with five facts about this little state if their lives depended on it.

Recent events, however, have catapulted Belgian politics into the front page of international headlines.

Most recently, on Monday February 28th, the Belgian parliament finally came to an agreement after months of deadlock which some feared would split the country in half.

Yes… serious concerns that the country would split in half! Read More »

Russians will go to the polls on Saturday, March 2, to elect a new president. Unlike our suspenseful US elections, in Russia it is all but a foregone conclusion that Dmitry Medvedev will be the winner.

Why such a farce? While hardly anyone really claims to “get” the Russian political system, it is generally agreed that Putin’s current power over the Russian public stems directly from the state’s chaotic transition during the 1990s.

Russia emerged from the ruins of the USSR on January 1, 1992 led by reformist Boris Yeltsin. Economically speaking, it was an entirely new country. The Russian nouveau riche established their positions through purchasing the most lavish of cars, furs, and mansions. The most flamboyant were members of an elite group of young billionaires known as the “Oligarchs”. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Roman Abramovich, Oleg Deripaska, names that bring up images of bad 1970s spy flicks, dominated Russian business interests.

While the Oligarchs enjoyed their imported champagne and Aston Martins, the middle and lower classes lived a much different life. For all its evils, life under the communist system included full employment and price controls for housing and basic food…provided you could find housing and a market with food still on the shelves and didn’t mind being a university educated bathroom attendant. Read More »