The Migrant Crisis Upended Europe

by Giulio Meotti • November 6, 2017 at 5:00 am

"The migrant crisis is the 9/11 of the European Union... That day in 2001, everything changed in the US. In a minute, America discovered its vulnerability. Migrants had the same effect in Europe... The migration crisis profoundly undermines the ideas of democracy, tolerance and... the liberal principles that constitute our ideological landscape." — Ivan Kratsev, Chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and a member of the Institute of Humanities in Vienna, Le Figaro.
The European public now looks at EU institutions with contempt. They perceive them -- under multiculturalism and immigration -- not only as indifferent to their own problems, but as adding to them.
"We are a cultural community, which doesn't mean that we are better or worse -- we are simply different from the outside world... our openness and tolerance cannot mean walking away from protecting our heritage". — Donald Tusk, President of the European Council.

Thousands of migrants arrive on foot at a railway station in Tovarnik, Croatia, September 17, 2015. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

A few weeks after Germany opened its borders to over a million refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that the migration crisis would "destabilize democracies". He was labelled a demagogue and a xenophobe. Two years later, Orbán has been vindicated. As Politico now explains, "[M]ost EU leaders echo the Hungarian prime minister" and the Hungarian PM can now claim that "our position is slowly becoming the majority position".

Many in Europe seem to have understood what Ivan Krastev, the Chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and a member of the Institute of Humanities in Vienna, recently explained to Le Figaro:

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Turkey's Nuclear Ambitions

by Debalina Ghoshal • November 6, 2017 at 4:00 am

Russia's ROSATOM already has nuclear cooperation deals with Iran, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, among others. Turkey is just the latest to benefit -- possibly along with Iran and North Korea, both of which have been openly threatening to destroy America -- from Moscow's play for power in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
The West would also do well not to feel secure in the knowledge that Turkey is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Nuclear reactors in the hands of a repressive Islamist authoritarian such as Erdogan could be turned into weapons factories with little effort.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (then Prime Minister) meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 18, 2012. Their meeting focused on nuclear cooperation, among other things. (Image source: kremlin.ru)

Turkey's announcement over the summer that it had signed a deal with Russia's State Atomic Energy Corporation (ROSATOM) -- of Hillary Clinton's Uranium One stardom -- to begin building three nuclear power plants in the near future is cause for concern. The $20 billion deal, which has been in the works since 2010, involves the construction in Mersin of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant -- Turkey's first-ever such plant -- will be operational in 2023.

ROSATOM already has nuclear cooperation deals with Iran, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, among others. Turkey is just the latest to benefit -- possibly along with Iran and North Korea, both of which have been openly threatening to destroy America -- from Moscow's play for power in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. It is also a source of desperately-needed revenue for Russia, hurt by sanctions imposed on Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine.

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