The new Journal of Romanian Studies special issue 'Heroes or Villains?' explores movement parties & democratic change in Romania. Read our Q&A with guest editor @dstrif.bsky.social, reflecting on the issue she co-edited with Diana Mărgărit. @aseees.bsky.social @uaces.bsky.social #RomanianStudies

CfP Edited Volume under contract (Palgrave,2026): Materiality and Foreign Policy: Sea, Land, and Outer Space Looking for one more land-focused chapter!!! Submission of abstract: July 15! #Materiality #ForeignPolicyAnalysis

Spectacular view of 100,000 people attending the #HandsOff march in NYC

“Trump and Vance appear to have entered the meeting with the intention of berating Zelensky and drawing him into an argument as a pretext for the diplomatic break,” Jonathan Chait writes: theatln.tc/ejdvMpQT

"We may never know why Trump is so perversely loyal to Putin," and "we don't know exactly why Musk went all in for Trump and Russia," Garry Kasparov writes. "But the urgency of their actions I do understand, and it's a dire warning":

Germany election: Merz says it’s ‘five to midnight’ for Europe

Go, Germany! Musk‘s campaign for the AfD seems to have backfired. Not the neoNazis, but the far-left Die Linke got a bumb in votes! Exist polls Der Spiegel. #Germanelections#Musk

"Countermajoritarian institutions...are democracy-subverting when they prevent electoral majorities from winning power and block legislative majorities from regular lawmaking." www.journalofdemocra...

This is a new level of madness. I don't know how it can be stopped

🇺🇸 CNN poll shows just 8% of Americans view Russia positively—on par with those who think the moon landing was fake. 61% see Russia as an enemy, and only 4% as a partner. Only 9% like Putin, with the same percentage believing the Earth is flat. 52% support Ukraine using U.S. weapons in Russia.

JD Vance is throwing his political weight behind a 62-year-old Romanian politician who was virtually unknown before a massive TikTok campaign in November (for which he allegedly paid no money), who denies the Moon landing and claims to have met aliens. Well done, JD! #Vance#Romania

This is official (Office of Romania’s President): One of the ‘deals’ requested by the Russians in Riyadh is the withdrawal of NATO guarantees from Eastern Europe. Did NATO lose any war? Why is the US bent on ensuring Russia, now a weaker nation, a bigger say in global politics? #Russia#Ukraine

Elon Musk lends his support to a man who literally says that, if he is elected, ‘there will be no more political parties’ in Romania. This is dictatorship, and Musk’s interference is one in favour of dictatorship! #democracyindanger

One would think that the Trump Administration has enough on its plate. Well, apparently not…that, or the Tate brothers and the judicial proceedings against them in Romania are as important as Ukraine, Gaza, and the destruction of the so-called ‘deep state’: www.ft.com/content/3f95...

Guess who is meddling again in Romania’s upcoming Presidential elections? Nawfal should take his own advice and stop commenting on issues he clearly has no clue about…

“I am a convinced Atlanticist and a friend of America”….but to compare European democracies to authoritarian states - “Ladies and gentlemen, this is not acceptable” Boris PISTORIUS, German Defense Minister, Munich Security Conference, 14 Feb. 2025

The audacity of Vance scolding Europe for having annulled Romanian election results due to Russian interference, representing a president who violently physically attacked the US system of governance and refused to acknowledge his defeat, still claiming the elections was stolen, is simply disgusting

Will the latest round of anti-far right and anti-Nazis protests (against AfD) change anything in the upcoming German elections? These are the latest poll results (Der Spiegel):

When you couple that w/ the draft legislation that was recently passed by the House, empowering the Treasury Department, by fiat, to declare a non-profit a "terrorist-supporting organization," and strip it of its 501(c)(3) status... 20/ apnews.com/article/nonp...

@raskin.house.gov: "Mexico said they were gonna put 10k troops on the border-- they already had 15k troops on the border! ... He just likes a lot of razzle dazzle and noise, but the leaders of the world are laughing at him. And we can recognize what a fraudulent pretense this whole thing was."

"Elon Musk is not the president, but it appears that he—a foreign-born, unelected billionaire who was not confirmed by Congress—is exercising profound influence over the federal government of the United States...It is nothing short of an administrative coup." www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

pushback works, part infinity +1 www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/h...

‘We’ve proved that change is possible’ – but Serbia protesters unsure of next move

The logic of the coup that is going on now. And how to resist it. snyder.substack.com/p/the-logic-...

"America First" becomes "America Alone" from @davidfrum.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Germany pays attention: Der Spiegel writes about the refusal of the European Court of Human Rights to consider the case brought by Georgescu against the Romanian Constitutional Court’s annulment of Romania’s 1 round of Presidential elections on charges of election interference by a foreign state.

If you are wondering what disgraced conservative influencers like Alex Jones are currently up to, well they interview pro-Russia wannabe politicians from Eastern Europe, who are attacking NATO for presumably preparing to launch a Third World War against Russia…#democracyInDanger

#ToxicNarratives: if you did not know, you heard it first here. Georgescu, Romania’s wannabe pro-Russian presidential candidate, claims that NATO will attack Russia from its military base in Southern Romania. Never mind the base itself is small to at best middle-size #UkraineWar

In 2020, I asked why so many Republicans had abandoned the values they had previously held. Still relevant. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

The European Union has a new hawk (and it’s a woman!:): the Union’s High Rep for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy is known to be an Iron Lady. She is also advocating putting more pressure on Moscow ahead of potential peace talks. “We are stronger”, she claims, both economically and militarily.

Like really bad news: Putin adviser Patrushev, in an interview today for Komsomolskaia Pravda includes Romania on a list with Hungary, Slovakia and Austria as countries that ‘understand’ stability and a balanced attitude towards Russia #UkraineWar

Romanians vote - again - on May 4 and 18 to elect their President. Pro-Russia candidate Georgescu - unknown to much of Romania before his alleged Russia-sponsored TikTok campaign - hopes to run again. Meanwhile, he opened an account on X thanking Elon Musk for his support #DemocracyInDanger

@RomanianElections: the real intervention by former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton: laws - about foreign interference in electoral processes must be upheld: “they did it in Romania, and, obviously, it will have to be done, if necessary, in Germany as well” www.romaniajournal.ro/amp/politics...

Norms of international law inevitably clash with political power in contested spaces, especially so in the South China Sea. Glad to share the results of a study over the effects of the 2016 UNCLOS Arbitral Tribunal on Taiwan’s foreign policy.

"When conspiracy theories and nonsense cures are widely accepted, the evidence-based concepts of guilt and criminality vanish quickly too." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

A pic for the history books #USPresidents #JimmyCarter