Categories
CSS Blog

Budget Support to Agriculture in Russia Compared to Other Countries

While support for innovations and the provision of digital technologies for agriculture are declared as being among the Russian government’s policy priorities, those activities are not prioritized in budgeting. This graphic compares the budget support to agriculture in Russia with that of other countries.

For more on the structure of agricultural production, trade development and agri-food policy in Russia, read this issue of the Russian Analytical Digest.

Categories
Coronavirus CSS Blog

The New EU Budget and Defense: Narrowing the Capabilities-Expectations Gap

Image courtesy of Guillaume Périgois/Unsplash.

This blog belongs to the CSS’ coronavirus blog series, which forms a part of the center’s analysis of the security policy implications of the coronavirus crisis. See the CSS special theme page on the coronavirus for more.

The EU as a foreign policy and security actor is often haunted by the “capabilities-expectation gap”, referring to the discrepancy between the expectations citizens and states have about the EU’s international role and what the EU is actually able to deliver. The gap consists of three main components: available instruments, resources, and the ability to agree.

The 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) will go down in history as the EU’s coronavirus budget – unprecedented in volume and the raising of joint debt. It features several new defense initiatives complementing the EU’s long-standing efforts to narrow the capabilities-expectations gap. While the budget places promising new instruments at the EU’s disposal, the trimming of resources initially allocated and unchanged decision-making procedures significantly dim the prospects for those initiatives to deliver the expected results. If these projects are to bear fruit, they must be prioritized and interlinked with existing programs and supported by strong financial commitments by the member states.

Categories
CSS Blog

Russian Defense Spending

Click to enlarge

EmailFacebookTwitter

These graphics provide an overview of the trend in Russia’s defense spending, outlining spending between 2010 and 2018 as well as forecasts for the defense budget up to 2021. For an insight into the prospects for Russia’s defense spending and more, see ‘Russian Analytical Digest No. 237: Security Issues’.

Categories
CSS Blog

Increases in Defense Budgets Between 2016 and 2017

Click image to enlarge

EmailFacebookTwitter

This graphic shows the changes in defense budgets of various European countries from 2016 to 2017. For more on the challenges facing European defense and armament planners, see Michael Haas and Annabelle Vuille’s recent addition to the CSS Analyses in Security Policy series here. For more CSS charts, maps and graphics on defense policy, click here.

Categories
Regional Stability

A Europeanized NATO? The Alliance Contemplates the Turmp Era and Beyond

Image courtesy of The White House/Flickr

This article was originally published by War on the Rocks on 25 September 2018.

When asked about President Donald Trump’s July 2018 visit to Europe, Henry Kissinger presciently noted, “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretenses.” In other words, for all the uproar surrounding the president’s personality, something bigger is going on, and Trump has come to personify it. Perhaps the biggest challenge is, therefore, to put words to this shifting ground and imagine its potential consequences.