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Ambiguity in diplomacy came in useful again last week. On Friday, Serbia and Kosovo reached an agreement for Kosovo representation at regional fora. Till now, Serbia, who opposes Kosovo’s independence, was blocking Kosovo’s participation in regional meetings. According to this agreement, Kosovo’s representatives will sit behind the plate ‘Kosovo’ with an asteriks pointing to the […]
February 13, 2012 by Jovan Kurbalija
Last weekend, thousands of people took to the streets of freezing European cities to protest against ACTA. Typically, especially in sub-zero temperatures, only critical issues such as wars and social injustice could bring so many out of doors. Why did this issue, with its rather bureaucratic acronym (ACTA: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) have such a public […]
February 2, 2012 by Jovan Kurbalija
Twitter has introduced a new policy allowing the possibility of filtering tweets at the request of local governments. This major departure in policy has triggered an avalanche of tweet-style protests. ‘It is a supercomplex issue’, complained Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo in a recent interview. He continued: ‘When the news came out, people tried to distil […]
January 31, 2012 by Jovan Kurbalija
If I did not know Aldo, I would completely skip his text “The Medium is Twitter” as another – justified – warning about techno-hype. The more media pushes techno-hype, the more it triggers techno-pessimism (or realism?). The dialogue between techno-optimists and techno-pessimists dates back, at least in written history, to a dialogue between Theuth, the […]
December 16, 2011 by Jovan Kurbalija
A few years ago, one of my colleagues proposed an empirical hypothesis about policy hype cycles. After he drew my attention to this hypothesis, I followed it more carefully and I find that there are supporting data from recent years (e.g. climate change, food security, preventive diplomacy). A possible explanation is that policy, like the […]
December 13, 2011 by Jovan Kurbalija
The end of the last week was marked by the UK’s veto of the deal agreed by everybody else in the EU family (23+3). To be left alone around the negotiation table is the worst that can happen to any country, short of not being at the table at all, which may happen to the […]
December 12, 2011 by Jovan Kurbalija
Last week in the Hague, at the Internet Freedom Conference, European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes outlined the elements for the EU’s digital diplomacy strategy for dealing with Internet policy issues.[1] Formally speaking, the architecture of the EU’s digital diplomacy is likely to involve her department (digital agenda) and Ashton’s EEAS (European External Action Service, the […]
December 8, 2011 by Jovan Kurbalija
Exactly 20 years ago, on 9 December 1991, EU leaders at the Maastricht Summit made two historical decisions: to start introducing the Euro and to recognise the ex-Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia. On this same day, 20 years later, on 9 December 2011, the EU will have to deal with the same two topics: […]
Reflections on Diplomacy 
February 27, 2012 by Jovan Kurbalija
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