What threatens our security is to a large extent of our own making. External threats mostly respond to risks and vulnerabilities that are the fruit of our own lack of consistency and professionalism and of our corruption.

A creeping “Ukrainisation” of the countries of the region, including Poland, is a greater and much more real threat than the mythical marginalisation allegedly caused by staying out of the eurozone. All new EU member states (and some “old” ones) are now experiencing dangerous developments such as questioning the pro-Western stance of a given country…

Michal Pullmann: Konec experimentu. Přestavba a pád komunismu v Československu. [The End of an Experiment. The Rebuilding and Fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia] Scriptorium, Praha 2011

Adam Burakowski, Mariusz Stan, The Country Full of Sadness, the Country Full of Humour. History of Romania after 1989, Institute of Political Studies – Polish Academy of Sciences, TRIO Publishing House, Warsaw 2012.

Enzo Traverso, Europejskie korzenie przemocy nazistowskiej (The Origins of Nazi Violence), Instytut Wydawniczy Książka i Prasa, Warsaw 2011

Jiří Holý, Petr Málek, Michael Špirit, Filip Tomáš, Šoa v české literatuře a kulturní paměti. Praha: Filip Tomáš – Akropolis, 2011

Gleb Pavlovsky, Genialnaja włast’. Słowar’ abstrakcij Kremlja, Izdatelstwo “Jewropa”, Moskwa 2012

Tony Judt, Pensjonat pamięci (The Memory Chalet). Wydawnictwo Czarne 2012; Tony Judt, Źle ma się kraj. Rozprawa o naszych współczesnych bolączkach (Ill Fares the Land). Wydawnictwo Czarne 2011

Claus Leggewie, Harald Welzer, Koniec świata, jaki znaliśmy. Klimat, przyszłość i szanse demokracji (The End of the World as We once Knew it: the Climate, the Future and the Prospects for Democracy), Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, 2012

Madeleine Albright, Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937–1948, HarperCollins 2012

About two years ago I gave a talk in the US, and afterwards an American businessman asked me to explain something peculiar. He had read in that day’s edition of The Financial Times that the Czech Republic—as the only country apart from Great Britain—had vetoed increased EU regulation of hedge funds. You don’t have any…

An interview with Thomas Piketty by Maciej NowickiThe contemporary world resembles the 19th century more than we might suspect. What we are witnessing now is a comeback of inequalities in their brutal and archaic forms—says Thomas Piketty in an interview with Maciej Nowicki.

If Poland draws conclusion from the Norwegian experience, it has an opportunity to become a global research and development center in the shale gas/oil exploration and production field. Regrettably, research is held in other countries and the service sector in Poland is slowly being dominated by foreign companies.

The Chinese have set a trap for the rest of the world. Calling their fatherland the Middle Kingdom, they have managed to rule not only over their state but actually over the whole continent, and furthermore over an ancient civilization of amazing continuity, disposing of their own value system which is so much different from…

The inhabitants of a small European country have found a peculiar way of defending themselves against the political and economic gale force winds sweeping the continent and dredging up right- and leftwing extremists from the social depths: they have elected a man who has promised them windless conditions. The name of the man swept to…

An interview with Sergei Markov by Filip MemchesThe protests of the urban middle class are a result of an improvement in their living standards. You could compare it—which is not to be taken literally—to a rebellion of those who own a Hyundai against those who own a Mercedes— says Sergei Markov, the Kremlin’s leading “political…

The 21st century will probably be a century of tectonic shifts in the global balance of power. One of the most important beneficiaries of the processes could be Turkey.

Almost all the generals and politicians wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal in the Former Yugoslavia have been captured. Still, we should not expect either a rapid nor an easy accession to the EU, and much less so to the NATO.