Dimitrios' World

The ongoing crisis in the Caucasus is a tell tale sign of a changing world whereby the unipolar world is slowly but surely being replaced by a post-American one. In this new world order, the challenge is to find a way to share power, to create a model of global governance where the United States, the European Union and the winners of globalization – countries such as Russia, China, Brazil, and India among others – all have a role. The war in Georgia clearly shows that the world has changed from the singular moment of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the splitting up of the Soviet Union soon after. The United States which reassessed its foreign policy and maintained its hegemony as the world’s leading power after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 now finds itself confronted with the reality that it is not omnipotent or at least with the fact that it cannot control the course of events on its own. In the grand chessboard that is, in this case at least, the quest for power

At the official handover ceremony between the Slovenian Presidency and the current French Presidency, on 30 June 2008, the French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, upon symbolically accepting a relay baton and an EU flag from his Slovenian counterpart commented that the European Union was “in average shape”. Kouchner’s sentiments echoed those of Nicholas Sarkozy who speaking on French television suggested that “something isn’t right, something isn’t right at all.” In an interview to the Italian daily Corriere della Serra on 25 June 2008, on the eve of the Euro 2008 semi-finals which pitted Turkey against Germany and Russia against Spain, Joerg Haider, the Austrian far-right politician, questioned why Turkey and Russia were allowed to participate in the European Soccer Championships by asking “what have these two countries got in common with Europe?” Though seemingly unrelated, the two aforementioned references in fact have much to do with each other. On the one hand, they describe a