Europe on @ppmotskula

The Triangle of Power: A Review

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Alexander Stubb, The Triangle of Power: Rebalancing the New World Order (Columbia Global Reports / Biteback Publishing, January 2026, 216 pp.)

There is something almost paradoxical about a sitting head of state publishing a book of serious international relations theory. Political memoirs are common enough; policy manifestos, dime a dozen. But The Triangle of Power is neither. Finnish President Alexander Stubb — former foreign minister, prime minister, finance minister, MEP, and Professor and Director of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Florence — has written what is genuinely a work of political science, grounded in first-hand experience at the highest levels of diplomacy, and aimed at a fundamental question: what kind of world order comes after the one that is currently falling apart?

Justice Is Blind — Except When It Isn't

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On selective principles, strategic silence, and what small states stand to lose

On Sunday evening, 01 March 2026, two statements landed in quick succession. Estonia’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, meeting in extraordinary session, voiced support for the US-Israeli strikes on Iran. EU High Representative Kaja Kallas issued a statement on behalf of the Union that condemned Iranian retaliation as “inexcusable” while remaining entirely silent on the legality of the strikes that provoked it. Two statements, one evening, telling the same story by different means.

ACTA is a Threat to Legislative Freedom in Europe

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

They say that ACTA will cause no change in EU and European countries’ copyright regulations. What they don’t say is that ACTA is designed to make sure there will be no change in European copyright regulations.

Advertised as some kind of a “coalition of the willing” — either you’re with us or you’re with pirates, counterfeiters, and possibly even Lord Voldemort himself — ACTA pretends to only deal with the enforcement of copyrights and related rights that are already present in EU directives and national laws of the Union’s member states. While the agreement’s publicly announced purpose is to harmonize the enforcement of such rights in signatory countries, it actually harmonizes the enforcement of the rights arising out of existing copyright-and-related-rights laws that are based on economic, social and technological realities of late 17th century.