Europe Svalbard Is an Archipelago

Europe

Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic Sea., de jure controlled by Norway but subject to unique international agreement.. It is located from 74 to 81N, above the Arctic Circle, and as such is the most northerly populated locality in Europe, and the northernmost civilian locality in the world -- Canada has permanent military settlements further north. Svalbard's significance for Europe is that there are both Norwegian and Russian settlements on the island of Spitsbergen. The archipelago has unique status as a free economic zone and a demilitarized zone. The Russian presence there amounts to a small mining village that was basically allowed under the Svalbard Treaty that assigned sovereignty of the archipelago to Norway, yet Norway typically exercise no control over the village of Barentsburg, which is instead administered by Russia (University of Oslo, 2011).

The Chunnel is the tunnel that runs under the English Channel. This project creates the first land link between the island of Great Britain and the European continent in history. In contains a high speed railway line, freight lines and a line for transporting cars through the tunnel as well. The Chunnel is significant in the context of closer ties between Europe and Britain, in particular closer trade ties. Given the strategic significance of the lack of land barrier between Britain and Europe during the two world wars, the presence of this link has security connotations for Great Britain as well (Doughty, 2014).

A sirocco is a hot wind from the Sahara that blows across northern Africa, the Mediterranean and southern Europe. Sirocco can be very fast winds, bringing with them both hot air and sand, the latter as evidenced by satellite photos. Sirocco can have a significant effect on the weather conditions across Mediterranean Europe.

Transdniester is a breakaway republic, de jure a part of Moldova but de facto independent, with its own government, border patrol and even its own currency. When the Soviet Union split, Transdniester's predominantly Russian-speaking population opposed independence, at least as part of the ethnically-Romanian Moldova. A war for independence was conducted, ending in the breakaway state. Transdniester has maintained close ties with Russia, one of the only countries in the world to recognize its autonomy. The region is of particular importance today because of the threat that Russia will run across southern Ukraine, capturing Odessa and then annexing Transdniester (The Economist, 2014). Such a move would render Ukraine landlocked, and put Russia on the EU's doorstep abutting Romania and Bulgaria. Moldova's future at that point would also be in doubt.

Austerity is a political term used to describe the economic condition of imposed hardship. The basic principle is that government cuts its budget, creating economic contraction. Many in Europe have made the case for austerity as a measure to boost the economy -- usually failing miserably in that regard. In some instances, the hardships created by austerity's bad economics has led to widespread social unrest, such as in Greece (Maltezou & Papadimas, 2013).

Required Question

I have a lot of products that originate in Europe. I am drinking a San Pellegrino Pompelmo right now -- it comes from Italy and has mass distribution via Nestle. I have a notebook that I bought in Germany last year. It's Paperblanks, which is a Canadian company and it was made in China, but it's in German so I think it counts. There's Italian pasta in my kitchen, and that company has a distributor here though the packaging does not indicate who. There is a lot of European music on the iPod -- this is distributed by multinational media companies via iTunes. A fifth European product is a French press, which originated in Europe. That looks like it was imported and distributed by the same company that made it. I have Italian wine (Tuscan) and Belgian beer. Whereas many European products appear to be imported and distributed by subsidiaries, this is not the case with the alcoholic beverages. Both are distributed by local companies that have brought them over and handle all of the marketing and distribution. A final European product is Dijon mustard (from Dijon), which is made by Unilever, a multinational that handles its own distribution. I know a lot of these are foods, but there are not that many non-comestibles that are from Europe, and the notebook isn't sold here, I brought it back myself.

Yugoslavia: The former Yugoslavia was always a fake country, a set of ethnic regions glorped together into a nation-state, so with the fall of Communism and the breakup of the U.S.S.R., the disintegration of Yugoslavia was inevitable. Slobodan Milosevic was president of Serbia during the breakup, and exploited Serbian nationalism to create conflict during this breakup. With Slovenia, Croatia and BiH all declaring independence, and Milosevic seeking to fan the flames of conflict, the situation in Yugoslavia became a crisis. Serbian minorities in both Croatia and BiH agitated for independence or reunion with Serbian, fearing negative treatment as minorities. Macedonia also separated early in the 1990s. The conflict in BiH grew bloody, however. Ethnic Serbs waged bloody war on Bosniaks, famously sieging the city of Sarajevo. Never designed with defense in mind, Sarajevo sits in a valley surrounded by steep hills from which Serbian military positions rained bullets and shells on the city, prompting an international airlift of supplies. The conflict eventually went cold, but there are still tensions between the Serbs, who have their own region called Republika Srpska, and the Bosniaks. A few years later, the ethnic Albanian minority in Kosovo grew tired of repression under Milosevic and sought independence from Serbia. NATO waged open war with Serbia in defense on the Kosovars, leading to the arrest of Milosevic (State Department, 2013). The final step was the split of Montenegro from Serbia, which occurred on peaceful terms in the mid-2000s. Ethnic tensions in the region remain, however, particular between Serbs and other groups in the region who suffered under Milosevic's brutal regime.