Joseph Nye writes:  As Europe debates whether to maintain its sanctions regime against Russia, the Kremlin’s policy of aggression toward Ukraine continues unabated. Russia is in long-term decline, but it still poses a very real threat to the international order in Europe and beyond. Indeed, Russia’s decline may make it even more dangerous.

The threat posed by Russia extends far beyond Ukraine. After all, Russia is the one country with enough missiles and nuclear warheads to destroy the US. As its economic and geopolitical influence has waned, so has its willingness to consider renouncing its nuclear status. Indeed, not only has it revived the Cold War-era tactic of sending military aircraft unannounced into airspace over the Baltic countries and the North Sea; it has also made veiled nuclear threats against countries like Denmark.

Russia’also benefits from its enormous size, vast natural resources, and educated population, including a multitude of skilled scientists and engineers.

But Russia faces serious challenges. It remains a “one-crop economy,” with energy accounting for two-thirds of its exports. And its population is shrinking – not least because the average man in Russia dies at age 65, a full decade earlier than in other developed countries.

Instead of developing a strategy for Russia’s long-term recovery, Putin has adopted a reactive and opportunistic approach – one that can sometimes succeed, but only in the short term.

Russia’s problem is not just Putin. Though Putin has cultivated nationalism. Other high-level figures – for example, Dmitry Rogozin, who last October endorsed a book calling for the return of Alaska – are also highly nationalistic, a successor to Putin would probably not be liberal. The recent assassination of former Deputy Prime Minister and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov reinforces this assumption.

So Russia seems doomed to continue its decline – an outcome that should be no cause for celebration in the West. States in decline – think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914 – tend to become less risk-averse and thus much more dangerous. In any case, a thriving Russia has more to offer the international community in the long run.

Though sanctions are unlikely to change Crimea’s status or lead to withdrawal of Russian soldiers from Ukraine, they have upheld that principle, by showing that it cannot be violated with impunity.

On the other hand, it is important not to isolate Russia completely, given shared interests with the US and Europe relating to nuclear security and non-proliferation, terrorism, space, the Artic, and Iran and Afghanistan. No one will benefit from a new Cold War.

Designing and implementing a strategy that constrains Putin’s revisionist behavior, while ensuring Russia’s long-term international engagement, is one of the most important challenges facing the US and its allies today. For now, the policy consensus seems to be to maintain sanctions, help bolster Ukraine’s economy, and continue to strengthen NATO (an outcome that Putin undoubtedly did not intend). Beyond that, what happens is largely up to Putin.

Renee Maltezou writes: Greece’s finance ministry dismissed on Sunday a report by a German newspaper which said that euro zone officials were shocked at Greece’s failure to outline plans for structural reforms at last week’s talks in Brussels.

The mood between Greece’s newly-elected leftist government and its euro zone partners has been tense during negotiations that will determine whether the cash-strapped country deserves further financial aid by its EU/IMF lenders.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung cited participants at last week’s meeting as saying that they were disappointed by Athens’ lack of movement in its plans, adding that the Greek representative just asked where the money was “like a taxi driver” and insisted his country would soon be bankrupt.

“When the readers of FAS read the minutes of the Euro Working Group meeting the newspaper will have difficulty justifying its headline and the content of its article,” the finance ministry said. “Such reports undermine the negotiation and Europe.”

A meeting of deputy finance ministers – called the Euro Working Group – on Thursday gave Athens a six working day deadline to present a revised economic reform plan before euro zone finance ministers meet on April 24 to decide whether to unlock emergency funding to keep Greece afloat.

Technical teams from Greece and its international lenders held a teleconference on Saturday to outline the agenda of talks in the coming days, a Greek finance ministry official said.

Greece’s biggest creditor Germany has said the euro zone would give Athens no extra funds until it has a more detailed list of reforms.

Cenk Sidar writes:  For most of the past decade, Turkey’s economy has enjoyed remarkable success. Between 2002 and 2006, during the first term of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), growth averaged 7.2 percent per year, making Turkey a star performer in an otherwise difficult region.

While external factors played some role in Turkey’s success, one would be remiss not to give due credit to the ruling party. The positive steps the AKP took after winning power — continuing the IMF-led reforms initiated by its predecessors and maintaining a responsible fiscal and monetary policy — helped the country achieve the macroeconomic stability necessary to attract foreign capital.

This picture has changed significantly over the past few years, as Turkey has turned from an exemplary emerging market into a country that grabs headlines with stories of economic weakness and financial vulnerability. The current list of problems is daunting: rising inflation, slowing growth, foreign exchange pressure, rising fiscal expenditures, increased unemployment, overall debt, and loss of export competitiveness. The IMF expects Turkish GDP to grow only 3 percent in 2015 and 2016. The lira has lost over 10 percent of its value since the beginning of this year. Moreover, the country is falling behind rival emerging markets. In 2014, India and China left Turkey’s 2.9 percent growth rate in the dust with impressive rates of 7.5 and 7.4 percent respectively.

Turkey’s slowdown is mainly caused by longer-term structural factors, pointing to an urgent need for fundamental reform. And this is where the economic track record of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AKP has begun to suffer. Even as the Turkish economy sputters, the AKP government is focusing on unsustainable, and sometimes destructive, short-term measures, such as pressuring the central bank to maintain a loose monetary policy, jeopardizing its independence and legitimacy in the process. Meanwhile, the structural reforms needed to ensure the country’s longer-term development are being put off.   Turkey’s Economic Problems