Analysis
With in-depth experience as a geopolitical, security and trend analyst (specializing in Southeast Europe, but operating within a wider geographic and theoretical knowledge base), I have attested expertise. My approach is marked by independence of thought, and academic specializations and rigor, plus a creative approach to complex issues.
I started my career as a Balkans Business Analyst for United Press International (2002-2003). This took me everywhere from Belgrade to Sofia to the Republic of Georgia and the Turkish border with Iraq, just months before the US invasion there. While the topics of coverage were not always the most interesting, they were useful and necessary as they helped me learn more about previously unexplored industries such as high finance, oil and gas, construction and so on. And the travel, of course, was historic.
In 2003, I founded the first independent website covering Southeast Europe, Balkanalysis.com, chiefly to add something new to a transition-era media landscape. I succeeded in creating a network of regional expert authors and researchers. The website covered all regional countries and topics ranging from politics, diplomacy and security to economy, investment and culture. Balkanalysis.com existed until 2021 when it suffered an unfortunate virtual death, due to code being lost in a failed server migration. Much of the Balkanalysis.com archive still exists on the Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL.com).
Additionally, I served in a long-term regular capacity as Macedonia Politics country analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, the subscription service of the Economist Group of London, from 2004-2017. This analytic task required interviewing major political figures, international diplomats and other informed sources on a regular basis. Over the years, as publishing trends changed, the reportage went from a glossy-format magazine providing quarterly reports to later on monthly reports and finally, events-driven reports as the initial post-2001 crisis receded and customer demand for the country (as a security risk) lessened.
Also, on two separate occasions (from 2008-2010 and 2019-2020) I researched and wrote exclusive analyses in the areas of security, intelligence, political risk, organized crime and geopolitics, for publications of the Jane’s Group, a leading UK specialist publisher. These publications included the former Jane’s Intelligence Digest, Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst, Jane’s Intelligence Review, and the firm’s in-house special projects division. This analytic experience allowed the opportunity for several exclusive reports in the intelligence, security and diplomatic realms, covering everything from insecurity in Kosovo and Montenegro to Chinese strategy in Serbia and the Turkish energy and naval strategy for the Eastern Mediterranean, in light of drilling off Cyprus and the Libya intervention. Alas, due to the expensive and private subscription nature of both the EIU and Jane’s, it is not possible to provide samples of my many and detailed texts.
Nevertheless, some more open-access long-form analysis can be found, for example, in the articles below, which I published in The American Interest. As these articles for a more general, policy-interested audience, they are less technical in nature but still seek to define the issues at stake and make a case for why they are relevant to an international audience.
Christopher Deliso, “An Avoidable Catastrophe,” The American Interest, March 10, 2016.