On Sept. 13, the caretaker Belgian prime minister, Yves Leterme, announced that he had applied to lead the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, indicating that he would soon leave the job he has held in a temporary capacity for more than a year. Belgium is what STRATFOR calls a compromise country — it is not a state held together based on geography or national identity, but instead was artificially cobbled together by compromises among the Netherlands, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Belgium is largely dominated by the Flemings (Dutch) in the north and the Walloons (French) in the south. The elites of the two groups barely coordinate when handling governance in the capital of Brussels, while the vast majority of Flemings and Walloons simply do not interact with each other, living and working in different parts of the country. But, despite having existed for 140 years, the Flemings and Walloons have never knitted together into a single national identity. Belgian elections almost always create awkward coalitions, often among parties that have nearly as little to do with one another as the voting groups they represent. The most recent government fell apart in April 2010. Elections two months later produced a hung parliament, and the country has now been operating for 458 days with a caretaker government. Even if Belgium manages to survive its newest political crisis, it has further complicated the eurozone crisis at a very inopportune time.
