Europe

“Finally, a revolution in France that I approve of!”

That was Edmund Burke, reacting happily to the election of conservative Nicolas Sarkozy as the new French president.

Burke looked and sounded pretty chipper, considering that he’s been dead for 210 years. OK, I’m not sure I was really talking to Burke. But I felt his spirit, knowing he would be delighted to see the French socialists defeated once again.

Those socialists, of course, are the inheritors of the 1789 Revolution that Burke so… more

When Kestutis Dziautas enrolled in Moscow's KGB college in 1985, he wasn't aware, he says, of the Soviet secret police's role in executing and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of fellow Lithuanians decades earlier. Likewise, he says, he didn't know that KGB agents were still the feared foot soldiers of a ruthless regime.But neither his claim of naivete, nor the fact that he spent only four months working for the KGB before the fall of communism, was enough to… more

What if the wrong candidate wins France’s presidential election? If the wrong candidate were to win because of electoral fraud -- stuffing of ballot boxes or rigging of votes -- all of France would be up in arms, and the international media would shine a glaring spotlight.

But a different specter hangs over French voters today: that the wrong candidate will win because of an antiquated method for electing their president. The current method, a first-round free-for-all… more

As if the US did not have enough on its plate, the latest strongly anti-American statements of President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have suggested the possibility of a new Cold War with Russia. And from the Russian point of view, these statements are only responding to a whole series of bitterly anti-Russian statements and actions by the US administration over the past year, including plans to bring Ukraine into NATO, the speech attacking Russia by Vice President Cheney… more

On February 5th and 6th, 2007, the Hudson Institute, with support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, convened a small workshop of noted specialists on Turkey, Europe, and international security to assess the state of America’s alliance with Turkey and, more specifically, to ascertain whether the United States risks “losing” Turkey as a long-time and critical ally. The workshop was part of a project directed by Rajan Menon,… more

In contemplating a future world in which U.S. power is used more effectively, but in more limited ways -- indeed, more effectively because of these limits -- Americans can draw upon the example of British strategy in the century before 1914, when its global power was at its zenith.

This experience has been used by writers such as Niall Ferguson and Max Boot as an example for the exercise of American global power today and in the future.

Such recommendations… more

Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, Deputy Chairman of the German Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament, has served as a Member of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee, and on the Parliamentary Delegations for the United States and Japan. Lambsdorff has been selected as a highly significant European Union Parliamentarian by German political magazine Focus and serves as one of Europe's most effective commentators on the pressing issues of European politics today.

In addition to his… more

Berlin -- If U.S. culture is an unusual mix of chauvinism and innocence, then German culture can best be described as an odd combination of sturdiness and self-doubt.

"Selbstzweifel," one German novelist told me.

"I want you to write down the German word for self-doubt," he said. "S-E-L-B... . We do think a lot about who we are, that's what I love about Germans. But then we have serious doubts."

This week, more… more

If you are a European, there may be many things you can do or say about Russia, but one thing you cannot do is ignore it. In 100 years' time, it may be that the US will take very little interest in what Russia does. That can never be true of those who share the European continent with it.

At present, the internal problems of the European Union have led to Europe essentially tagging along behind US policy,… more

BERLIN -- If language learning and vacation destinations are any indication, then Germans are among the world's most cosmopolitan people. No one travels around the globe more than they do; few are more multilingual.

But even as Germans eagerly embrace the planet's ethnic and cultural diversity, they are struggling with it back home. There have been no recent incidents of home-grown Islamic terrorism in Germany (as there have been in Britain) and no rioting by minority youth (as in France),… more