Gerard Baker

Des Moines

Last month, after weeks of frustrating inactivity occasioned by an ankle injury, David Beckham finally made his debut in Major League Soccer. The owner of the most famous foot in sports, the head that launched a thousand haircuts, the talented half of one of the world's most recognizable couples,…

It takes skill to turn one of the most predictable and anticipated events in political history into a virtual showstopper. It takes something approaching political genius to pull off that feat when you are almost universally regarded as dour, unexciting, and having all the charisma of a mildewed…

Hong Kong will soon mark the tenth anniversary of its return to China. At midnight on July 1, 1997, amid the mournful downpour of a tropical monsoon, as British soldiers lowered the Union Flag for the last time and Tony Blair, the fresh-faced new prime minister, looked on, another chapter in…

London

THERE MAY NOT HAVE BEEN such a consequential visit involving gifts for a newborn since the Magi came upon that star shining in the east a couple of thousand years ago. On Monday, September 4, Tom Watson, a hitherto (and if there's any justice, henceforth) anonymous junior defense minister in Tony…

AS ENGLISH PARENTS of five young girls who've lived almost their entire lives in these United States, my wife and I have spent much of the last decade checking off the rites of passage on their journey towards full immersion in American life.

WHEN A BELEAGUERED BRITISH PRIME MINISTER fired a bunch of his closest cabinet colleagues in the 1960s, the grubby desperation of the move was well captured by an opponent's quip: "Greater love hath no man than this," he said--"than to lay down his friends for his life."

AMERICA'S LEGISLATIVE LEADERS SPENT a good deal of time last week discussing what to do about "undesirable" foreigners. Illegal immigrants were the main target. The Senate and House so far are diverging widely on whether it is best to keep them in or throw them out. Since doing the first defies…

TWILIGHT IS HASTENING FOR TONY Blair. Though British prime ministers face no term limits, few can withstand the swelling tide of public boredom and familiarity's contempt. Margaret Thatcher set a peacetime record of 11 years in office before she succumbed; Blair, elected in 1997, will have clocked…

TIME WAS WHEN THE SELECTION of a new leader of the British Conservative party was an event of some significance.

THERE HAS BEEN some rather harsh treatment in the media of George W. Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers. It has been said that she is an underqualified crony of Bush's, and that as a middling corporate lawyer, with no experience on the bench, she has never offered much in the way…

The first issue of this magazine appeared in September 1995, part way through the Clinton administration, and less than a year after the Republican victory in the congressional elections of 1994. The pressing foreign policy issue of the day was Bosnia. The world seems a very different place today.…

EVEN BY THE EUROPEAN UNION'S own standards of vaulting futility, the charade it will inaugurate on October 3 will be especially pointless. On that date, to great fanfare, the European Union will formally launch accession negotiations for Turkey. Heads of government will speak solemnly about this…

IT WAS ALWAYS A CHEAP shot to accuse the leaders of the antiwar crowd in Britain of working hand-in-glove with the terrorists. True, some of them in recent weeks have sounded remarkably like apologists for al Qaeda, with their talk of "understanding" Islamic rage about Iraq or Israel, and their…

WHILE LONDON POLICE WERE SIFTING through the wreckage of three subway trains and a bus on the evening of July 7, an agitated woman was calling the emergency hotline that had been arranged for people to report missing family members and friends.

IN SCALE, IT WAS neither a 9/11 nor even a 3/11. Though grisly, brutal, and indiscriminate, the terror attack on London produced many fewer casualties than the assaults on New York four years ago or Madrid last year. On the gruesome slide rule of death Osama bin Laden and his cronies lovingly…

AS THE DUST SETTLES after the explosive referenda at the heart of the European Union, interested parties from all sides are peering nervously into the crater, trying to figure out what remains of the European "project." E.U. heads of government will meet next weekend to map an immediate route out…

NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV ONCE COMMENTED WRYLY that the only trouble with free elections is that you never know who's going to win. The old shoe-banger's words have been echoing around Europe these last few weeks, as the continent prepares for a democratic exercise that could alter the entire political…

London

London

Rome

UNTIL RECENTLY, ATTACKING ALAN Greenspan was regarded in Washington as the political equivalent of mugging Mother Teresa: not only wrong, but distinctly unwise. The Federal Reserve chairman was universally revered as a monetary policy wizard, having orchestrated the best U.S. economic performance…

IT'S HUG-A-European Month for American foreign policy. First Condoleezza Rice inaugurates her tenure at the State Department with a grand tour of Europe's capitals. She wears tweed in London, speaks multilateralist in Paris, and from Brussels to Berlin dispenses erudite grace and scented bonhomie…

THOUGH PUBLIC REACTION in Europe to President Bush's reelection this month was predictably outraged, grief-stricken, and generally dumbfounded, it wasn't hard to detect behind the mask of uncomprehending disapproval a smug half-smile of self-satisfaction. Deep down, European political and media…

FOUR YEARS ago, when I covered the last U.S. presidential election campaign, it was hard to be impressed with George W. Bush. He seemed a callow sort, propelled effortlessly towards the presidency by a combination of heredity and money, swagger and bonhomie.

AS JOHN KERRY stepped down from his campaign plane at Youngstown airport in Ohio en route to a rally Sunday, an enterprising reporter shouted out an excellent question.

EUROPEAN PUBLICS, fed by their media a steady diet of horror stories from Iraq and Michael Moore-style caricatures of the Bush administration's criminality, could be forgiven for being mystified and dismayed by the course of the U.S. presidential election.

LAST NOVEMBER, suicide bombers killed 19 Italians stationed at a military police barracks in Nasiriyah, southern Iraq. It was the largest single-incident loss of life for the Italian military since the Second World War, and the shock and pain that reverberated through the country was palpable.…

New York

HOW GOOD is your knowledge of the political parties' platforms for November's presidential election?

UNDER PRESSURE from insurgents in Iraq, assailed by his Democratic opponent at home for a reckless "unilateralism," struggling to reassure a restive American public that his foreign policy is on the right track, President Bush has turned to an unlikely corner for help this summer--Europe.

FOR THE LAST WEEK, much of Britain has borne witness to an outpouring of grief the like of which has not been seen since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. When Baron Hutton of Bresagh, knight of the realm, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, a hitherto rather inconspicuous retired member of the…

AMERICA WASN'T THE ONLY COUNTRY attempting a bit of nation-building this turbulent summer. While U.S. troops and U.N. diplomats battled insurgents in the streets and deserts of Iraq, European politicians and bureaucrats, in the less demanding surroundings of Brussels bistros and Provençal villas,…