“I wasn’t born chancellor,” said German leader Angela Merkel in an ad for her 2009 reelection campaign. She repeated the phrase in late October at a press conference to announce her coming resignation as chairman of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Recent state elections have…
He denied that there were Nazi-operated gas chambers and received an award from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
A fight delayed.
Christopher Caldwell on the euro and the damage it wrought.
The nation-state reconsidered.
One of the last laws in Europe banning abortion, Ireland’s eighth amendment, was decisively rejected by voters on May 25. The plebiscite’s result allows the amendment to be struck from the country’s constitution. Once that happens later this year, Irish women will no longer have to smuggle in…
Jews worry too much. That seems to be the point of a recent article in the otherwise sensible Economist. Sure, two German rappers won that country’s highest music award by bragging their torsos are “better defined than an Auschwitz inmate’s” and vowing to “make another Holocaust.” But, says the…
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organization that licenses EU television broadcasts and hosts the annual Eurovision Song Contest, has terminated its contract with a Chinese broadcasting company. The company, Mango TV, cut one of the songs from the contest’s broadcast—the gay-themed…
Allies, committed to deal and looking to preserve economic benefits to Tehran, risk U.S. sanctions
The daring exploits and beguiling charm of the 20th century’s greatest travel writer
The upcoming parliamentary election in Hungary appears only marginally more exciting than the recent Russian presidential election. Although the number of undecided voters is substantial, it would require a minor miracle for the ruling Fidesz Party to be voted out of power this Sunday.
To say antisemitism is on the rise in Europe is commonplace. A dismayingly high percentage of Europeans (often in the 40s, according to surveys) believe Jews are too powerful in their countries' governments, too influential in their media, and probably more loyal to Israel than to the countries in…
Everyone has heard the story. Early this month, former GRU officer and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury, England. Twenty-one other people, including police officers who had intervened, received medical treatment and as…
There are two ways of looking at Brexit. One is confusing, the other is clear, and both are true. Many people in Britain would prefer not to look at all at Brexit. They would prefer to undo it by calling a second referendum, or contriving a slow legislative throttling that, like the assassination…
Maybe not since the proto-Protestant radical Girolamo Savonarola was hanged and set on fire with two of his clerical accomplices in 1498 has Florence seen a weekend so filled with terrifying surprises and reversals of fortune. On Sunday morning, March 4, the city awoke to discover that Davide…
President Trump threatened to impose tariffs on the European Union, in what would be an economic counter-strike to Europe’s expected response to impending steel tariffs.
Since January, the most important person in the campaign for the Italian elections coming on March 4 has been a missing person. Sad selfies of Pamela Mastropietro, a troubled 18-year-old from Rome, have appeared on the front pages of Italy’s newspapers since her body was found, chopped up, rinsed…
It was a Frenchman who gave his surname to the term chauvinism, and it was a Frenchman, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose prosecution for sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York in 2011 now looks like the earliest tremor of the #MeToo movement.
Over the past five years, the State Grid Corporation of China has come close to performing a feat that the European Union, despite its 13 trillion euro economy, has failed at for two decades: create an electricity grid stretching across much of Europe, introducing efficiencies and economies of…
“You’re my type of guy,” President Donald Trump is reported to have told the Czech President Miloš Zeman, a fervent critic of Muslim immigration into Europe and an avowed Trump admirer, in a phone conversation held before POTUS’ inauguration. To his chagrin, however, the Czech head of state was not…
Journalists like anniversaries, or at least this one does, and 2018 is an ideal vantage point from which to survey the past. It’s been a half-century now since the annus horribilis of 1968, for example, and a century-and-a-half since my favorite president (James Buchanan) died. But more to the…
Oakland, Calif.
Oakland, Calif.
The Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos, who in the 1970s won the Panama Canal back for his country, used to tell less successful Latin American leaders that the United States is like a monkey on a chain. You can play with the chain all you like—but if you play with the monkey, you’ll get badly hurt.…
Manchester, England
The Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos, who in the 1970s won the Panama Canal back for his country, used to tell less successful Latin American leaders that the United States is like a monkey on a chain. You can play with the chain all you like—but if you play with the monkey, you’ll get badly hurt.…
European officials are signaling openness to cracking down on Iran’s support for terrorism and improving on the 2015 nuclear deal, which one diplomatic official attributed on Monday to the Trump administration’s tough talk.
The forces driving North Korea’s nuclear weapons program are reminiscent of Cold War strategies pursued by the Soviet Union. Most notable was Moscow’s decision in the mid-1970s to deploy 243 SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) with three independently targetable warheads apiece and…
Many are horrified by the ascent of protectionist, isolationist, and nativist ideas on the political right – and rightly so. Fewer have noticed, however, that developments on the political left also bode ill for those want to see the world’s liberal democracies united against their common enemies,…
Recently, French president Emmanuel Macron addressed the Polish government with perhaps the most scathing criticism of any European leader to date. Polish citizens, he said, “deserve better” than the current government, which “has decided to isolate itself in the workings of Europe.”
Before his untimely passing earlier this year, political philosopher Peter Augustine Lawler offered up some timely reflections on Allan Bloom’s “souls without longing,” the elite students who comprise the bulk of Bloom’s study in his 1987 bestseller The Closing of the American Mind. As Lawler…
Before his untimely passing earlier this year, political philosopher Peter Augustine Lawler offered up some timely reflections on Allan Bloom’s “souls without longing,” the elite students who comprise the bulk of Bloom’s study in his 1987 bestseller The Closing of the American Mind. As Lawler…
The U.S.’s European allies are split on how to respond to new American sanctions on Russia. Some of the sanctions the House passed on Tuesday are targeted against companies or individuals that cooperate with Russian energy companies. According to the bill, “The Government of the Russian Federation…
Today on the Daily Standard podcast, senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about what to watch for in President Trump's trip to Warsaw for a speech and then Hamburg for a G20 summit.
Do Brexit, unbridled immigration, Russian aggression, and mounting nationalist sentiment augur the imminent end of the European project?
Do Brexit, unbridled immigration, Russian aggression, and mounting nationalist sentiment augur the imminent end of the European project?
"Everyone said it would be impossible to do what we did," France's new president, 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron, told a crowd of politely applauding supporters in the courtyard of the Louvre shortly after the polls had closed on May 7. "But they didn't know France!"
From the Foundation for Constitutional Government:
From the Foundation for Constitutional Government:
"I don't know where democracy will end," said the Habsburg statesman Klemens von Metternich, "but it can't end in a quiet old age." Metternich was an architect of a postwar European order—the Concert of Europe, assembled after the defeat of Napoleon. In his old age, he witnessed its disintegration…
"I don’t know where democracy will end," said the Habsburg statesman Klemens von Metternich, "but it can't end in a quiet old age." Metternich was an architect of a postwar European order—the Concert of Europe, assembled after the defeat of Napoleon. In his old age, he witnessed its disintegration…
"To put it in a nutshell," João Carlos Espada tells us, his book "aims at providing an intellectual case for liberal democracy." This aim puts The Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty on a crowded shelf of mostly desiccated husks. What gives his work vitality is his wish to clarify why European…
"To put it in a nutshell,” João Carlos Espada tells us, his book "aims at providing an intellectual case for liberal democracy." This aim puts The Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty on a crowded shelf of mostly desiccated husks. What gives his work vitality is his wish to clarify why European…
Almost fifty years ago a professor at the University of Geneva formed a group that would become the World Economic Forum (WEF). You probably know it as "Davos," named after the Swiss city that hosts its invitation-only annual meeting that draws 2,500 of the famous that want to be leaders like…
Philosophers once preached what they practiced. Socrates, Diogenes the Cynic, Epicurus, and the Stoics not only devoted themselves to living simple, abstemious lives; it was the essence of their philosophy. Some of the most important modern philosophers—Spinoza, Kant, Thoreau, Kierkegaard,…
Philosophers once preached what they practiced. Socrates, Diogenes the Cynic, Epicurus, and the Stoics not only devoted themselves to living simple, abstemious lives; it was the essence of their philosophy. Some of the most important modern philosophers—Spinoza, Kant, Thoreau, Kierkegaard,…
Stockholm
Stockholm
Years ago, when I was writing about a wave of immigrant violence in France, a higher-up in the housing authority of a provincial city took me on a tour of some slum projects. Alphonse was his name. He was the directeur de régie de gestion, which, as best I could translate, meant "director of the…
It promises to be a fracking good year in some of our oil producing regions. To understand why, you need to keep four numbers in mind: $100, $25, $50, and $60. The first is the approximate price of a barrel of crude oil in the summer of 2014, the second the price to which it plunged early in 2016,…
Russian president Vladimir Putin is already waging a war against the West and American hegemony—if only leaders in the United States would look at the evidence. That's what Molly K. McKew argues in a new feature at Politico magazine.
A historian can be wise after the fact, but a political analyst must be wise before it. Most commentators failed to detect the signs of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, despite their received wisdom and psephological sensitivity. (The exception seems to have been those relying on that most…
British prime minister Theresa May has been in office for just five months. It hasn't been smooth sailing. Grappling with the aftermath of Brexit, May has faced anti-Brexit legal challenges, tough negotiations with disaffected European Union leaders, and a parliamentary revolt over plans to expand…
If you've ever been to Paris, you've likely seen the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois; it's directly across the street from the east end of the Louvre. Surprisingly, despite its central locations, it's off the tourists' beaten path; it's too close to the much more famous Notre Dame Cathedral and…
The U.S. State Department updated its travel warning for Ukraine this week, backing off a recommendation that U.S. citizens currently in Crimea and the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk leave the area. The warning posted Wednesday advises U.S. citizens "to avoid all travel to" those regions of…
The last German offensive of World War II began at 5:30 a.m. on December 16, 1944. The rank-and-file German soldier thought he was giving Paris back to the Führer for a "Christmas present." The more experienced Wehrmacht commanders knew that, even should they reach the Meuse or—more…
A historian can be wise after the fact, but a political analyst must be wise before it. Most commentators failed to detect the signs of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, despite their received wisdom and psephological sensitivity. (The exception seems to have been those relying on that most…
Until October 26, perched on the French coast of the English Channel, the "Jungle" refugee camp housed over 6,000 migrants. Living conditions were awful.
Austrians have rejected a far-right presidential candidate. From the Wall Street Journal:
The Italian prime minister will resign. Reuters has more:
With everything he said on the campaign trail, it was inevitable that the relationship between President-elect Donald Trump and the European Union would start off on the wrong foot. But if Trump appreciates that the liberal democracies of Europe are still the best friends that America has in the…
If the U.S. election season looks too depressing, you might consider following the presidential primaries in France instead. A week ago, the French magazine Le Point—which lies on the French center-right but is very far from the intellectual conservatism in the British or American sense—dedicated a…
How best to defeat Islamist terrorism? Expel ISIS from Iraq and Syria? Crack down on domestic radicalization? Work with Muslim reformers to dismantle the ideological roots of Islamism? Each of these would, of course, be admirable pursuits. But none of them seems to spring first to mind among…
Modern societies have problems with social cohesion. Austria's problem is with adhesion. The envelopes for the postal ballots in the presidential revote scheduled for October don't stick, the interior ministry announced this week. He hinted that he might have to postpone the election. Some allege…
The BBC reports:
A surprising German poll showed Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) tied for second place with the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) just before this weekend's regional elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The incumbent Social Democrats are at 28 percent, the CDU and the…
Donald Trump unleashed a new populist messenger on Wednesday night who declared Americans can defeat the establishment and the media just as the British people did in voting to leave the European Union.
How on earth does Angela Merkel think she is going to get re-elected?
Perhaps not since Louis Réard introduced the first bikini to Paris in 1946 has beachwear been such a heated topic in France. The controversy began last week, when a women's group from Marseilles advertised a "burkini day" at a local waterpark. The event, which would have banned men over the age of…
Seventeen-year-old ISIS volunteer Kadiza Sultana was killed by a Russian bombing strike in Syria, according to the BBC. One extraordinary thing about her is that she was already, at her age, a widow: The ISIS fighter she had married (or been married off to) had lately been killed in action. What…
During morning mass Tuesday, two ISIS terrorists stormed a Catholic church in France and killed an 86 year-old priest. Another person was seriously wounded. Monday afternoon, German authorities announced that a suicide bomb attack in Ansbach was perpetrated by a man pledging allegience ISIS leader…
Legend has it that during the Black Plague, superstitious Europeans started killing cats. The idea was that witches had caused the plague and cats were disguised devils, serving as the witches' "familiar spirits," ergo killing them would hurt the witches and hopefully spare people from the disease.
Why did Brexit win? Well, first bear in mind it's not unusual for the EU to lose referenda. Before the end of the Cold War, the only votes it lost were in Norway (1972) and Greenland (1973). But in 1992, the Maastricht Treaty almost lost in France (51.1 percent in favor) and did lose in Denmark…
When historians seek to explain an event, they often divide their explanation into three parts. In the long run—what the French Annales School called the longue durée—there are deep historical structures, mental frameworks or other slow-to-change systems. In the intermediate term, there are…
"Putin umer?" Is Putin dead?
Paris
It was a British-born American patriot, Thomas Paine, who first proposed a "basic income" plan in 1797. The idea has been recycled every few decades since the 19th century by various utopian communes and left-wing economists. Now, it seems, the idea's close to becoming a reality in Utrecht.
Following the "Brexit" versus "Bremain" debate from afar (and by the way, now that the referendum is finally over, can we please retire those hideous portmanteaus?), one got the sense that the two opposing camps were arguing on entirely different grounds. They weren't so much debating as making two…
London
London
London
According to the Irish Independent, the number of Americans requesting Irish passports has increased by 14 percent since their Scottish cousin Donald Trump joined the presidential race last summer. Correlation doesn't mean causation, of course, but more than a few people have remarked upon the…
Voters in the United Kingdom will be choosing — in a referendum to be held by the end of next year, and perhaps as early as June — whether or not to stay in the European Union. Barack Obama wants the U.K. to stay put and is reportedly planning "a big, public reach-out" to persuade Brits to stick…
"Suddenly there was a hand on my bottom . . ." was the rather atypical headline that ran in Germany's ordinarily conservative daily newspaper Die Welt on January 4. It described a riot-like series of sexual assaults and robberies carried out on New Year's Eve in the center of Cologne on the…
The walls are going up all over Europe; we shall not see them lowered in our lifetime. The dream of "ever-closer union," and the eventual merging of nations into a United States of Europe, is over. From the white cliffs of Dover in the west, where David Cameron refused to follow Brussels's orders…
Should the United States militarily defeat jihadist outfits in the Middle East? After 9/11 the answer seemed easy, but after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Barack Obama is not alone in arguing that large-scale offensive campaigns against radical Muslim movements aren't worth the cost. Even if…
In naming German chancellor Angela Merkel its "person of the year," Time has made a bold departure from tradition. Often as not, the magazine gives the honor to a vague collectivity: "the Peacemakers," "the Whistleblowers," "The American Soldier," "the Good Samaritans," the "Ebola fighters," "the…
The EU has never looked worse. Last week alone, Denmark rejected the deepening of ties with the EU in a referendum, France's anti-EU party received a leading number of votes in its regional election, and Sweden, Germany, and Austria have all reinstated border control—effectively ending Schengen for…
The other day, sitting around naked in a Bavarian hotel with a woman I'd just met, I thought of the best-mannered person I ever knew. Andrzej came from an elegant Warsaw family. I met him at the very end of his long and difficult life, when he was singing "Sto Lat" at his American grandsons'…
The Germans are angry with the Greeks for retiring at age 50 and counting on Germans to keep working until they are 65 so as to have enough cash to lend to Greece. The French are angry with the Germans for demanding such harsh and humiliating terms from the Greeks in return for a few billion more…
In an essay for Mosaic, a French professor writes that it's "The Twilight of French Jewry, the Twilight of France."
Today, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed that Russia has violated Turkish airspace for a second time. On Saturday, a Russian plane crossed into Turkish airspace near the Syrian border, and in response the Turks scrambled two F-16s. In a subsequent incident, Ankara said that a…
Whenever I read about the European response to the current wave of “migrants” to Europe, one of the first questions that comes to mind is, “Why?”
The eighties, as the hipsters among us know, are undergoing a revival. The music and fashion of the decade have been disinterred, and its politics too. Where, the pundits of America ask, is our Reagan? Meanwhile in Britain, the Labour party has revived its eighties’ follies by choosing an…
Until mid-September, the half-million migrants who had been marching northwards into central Europe seemed like the Old World equivalent of Hurricane Sandy survivors. Families uprooted by the war in Syria were seeking safety, according to this view of things. It was sad to see little girls sleeping…
Moody’s must have it in for France. Sure, its economy is moribund. Sure, its trade unions are among the most intransigent in the world. But surely the socialist government deserves some credit for one of the most significant reforms in 200 years.
Europe’s migrant crisis, the continent’s greatest humanitarian disaster since the aftermath of World War II, continues to worsen. The summer began with mass drownings in the Mediterranean and bickering between the European Union and the governments of its member states over who should foot the bill…
You could tell that the plan European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker announced on September 9 for distributing 160,000 refugees around the European Union was slapdash. You could tell by the number of times Juncker felt he had to browbeat his listeners about their Nazi past. “We Europeans…
Weekend remarks concerning Russia's current activities in Syria by Gen. Philip Breedlove, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO's supreme allied commander, are far from reassuring. Speaking to reporters after NATO's Military Committee Conference in Istanbul on Saturday, Breedlove…
For the last several weeks, Air Force Secretary Deborah James has been touting the deployment of F-22 Raptor fighters – the best plane America owns – to Germany as “the strong side of the coin” in an effort to reassure Eastern Europeans who have seen their air space increasingly violated by Russian…
Have you ever had two dinners in one night? I did, more than 20 years ago, in Budapest. My buddy Todd and I had gone backpacking through Europe, hitting 11 cities in 30 days. As students, we were careful not to overspend, staying at pensions and hostels and crashing at my former host family’s house…
As he has for much of his post-presidency, Bill Clinton was on the road again in June, traveling to Europe at the end of the month for various conferences and other public appearances. After a few days in London, the president popped over to Paris for a day or two to shop at Hermès, a well-known…
The vote in Greece is running 60 percent “No” on the terms of its creditors. The same experts who had been predicting a close vote will now explain why it was a runaway in favor of … well, who knows. But count on the usual confident voices to sort it all out.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not find a home in France. The French government has announced today it will not grant asylum to the fugitive.
The crisis in Greece remains … a crisis. After five years, during which time everyone who was paying attention said it was a crisis. And, of course, the crisis went unresolved. The end game may come soon but, then, who knows? But there seems to be a consensus of sorts building around the idea…
Julian Hattem at The Hill reports that:
France needs Greece more than Greece needs France. So long as the Greeks grab the headlines with their defense of their unreformed economy, no one seems to notice that France is in violation of EU rules on the size of the allowed deficit, has such sustained high-level unemployment that its young…
The new novel Les Événements (The Events), by the French author Jean Rolin, tells the tale of a France that has descended into a chaotic and multifaceted civil war involving jihadist, nationalist and Marxist militias, in various and fluctuating combinations, as well as remnants of the regular army.…
The boss marks the D-Day anniversary with Ronald Reagan's words (and more!):
There is an important difference between European and American appetites, in addition to those for fast foods: risk taking. “Investments in Start-Ups Pick Up Pace,” reports the New York Times after surveying the high-tech financing scene here in America. “Europe Struggles to Foster a Startup…
Friday morning, David Cameron returned to Downing Street as Britain's prime minister. After a campaign of unsurpassed tedium, the General Election came alive last night with the first exit poll, and a Conservative victory out of nowhere. For weeks, the incumbent Conservatives and the Labour…
Friday marks the seventieth anniversary of Victory in Europe, or V-E, Day, when the Allies accepted Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender after six long years of war. No one should have savored that day in 1945 more than Winston Churchill, the wartime British prime minister. Yet he was to a…
Springtime in the Mediterranean: The skies are clear, the waters are calm, and the migrants are drowning. In 2014, the U.S. Border Patrol estimated that 307 people died while being smuggled into the United States from Mexico. So far this year, more than 1,650 people have drowned as they attempted…
Bill de Blasio is trying to insert himself into the foreign policy arena. The New York City mayor, more specifically, has commented on the deaths of refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
As reported by the Austrian daily Der Standard, some fifty Bosnian soccer fans broke into a chant of “Kill, kill the Jews!” during a pro-Palestinian rally in Vienna’s central Saint Stephan’s Square last week. The incident appears to have occurred on Tuesday, when the Bosnian national team was in…
Shlomo Papirblat of Haaretz is reporting that:
The question as to why Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of Germanwings flight 9525 would intentionally bring about the crash of the plane is at the source of much of the perplexity surrounding the Germanwings tragedy. Even if we suppose that Lubitz was suicidal, it is obviously one thing to commit…
An Iranian journalist writing about the nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran has defected. In an interview Amir Hossein Motaghi, has some harsh words for his native Iran. He also has a damning indictment of America's role in the nuclear negotiations.
A French prosecutor named Andreas Lubitz, 28 years old, as the co-pilot who may have been responsible for the downed European flight.
Clinton Makes Trouble For Cuomo
Today is the sixth anniversary of Hillary Clinton's reset with Russia. That's when Clinton physically gave her Russian counterpart a "reset" button (though, in fact, she got the translation wrong):
Seventy years ago, on March 1, 1945, Franklin Roosevelt assured a war-weary nation that a new era of international peace and democratic government was at hand. The accords signed just weeks earlier at the Yalta Conference, he told Congress, laid the foundation for postwar cooperation between the…
Vice President Biden spent about a day and a half in Belgium in early February to meet with various European leaders, but his entourage, security team and other delegation members required up to 209 rooms for up to three weeks surrounding the visit. While the estimated tab was $690,507, this cost…
If you ignore the cringe-worthy opening line of this article from the Pew Research Center – the Holocaust did far worse than “decimate” Europe’s Jewish population – you will find some interesting facts. In a nutshell, Europe’s Jewish population continues to decline. There are now approximately 1.4…
Vice President Joe Biden is in Europe today where how spoke out against Vladimir Putin's aggression toward Ukraine.
According to this Reuters headline, Germany is getting its game face on
France’s momentary appearance on the world stage as a champion of free expression, after the execution of the beloved Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, made for a break in her relentless culture of repression of free speech, which she shares with most of Europe. Aside from a handful of…
With the price of oil plunging, the ruble crashing against other currencies, and its interest rates soaring, Russia has announced to the world that it:
The European Parliament has called for the dismemberment of Google, the French want “les Gafa,” as they call Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, reined in, EU regulators are under pressure to get tough with the Americans. And the leaders of Silicon Valley’s non-tax-paying, privacy-invading,…
Europe is experiencing increased, and threatening, intrusions by Russian aircraft and:
Bloomberg is reporting that:
Following the lead of Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Secretary of State John Kerry Sunday began using the Arabic acronym "Daesh" at times when referring to the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS). Kerry was in Egypt for a meeting with Egyptian foreign minister Shoukry, and spoke extensively about the…
Gdansk
It is a global economy and Europe is sneezing. As the FT report:
When Joe Biden addressed the John F. Kennedy Forum at Harvard's Kennedy School in Boston last Thursday night, he said that the "international order that we painstakingly built after World War II and defended over the past several decades is literally fraying at the seams right now." Thanks to some…
“Good old rugby football. All over the British Isles its exponents were in the van of those who went.” —Walter Carey, Bishop of Bloemfontein and former British Lion, 1921 One hundred years ago, the rugby pitches of the British Empire and France emptied out, and a generation of players traded in…
In the late 17th century, times were tough in Scotland. The Stuarts, the Scots’ royal family, had been tossed off the throne of England for a second time, and the country had been excluded from the burgeoning English system of international trade regulated by the Navigation Acts. Even the climate…
This week’s referendum on Scottish independence may seem like an obscure, perhaps even Ruritanian quarrel to many Americans, but it has profound implications not just for the U.K. and Europe but also for the United States.
The Great War did not begin in the trenches, in rain, mud, and dark futility. At first, the fighting was out in the open under blue skies and late summer sunshine. There were bugles and drums, and sometimes the troops even sang when they charged. French officers leading these attacks wore white…
With the president attending this week's NATO summit in Wales, and the heightened concerns among the organization’s members – especially the newer ones with experience of hand’s-on Russian domination and rule – it might be profitable for our “allies” to consider some facts reported by Gideon…
It was a threat Europe’s security services had long feared coming true. In June, Mehdi Nemmouche, a French-born jihadist who had returned to Europe after fighting in Syria with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, shot four people to death in an attack at the Jewish museum in Brussels. While the…
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece of August 6 about “the surge of poisonous anti-Semitism around the world, particularly in Europe,” Andrew Nagorski had the temerity to note that “the president [Obama] has not prominently addressed the subject of rising anti-Semitism in Europe, much less its…
Here, in the parlance of the times, is a “pro-tip.” When attempting to rebut the notion that anti-Semitism in Europe is largely a problem caused by young Muslim men, don’t cite two horrific anti-Semitic atrocities perpetrated by . . . young Muslim men.
I've lived in Europe the past dozen years—in Berlin, Prague, and London. When it comes to Israel, Europe's ways seldom cease to amaze.
The Chevrolet Volt is done in Europe. As David Shepardson of the Detroit News reports:
Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:
At Tablet, French writer Marc Weitzmann explains what is behind the attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels on Saturday that killed a visiting Israeli couple, a French volunteer at the museum, and a Belgian museum employee. Weitzmann is a well-known novelist, literary critic, screenwriter, and…
Going by the returns, the voters were weary of high unemployment, economic growth that it would be charitable to call “sluggish,” and a high-living, rule-writing bureaucratic elite enthralled by its own policymaking genius and inclined to dismiss critics as ignorant racists.
Italy has long been Europe’s political laboratory, having invented fascism, incubated eurocommunism, launched the postwar economic miracle, and brought the social democratic nanny state to ruin. Most Italians are very unhappy, as well they might be. Unemployment is at record highs (13 percent…
The crisis in Ukraine has not reached the dreaded point where it turns into a shooting war. And likely it will not. So we hear no urgent analysis of things like objectives, interior lines, unity of command, logistical staying power, the durability of alliances, and the other matters that have…
The situation in Ukraine continues to deteriorate, providing Russia with what it considers a case for intervention. As James Marson and Lukas I. Alpert of the Wall Street Journal report this morning:
In late March, President Obama took a week-long trip through Europe which included a stop of less than 24 hours in Brussels, Belgium for meetings with the European Union and NATO. The president stayed at The Hotel, a twenty-seven story hotel in the center of the city. The estimated cost for the…
General Secretary Xi Jinping of China is in Lyon, France today, the second stop on a European swing, his first trip there since taking over the leadership of China’s Communist party. He has already visited Amsterdam, where he met with President Obama. After France, including a visit to Paris, Mr.…
President Obama is keeping up the rhetorical pressure on Russia. As Justin Sink of the Hill reports:
In a recently leaked private phone call, an EU foreign policy official, Helga Schmid, grumbled to the EU’s ambassador to Kiev that it was “very annoying” that the United States had criticized the EU for being “too soft” to impose sanctions on Ukraine. Criticism may be annoying, but EU softness is a…
At today’s press conference with French president François Hollande, a member of the French press asked President Obama whether France had replaced Great Britain as America’s closest ally.
In his ponderously titled book Contributions to the Correction of the Public’s Judgement Concerning the French Revolution (1793), the German philosopher and political leader Johann Gottlieb Fichte took time out from his defense of the Reign of Terror to compose what has been called by Daniel…
Advocates of assisted suicide tell two—no, three—lies that act as the honey to help the hemlock go down. The first is that assisted suicide/euthanasia is a strictly medical act. Second, they falsely assure us that medicalized killing is only for the terminally ill. Finally, they promise that strict…
Apparently relations between the United States and Europe are actually maturing. How else to account for the singular absence of transatlantic crisis-mongering over the many, many ways in which the Obama administration has annoyed our allies in Europe?
The Good Book tells us “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work He had done in creation.” What biblical scholars cannot tell us, however, is precisely how God spent his Sunday. Did He go for a run? Read the paper while sipping on a venti macchiato at…
It is often remarked that espionage is the second-oldest profession. Written records from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Iran suggest that spying and civilization sprang up together. In antiquity, spies could be the hidden bureaucrats of tyranny or good governance (a ruler needed to know whether a satrap…
Last week in these pages, Ike Brannon noted that Europe is outstripping the United States in reducing the role of government in the economy (“Europe Leads the Way?” October 14). Now it seems that our European brethren are also taking a more sensible view of the regulatory state. The European…
The captain of the ms Noordam has announced that due to the choppy seas we won't be able to put in, as planned, at Santorini—but that rather than having another day at sea, we're boldly heading off to dock at Iraklion, Crete.
On board the ms Noordam, at port in Venice
For much of the last century the United States was the world’s beacon for capitalism, but these days we’re far from such a lofty perch. Since the end of the Cold War, countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain have moved to reduce the role of government in the economy by changing the tax code as…
In Sweden, President Obama complained about the way he's sometimes treated back home in the United States, and suggested he'd be more welcomed in Europe:
Last week, the New York Times ran a piece on the dire demographic problems facing Germany. The short version: Germans aren’t having enough kids, and as a result the economy is in trouble and there are all sorts of logistical problems—vacant buildings that need to be razed; houses that will never be…
Democratic senator Mary Landrieu says she's embarrassed to go to places in Europe like France and Spain because some Americans do not have health insurance. Landrieu, who is up for reelection in 2014, represents the state of Louisiana.
The Balkan republic of Kosovo has not been spared infiltration by Islamist extremism. In June, Imam Irfan Salihu from the historic and multifaith southern Kosovo city of Prizren—the country’s second largest after the capital, Pristina—was relieved of his mosque duties after delivering a harangue in…
The indispensable online magazine of Jewish life and thought, Mosaic, is featuring a spectacular contribution by our friend, the French journalist and president of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, Michel Gurfinkiel. Gurfinkiel offers a sweeping, compelling, and, yes, depressing assessment of…
This week the EU took a stance that it heralded as pro-peace, pro-"peace process," and anti-settlement. Henceforth, new guidelines require all 28 member nations to refuse any grants, scholarships, prizes, or funding to entities in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Or any part of Jerusalem that…
Here’s a TTIP for you. No, that’s not a typo missed by our ever-vigilant editors. It stands for Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, what British prime minister David Cameron calls a “once-in-a-generation prize” that can create two million jobs on both sides of the Atlantic, and Sir…
The Scrapbook tends to avoid inductive reasoning—that is, drawing a general conclusion from specific examples—because any good polemicist can cherry-pick his anecdotes. But some recent tidings from Bratislava, in Slovakia, have tempted us to wander down Inductive Lane.
As if there isn't already enough on the agenda for the G-8 Summit, now Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is threatening Europe by hinting at a terror campaign on the continent. If the Europeans arm the Syrian rebels, Assad told the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "then Europe's backyard…
The White House announces President Obama will speak at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin later this month:
Speaking today in Stockholm, Sweden, John Kerry called "climate change" a "life and death" issue. And the secretary of state apologized on behalf of the United States for not doing enough to fight "climate change."
Early in this book, author Brendan Simms, professor of history at Cambridge, quotes John Locke: “How fond soever I am of peace I think truth ought to accompany it, which cannot be preserved without Liberty. Nor that without the Balance of Europe kept up.” As Simms indicates, for Locke, “truth” was…
The Associated Press reports:
Since the Shermans of General Patton's Third Army crossed the Rhine on March 22, 1945, there have been American tanks in Germany. No more, as John Vandiver of Stars and Stripes reports.
Bjorn Lomborg claimed on John Stossel's television show last night that money isn't being spent well to combat "global warming":
Walter Russell Mead writes that “Francois Hollande really can’t catch a break. One of the most memorable election promises he made was to raise marginal tax rates on the very rich—those making €1 million or more—to an eye-popping 75%. His government has, alas, finally decided to scrap that…
The Russian energy company Gazprom is offering to bailout Cyprus in exchange for gas exploration rights, according to media reports.
Recall how improbable it seemed that the tiny nation of Greece might bring down the Euro and cripple the world's financial mechanisms? And, then, the story – if not the danger – seemed to fade away. Well, it now appears that the even more insignificant island of Cyprus may provide the spark. As…
Italy has long been the political laboratory of the West. From Roman republics and tyrannies through the city-states of the Renaissance, into the Counter-Reformation and on to fascism, Eurocommunism, and homegrown terrorism, the Italians have provided us with advance looks at our future. We should…
All of the fuss by the G-7 and the G-20 at their meeting this week about whether Japan should be condemned for attempting to end decades of stagnation by easing monetary policy, with the effect of driving down the yen, makes for good copy. Especially since the various G-7 spokesmen put on a…
Yesterday the Bulgarian government announced the results of its investigation into the July 18, 2012 bus bombing that killed 5 Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver in the city of Burgas. At least two members of what appears to have been a three-man team belong to Hezbollah. More…
Sarajevo
The New York Times has finally discovered that fiscal cliffs aren’t the only thing that menace the modern nation-state. There’s a demographic cliff, too. A couple weeks ago, the Times’s Ross Douthat wrote a column about America’s bleak demographic future and suggested that the reason we aren’t…
Gary Schmitt writes that Nobel Peace Prize committee snubbed NATO:
Denmark has long been regarded as one of the world's most attractive nations, for citizens and tourists alike. My own visits there, years ago as a student, were delightful. And the Danes have a wonderful history of civic virtue, not least during the Holocaust. As the United States Holocaust…
When asked whether he favored legalizing marijuana, former president Jimmy Carter made clear that he did.
Benjamin Weinthal reports that "Death to the Jews" chants were heard in the streets of Vienna:
The World Jewish Congress is expressing concern about an anti-Semitic and racist outburst at a recent soccer game. The concern relates to a Europa League game between Italian team S.S. Lazio and the English the Tottenham Hotspur. The match took place Thursday night in Rome.
After a year and a half of conflict, and despite some 40,000 deaths, the world still stands impotent to end the bloodshed in Syria. With Russia and China reviving their recurring role as United Nations Security Council obstructionists, concerned countries have been forced to seek out meaningful…
At Harry's Bar, 5 rue Daunou, 2eme, Paris—in the deepest of deep blue precincts!—Mitt Romney is doing surprisingly well in the early vote, trailing Barack Obama by only about 10 percentage points. Sophisticated statistical analyses of early voting trends suggest this may well mean diminished Obama…
A chart from the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee shows that "U.S. Per Person Debt [Is] Now 35 Percent Higher than that of Greece."
The European Union passed a new round of Iran sanctions on Monday, targeting the Islamic Republic’s vulnerable financial, shipping, and bank sectors.
The 2012 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the European Union (EU), was lauded by the Norwegian selection committee for having “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” Among various attainments, some decades in the past and others arguable, the…
The Nobel Peace Prize committee has given this year's award to the European Union. The committee explains in a press release:
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