Who has time for history, and a guide to managing disasters of the future, when such vast, self-inflicted damage—the legacy of Obamaism, the promise of Trumpism come to mind—must be dealt with at the moment? Here's a wager: Tevi Troy's new book will do well now. It's carefully researched, well…
Who has time for history, and a guide to managing disasters of the future, when such vast, self-inflicted damage—the legacy of Obamaism, the promise of Trumpism come to mind—must be dealt with at the moment? Here's a wager: Tevi Troy's new book will do well now. It's carefully researched, well…
It's said that hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. At first blush, that's Ukraine. On a recent visit to Kiev, we heard account after account of the problems facing Ukraine, the two most serious being corruption and the ongoing conflict with Russia. Two doozies, to be sure.
At the end of World War II, a gifted young British expert on Russia named Thomas Brimelow—later ambassador to Poland, but at the time reporting from Moscow—ventured that what the Soviet Union respected most about Great Britain was “our ability to collect friends.” Indeed, having allies in this…
In fall 1991, a member of the Slovenian parliament visited me at my office at the American Enterprise Institute to discuss her country’s campaign to join NATO. I recall the intensity of the conversation and how odd her zeal seemed to me at that moment. The Cold War was over. Slovenia’s fate as a…
"Russia is a friendly, European country,” said President Vladimir Putin in a 2001 address to the Bundestag in Berlin. Putin told German lawmakers he applauded European integration, believed in the unity of European culture, and was convinced that no one had benefited from Europe’s divisions in the…
A Kiev-based Ukrainian friend, after meeting a delegation of young Russians, emails me: "totally terrible, young Russian diplomats. Manipulation, propaganda, gloating over victory in Eastern Ukraine, this new generation even worse than before. We will have big trouble with Russia for a very long…
Warsaw
Gdansk
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.
It was a year or two before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. I was sitting in the kitchen of a small, second-floor apartment in the Thuringian town of Ilmenau, when my friend’s mother turned pensive and pointed out the window to a hill nearby. In 1945, Frau Loebner explained, American soldiers arrived…
Tallinn
There's a black and white photo, a little grainy and slightly out of focus, of Igor Stravinsky greeting Mstislav Rostropovich at the Royal Academy of Music, London, in June 1964. Standing in the background in the upper left hand corner is a tall lanky figure, a 20-year-old music student named John…
Peeling the Onion
Kiev
London
Berlin
Berlin
London
Jerusalem
Tel Aviv
Berlin
I ATTENDED A MEETING OF about 40 Syrian exile oppositionists in Paris last week. It was a bit surreal. There was the Syrian-Kurd who lives in Germany, for instance, a sweet, grandfatherly fellow with a big white mustache. The guy introduced himself to me, I glanced at his name tag to make sure I…
YOU CAN BE SURE, had Hashemi Rafsanjani been voted president in Iran's recent election, a chorus of pundits would have been calling for the administration to drop its hard line and "engage" Tehran. We witnessed this last time, when "moderate" Mohammad Khatami became president in 1997. Of course,…
Berlin
Berlin
Baghdad
Berlin
BERLIN Breakfast in Berlin is brilliant. My favorite place to go is the Mokkabar, a cafe in Kreuzberg, the district where violent lefties used to blow up cars and that the city's Turks have always called home. Today, Kreuzberg, at least the neighborhood of the Mokkabar, has calmed down. It's…
CONSIDER two foreign ministers. The first wants "to destroy" the Taliban; the second to work with "moderate Taliban leaders." The first warns repeatedly that a key terrorist aim is "the destruction of Israel." The second seeks, even now after the assassination of a government minister, to increase…
WHEN RICHARD BUTLER once shared with the United Nations Security Council a series of high-altitude photographs of some 130 heavy Republican Guard trucks gathering at an isolated spot in the desert -- they had just fled an inspection site as Butler and his arms inspection team were approaching --…
Munich
Podgorica, Montenegro
WHEN THE HISTORY OF NATO'S DEMISE is written, the entire affair, it will be said, was rich with irony. It was on the eve of the Washington Summit in April 1999. Western leaders were preparing to toast each other in the American capital when a defining moment inconveniently emerged, courtesy of…
There was high-flown talk of dreams becoming reality. The finance ministers were "visibly moved," said press reports. The Italian was "proud" to be able to call himself "a European citizen." The Portuguese called it a page "that can never be turned back," while others beamed about the "new…
George R. Urban
The Center for Attitudinal Healing "pursues healing and development at a personal, social, and spiritual level." The Center's work "empowers a deeply shared experience from which an enduring sense of community can grow." " Choose peace rather than conflict," starts one mantra -- "and love rather…
Mention Maastricht and eyes glaze over. That is, of course, unless discussion is punctuated by anecdotes about Brussels bureaucrats working feverishly to "harmonize" rules on everything from the size of condoms to the curvature of bananas. According to new legislation, "visually challenged" truck…