Obama’s Europe Neglect Could Bring Bush Nostalgia

My first piece for ForeignPolicy.com, "Europe's Obama Fatigue," is online. Despite George W. Bush's defiant "you're with us or you're against us" public stance, he actively solicited advice and input from his NATO partners. Obama, by contrast, is saying all the right things in public about transatlantic relations and NATO but adopting a high-handed policy and paying little attention to Europe. [...] It would ...

Caption Contest

Time for the Thursday OTB Caption ContestTM REUTERS/Eliana Aponte (MEXICO SOCIETY) Winners will be announced Monday PM

Greece’s Socialists Win

Greece's Socialist Party has defeated the New Democracy Party in the country's national elections with enough seats to form a government: ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's Socialists, who campaigned on a promise to inject a 3 billion euro ($4.36 billion) stimulus package into the economy, have won Sunday's national election with enough seats to form a government. Various analysts are quoted: Voters gave a ...

Old Europe, New Europe

Back in 2003, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously noted that while "Old Europe" (particularly France and Germany) was hard to work with, America could count on "New Europe."   Fast forward to 2009 and we may have reversed polarity. My latest New Atlanticist essay, "Losing New Europe, Too?" explores this evolution, including why Western Europe is back in the fold and why ...

You Know You Got it When You’re Going Insane

Norm Geras (who just celebrated his 6th blogging anniversary) points us to this hilariously annoying SPIEGEL interview with Wired editor Chris Anderson: SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let's talk about the future of journalism. Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don't use the word journalism. SPIEGEL: Okay, how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States ...

EU Elections: Good Night for the Right

I begin my New Atlanticist roundup essay "European Parliament Moves Right" with, "The weekend's European Parliament produced good news for the center-right parties, bad news for the center-left, and good news for radical parties of all stripes." I plan other posts today on the implications for the major governments and smaller states in Europe.  This post, though, focuses on the general ...

Poland Celebrates 20 Years of Voting

As the 20th anniversary of the Solidarity movement's triumph approaches, Poland finds itself divided politically and unhappy with its current state of affairs.   As I argue in my New Atlanticist piece "Poland's Democracy at 20," this is a good thing. Unhappiness with the quality of one's politicians, too, is a sure sign of a maturing democracy.  Gone are the days when ...

U.S. Defense Spending and the Free Rider Problem

My New Atlanticist essay "Australia Prepares for U.S. Decline" discusses a recent Aussie white paper that is generating much discussion in the foreign policy wonkosphere.  Basically, they see a rapidly rising China and a United States that's overstretched with other commitments and could therefore reduce our commitments to the Asia-Pacific region.  Hence, they're planning for major defense upgrades. Andrew Shearer sees ...

Here and There

Eugene Volokh takes on a pedantic emailer irritated at his use of "the lion's share" in the way it has been used for the last several centuries rather than the original coinage by Aesop. Kevin Drum independently draws the same conclusions I do re: the reasonableness of networks' complaints about Obama's all-too-frequent prime time press conferences. Barry Horn reports that Pennsylvania Congressman ...

Let France Do It

Presumably invigorated by our resounding successes in nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, the editors of the Washington Post have come down in favor of U. S.-led nation-building as the solution for piracy in Somalia: Last week's crisis offers the Obama administration an opportunity to avoid perpetuating past errors. No, we aren't advocating another massive U.N. intervention in the country backed by ...

Obama to Run GM, Chrysler

President Obama says he'll help GM and Chrysler but they'll have to agree to some "pretty drastic changes." "We will provide them some help," Obama said. "I know that it is not popular to provide help to auto workers — or to auto companies. But my job is to measure the costs of allowing these auto companies just to collapse versus ...

Macedonia’s Bicycle

There was an old Bill Cosby bit about an uncle who promised him that he'd get a bicycle for Christmas if he'd just be good.  Bye and bye, the uncle would find some minor transgression as an excuse and tell him that he'd ruined his changes at the bicycle.  Eventually, it dawned on Bill that the uncle never had any ...

Exchange Rates Fluctuate!

In my New Atlanticist piece "Euro Drops Ever So Slightly After Bailout Rejection," I give a YahooNews headline writer a hard time for turning an insignificant change in the dollar-euro exchange rate into a commentary on Europe's response to the financial crisis. Hilarity (or, at least, some historical perspective) ensues. Photo by Flickr user Alex Segre under Creative Commons license.

US-Europe Relations Still Need Work

A series of discordant columns over the weekend makes it clear that a new American president has not been a magic fix for the transatlantic relationship. Indeed, the global financial crisis has exacerbated differences, not just between America and Europe but within Europe as well. I round up and synthesize these columns in my New Atlanticist piece "Obama Has Not ...

From the Archives

Looking for the Colonel Jessup discussion I referenced in my last post, I came across the post "GOOD MOVIE, WRONG LESSON," written on January 31, 2003 and imported over from the original blogspot site (unfortunately, owing to then-existing vagaries, sans comments).  It was the fourth substantive post and fifth total post ever on the site, written on my first day ...