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 ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 30, 2009 06:10
EU Georgia Report False Equivalency
As widely anticipated, an EU report on last year's Russian invasion of Georgia finds plenty of blame to go around, finding that Tblisi "triggered" the conflict but that Moscow violated international law by its invasion and with numerous atrocities thereafter. This leads John Cole to quip, "Was the McCain/Palin campaign right about anything?" As I detail in my New Atlanticist post, "EU: ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 30, 2009 14:03
Britain Seeks Ban On Pint Glasses
As part of their ongoing effort to cement George Orwell's reputation by making him the most accurate prophet in history, the British Home Office is now investigating the possiblity of forcing every Pub in Britain to replace pint glasses with plastic pint cups: The BBC reported recently that the British Home Office is seeking a new design for pint glasses that ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 30, 2009 10:25
NATO’s Future
I've been busy at the Atlantic Council today covering two huge events. First, Senator Richard Lugar delivered a speech on the Future of NATO. In addition to the usual niceties about the important of transatlantic cooperation, Lugar argued that we need "boots on the ground" in Eastern Europe to assuage their fears about Alliance commitment and that NATO should consider unconventional ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 28, 2009 16:49
Poland and Czech Republic Don’t Feel “Abandoned”
Via Steven Taylor, we note that neither Poland nor the Czech Republic feel "abandoned" by Obama's decision to scrap missile defense replace an expensive, ineffective boondoggle "missile defense system" with a less expensive, mobile, effective land and sea-based SM-3 interceptor force. Here's the Polish Prime Minister: Tusk said that Obama's "proposal of an alternative strategy should not affect the security ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 18, 2009 12:40
Did Obama Break Promise on Missiles?
I've been critical of the optics of President Obama's decision to abandon missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland. But I disagree with Jim Geraghty's assertion that it also represents breaking a promise made in April. Here's what he said in Prague: So let me be clear: Iran's ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 18, 2009 10:21
Obama Abandons Poland
On the 70th Anniversary of Russia's invasion of Poland, Barack Obama announced that he was abandoning Bush era plans to install ballistic missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, pleasing Moscow and igniting fear among our Eastern European allies. In my New Atlanticist essay "Obama Abandons Poland and Czech Missile Defense," I take exception to the strategic rationale offered ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 17, 2009 12:06
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 ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 15, 2009 09:29
Does America Still Love Germany?
My New Atlanticist essay "German-American Partnership in Peril?" answers a question that likely hasn't occurred to many Americans. Angela Merkel is in town, though, and a spate of pieces in the German press this week have expressed the concern that Asia and "Europe" are getting all the attention while Berlin is becoming an afterthought. There are legitimate and substantial policy differences, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 26, 2009 12:11
We’re All Iranians Now!
Amidst the blogospheric solidarity for the Iranian protestors, it's worth pointing to news that has been overshadowed by those events: The UN and OSCE monitors are leaving Georgia. Despite declarations that "we're all Georgians now," the fact of the matter has been from the beginning that neither the United States nor Western Europe had any appetite to go toe-to-toe with the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 16, 2009 16:12
Windows Ships Without IE – How to Download Firefox?
Steven Taylor points to a BBC report that, in response to EU complaints about its monopsony oligopoly power, Microsoft will ship Windows 7 to Europe minus Internet Explorer. In addition to thinking, as I do, that the whole thing is rather silly, he wonders about the practicalities of this: [O]ne suspects that a new Windows machine will have a tool to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 12, 2009 13:07
Europe’s Fringe
The press had a field day with the election of various racist and oddball parties to the European Parliament over the weekend. A quick scan of the headlines: "European election results Battered and bruised" (The Economist); "European elections 2009: far-Right and fringe parties make gains across Europe amid low turnout" (The Telegraph); "European elections: extremist and fringe parties are the big ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 11, 2009 11:39
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 ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 8, 2009 12:14
Scrap NATO?
As the NATO heads of government prepare to converge on Kehl and Strasbourgh for the Alliance's 60th anniversary Summit, they're facing extreme skepticism from some heavy hitters in the security policy community. Ted Galen Carpenter terms it a "Hollow Alliance." Andrew Bacevich wants the USA to quit in order to save it. Mark Medish wants to rename it POTATO. In my ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 2, 2009 14:48
Obama Snubs Sarkozy with Chirac Overture?
Fresh off the heels of snubbing Gordon Brown by not holding a joint press conference with him and giving him a gift that could have been purchased at Wal-Mart, Barack Obama has annoyed Nicolas Sarkozy by sending a mash note to former French president Jacques Chirac asserting that, "I am certain that we will be able to work together, in ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 23, 2009 10:16
