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
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 ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 22, 2009 07:01
Obama Gave Brown Unplayable DVDs
You can't make this stuff up: While not exactly a film buff, Gordon Brown was touched when Barack Obama gave him a set of 25 classic American movies – including Psycho, starring Anthony Perkins on his recent visit to Washington. Alas, when the PM settled down to begin watching them the other night, he found there was a problem. The films only worked ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 20, 2009 05:36
France Defies US on NATO
Who would ever have guessed that France's reentry into the NATO military command would cause headaches for the United States? French defense minister Herve Morin signaled that his country will attempt to be a counterweight to the United States now that it rejoined the NATO military command. In addition to reiterating that France will not send more troops to Afghanistan, it ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 19, 2009 10:45
Merging NATO and the EU
Paul Hockenos, editor of Internationale Politik-Global Edition, argues in an intriguing Spiegel piece that the United States should rethink its relationship with NATO and instead focus on the EU. In my New Atlanticist piece "Should Obama Abandon NATO for the EU?," I argue against his false dilemma and point out reasons why it benefits the United States to work with both ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 11, 2009 08:02
Jim Inhofe Interview
On the night before CPAC, Senator James M. Inhofe's staff reached out to me to see if I would be interested in interviewing him. I was, indeed, but Inhofe never made it to CPAC Thursday because of a series of unscheduled votes, so it became an email exchange instead. Because Inhofe is the second ranking Republican on Armed Services Committee and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 4, 2009 12:14
New Iron Curtain?
The political financial crisis came to a head yesterday in Europe, with Hungary begging for help from its fellow EU members under the peril of a new "iron curtain" dividing the Continent and getting matter-of-factly rejected. My New Atlanticist piece on the controversy, "Economic 'Iron Curtain' Dividing Europe?" concludes: The present crisis has had the salutory effect of splashing a bit ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 2, 2009 10:27
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 ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 1, 2009 09:04
NATO Head Tells Europe Leadership and Burdens Go Together
You've probably never heard of Jaap de Hoop Scheffer but he's my new hero. He's secretary general of NATO and he's got a message: Europe Must 'Share the Heavy Lifting' in Afghanistan. He says it's great that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy want a greater voice in Alliance decision-making. But he says that comes with a price: Taking an equal ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 7, 2009 07:31
