Outside the Beltway

Former French president Jacques Chirac is being tried on corruption charges stemming from misconduct as mayor of Paris.

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum thinks we’ve been too hard on the Crusaders.

Frank Jacobs explains how “in German, you can tell with some degree of certainty which general area someone hails from by the way they tell the time at quarter past ten.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron has made public documents which confirm his predecessors role in the release of the man convicted of bringing down Pan Am Flight 103.

A new Wikileaks revelation indicates that the U.S. may have paid a heavy price to get a deal on New START.

European subsidies have given Airbus a competitive advantage over America’s Boeing in commercial aircraft salesboein. The reverse is true on military aircraft.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was greeted with protests from some EU parliamentarians when he addressed them as its rotating president of the European Council.

Is the West’s string of luck about to end?

Joe Ratzinger, the future pope, lobbied hard against Turkey’s membership in the EU.

Julian Assange is a loathsome human being. Is he also a rapist? Under Swedish law, maybe.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested Tuesday in London on a Swedish warrant.

The long awaited new strategic concept, launching what has been termed “NATO 3.0,” has been published under the banner “Active Engagement, Modern Defense.”

Once again, Angela Merkel has held her ground and forced the other EU leaders to accommodate Germany’s policy concerns. This time, it’s a set of amendments to the Lisbon Treaty to deal with sovereign debt emergencies.

Police in Turkey have arrested 12 people suspected of links to Islamist militant network al-Qaeda in Istanbul and Van province.

World Politics Review has published a special issue on “NATO’s Identity Crisis” ahead of next month’s Lisbon summit and the unveiling of a new Strategic Concept. I contributed the lead essay, “NATO in an Age of Austerity.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel declare multiculturalism in Germany to be a “failure.” Proof that anti-immigration activists in the United States are correct, right?

Venezuela have reached a series of agreement on energy. Should the US be concerned?

The State Department’s terrorism threat warning for Europe is probably meaningless. If it isn’t, it’ll be perceived that way.

Yesterday’s NATO Beyond Afghanistan conference was a depressing day for fans of the most successful military alliance in history.

Apparently, riding in a gilded carriage with footmen does not preclude one from seeking welfare funds in the United Kingdom.

Turkey reformed its constitution over the weekend, in what Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised “will go down in history as a turning point in Turkish democracy.” But there’s strong disagreement over which way it’s headed.

Lost amidst the welcome news of British-French cooperation on military cost-sharing in some tough talk from their ministers of defense on NATO.

Responding the near-collapse of the Greek economy, forestalled only by a massive bailout from their brethren, the EU’s finance ministers agreed this morning to submit the outlines of their budget plans for approval by the European Commission.

If you think anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States is running high, a look across the Pond will put things in perspective.

What do the critics mean when they say that the United States should be more like Germany?

German government payments compensating hunters for lost income due to radioactive boar have quadrupled since 2007.

The world would undoubtedly be a better place if Islamic fundamentalism reached even 19^th century Western notions of individualism and gender equality. But cultures evolve over decades, and bans on their practices are not useful means of promoting positive change within them.

84 of 91 European banks passed their stress tests. How will investors react?

Feldpost für unsere Soldaten is a campaign recognizing the sacrifices of German soldiers fighting in Afghanistan.

My latest for The National Interest, arguing that the talk of crisis in Europe is overblown, is up. Naturally, they’ve titled it “Crisis in the EU.”

It turns out that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi isn’t dying after all, at least not any faster than any other human being.

Israel and Turkey held secret, informal talks recently. This is interesting, given the recent flotilla incident. What is more interesting is that the Israeli Foreign Minister learned of the event via the press.

Contrary to popular belief, Adolf Hitler didn’t come to power by democratic means or because of his ability to whip the public into a frenzy.