Foreign Affairs
I’m sure they are: President Obama said yesterday that he had told Russia that reducing Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon would in turn lessen the need for a U.S.-planned missile-defense system in Eastern Europe that Moscow has opposed. But Obama said he sought no “quid pro quo” with Moscow. Obama also said it was…
Charles Krauthammer is not optimistic that initial indications of foreign-policy acumen in the Obama White House are not plentiful: The Biden prophecy has come to pass. Our wacky veep, momentarily inspired, predicted in October that “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama.” Biden probably had in mind an eve-of-the-apocalypse drama…
Mark Patinkin’s bullet-list-style column, today, makes two quips that, helpful soul that I am, I’ll try to answer: Someone will have to explain to me why Palestinian militants feel it’s productive to keep firing rockets into Israel. Because, receiving no substantial international backlash against the practice, the terrorists wish to provoke Israel into military action,…
Fans of our new president perhaps imagine us non-fans as scowling through the day today, embittered by all that hope and rueful of the change to come. Me, I’m just going about my business, as I have on every inauguration day within my lifetime. That said, Andrew Stuttaford’s suggestion is an attractive one, although I…
In the Netherlands, the canals have frozen over for the first time in years and the Dutch are strapping on their skates and having a blast, albeit with a few bumps and bruises. But the politics are never far away, even in what you’d think would be a feel-good story. First, there’s the environmental angle:…
Although he offers an historical contextualization of the rioting in Greece, Robert Kaplan worries that they may be an indication of the century to come: The protests of today are not about America; they are about the legitimacy of a government that has been in power for four years without achieving much. With the global…
Mark Patinkin’s reasonable on the Israel-Palestine conflict: These were not rogue militants acting on their own. Gaza is now controlled by the extremist Hamas government. The missile firings were allowed, even encouraged, from on high. At last, on Dec. 27, Israel launched a counterattack to stop the rockets. Much of the coverage outside the United…
Like any patriot, I’ve got a problem with this: U.S. manufacturers say they’ve learned to compete against China’s lower wages. What they can’t compete with are government subsidies that enable China to sell some finished products for less than the fiber alone costs in the United States. The difficulty is in the solution. I’ve got…
Given what follows, it’s difficult to comprehend Matthew Stevenson’s initial statement that “the more general trend is European indifference to the policies of the United States.” He proceeds to explain: Economically, Europeans blame America’s financial narcissism for the recent market panic and recession. And: On security, Europeans feel hung over from the binge of recent…
Both the remark and the reporter’s presentation are worthy of note in this recent New York Times piece on Israel’s movement of ground troops into Gaza: Another woman found only half of the body of her 17-year-old daughter in the Shifa morgue. “May God exterminate Hamas!” she screamed, in a curse rarely heard these days.…
