A primer for the ultimate Greek tragedy? On the Ides of September US President Joe Biden shifted the Great Game overnight from Afghanistan (and Europe) to Oceania (and Asia) by announcing a new informal AUKUS defense partnership. The United States…
NATO summit – the View from Berlin
The two-day celebration of NATO’s 70th anniversary in London this week was a success. Neither the United States, France, nor Turkey quit the world’s longest-lasting alliance in a huff. This was without a doubt the lowest bar for accomplishment in…
Bending the Bamboo
Should Europe add pro-democracy protests in far-off Hong Kong to its list of geopolitical crises to confront in order to plug gaps left by America’s abdication of global leadership? Yes, say European Union foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini, human-rights activists…
The First Armageddon: The View from Berlin
A three-bell alarm is ringing in Germany, in the European Union, and in transatlantic relations. Yet so far, voters seem oblivious to the threat. That’s why the vote for the European Parliament (EP) next week – normally a sleepy affair…
A Specter Is Haunting Europe
The thirteen-year era of “Mutti” (“mama”) Angela Merkel just ended — not with a bang, but with a whimper. Germany’s most beloved politician for a long decade was not voted out of office. Nor did the veteran chancellor succumb to…
Poland B vs. Poland A
President Andrzej Duda’s veto of two laws this month–they would have subordinated Poland’s independent courts to the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS)–delayed briefly the campaign of the Catholic right-wing PiS to bring all three branches of governance under its…
Tillerson Flips Putin
In a three-hour refueling layover in Ukraine on Sunday US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson scored a little-noticed judo flip on that judo master, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Suddenly the big question is no longer last week’s worry in the…
Gunfight at the Ukraine Corral
2016 promises to be a decisive year for Ukraine. The sudden resignation on 3 February of Economics Minister Aivaras Abromavicius – and the immediate sharp fall of Ukraine’s sovereign bonds – suggest that the showdown is at hand, much sooner…
Will Ukraine Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?
Kiev has won an improbable victory by holding Russia’s military behemoth to a stalemate in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s undeclared war on Ukraine. After a year of intensive shelling during a poorly observed truce in the Donbas, the big guns…
Vietnam’s Postwar Generation
Hanoi / December 2013 The best way to see Hanoi is to ride pillion on Do Duyen’s motorbike. Duyen, like most Vietnamese drivers (except when they drink too much rice wine at Tet or at weddings) has a sixth sense…