Yes, it was a soporific campaign that led to Sunday’s coronation of Angela Merkel as Germany’s third-term German chancellor and (still) the world’s most powerful woman. But no, that doesn’t mean stagnation in Berlin’s foreign policy. As skillfully as she…
Berlin’s Take on Syria: Spectrum Mirrors US
Berlin holds up an intriguing mirror to America’s Syria policy. Chancellor Angela Merkel, like President Barack Obama, has been snatched from shame by the diplomatic judo of the past two weeks. And divided opinion in Germany spreads across the same…
Losing Afghanistan
Who lost Afghanistan? President George W. Bush, by hubris? Gen. David Petraeus, by his faith in counterinsurgency doctrine? Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose clan skimmed off fortunes from the 90 percent of the Afghan budget funded by the West? Warlord…
Spanish and British Fleets Face Off Again in Gibraltar
Think of Gibraltar as a whimsical footnote to last week’s abrupt abdication by Britain from “punching above its weight” for half a century in its post-empire world. Even as the mother of parliaments has barred its government from joining an…
What the NSA Can Learn From Sweden
When Congress reconvenes in Washington after the summer break, it will try – for the first time since the 1970s – to recalibrate the proper balance between security and privacy in treatment of signals intelligence. It could learn a lot…
Merkel Goes Trekking 9 Weeks Before Election
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has now given her July press conference and vanished into the Tyrolean Alps on her usual summer vacation free of public politics. Her trip highlights another way in which Germany lags behind the United States in…
The Hague Tribunal Heritage after 20 Years
As the special war-crimes court for ex-Yugoslavia celebrates its 20th anniversary in Sarajevo today and prepares to close its doors by 2016, it seems to have performed better at politics than at jurisprudence. That’s not a bad record, perhaps, for…
Recycling Curveball: What Really Went Wrong
Remember Curveball? He was the star witness Secretary of State Colin Powell cited in February 2003 to “prove” to the United Nations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that it was urgent to invade Iraq and not give the…
Serbia Enters Europe: The End of the Bloody Balkan Wars
Yes, it’s laudable that Croatia just became the first new member of the European Union in six years. Yet the really breathtaking news from the Balkans this week is the humdrum fact that Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga attended Croatia’s celebrations…
Serbia’s Metamorphosis: From “Bandit” to “Decent”
There are many things you could say about the European Union-brokered agreement on broad principles that the Serbian and Kosovar foes struck at long last this past weekend. That it is historic—the definitive end to the nasty Balkan wars of…