The Bidens are serving the Macrons US-made wine and cheese. A cute gesture or a clumsy diplomatic move?
The Bidens are serving the Macrons US-made wine and cheese. A cute gesture or a clumsy diplomatic move?
After Donald Trump won the elections in the US, Twitter was abuzz with the picture of potential UN Security Council country leaders that included Theresa May, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi...
[I've been debating whether to post this...it's a "transcript" of a talk I gave yesterday here at the University of Puget Sound. It's a bit basic as it was intended for a general audience of,...
The horrifying events in Paris tonight are almost beyond comprehension. While we don't know much more than the specific facts on the ground--coordinated attacks, suicide bombers at Le Stade de...
Quite a weekend, the opening of Zero Dark Thirty in the U.S. reminding everyone of the interventionist elements of the Obama Doctrine (see my next post) and a full-fledged French intervention in Mali, not to mention U.S. assistance with a French hostage liberation operation tucked away on the inside pages. Washington, D.C. is a funny place these days...all but two of the think tanks here are obsessed with the rise of China and just about the entire U.S. foreign policy establishment is choking on economic austerity and therefore fully inclined to doubt that our government or any other can...
So I spend a few years writing a book on American foreign policy and stop paying attention to European politics, only to return and find the whole thing in chaos. I am finding three developments going on in Europe fascinating (if despicable and disgusting).First, the Financial Times recently ran a story on Sarokozy's plan to launch a debate in France on the importance of secularism, which is really just a way to pick on Muslims and draw votes from the National Front, who have been doing very well lately under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen's daughter. (As an aside, how much of a...
On Tuesday of this week, amid much pomp and fanfare (and a certain amount of suppressed hilarity) an Anglo-French Treaty was signed, providing for 50 years (no, really, 50 years) of defence co-operation. I’ve posted on this at the LSE blog here and haven’t much to add – basically there is less to this than meets the eye. Meanwhile, back in the real world, a little noticed policy poses a genuine threat to one of the major sources of British ‘soft’ power, the BBC World Service. As part of a wider deal on the funding of the BBC, funding for the Service is to be shifted from a grant from the...
Did you know that Djibouti is in the midst of a border conflict with Eritrea? I didn't, and for that I blame American news outlets. According to the BBC, French troops are providing logistical and medical support to Djibouti's forces. The United States has condemned "Eritrean aggression.". Eritrea, for its part, has condemned "'US meddling' in the Horn of Africa.". Which presumably refers not just to the large US base in Djibouti (Camp Lemonier), but to its backing of Ethiopia and its related proxy (as well as direct) activities in Somalia.Given the creation of AFRICOM, the fact that Africa...
It is a time of political transition in Europe. While Tony Blair is not leaving his post as the UK's PM until next month, Jacques Chirac has already been replaced as French President by Nicolas Sarkozy.A few weeks ago, Sarkozy'z UMP party of the center-right beat Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal 53% to 47%. However, Sarkozy has just named Socialist Bernard Kouchner as his Foreign Minister. What will this mean for French foreign policy -- and perhaps US-French relations?The former is perhaps easier to predict. Kouchner is best known as a founder (1971) of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors...
Patrick's post regarding yesterday's "Non" vote in France brings up an interesting point, one that is often missing from discussions of European integration in the MSM (mainstream media)--the importance of identity for political outcomes. Patrick argues that the vote yesterday was not driven by economic interests per se, but rather the successful framing of the issue by right and left groups as one of "us" (France) vs. "them" (other Europeans).While I believe identity played a role in this outcome I think it is more complicated than a simple self-other distinction (not that Patrick has...
French voters rejected the European Constitution yesterday in a referendum by a pretty decisive margin: 55% opposed, 45% in favor. Pollsters had been predicting this outcome for a while, so the returns came as no surprise; now begins the tussle over why the constitution was rejected. The New York Times [free subscription required] attributed the result to economic issues:The debate had been colored by fear of the mythical "Polish plumber," the worker from recent European Union members from the East who is increasingly free to move West and willing to work for lower pay than Frenchmen. ......