Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Failure of US leadership The US Congress has dithered and reveled in dysfunction for months, delaying a crucial national security bill. This, even though members knew each day’s delay was costing an increasingly defenseless Ukraine dearly in both blood and treasure. US allies and enemies alike watched in utter stupefaction: Democratic allies expressed shock and dismay — as US politicians displayed… Read more.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan straddles Western democracies and Eastern autocracies, much as Turkey straddles Europe and Asia. His politics are as ambidextrous as Turkey’s geography is strategic. And Erdogan has used Sweden’s application for NATO membership to display his ambidexterity. Turkey greenlights Sweden’s NATO membership Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine scared Finland and Sweden straight. It moved both to… Read more.
Listening to Prime Minister Boris Johnson rave about the Brexit deal he struck with the European Union, you’d be forgiven for thinking he wowed the Europeans with his negotiating skills. And that, as a result, he not only got everything he wanted, but induced them to give him a few extras. But Johnson is not… Read more.
No doubt there was more media hype this time about a potential upset. But Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reelection was as guaranteed on Sunday as Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s was on Sunday, March 18. Turkey’s long-standing leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan has won a new five-year term after securing outright victory in the first round… Read more.
Just years ago, Grexit had the European Union reeling with existential angst. Notably, the fear was not that Greece would leave, but that its chronic indebtedness posed too great a communal burden to allow it to remain. Further that bailing out Greece would create a domino effect – with other poor, debt-ridden member states (aka… Read more.
Political dysfunction, economic stagnation, and civil strife on the Dark Continent are such that Africans will continue to risk life and limb to seek a better life. For, just as no legal barrier or risk of drowning in the Caribbean Sea has stemmed the tide of Haitian migrants setting off for America, no legal barrier or… Read more.
Yesterday, Greece finally held its anxiously awaited general election, which many regarded as a referendum on that country’s membership in the Eurozone. The consensus was that a win by the ruling New Democracy party, headed by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, would mean more of the bitter austerity medicine Greeks have been taking for years as… Read more.
According to Edward Snowden’s latest rolling disclosures, when it comes to international spying, the United States targets allies like France and Germany as readily as it targets frenemies like China and Russia. Unsurprisingly, the Europeans are “shocked, shocked,” and are expressing feelings of profound betrayal: The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and French president, François Hollande,… Read more.
Public disillusionment in Britain with the European Union is such that Prime Minister David Cameron felt compelled last Wednesday to pledge to hold an “in-out referendum” on UK membership if he is re-elected in 2015. The next Conservative manifesto in 2015 will ask for a mandate from the British people for a Conservative government to… Read more.
[T]he so-called “PIGS” (namely, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain) have been arguing that the sovereign debt crisis that is threatening to plunge their respective countries into bankruptcy is a burden all of Europe should bear. And everybody knows that a default by any of these PIGS will cause the disunion of the European Union. (A… Read more.
