Posted by Kyle Atwell in
European Issues on Monday, November 17. 2008
“Prejudice in Europe is more than skin deep”, writes Columbia University historian Mark Mazower in the Financial Times:
Europeans find it hard adjusting to a colour-blind world. Indeed their hesitancy is growing. In Austria, the extreme right carved out big gains in September’s general elections. Pope Benedict weighed in over the summer to warn against a possible resurgence of fascist values in Italy. Europe as a whole, according to recent polls, has become significantly more xenophobic over the past few years. Fears of Islamic terrorism and anxiety about globalisation have fed this trend. So has fervent anti-European Union sentiment, strongly correlated to populist anti-immigrant rhetoric. By contrast, Mr Obama’s story is that of the immigrant dream, a tale of upwardly-mobile success that cut decisively across race lines. Immigrant voters played a decisive electoral role in Mr Obama’s win, yet immigration – for all the prior public debate – figured little as a campaign issue.
It will be interesting to see if a black president in America will reverse the trend of rising xenophobia in Europe cited by Mazower. Al Jazeera also poses an interesting question, "Will the 'Obama effect' encourage more diversity in global politics?"
See also from Atlantic Review: * Five Reasons Obama Would not be Elected in Europe
Posted by Editors in
European Issues, Transatlantic Relations, US Domestic and Cultural Issues on Thursday, November 13. 2008
Sarah Scrafford, who regularly writes on the topic of Online University Rankings, wrote this guest post:
Are European and US college programs equivalent?
The transatlantic divide is being further torn apart by the educational argument. The fierce debate rages on – are the three year degrees offered by institutions in the UK and across most of Europe equivalent to the four year programs on offer at US colleges? If not, which of them is the more superior? Are graduates of the shorter program less smart than their American counterparts? Or is it vice versa?
Continue reading "Europe or the US? Educational Questions We Need to Ask"
Posted by Editors in
European Issues, US Foreign Policy on Friday, October 24. 2008
Paddy Ashdown and Richard Holbrooke in The Guardian:
Almost exactly 13 years ago, American leadership brought an end to Bosnia's three-and-a-half-year war through the Dayton peace agreement. Today the country is in real danger of collapse. As in 1995, resolve and transatlantic unity are needed if we are not to sleepwalk into another crisis.
Posted by Joerg Wolf in
European Issues, International Economics on Friday, October 3. 2008
I thought I would never read a headline like this in an Anglo-American newspaper. It was the headline for the "European View" column by Paul Betts in the Financial Times on Tuesday:
In the past 48 hours, various European countries have scrambled to put together bail-out packages for troubled financial institutions in Germany, the UK, France, Belgium, Ireland and Iceland. And while this is by no means the end of the story, it has demonstrated that the European authorities and individual national governments can move very quickly to try to stem a growing crisis of confidence in the European financial system.
In the past 10 days, the conventional wisdom was that Europe would never be in a position to act as swiftly to rescue its financial industry with a comprehensive plan such as Washington's $700bn (?498bn) troubled asset relief programme. Yet the plan has yet to be approved, with all the political modifications demanded by US lawmakers. No evidence has so far emerged that Europe will need to orchestrate a similar plan of such magnitude.
Of course, as Peer Steinbrück, Germany's finance minister, has noted, Europe is not so much seeing a little light at the end of the tunnel but rather the headlights of an oncoming train.
Posted by Nanne Zwagerman in
European Issues, Transatlantic Relations, US Foreign Policy on Thursday, September 25. 2008
In immediate response to the Russia-Georgia war, it has been popular to say that we are witnessing the 'return' of history. This was the title of a post by Stanley Crossick, crossposted on the Atlantic Review. There have been many who have heralded the return of history, some even more or less directly after Francis Fukuyama wrote his seminal essay 'The End of History?'. Most recently, Bob Kagan has written a book called 'The Return of History and the End of Dreams', which stems from the essay 'End of Dreams, Return of History'.
Francis Fukuyama answers some of the critics in his Washington Post column 'They Can Only Go So Far'. One interesting point Fukuyama makes is that we can't paint all forms of autocracy with one brush, that there are important differences between various forms of authoritarianism. He also argues that none of the current forms have an idea:
The facile historical analogies to earlier eras have two problems: They presuppose a cartoonish view of international politics during these previous periods, and they imply that "authoritarian government" constitutes a clearly defined type of regime -- one that's aggressive abroad, abusive at home and inevitably dangerous to world order. In fact, today's authoritarian governments have little in common, save their lack of democratic institutions.
The thing to say about 'The End of History' is that people generally misunderstand it. Fukuyama himself says so, and Blake Hounshell nods in agreement on Foreig Policy's Passport blog. It's unclear to me whether the idea is misunderstood by the many who have debated it in writing. Bob Kagan certainly gets the point.
Continue reading "Authoritarianisms"
Posted by Editors in
European Issues, Transatlantic Relations, US Domestic and Cultural Issues on Friday, September 19. 2008
This is a guest post from Andrew Zvirzdin. Originally from upstate New York, Andrew is currently pursuing a Master's degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy. He previously studied at Université Libre Bruxelles, University of Rome Tor Vergata, and Brigham Young University. He has worked on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament and as an Assistant Editor for Scandinavian Studies. Andrew specializes in political economy, international finance, and EU–US relations.
Freedom Fries are out of style, but Europe is still taking a beating this campaign season. Republicans are gleefully using Barack Obama's recent visit to Europe as evidence that he wishes to import European-style welfare states back to the United States “to grab even more of our liberty and destroy our hard-earned livelihood,” as Mike Huckabee recently put it.
Just how evil are European welfare states compared to the United States?
OECD data indicates that the differences may not be as large as we may think. Consider two key indicators:
Continue reading "Social Welfare in Europe and North America"
Posted by Nanne Zwagerman in
European Issues on Saturday, September 13. 2008
Over on the Global Guerillas blog, John Robb suggests that the countries currently feeling threatened by Russia should change their strategies:
This shift towards economics and networks also means that small states on Russia's periphery now have a defensive trump card. They can inflict damage on Russia that far exceeds the potential economic benefits Russia receives. Any one of these nations could easily inflict tens of billions in damage to Russia's energy industry (which pays for much of the Russian government). IF these nations came together in a defensive alliance, its possible that Russian energy production could be halved and inflict damage that's counted in the trillions.
Left to the side of this is that Russia is often a big trading partner of these countries, and that any damage done to the Russian economy - and gas pipes in particular - would damage these countries as much, or more. In some ways, this is a MAD strategy.
Moreover, Russia's current actions in Georgia don't appear to have their basis in economic interests, after all, they did not take the pipelines out. And the Russian stock market did not exactly benefit. This is not to say that Russia can't be deterred by further economic disincentives. But plans to damage critical infrastructure could be learned of by the Russians. They have spies. And it could lead to a broad array of Russian counteraction, the least of which would be the expulsion of many nationals, something Russia had already done with the Georgians.
Posted by Nanne Zwagerman in
European Issues on Thursday, September 4. 2008
The 'Heinrich Böll Stiftung' - the political foundation affiliated with the German green party - is having its annual foreign policy conference next week, on September 11th and 12th. It will be a big issue conference, focusing on the question of ideals versus interests in foreign policy. The German greens are one of the broadest green parties that exist, and have a lively internal debate between party leaders on realism versus a more pacifistic foreign politics. It was Joshka Fischer, German Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, who took the Germans into the Kosovo war back in 1999.
Fischer, now something of a foreign policy star, won't be attending. However, a former MFA of Poland, Adam Daniel Rotfeld, will. Rotfeld is also a former Director of SIPRI. Other speakers include Ahmed Rashid, Steven Weber, and two members of the current leadership of the greens, Renate Künast and Reinhard Bütikofer.
You can find the programme via this page (page in German, programme also available in English)
The Heinrich Böll Stiftung recently moved to a new office in Berlin Mitte, which frankly looks boring, but is very energy-efficient! We hope to give you some details of the view from the inside, next week.
Posted by Kyle Atwell in
European Issues, Transatlantic Relations on Monday, August 25. 2008
Ronald Steel, professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, argues that Russia's strong hand against Georgia signals that, “A Superpower Is Reborn” (NYT):
THE psychodrama playing out in the Caucasus is not the first act of World War III, as some hyperventilating politicians and commentators would like to portray it. Rather, it is the delayed final act of the cold war. And while the Soviet Union lost that epic conflict, Russia won this curtain call in a way that ensures Washington will have to take it far more seriously in the future.
This is not just because, as some foreign-policy “realists” have argued, Moscow has enough troops and oil to force us to take into consideration its supposedly irrational fears. Rather, the conflict in Georgia showed how rational Russia’s concerns over American meddling in its traditional sphere of influence are, and that Washington had better start treating it like the great power it still is.
Continue reading "Is Russia a Superpower? Cold War II?"
Posted by Pat Patterson in
European Issues on Sunday, August 24. 2008
This is a guest blog post by Pat Patterson:
Kenneth R. Weinstein, the CEO of the Hudson Institute, wrote a recent article in The Weekly Standard which argues that the divisions within the EU are greater and institutionalized than the more publicized division between the EU and the US.
Many of the policies, most recently instigated by France, have been resisted because they are seen as solely in French national interest and in most cases are the antithesis of the interests of the EU bureaucracy and Germany: "But suspicions linger in Berlin and elsewhere that Sarkozy's true goal in forming the [Mediterranean] Union was to expand France's sphere of influence at Germany's expense."
Continue reading "European Disunion"
Posted by Editors in
European Issues, Transatlantic Relations on Sunday, August 24. 2008
As part of our media partnership with Blogactiv, we are cross-posting this article by Stanley Crossick, the founding chairman of the European Policy Centre.
Francis Fukuyama was wrong. We have not been witnessing the end of history, but the return of history.
One reason for this is that we have not learned the lessons of history. But who did not at least think that 1989 had brought to an end four decades of Cold War in Europe and the establishment of a long term Pax Americana?
The US and Europe, led by market-obsessed economists, focused on economic and democratic reform in Russia and anchoring former Soviet countries in first in NATO and then in the European Union. Little attention was paid to Russian sensitivities or western behaviour perceived by Russians to be humiliating. We should have recognised that permanent change had not taken place: historical Russia was on vacation.
Continue reading "The Return of History"
Posted by Nanne Zwagerman in
European Issues, US Foreign Policy on Saturday, August 23. 2008
In an interview with the Kommersant, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, confirmed that the Russian response to Georgia's attack on South Ossetia was legitimate. He also stated, however, that Russia went too far by invading Georgia 'proper', and that Russia now has to abide by the cease-fire agreement and stop hinting at regime-change in Tblisi. A small bit of an AP report in the International Herald Tribune:
John Beyrle [...] told the Kommersant Friday that Russia "gave a well-grounded response" to a Georgian attack on Russian peacekeepers, but exceeded its authority by invading Georgia proper.
Ambassador Beyrle has presumably been green-lighted to give this statement, and he has also stated to the Kommersant that Saakashvili acted without the consent and against the advice of the United States in attacking South Ossetia. This signals a certain ratcheting-down of tensions between the U.S. and Russia, and a readiness on the side of the U.S. to come to an accommodation.
The full interview is available in Russian, here.
Late update: Telo notes in the comments that the translation of the AP might be off, and that the relevant statement by Ambassador Beyrle implies that the Russians had a reason to respond, but is ambiguous on whether that reason was completely sufficient.
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