US election 2012: It’s time for a Republican Party clear-out
The Republican party’s sound economic policies are being drowned out by the strident voices of dubious fringe figures President Barack Obama’s victory speech. Mitt Romney could not separate himself...
View ArticleUS election 2012: Why ‘leading from behind’ might not be the best way to take...
Let’s be perfectly clear: this year’s American presidential election was not a referendum on American foreign policy. Nor did it involve much discussion of the subject. During most of the campaign, the...
View ArticleTo Americans, Margaret Thatcher stood for free markets and free people
No transatlantic alliance since has held a candle to the potent symbolism of Reagan-Thatcher In America, we didn’t know about the miners’ strike, and I suspect that if we had, we might not have cared....
View ArticleSpies, terrorists and an undercover ham sandwich
I am trying very hard to understand why everyone is shocked — shocked! — by news that the US government helps itself to the massive data flows generated by Google, Facebook and Twitter. I have always...
View ArticleDoes Eastern Europe still exist?
In February 2009, the Economist ran a cartoon which featured caricature versions of Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, then the leaders of their respective countries. The three were...
View ArticleMiddle East violence ‘the result of generations of tyranny’
It’s not an Arab Winter: Today’s violence in the Middle East is the end result of generations of tyranny, suppression and distortion of political discussion The Washington Post headline declared that...
View ArticleTime for our leaders to stop talking about ‘justice’ in Syria if we can’t or...
Honesty may be the best and only realistic policy ‘It’s about chemical weapons. Their use is wrong and the world shouldn’t stand idly by.’ — David Cameron, 27 August ‘The chemical massacre in Damascus...
View ArticleANTI-SEMITE AND JEW
LETTER FROM BUDAPEST The double life of a Hungarian politician. The day was chilly but clear, the crowd energetic. Some were in quasi-military uniform, others in hooded sweatshirts emblazoned with...
View ArticleThe pictures from Kiev don’t tell the whole story
The conflict in Ukraine is, at heart, about politics – not an ethnic, geographical or linguistic dispute – and nor is it confined to Kiev Yes, the photographs from Kiev this week were uncanny, even...
View ArticleRussia’s information warriors are on the march – we must respond
A robust campaign to tell the truth about Crimea is needed to counter Moscow’s lies Russian television news is reporting…” Nowadays, when I hear those words pronounced on the BBC or ITN, I can’t help...
View ArticleThe Unwisdom of Crowds
Why people-powered revolutions are overrated Kiev’s mass anti-government protests are a thing of the past, but the barricades remain, a shrine to the victims. Visitors trickle through the site, paying...
View ArticleNationalism Is Exactly What Ukraine Needs
Democracy fails when citizens don’t believe their country is worth fighting for Close your eyes, repeat the words “Ukrainian nationalist,” and an image might spring to mind: probably a man, most likely...
View ArticleWhen the Berlin Wall came down
On the evening of November 9 1989, East Germans began to walk through the Berlin Wall. Now, with hindsight, it seems inevitable that their story would end happily, that East and West Germany would...
View ArticlePutin’s great gamble is about to backfire
Since the invasion of Crimea, Russia’s President has been conducting an experiment in anti-western rebellion Since the Russian invasion of Crimea last February, many different phrases have been used to...
View ArticleHow Vladimir Putin is waging war on the West – and winning
Across the new Europe, a little bit of Russian influence is going a long way Last month, the speaker of the Russian parliament solemnly instructed his foreign affairs committee to launch a historical...
View Article“So beginnen Weltkriege”
Russlands Militäraktionen in Syrien und der Ukraine folgen westlicher Planlosigkeit, warnt Anne Applebaum, Osteuropa-Expertin und Pulitzer-Preisträgerin, gegenüber der »Presse am Sonntag«. Wladimir...
View ArticleObama and Europe – Missed Signals, Renewed Commitments
Even now, gazing back through the jaundiced lens of subsequent experience, Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign speech in Berlin still seems an extraordinary occasion. Tens of thousands of mostly young Germans...
View ArticleRussia and the Great Forgetting
In the summer of 1985, I spent two months in the city that used to be called Leningrad. Along with several dozen other American college students, I stayed in a shabby Intourist hotel. Sharp-eyed old...
View ArticleThe Victory of Ukraine
In later years, there would be bigger demonstrations, more eloquent speakers, and more professional slogans. But the march that took place in Kiev on a Sunday morning in the spring of 1917 was...
View ArticleDestruction Myth – The rise and fall of the Romanovs
He is the mad monk, the holy fool, the man whose mystical powers enthralled the tsarina and cured the tsarevitch. It is said that he was a hypnotist, a rapist, a cultist, a charlatan, a seer....
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