WASHINGTON — World leaders meeting in London to discuss Afghanistan’s future have dealt themselves a weak hand.   The principal obstacles to success in Afghanistan have not been the adversary’s strength or any lack of support for the international mission by the Afghan public.   Rather, the primary obstacles to victory have been Western temporizing, [...]

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WASHINGTON — In the early 2000s, the issue of Muslim schoolgirls, teachers, and civil servants wearing headscarves in public institutions and schools was a heated national debate in France and a source of discussion and controversy around the world. In 2009, President Nicholas Sarkozy rekindled the flames of that debate with statements condemning the burqa [...]

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For a full write-up of the event, please click here.

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WASHINGTON — There are two sets of policy issues emanating from the rubble and horror of Port-au-Prince: “Whither Haiti?” and “Whither relief aid?” With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah visiting the country, most of the attention is on the first question.   Is there, policymakers are asking, some dynamic by [...]

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In a GMF video feature, Senior Fellow Dan Twining explains the importance of the Afghanistan conference on January 28, and the key topics shaping the discussion.

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BERLIN — One year after taking office, President Obama’s polls have plummeted, unemployment is at 10 percent, the loss of Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat endangers the administration’s health care reforms, and Iran has rejected a deal that would allow it to enrich uranium abroad. All of that is bad news. But this is not [...]

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WASHINGTON — One year after President Obama assumed office, 55 percent of Americans think their country is on the wrong track, according to National Journal.   Sixty-one percent believe their country is in decline, according to NBC and The Wall Street Journal.   Half the American public, according to Pew, embraces the isolationist premise that [...]

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WASHINGTON — Ask most Americans and Europeans to identify Vladimir Filat or find Moldova on a map and you’re likely to get a blank stare. Both, however, are worth getting to know. Filat is the new prime minister of Moldova, a small country of four million people that emerged from the break-up of the Soviet [...]

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BELGRADE — The landslide victory of Ivo Josipovi? in the January 10 presidential elections in Croatia bodes well, not just for the country, but also for the Western Balkans as a whole — not least for the region’s hopes for membership in the European Union. The 52-year-old Social Democrat, a tenured professor of international criminal [...]

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BRUSSELS — On January 1, Spain became the first country to take over the six-month rotating EU Council Presidency since the Lisbon Treaty went into effect a month earlier.   To Madrid, therefore, falls the challenge of shaping how the new and improved EU will work. Like all countries that assume the half-year rotating EU [...]

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