In my last blog post about the effects of High Speed Rail (HSR) stations on cities in Europe, I discussed the architecture of several notable HSR station buildings that have attracted a great deal of attention in and of themselves.  However, a memorable building alone isn’t sufficient to generate the so-called HSR Effect, which can [...]

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KABUL—“We have moved from a narrative, which lasted for years, that everything was fine when it wasn’t to a narrative that everything is going wrong when it isn’t.” This lament from a former Western official, who, like others quoted in this piece, did not speak for attribution, summed up the frustrations of many in Kabul [...]

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A GMF blog post by Ben Adler in September 2009 discussed the economic potential of high-speed rail, citing governmental and business leaders in Strasbourg, France, who agreed that their area had benefitted from the “High-Speed Rail Effect,” a host of civic advantages that can result from, or arrive alongside, new High-Speed Rail (HSR) service. These [...]

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The 2010 German World Cup team was a force to be reckoned with – a physically strong, methodical, and dangerous team whose leading goal scorer, Polish-born Miroslav Klose, fell just one goal short of tying the all-time record of individual World Cup goals. The team’s prowess was enhanced by the footwork and speed of one [...]

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WASHINGTON – Ten months ago the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ended six decades of near-unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), ushering in a new political era.  But on July 11, elections for Japan’s upper house rolled back DPJ gains and produced yet another divided government, seemingly dashing hopes for effective reform.  A [...]

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BELGRADE — War was not supposed to happen again in Europe.  For decades, children had been taught in schools across the continent of the horrors perpetrated by Nazis and Fascists and Communists, by foreign invaders and domestic collaborators. Yet despite all this, in the early 1990s Yugoslavia was once again the scene of war and [...]

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Transatlantic Taskforce on Development Blog Series: On both sides of the Atlantic policymakers are struggling with a common problem – how can we forge better cooperation across the so-called three Ds – development, diplomacy and defense? This challenge was well-identified by the Transatlantic Taskforce on Development, which set out a number of recommendations to address [...]

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Transatlantic Taskforce on Development Blog Series: On both sides of the Atlantic policymakers are struggling with a common problem – how can we forge better cooperation across the so-called three Ds – development, diplomacy and defense? This challenge was well-identified by the Transatlantic Taskforce on Development, which set out a number of recommendations to address [...]

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GMF Fellow David J. Kramer analyzes the recent events surrounding the Russian spy scandal, including the recent spy swap, and what questions still need to be answered by both administrations.

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WASHINGTON—Bronislaw Komorowski’s victory in last Sunday’s presidential elections in Poland gives the Warsaw government a rare window of opportunity to advance a packed domestic reform and foreign policy agenda. With a fellow member of the centrist Civic Platform as the head of state, Prime Minister Donald Tusk can finally move to act, without the daily [...]

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