WASHINGTON–Mitt Romney, one of the leading Republican U.S. Presidential candidates, has informed his countrymen over the past few weeks that U.S. President Barack Obama is working to turn the United States into Europe. This, one might think, is good news. Presumably it suggests that a unified “West” is closer to becoming a reality. The president, [...]

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WASHINGTON– Strange as it may seem to some, there are those who wish to join the European Union, in spite of all its current flaws. Croatian voters gave a resounding yes to becoming the 28th member state of the European Union in a referendum held last Sunday. The country is slated to join as a full [...]

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WASHINGTON – As he campaigned for the U.S. presidency in 1952, Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower argued that he would seek to bring “security with solvency” to the American people.  Eisenhower realized that the challenges posed by the Soviet Union could too easily stress America’s finite resources and a strategy to face that threat consider [...]

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Fewer than 30 days into the new year, the foreign policy agenda for Europe and North America has already become crowded.  North Korea, Iran, Syria, potential breakthroughs in Burma, and the still roiling revolutionary fervor in the Middle East are but a few of the issues facing transatlantic policymakers.  Iraq, facing renewed violence in the [...]

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WASHINGTON–A year ago, during his State of the Union address, U.S. President Barack Obama set a goal for a national high-speed rail (HSR) network: 85 percent of the country’s population would have access to HSR within 25 years. One year later, that goal seems wildly optimistic. Within a month of Obama’s speech, Florida Governor Rick [...]

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All In:  The Education of General David Petraeus.  By Paula Broadwell with Vernon Loeb. The Penguin Press, 2012, 394pp. $29.99. Writing a first book is challenging in its own right, much less doing so as events unfold.  In All In, The Education of General David Petraeus, Paula Broadwell chose to add a third hurdle:  writing [...]

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BRATISLAVA—“Freedom House got it wrong!” We can expect to hear this message from an angry official in Budapest after the release on Thursday of the Freedom in the World Report 2012. Hungary has the unfortunate distinction of being the only Western democracy in which governance and civic liberties declined over the last year. Just earlier [...]

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WASHINGTON– Political realities facing the leaders of the United States and Iran mean that military confrontation between the two states is a distinct possibility. In late December, the Iranian armed forces conducted a number of war games — which included the live firing of missiles — in the Straits of Hormuz and adjacent waters of the [...]

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BRUSSELS—Full details of the Obama administration’s new look in defense spending, force posture, and strategy are not yet out. But enough has been revealed  to venture some thoughts on the logic of the new approach and the longer-term implications for the United States and transatlantic partners. The shift to a “one war, spoil and manage” [...]

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BERLIN — When President Barack Obama unveiled a new national defense strategy last week, which confirmed the United States’ intent to play a sustained role in shaping a rising Asia, he noted that “the tide of war is receding.” This observation will have done little to reassure a skeptical Beijing that the strategy is aimed [...]

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