TURIN—The European sovereign debt crisis reached its apex when global financial markets began considering the possibility that a large euro zone economy — Italy, Spain, or both — could become another Greece, resulting in the dissolution of the single currency. By November 2011, the spread between the yields of 10-year Italian and German bonds was [...]

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WASHINGTON – On Sunday night, as buildings burned in Athens, Greek parliamentarians passed a new budget austerity package, demanded by creditors as a prerequisite for a new €130 bailout package. But eurozone finance ministers are now hesitating to approve their end of the deal in light of lingering questions about a €350 million hole in [...]

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WASHINGTON – Leadership transitions are inevitably accompanied by uncertainty. Promises made by aspiring leaders – particularly on matters of foreign policy – rarely bear themselves out.  In recent American memory, Bill Clinton decried the “butchers of Beijing” as a presidential contender but did his utmost to set U.S.-China relations on an even keel after the [...]

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In what is being called “Europe’s big freeze,” a deadly cold front, high winds, heavy snow, and layers of ice have killed about 400 people, torn apart buildings, and disrupted supplies since the end of January. Thousands have been trapped in their villages, cut off from food, medicine, and fuel as avalanches and ice block [...]

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WASHINGTON – When it began last March, the Syrian revolution appeared to be a textbook example for a peaceful uprising by a people united against state brutality. For weeks, videos documented the determination of the mostly youthful protesters, chanting their demands for freedom and political participation only to be faced with bullets, arrests, torture, and execution. [...]

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BERLIN/MUMBAI–The announcement last week that India was entering into exclusive negotiations with Dassault for its Rafale fighter jet represents a major coup for the French defense contractor and for Nicolas Sarkozy. The embattled French president was evidently relieved by the prospect of the Rafale’s first ever foreign sale in a deal worth over US$10 billion, [...]

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WARSAW / WASHINGTON – For hundreds of years, Poland suffered from an overbearing Germany that trampled on the rights of the Polish nation, occupied the country, and, at times, worked to extinguish the Polish nation-state entirely. No wonder that there is a residue of skepticism and caution in Poland when it comes to relations with [...]

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PARIS–President Barack Obama’s announcement last June of an accelerated U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan reopened debates in many European countries over when their soldiers should return from that unpopular war. French President Nicolas Sarkozy followed a few days later with an announcement that French troops would be reduced “in a proportional manner and in a calendar [...]

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent announcement that French troops would hand over their security responsibilities to Afghan forces by the end of 2013 — a year earlier than the completion of the NATO combat mission — has caused some to declare that the entire Afghanistan operation is at risk. The French decision certainly reflects Sarkozy’s need [...]

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