WASHINGTON — American elections are largely driven by domestic concerns, but their outcomes have global ramifications. Never has this been more evident than in the wake of this year’s U.S. Congressional elections, which produced an overwhelming Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and returned a razor-thin Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate. The [...]

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WASHINGTON — Next Tuesday’s U.S. midterm election is shaping into a debate about the role of government.  Age-old differences on the role of the market and the size of government are being used to score political points.  Candidates, most of them Republican, are making frequent references to “Europe” as  verbal shorthand for the heavy hand [...]

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Article originally published on euobserver.com Remember last year when the whole world was looking at a small and cold country in Europe – Denmark – mesmerized by an international conference on climate change known as COP15? This year, many people won’t even know where the follow-up conference, COP16, is taking place. While the next round [...]

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WASHINGTON – Europe’s relationship with China is at a crucial moment, and the United States should be paying attention. With the creation of a unified European foreign policy under the Lisbon Treaty, Brussels now has the authority and the tools to build a stronger relationship with Beijing. And officials on both sides appear anxious to [...]

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According to this year’s Transatlantic Trends survey, Turkey can be seen as drifting away from the West. How do we know? After surveying approximately 1,000 people in Turkey (along with about 1,000 in the United States and each of 11 European Union countries) on a host of foreign policy and economic policy questions, we found [...]

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WASHINGTON — The popularity of Barack Obama as a presidential candidate in 2008 rivaled rock stars in Western Europe. His election as president of the United States suggested that he would open a new chapter in the U.S.-European relationship. This is certainly true, to a degree. The desirability of American leadership greatly improved in Europe, [...]

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WASHINGTON — The health care legislation that has just been passed by the U.S. Congress after almost a year of political wrangling is being hailed as a sweeping overhaul of a troubled system.   For some, the reform package does not go far enough.   President Obama’s opponents describe the health bill as a costly [...]

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WASHINGTON — Israel last week submitted its response to the UN’s Goldstone Report.   That report investigated the conduct of Israel and Hamas during the Gaza war in January 2009, accusing both sides of war crimes.   It recommended resorting to the International Criminal Court if the sides failed to investigate the charges themselves.   [...]

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COPENHAGEN — As hope dims for a major global climate deal in Copenhagen, participants still could make enough progress to lay a real foundation for a future treaty. But even that will take significant cooperation, particularly between the transatlantic partners.   With only two days left in the negotiations and tensions running high as the [...]

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WASHINGTON – Transatlantic Trends, a recent survey by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) reveals that President Obama’s popularity in Europe has not made U.S. foreign policies equally popular. The war in Afghanistan, for example, remains widely unpopular among Europeans and the war now seems to divide Americans and their political and [...]

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