Section: European Voice (EU)
Jens Stoltenberg: NATO troop deployment right response to aggressive Russia
Russia is trying to expand its sphere of influence by military means, and NATO’s deployment of up to 4,000 multinational troops in the Baltic states and Poland “is an appropriate response” to the country’s “aggressive actions,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told German tabloid Bild in an interview published Thursday. “We...
German foreign minister: Brexit ‘would shake the union’
The U.K. voting Leave in the EU referendum June 23 would “shake the union,” German Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned Wednesday, the BBC reports. “It would not just carry on as 28 [countries] minus one,” Steinmeier said at a joint press conference in Brandenburg with French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. “It...
Russians on probation
The behavior of some Russian football fans — using that last word in the loosest sense — makes one pine for the days of the Cold War, when these thugs would not have been able to travel abroad. Say what you will about the Iron Curtain: at least it kept the lumpen Russian at home. He is now uncaged and in our midst. Much condemnation has been...
Martin Schulz cracks the whip on migration
Martin Schulz has stepped up a behind-the-scenes effort to soften opposition in the European Parliament to legislation on migration and terrorism issues, holding meetings with MEPs whose support is seen as critical to passage. The Parliament’s president had held two meetings in the past month with senior MEPs from the civil liberties,...
Unbearable angst of Czech being
PRAGUE — Today’s Czechs are healthier, wealthier and safer than they have ever been. The economy grew at a robust 4.2 percent last year and the country boasted the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union. The EU’s problems, from a possible British exit to the eurozone and migration crises, have almost no tangible impact on the...
Donald Tusk wants to bury the European Dream
Europe is coming around to Donald Tusk’s way of thinking. The European Council president has been spreading a message that until recently would have sounded surprisingly Euroskeptic coming from the head of an EU institution: We need to let go of the “European” dream — at least as it has usually been defined since the founding of the Union....
Why this Russian wants to give Donald Trump 100,000 rubles
NIZHNY TAGIL — Felix Nikolaevich Kolsky knows war. His grandfather had five sons, and only one came back from World War II. Kolsky’s father was one of the ones who didn’t make it home, and Felix was born in his absence, shortly after he went off to the front in 1941. “My generation never recovered,” he says of the 27 million people...
Paul Manafort’s wild and lucrative Philippine adventure
When Paul Manafort met Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980s, each had something the other wanted. Marcos, then in his third decade as leader of the Philippines, had developed a reputation in Washington as a stalwart ally in the fight against communism. But he was facing rising concerns about rampant corruption, plundering of public resources and human...
What exactly would it mean to have Trump’s finger on the nuclear button?
Donald Trump, December 15, 2015: “The biggest problem we have is nuclear—nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That’s in my opinion that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.” Hillary Clinton, June 2, 2016: “This is not someone who should ever have the...
Romney: Trump will cause ‘trickle-down racism’
Mitt Romney argued on Friday that Donald Trump’s rhetoric could make racist and misogynistic sentiments more permissible in America. The 2012 Republican nominee hammered the presumptive Republican nominee’s past comments on race, saying on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that if Trump were to become president, his words would pose an...
