Section: European Voice (EU)
3 biggest Dutch election myths
AMSTERDAM — As Dutch voters go to the polls this week, one thing is clear: There is a gulf between how the election is seen abroad and the view within the country. Whereas foreign observers see a yet another big test of the postwar political order in Europe, for the Dutch, the vote is much less dramatic. Rather than being a...
Unquiet American
STANFORD, California — “I wish him well,†tweeted Michael McFaul, on the day Jon Huntsman was offered the delicate job of ambassador to Russia from the United States. It’s the job McFaul held from January 2012 to February 2014, when he resigned after 24 months of the most unrelenting workplace...
McCain on Trump-Russia probes: ‘Lot of shoes to drop from this centipede’
Arizona Sen. John McCain suggested Sunday “there’s a lot of shoes to drop†once more information is known about President Donald Trump and his associates’ ties to Russia. In an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union,†McCain said he was troubled...
Trump’s dictator chic
Trump’s design aesthetic is fascinatingly out of line with America’s past and present. If you doubt it, note that the interiors of the apartments his company actually sells bear no resemblance to the one he lives in. But that doesn’t mean his taste comes from nowhere. At one level, it’s...
Trump to select former UN spokesman as NATO envoy: report
U.S. President Donald Trump will nominate Richard Grenell, a former U.S. spokesman at the United Nations to be the next ambassador to NATO, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Grenell was an early Trump supporter, and if confirmed by the Senate, would be the highest-ranking openly gay person in the Trump administration. In his recent stint as aÂ...
Commission gives Orbán his nuclear deal
In a European Union beset by crises, a decision Monday to approve a new nuclear power plant for Hungary showed the Commission’s limited appetite for tangling with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The EU justified its blessing of a new nuclear power plant in Hungary by saying it imposed stringent competition conditions unusual for projects of...
Boris Johnson: Russia ‘up to all sorts of no good’
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Monday that Russian meddling in other countries is “unacceptable” and that Russian authorities “have got to change, they have to got to show that they can be trusted again,” AFP reported. Johnson was speaking in Brussels before a meeting of European foreign and defense ministers. “Let us be very...
State Department staffers have one question: Where’s Rex?
The State Department resumes its formal press briefing on Monday — an event that offers Secretary of State Rex Tillerson an ideal setting to assert to the world that America remains a diplomatic force and reassure his jittery employees that their work matters to the new administration. But Tillerson is not expected to show up,...
Dutch go old school against Russian hacking
THE HAGUE — Better safe than sorry. That’s the Dutch government’s approach to dealing with the fear of Russian election hacking. The tech-savvy country scaled back the use of computers to count votes and opt for an all-paper, all-manual election this month. It is one of the more drastic responses to a threat that France...
The definitive guide to Trump’s Russia ties
President Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia is facing fresh scrutiny in the wake of reports that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, failed to disclose two meetings he had last year with the country’s ambassador while he was advising Trump’s campaign. The Justice Department maintains that Sessions held...
