Section: European Voice (EU)
Does Trump herald the end of the West?
LONDON — Since the fall of communism in 1989, a year has not gone by without some high-level meeting or international conference wrestling with the question of whether the Western alliance, NATO, has passed its sell-by date. “Whither NATO?†is now a well-worn inside joke for the conference attending global...
Dutch Labor exits stage left
GRONINGEN, Netherlands — Set aside, for the moment, the surging far-right leader Geert Wilders or the incumbent, liberal Mark Rutte fighting to hold on to the prime ministership. The other big story of the Dutch election next month is the collapse of the mainstream left. It goes a long way to explain why this country’s politics...
Trump’s new warrior-scholar
President Donald Trump has picked one of the military’s leading warrior-scholars to restore order to the National Security Council — but also one who has staked out a decidedly more hawkish position on Russia and gone out of his way to assert that the war against terrorism must not morph into a war against Islam. Lt. Gen. H.R....
Economy is Brits’ top concern: survey
An increasing number of British people say the state of the economy is the most important issue affecting confidence in the U.K., according to a consumer survey. Some 28 percent of those polled named the economy as one of their top two concerns at the end of 2016, up from 12 percent in 2015, according to the Nielsen Global Survey of Consumer...
Ukraine: not quiet on the Eastern front
The gut-churning bass of artillery rockets dispels the myth that a cease-fire is holding in eastern Ukraine, two years after the Minsk 2 agreement between Russian-backed separatists and pro-government forces was signed. At least 30 civilians died when the fighting escalated again in January, following what the government in Kiev described as an...
Today at Commission, Poland spat and ‘fake news’
There’s been a visit to Brussels by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and tough Eurogroup talks on a Greek bailout, but this Commission midday briefing was mainly focused on what the commissioners got up to (or not) at the weekend. Asked about a heated exchange between Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans and Polish Foreign...
Mike Pence pledges American support for EU
Seeking to reassure European allies unnerved by President Donald Trump’s support for Brexit and criticism of NATO, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence met with senior EU officials Monday and issued a strong statement of solidarity and commitment to working with the European Union. Pence, after a meeting with European Council President...
Belgian PM to Pence: We won’t allow EU to fragment
Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel said he used a dinner with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in Brussels Sunday evening to warn the Trump administration against supporting any break-up of the EU. Pence arrived in Brussels Sunday after attending the Munich Security Conference, and was scheduled to meet senior EU officials on Monday....
Trump’s demand upsets German election
MUNICH — When the visiting American dignitaries hammered home their desire for Europe to spend more on their militaries in recent days, their biggest target was the Continent’s richest nation — Germany. Washington’s pointed attacks on Berlin — whether over its open-door policy for refugees or its...
Trump has no foreign policy
Whenever a new American president takes office, or even well beforehand, analysts and academics rush to discern their foreign policy “doctrineâ€â€”a grand theory that connects what might otherwise appear to be a Pollack-like splattering of dots. The Bush doctrine, for instance, was supposedly about the rejection...
