Section: The Huffington Post (USA)
Weekend Roundup: Is Europe Imploding?
Europe is facing divisive challenges on all fronts. It is being torn within by hardening attitudes toward the growing presence not only of Muslim immigrants, but also of citizens. On Monday, demonstrators thronged the streets of Dresden in support of “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident.” On Wednesday in...
Two Cheers for Obama’s Ukraine Policy
While 2014 will certainly not be remembered as a particularly great year for U.S. foreign policy or American domestic politics, one important challenge where the Obama administration has made some real progress is in managing the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. The United States embraced a measured and prudent policy in response to the so-called...
Making Despots Legitimate
It is curious and a bit tragic that as President Obama courageously and wisely acts to temper 50 years of hostility toward Cuba, the U.S., in conjunction with the European Union, is cranking up hostility toward Russia with punitive measures for its adventurism in the Ukraine. It’s as if nothing was learned from our unrelenting punishment of...
Putin Is Bringing Darkness to the Edge of Europe
KYIV — In 2014, Vladimir Putin discovered his inner Trotsky. For what Russia’s president is now offering Ukraine is a perverse twist on the formula Trotsky proclaimed during the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk in 1918: “No war, no peace.” In doing so, Putin has not only moved to trap my country in a frozen conflict...
Why 2014 Wasn’t So Terrible
In bidding farewell to 2014, most of us gave the year a swift kick in the rear end as it exited the calendar. On foreign policy in particular, few people had nice things to say about the recently departed. After all, it was a banner year for all manner of evils. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa dominated the headlines, and the trumped-up fear of...
Security on the Korean Peninsula
The following speech was delivered on December 3, 2014 at the Chatham House in London Ladies and gentlemen, In just a few days, we will say farewell to 2014 and greet the new year. From my standpoint, this year may be recorded as one of the most eventful years in the post-Cold War era, fraught with difficulties – Syria; Iraq and ISIL,...
Ignoring ‘Cold War II’ Won’t Make It Go Away
MOSCOW — Of course, we could split hairs and ask: Are we on the brink of a new Cold War? Has a second Cold War already started? Did the first Cold War ever end? In my opinion, that is not the main point. The simple fact that we are even asking such questions is far more important because it means that, regardless of which answer you choose,...
Poland’s Feminist Genealogy
There is an infamous story in Poland about a sign at the shipyard in Gdansk where the trade union movement Solidarity got started in 1980. Although nobody actually saw the sign, many people firmly believe that it existed. The sign read: “Women, do not disturb us. We are fighting for Poland.” “The sign is very important to Polish...
In Midst of War, Ukrainian Political Left Ponders Next Moves
To the extent that the mainstream media covers Ukraine at all, it tends to frame Kiev’s conflict with Kremlin-backed Russian separatists as a zero-sum game pitting Vladimir Putin against the U.S. and its western allies. Yet beneath all the wonky geopolitical chatter, Ukraine’s independent left — which must be distinguished from...
Five Middle East Predictions for 2015
Only a fool offers longer term predictions about the Middle East. I offer the following shorter term predictions about the Middle East for 2015.1. ISIS will decline in power and influence. I do not believe ISIS is viable as a state; it lacks any coherent and functional ideology, any serious political and social institutions, any serious...
