Forget about the incessant drumming of Cold War 2.0 against China. Forget about think-tank simpletons projecting their wishful thinking on the perpetual “end of China’s rise.� Forget even about a few sound minds in Brussels – yes, they do exist – saying Europe does not want containment of China; it wants engagement, which means business.... Read More

“Clear Differences Remain Between France and the U.S, French Minister Says,� is the headline to a remarkable piece appearing in the New York Times today. The Minister, Bruno Le Maire, is brutally frank on the nature of the differences as the quotations below Illustrate. (Emphases in the quotations are jvw’s.) In fact, they amount to... Read More

Respect LBGT rights or get out of the EU, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte instructed Hungary's Viktor Orban at last week's gathering of the European Union in Brussels. According to Reuters, attendees described it as the "most intense personal clash among the bloc's leaders in years." What caused the clash? Hungary just passed a law... Read More

There’s been so much dramatic news these days – from Greece’s miseries to Iran, China from blowhard Donald Trump – that the shocking story of how America’s National Security Agency has been spying on German and French leadership has gone almost unnoticed. Last year, it was revealed that the NSA had intercepted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s... Read More

As the European Coal and Steel Community of Jean Monnet evolved into the EU, we were told a "United States of Europe" was at hand, modeled on the USA. And other countries and continents will inevitably follow Europe's example. There will be a North American Union of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and a Latin... Read More

We will find out the answer to the question posed in the title in the outcome of the contest between the new Greek government, formed by the political party Syriza, and the ECB and the private banks, with whose interests the EU and Washington align against Greece. The Spartans, whose red cloaks and military prowess... Read More

Europe won the Cold War. Not long after the Berlin Wall fell a quarter of a century ago, the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States squandered its peace dividend in an attempt to maintain global dominance, and Europe quietly became more prosperous, more integrated, and more of a player in international affairs. Between 1989 and... Read More

Remember the glory days of the 1990s, when our interconnectedness -- the ever-tighter embrace of Disney characters, the Swoosh, and the Golden Arches -- was endlessly hailed? It was the era of “globalization,� of Washington-style capitalism triumphant, and the planet, we were told, would be growing ever “flatter� until we all ended up in the... Read More

Greek voters have rebelled against the austerity programme imposed by Brussels and Berlin in return for loans to fund Greece’s massive debt. The radical left Syriza party, which promises better terms for Greece, won a decisive victory in the general election today and is close to winning an absolute majority in parliament. Syriza, led by... Read More

A week ago, in the St. George's Hall in the Kremlin, Russia's elite cheered and wept as Vladimir Putin announced the re-annexation of Crimea. Seven in 10 Russians approve of Putin's rule. In Crimea, the Russian majority has not ceased celebrating. The re-conquest nears completion. In Eastern Ukraine, Russians have now begun to agitate for... Read More

Here is an old Soviet-era joke, from the subgenre in which dimwitted peasant Khruschev plays Costello to smart seminarian Stalin’s Abbott. This joke is a slur on the noble Romanian people, whose hospitality I once br

The Greek government's debt became unmanageable after autumn 2008, but the EU didn’t respond until over a year and a half later. (source) In the post-national Greece that developed after 1974, the clear winners were the middle class. Thanks to the strong purchasing power of other European currencies, and later the Euro, they could travel... Read More

The latest bestseller by German economist Thilo Sarrazin, a former member of the Bundesbank executive board, is a rambling critique of the eurozone. His book Deutschland braucht den Euro nicht (Germany does not need the euro) tells you everything you might want to know about why the eurozone is collapsing. The countries that formed the... Read More

Edited, 6/6/13. See below! I'll have much more on this later, but I stumbled across this map, and I thought it was too poignant to ignore: This is a map of the 2010 unemployment rates across Europe, broken down by region, originally found here. I have filled in the unemployment rates of the former Yugoslav... Read More

In 1945, when I was two years old, FBI agents barged into our Florida home and arrested my beloved French governess, Mlle Chapuiseau, as a "Nazi spy." With the typical dimness of government security agents everywhere, the FBI reasoned: Mlle Chapuiseau was from Alsace. That bitterly disputed province had been occupied by Germany from 1940—1945.... Read More