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Democracy under siege in Romania
BUCHAREST — The Romanian government’s response to a peaceful uprising is a traumatic reminder of the frailty of our democratic gains. Fifty years on from the crushing of the Prague Spring and almost 30...
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Europe’s new Eastern raiders
ISTANBUL — Maybe history does repeat itself: the first time as tragedy, the second as a European Commission proposal. They carry different names now, but raiders from the East are once again back at...
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Trump’s Iran sanctions are backfiring in Iraq
BAGHDAD — As soon as the most recent round of U.S. sanctions, announced by the Trump administration on August 7, hit Iran, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi said his country would reluctantly...
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Whatever happened to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan?
The troops waging America’s 17-year-old war in Afghanistan are confronting a puzzle: What has become of the enemy who drew them there? Al-Qaeda, the group whose September 11 terror attacks provoked the...
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Poland is Europe’s future — but which one?
WARSAW — What is one to make of Poland, hopefully without getting whiplash along the way? One Poland buzzes with youthful optimism: the economic success story of post-1989 Europe on daily show not just...
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Europe’s freak weather, explained
BERLIN — We’ve all become increasingly used to reports of extreme weather over the past few years. But this summer’s raft of dramatic weather events is significant: Not only does it show what warming...
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When Aretha Franklin rocked the national anthem
Five decades ago this month — before “Chicago 1968” became a shorthand for mayhem and riots, days ahead of Senator Abe Ribicoff’s convention-stage denunciation of the police department’s “Gestapo...
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The lock-him-up campaign
NEW YORK — Zephyr Teachout, the would-be next attorney general of New York, sits tight against the desk in the former doctor’s office she’s using for her campaign headquarters, her very pregnant belly...
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Why the EU can’t outsource its migration crisis
LONDON — When disagreements over how best to share the responsibility for asylum seekers and migrants in the European Union flared up earlier this summer, EU policymakers reached once again for a...
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Bannon’s mission impossible: Unite the European right
It’s fashionable in Europe today to depict the rise of a nationalist, populist, anti-EU right inspired by Donald Trump as unstoppable, with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon playing the role of...
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Prague Spring a reminder of threats to Europe
As we mark the anniversary of the 1968 Prague Spring — when Warsaw Pact tanks crushed the hopes of a pro-democracy movement — it is tempting to imagine that the era of authoritarian powers has come to...
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A Balkan border change the West should welcome
Europe has an intense and understandable fear of changing national boundaries. But discussions about a land swap between Kosovo and Serbia, which have been in a simmering conflict for two decades,...
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Pope’s faded star power in Ireland
DUBLIN — When Pope John Paul II touched down in a shamrock-emblazoned Aer Lingus Boeing 747 in September 1979, he was treated like a star. That same year, thousands of elated fans famously rocked to...
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Bunga bunga Britain
BOLOGNA, Italy — Which country is hot in the summer, good at football and a political basket case? Italy? No, Britain (OK, England in the football). There was a time, not too long ago, when British...
View ArticleJohn McCain, the anti-Trump
BERLIN — John McCain’s passing leaves a void at the heart of the transatlantic partnership. The long-time Republican senator was a tireless advocate of U.S.-European relations: He strongly believed in...
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Redrawing Balkan borders would be a fatal mistake
On a stage with the presidents of Kosovo and Serbia at the weekend, I appealed directly to both of them not to make a fatal mistake and destabilize the whole Balkan region. I spoke not just as a policy...
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Trust me, Donald Trump, white South Africans are doing fine
I live in South Africa, and days after President Donald Trump’s tweet last week about the dangers, including “large-scale killing,” faced by white South Africans, I got an email from a friend back home...
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British Jews’ Corbyn problem
LONDON — Today, Jewish life in Britain is under greater threat than at any time since World War II, and it is because of one man — Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn — and the fetid politics that...
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AI can’t fix Facebook
BERLIN — Facebook is failing to contain hate speech. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Myanmar, where the company’s systems miss thousands of posts that incite violence against the Rohingya...
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Britain’s best hope: A federal EU
Fanatical Brexiteers are bound to be disappointed. The European Union and the United Kingdom are so deeply interdependent that a real divorce is, in practice, impossible. Forget “taking back control.”...
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