Enough is enough: NATO must suspend cooperation with Turkey
Under the brutally authoritarian rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, its diehard Islamist president, it has stood out as the alliance’s greatest liability.
Charles de Gaulle
Will France abandon its opposition to unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state?
If it does, then Israel will be more reliant on Germany, Italy, Greece and the Eastern European states to fight its corner within the European Union, its largest trading partner.
Op-eds
French Twist
Emmanuel Macron cozies up to the Chinese Communist Party
Op-eds
Will the Republican’s Tilt Toward Isolationism End?
Asked “which is the more hawkish party,” anyone remembering the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George Bush would immediately answer “the Republicans.”...
Op-eds
Weaponizing Refugees
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Willkomenskultur (“Welcome culture”) refugee policy of last year has screeched to a grinding halt. Delivering an early December speech at her C...
Op-eds
Crowds and Power
I was in France in the summer of 1968, working at the World Bridge Olympiad in Deauville on the Normandy coast. Late at night–bridge tournaments run into the wee hours–I would h...
Op-eds
Iran’s Serial Violations and Obama’s Tepid Response
Berlin – The sheer scale of Iran’s violations of the Joint Plan of Action to slow down its illicit nuclear-weapons program should ring alarm bells in the White House. Ve...
Op-eds
Crowds or Mobs, Demonstrations or Riots
When is a demonstration a riot? When you disapprove. Crowds demonstrate and mobs riot. Got it? Thus, those big assemblages of protesters in the streets of Hong Kong are crowds for most W...
Op-eds
The French
What are we to make of the latest broken stereotype, the one that portrays the French as Europe's leading surrender monkeys? After French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius rejected the latest...
Op-eds
Obama’s Iran Blind Spot
In response to President Obama’s Syria speech about a deal with Russia confiscating the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government...
Op-eds
Erdogan’s Great Gamble
Something quite extraordinary -- perhaps even historic -- is afoot in Turkey. The country's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is engaged in a colossal roll of the political dice, an act...
Op-eds
Troubled Paradise: The Mixed Success of the African Union’s Intervention in the Comoros
Located at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel off the east coast of the Africa, the Comoros Islands – Ngazidja (Grande Comore), Mwali (Mohéli), Nzwani (Anjouan), and Mahor&ea...
Op-eds
Egypt: Revolution? By Whom? For What?
As I’ve remarked in the past–but you can’t say the truth too often, right? — nobody knows what a revolution looks like. And in fact that last clause may be very misl...
Op-eds
A New French Resistance
The electoral victory by Nicolas Sarkozy is the product of the French public's rejection of a decay eroding the foundations of the Fifth Republic since its inception in 1958. The country...
Op-eds
French Resistance to Jihadism
When I was leaving Paris at the end of October 2005 after a visit to France, I had two things in mind: First, I had seen the beginning of the urban intifada, which would soon engulf about two hun...
Op-eds
Lebanon’s Strange Mix
By: Amb. Richard Carlson & Barbara Newman. BEIRUT, Lebanon - The sweeping victory in the third round of the Lebanese parliamentary elections by Gen. Michel...
Op-eds
Historical Precedents: The War on Terrorism Does Echo WW2
The 60th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy gave President Bush an opportunity to draw parallels between World War II, on the one hand, and the war in Iraq and the broader global conflict, o...
Op-eds
A Winnable War – If Americans Don’t Succumb to Defeatism
In August of 1944, Charles de Gaulle led a victory parade down the Champs Elysees in Paris. What a clever idea that was. De Gaulle had never been elected anything. Early in the war he ha...