Europe
June 13, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
During an interview last year, President Trump and Tucker Carlson had this exchange: CARLSON: Membership in NATO obligates the members to defend any other member who has been attacked. So let’s say Montenegro, which joined last year, is attacked: Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack? Why is that? TRUMP: I understand what you’re saying. . .but that’s the way it was set up. .
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May 26, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports that “Europeans [have] dealt a blow to the continent’s traditional center-left and center-right politicians in elections for the European Parliament. . .depriving them of a majority for the first time.” It was a high-turnout election, with the highest participation level in 25 years. The Post says that voters used the elections to “take a shot at the parties that have steered Europe’s consensus-driven policies for decades.”
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May 25, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post is probably the leading American defender of “the Europe of Brussels,” the antithesis of “the Europe of Nations.” She’s also one of President Trump’s harshest critics. That makes sense. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks the truth when he says that “President Trump has helped put the world back on track to a nation-first trajectory.” In her latest column, Applebaum describes a lunch meeting
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May 24, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
John Fonte is probably the leading American critic of what he calls “the Europe of Brussels.” Thus, his is a voice worth listening to in connection with the European parliamentary elections now being held. John discusses what’s at stake in these elections in an article for “American Greatness” called “The Virtues of Patriotism.” The election, says John, represents a “war of ideas between the ‘Europe of Nations’ and the ‘Europe
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May 23, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Voting in the European Parliament elections begins today. It will continue into the weekend. As I understand it, different countries vote on different days. The “populist” parties are expected to make their best-ever showing. I wrote about this development here. In that post, I suggested that if the populists make the gains they are expected to, they will fall far short of making up a majority in Parliament, but will
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May 19, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
European parliamentary elections will take place on May 26. I’m old enough to remember the early elections in which my wife’s socialist cousin refused to vote on the grounds that the EU had no power and the elections didn’t matter. Ah, the good old days. Nowadays, the EU has vast power, so the elections are not so easily dismissed. However, it’s possible that the results of this election might cause
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May 8, 2019 — Scott Johnson
In the third installment of our preview of the new (Spring) issue of the Claremont Review of Books (subscribe here), Christopher Caldwell takes up Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. We have featured Caldwell’s several CRB essays on the Muslim immigration that is transforming Europe. As the author of the 2009 book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, he knows what he is talking about. His
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March 25, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams was the liberal governor of Michigan throughout the 1950s. In 1961, President Kennedy named him Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. It seemed like a good fit for Williams, a longtime civil rights advocate. Williams generated controversy in his new job by declaring: “What we want for the Africans is what they want for themselves.” The press translated this as: “Africa for the Africans.” The
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January 26, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
I wrote here about the controversy over what to call the Balkan nation just north of Greece. The dispute has raged for decades — the northern neighbor calling itself “Macedonia” and Greece objecting to the use of that name, which has strong associations with Alexander the Great and his father, Phillip of Macedonia. Finally, a compromise was reached whereby the northern neighbor would be “North Macedonia.” It would make concessions
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January 21, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
There’s a longstanding controversy over what to call the Balkan nation just north of Greece. It calls itself Macedonia. However, Greece, which also includes a chunk of what historically was called Macedonia, has objected to assigning that name to another country, and a Slavic one at that. The dispute came to the fore following the breakup of Yugoslavia, of which “Macedonia” had been a part. An interim agreement in the
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October 16, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
The mainstream media has criticized President Trump’s reaction to reports that Saudi Arabia is responsible for the disappearance and probable death of Jamal Khashoggi. Trump has said he is waiting for more facts, clearly an appropriate position to take. He has also said that if the Saudis are responsible for killing Khashoggi the U.S. response will be “severe punishment.” From the media’s perspective, this statement seems unobjectionable. At the same
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October 2, 2018 — John Hinderaker
The battle between the people and insatiable self-proclaimed elites that rages here in the U.S. is, in some respects, uncannily duplicated in Europe. So this righteous rant by Mick Hume at Spiked resonates with American readers. A few newspapers, mostly tabloids like Britain’s Sun, have had the temerity to stand up to the EU’s power grab. Worse, many millions of Europeans agree with them. What is the solution? “Smart regulation.”
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July 11, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Get out the fainting couches! President Trump is in Europe, and once again he is saying the unsayable. The occasion is the NATO summit that began today in Brussels. Trump fired an opening salvo that included two themes, as reported by Bloomberg. The first is that Germany, in particular, undermines the alliance’s defenses against Russia by being too dependent on Russian natural gas: “It’s very sad when Germany makes a
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July 11, 2018 — Scott Johnson
The President of the European Council is one Donald Tusk. Tusk previously served as Prime Minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014 and was a co-founder and chairman of the Civic Platform political party. I concede that I don’t know much about him. I thought yesterday that he was entirely out of line with his comment on the resignation of Boris Johnson as Foreign Minister in the cabinet of British
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July 9, 2018 — Steven Hayward
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is hanging on by her fingernails in Germany right now, as the backlash against migrants reached a critical mass in recent weeks. The cabinet minister who confronted Merkel and forced immigration concessions, Horst Seehofer of the “conservative” CSU party based chiefly in Bavaria, has seen his own poll ratings collapse in the aftermath of the political crisis. But this is just as likely to be the
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July 1, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Forget, for the moment, our long-running “Civil War on the Left” series. That civil war is essentially over, and the radical “progressive” left has won. Notice how fast the left and the media is rushing to embrace their shiny new object, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the young (and presumably wise) Latina who knocked off the incumbent number four-ranked Democratic House member Joseph Crowley (who, admittedly, I had never heard of before last
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June 10, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump has urged that Russia be readmitted to what is now the G-7. He stated: Something happened a while ago where Russia is no longer in. I think it would be good to have Russia back in. Whatever was it that happened “a while ago” that caused Russia to be kicked out of the G-7? I remember. Russia annexed Crimea. How long a while ago did Russia do that?
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