The ramifications of the EU’s disastrous choice of Catherine Ashton for its first full-time Foreign Minister are going from bad to worse. Following a less-than-stellar performance during a question-and-answer session with the European Parliament, America’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, embarrassingly struggled to remember her name at dinner with European bureaucrats this week. While EU elites have been worryingly obsessed with Brussels’ internal reorganization for the past eight years, Washington and London have been leading the bloody campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. From …
Outlining his strategy to “bring this war [Afghanistan] to a successful conclusion” in a nationally televised address last night, President Obama stated that he was confident of securing additional military and civilian contributions from America’s NATO allies in the days and weeks ahead. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will travel to Brussels later this week to meet with NATO Foreign Ministers, and will stand alongside countries like Britain and Slovakia which have already announced additional troop deployments for Afghanistan. Other nations, such as Poland and Italy will likely pledge additional …
European leaders will meet for dinner tomorrow for a special summit to decide who will become the first permanent EU president and the new EU foreign minister. With the ink barely dry on the illegitimate Lisbon Treaty, EU elites are rushing with indecent haste to anoint the next leaders of Europe. And in typical EU fashion, negotiations over who will become the formal ‘faces of Europe’ will be conducted behind closed doors with zero public input. Although there is a small chance that the 27 European heads of state and …
Ask any person across Europe their top priority right now and they’ll likely say “it’s the economy, stupid.” Soaring unemployment, failing banks and massive government deficits continue to dominate the news headlines in several EU countries as ordinary people worry about their jobs and futures. As people tighten their pocketbooks, it is increasingly obvious that international institutions aren’t doing the same. This week, the EU’s Court of Auditors refused to once again sign off the EU’s budget – for the 15th straight year. For 15 years, the EU’s own auditors …
EU elites have been lining up in euphoric droves to celebrate the passage of the Lisbon Treaty. Having fudged, connived, bullied and browbeaten the final hold-outs, the creation of an EU super-state will now take its greatest leap forward. Contrast the throngs of headlines over Lisbon’s passage with the EU’s response to Russia’s simulation of a nuclear attack on Poland. A Polish newspaper recently revealed that Moscow simulated a war game in which Russian armed forces invaded Poland and nuclear missiles were fired. Eerily similar to the propaganda methods adopted …
Czech President Vaclav Klaus has signed the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty proclaiming, “the Czech Republic will cease to be a sovereign state.” He’s right. The Lisbon Treaty contains the building blocks of a United States of Europe and will shift power from the member states of the EU to Brussels in critical areas of policymaking, including defense, security, and energy–areas in which the United States finds more traction on a bilateral basis. The treaty is a blueprint for restricting the sovereign right of EU member states to determine their own …
As Vice President Joe Biden completes his arm-twisting tour of Central and Eastern Europe, the Czechs have announced that they are ready to participate in America’s new missile defense plan, but only in the context of NATO. In the clearest sign yet of dissatisfaction with their second-class treatment by the new Administration, the caretaker Czech Government announced that Czech participation in the new missile defense architecture will no longer be on a bilateral basis. It is clear that President Obama sent Biden to Central and Eastern Europe to paper over …
Sending the Vice President to Poland and the Czech Republic this week could easily be another misstep by the Administration when it comes to handling relations with Central and Eastern Europe. Despite his seniority, the famously gaffe-prone Joe Biden may not be the wisest choice to handle Washington’s “damage control” exercise in Warsaw and Prague. And damage has been done in abundance, not just to America’s diplomatic relations with Poland and the Czech Republic, but to its standing in this part of the world more broadly. President Obama’s abandonment of …
In January, amidst a particularly cold winter, Russia’s quasi-governmental gas giant Gazprom turned off the gas taps to Ukraine after the two sides failed to reach agreement in a pay dispute. Downstream users including Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and the Czech Republic were also put in the deep freeze. Gazprom has become synonymous with energy intimidation and Moscow has leveraged energy to specifically target former Soviet states such as Ukraine as it seeks to carve out a sphere of influence in its near abroad. However, the conundrum for Moscow in playing …
It has not been a good week for the Czech Republic. On Thursday, President Obama formally ditched the agreement to deploy elements of America’s missile defense shield there. Twisting the knife further on Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened Prague with “consequences” of delaying ratification of Lisbon Treaty, making the statement completely unprompted. The Lisbon Treaty, a rehashed version of the twice-rejected European Constitution, is awaiting ratification in Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic. Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer has indicated that it could take a further six months to …
