President Obama and President of the Republic of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili recently announced that the two countries should start free-trade negotiations. Let’s hope both presidents are serious. Presidents Obama and Saakashvili should instruct the appropriate government agencies to expedite preparation of the agreement. The most recentU.S.trade agreements, with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, each took more than five years to get from inception to implementation. This deal could get done in a fraction of that time. Both countries are already relatively open to international trade and investment, and the volume …
London today celebrated Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday and his role in bringing down the Iron Curtain with the unveiling of a 10-foot bronze statue of the former President at the U.S. Embassy in England. British Foreign Secretary William Hague and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke at the event, which drew a crowd of 2,000. Reagan’s statue will stand alongside those of former Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The tribute is one of many commemorations of Reagan’s legacy held across Europe over the past week.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw (Radek) Sikorski was probably being polite when he described, in a conference call on Friday with U.S. policy experts, the U.S. government as “a friend of the Eastern Partnership” initiative, a Polish-Swedish venture within the EU, which covers Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and the three countries of the Caucasus. The disparity between the U.S. and EU in terms of economic resources dedicated to Eastern Europe is overwhelming. While the EU spends billions on supporting this partnership, the United States spends a grand total of $311 million annually …
On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and Central and Eastern Europeans were freed from the constraints of communism. Twenty years later, the world that President Obama inherited from Ronald Reagan’s legacy is profoundly changed. Those suffering under planned economies and the denial civil rights are now living in free market economies and democracies. On the twentieth anniversary of this historic day Obama was absent. Instead, he sent his Secretary of State to Berlin in his place. Dr. Nile Gardiner points out that the administration added further insult to …
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 …
