...plete with “facts” showing how Turkish immigrants are destroying the fabric of German society and “statistics” proving their intellectual inferiority, is just one striking example of a phenomenon that has swept across Western Europe: the spectacular resurgence of nativism. Sarrazin paints a picture of a Germany fighting to preserve a grand national heritage against a modern-day Ottoman invasion of barbarian infidels. He is not alone. Europe, the...
...the year’s theme merged the realms of art and politics in such a manner that I became unsure of where one ended and where the other began. The piece I mentioned earlier reflects the political and social reality of modern-day Europe. As the caption on the entrance wall of his pavilion explained, the protagonists of his exhibition are immigrants who “not being ‘at home’ remain eternal guests, strangers deprived of rights who remain mute, invisible...
Every day, the newspaper is full of more disheartening realities from the continent that threaten to shatter the teenage American perception of Europe as a bastion of indiscriminate sexual opportunity, sandy beaches, and wine-splattered tablecloths. Of course, Europe has never been the Xanadu that American pop culture has painted it as for decades, despite the splendid languor and unmistakable placidity in the European disposition that evades ev...
Disturbing trends are cropping up in Europe. Far-right political parties are now joining government coalitions, which is leading to an improvement in the radical right’s electoral success in traditionally open societies – even in the Netherlands and Denmark. With rising xenophobia toward the large number of Muslim immigrants in Europe, immigration policies are more stringent than ever before. And it’s plausible that Marine Le Pen, the le...
...et Union, and each one of them has ultimately failed to resolve it. Liberal interventionism (of the kind Obama is revisiting in Libya) failed, in the end, to become an organizing principle for NATO under Bill Clinton, and the Europeans similarly lacked the stomach for George W. Bush’s global war on terror. The root of the problem is that the United States is at the center of an alliance structure of and for the Cold War. NATO is an anti-Russian m...
...ma Desai, a Columbia economics professor. This sense of victimization has manifested itself in Russian foreign policy, both past and present. Josef Stalin justified the Soviet establishment of satellite governments in Eastern Europe by arguing that it created a buffer zone for a potential attack from the West. Under Putin, Russia has intervened in the affairs of its former constituent republics, protesting as they grow closer to the US and the EU...
...Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark is here, accompanied by Crown Prince Frederik, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Danish members of Parliament. Also invited are numerous representatives from NATO, Norden, the ICC, Nordefco, the European Union, the United Nations, and special emissaries for northern issues from a plethora of multilateral organizations. European, American, and East Asian heads of state have each brought along their own cohort of mult...
...c. The National Security Education Program (NSEP) is a language initiative that provides scholarships to students studying languages “critical to U.S. interests.” These languages unsurprisingly hail from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East. While most initiatives of the same genre require only that the recipient continue studying the language, NSEP actually involves a year of government serv...
...sible for the ferocity of the revolution. Consistent fraud, increased police brutality, and the seeming readying of power transfer to Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal, in addition to the semi-recent success of revolutions in Eastern Europe, South America, South Africa, and finally, Tunisia, were what sparked this revolution. Of course, the fuel for this flame was provided by economic despair entangled with widespread corruption in government as well as...
...n Institute. The paper is co-authored by Professor David R. Cameron of Yale University. Professor Orenstein’s research ranges from international economic policy to pension reform and economic transition in Central and Eastern European states. Orenstein began his presentation with a comment on the nature of previous research done on the democratic transition of former Soviet states to democracy. Much of this body of work, he noted, has been on the...
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