A good German counterpoint to yesterday’s article from the Berliner Zeitung headlined U.S. Assault on Assange Betrays America’s Founding Principles is this article from Die Welt, headlined WikiLeaks Threat to America is Nothing for Europe to Snicker About by columnist Thomas Kielinger. Kielinger warns readers that to encourage and support organizations that undermine U.S. power and credibility like WikiLeaks is tantamount to undermining European security. For Die Welt, Thomas Kielinger...

When people in other countries quote the Founding Fathers to Americans, they are almost invariably seeking to strike a nerve that they hope will get the United States to change course. Columnist Holger Schmale in this article from of Germany’s Berliner Zeitung asserts to his readers that by seeking the arrest and prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Washington is acting hypocritically and making a mockery of the ideals it seeks to promote around the world. For the Berliner Zeitung,...

Today, the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee awarded Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize – but his chair went empty. Beijing refused to allow him, his wife or any of his relatives to travel to Oslo and accept the award. According to this editorial from China’s state-run Global Times, awarding the Prize to Liu Xiaobo is part of a long-running Western conspiracy to obstruct China’s ‘peaceful rise’ and is a ‘political farce.’ The Global Times...

The ramifications of the WikiLeaks disclosures continue to ripple around the world. One country that has had to scramble more than most to deal with the fallout from the massive leak of U.S. diplomatic communications is Lebanon. Not only did the cables reveal the Saudis suggesting an armed Arab force to ‘destroy’ Hezbullah, which is well represented in the current Lebanese government, but news that Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri advised American officials that they ‘must be willing...

Mexico is another country plunged into turmoil by the unvarnished views of American diplomats made available by WikiLeaks. According to Mexico’s Coordinator of the Dialogue for the Reconstruction of Mexico, Manuel Camacho Solís, writing for El Universal, ‘If someone had been dedicated to tracking files that are the most devastating to Mexico in the State Department archives, he would have been hard pressed to find a more damaging set.’ For Mexico’s El Universal, Manuel...

What is the long-term significance of the disclosures by WikiLeaks? And how are international journalists coping with interpreting the huge mass of once-declassified material suddenly flung into the public domain? These two articles – one from Germany and the other from France – give a European accounting of the answers. According to the first article headlined WikiLeaks Makes Real a Global Public Sphere by Ines Kappert of Germany’s Die Tageszeitung, WikiLeaks has put more power...

Has China been too restrained and too considerate of its nervous neighbors, by not building an aircraft carrier of its own? According to this article from China’s state-run Global Times, America’s recent military exercises with South Korea near the China coast is all the reason Beijing needs to set aside any misgivings and begin construction. For China’s state-controlled Global Times, Sun Peisong, director of China’s Jiangsu Lianyungang Development Research Institute, writes...

Are the people of WikiLeaks just like the neighborhood gossips, and doesn’t the name of their leader Julian Assange sound like a brand of hairspray? Columnist Joao Quadros of Portugal’s Jornal De Negocios takes a humorous and uniquely Portuguese and European look at what, in terms of ink spilled, may be one of the most significant news stories in years. For the Portugal’s Jornal De Negocios, Joao Quadros writes in part: Immediately, the U.S. administration strongly criticized...

The reaction of China to the disclosure by WikiLeaks of U.S. diplomatic cables is particularly interesting. According to this editorial from China’s state-run Global Times, Beijing suspects that the U.S. may have some kind of ‘tacit understanding’ with WikiLeaks. But even if WikiLeaks developed organically, the editorial says that China is concerned that as a child of the Western-dominated Internet, it could end up damaging its own interests far more than it appears to have hurt...

It’s one of the most fascinating details to emerge from the leak of classified U.S. diplomatic dispatches: Leaders in Saudi Arabia and a number of other Gulf nations want the United States to stop Iran and its nuclear program, or in the words of Saudi King Abdullah, ‘cut off the head of the snake.’ But as the articles below show, while the two nations may in fact be at loggerheads, they agree on one thing: both in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the suspicion is that this massive release...

As I have pointed out over recent days, one of the most riveting aspects of the disclosure of classified U.S. diplomatic cables is that because they touch upon local issues and local leaders around the world, there are fascinating nuances of reaction from country to country. Below are three articles we’ve translated from Spain’s El Pais, one of the five newspapers in the consortium selected by WikiLeaks to interpret the U.S. diplomatic cables for the world. In the first article, headlined...

With once secret U.S. diplomatic cables washing over the world, are we getting all worked up over gossip everyone already new? According to columnist Clovis Rossi of Brazil’s Folha newspaper, so far at least, there is precious little ‘news’ coming out of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. State Department cables doled out to some of the world’s leading newspapers. For Brazil’s Folha, Clovis Rossi writes in part: Do you believe that the Brazilian Embassy in Buenos Aires...

Revelations from WikiLeaks that China is running out of patience with North Korea thickens the plot on the Korean Peninsula, and makes recent editorial comment from China’s state-controlled press even more interesting. Beginning over the Thanksgiving weekend, we’ve posted five editorials from the state-run Global Times which reflect a dual strategy on the part of the Beijing leadership: attempt to peel South Korea away from its alliance with the U.S. and toward one with China; and...

The number of U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks is so large, so fascinating and so cutting, that it’s hard to know when the global reaction will end. Equally difficult is to figure out where to begin when discussing that reaction. But Pakistan seems as good a place to begin as any. Thus far, Pakistan has been stung by two items contained in the leaked U.S. cables. The first is a quote of Saudi King Abdullah that criticizes Pakistan President Asif Zardari’s impact on Pakistan...

Happy Thanksgiving Day weekend everyone! In addition to covering the crisis in North Korea, we’re still busy covering the aftermath of the Russia-NATO Summit. After the summit last week, many analysts were baffled by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for joint ‘sectoral missile defense,’ which appears to put most of the responsibility for defending against a rogue missile attack in Moscow’s hands. But according to columnist Alexander Goltz of Russia’s...

Is Barack Obama too stingy when it comes to the president’s power to pardon the condemned? On Thursday, like all of his recent predecessors, Mr. Obama will pardon a pair of turkeys. While that’s certainly good news for the two birds, who will escape the fate of 46 million of their fellow turkeys, Le Figaro columnist Veronique Saint-Geours wonders why more human beings don’t warrant similar attention. For France’s Le Figaro, Veronique Saint-Geours writes in part: For Thanksgiving,...

So how is the rest of the world reacting to the memoirs of former President George W. Bush? Two of the articles we’ve posted on the subject in the past 24 hours express a mixture of resignation, anger and temperance about their veracity and significance. The first article headlined George W. Bush’s Memoir is No Laughing Matter from columnist Hasan Nafi’a of Egypt’s Al-Masry Al-Youm, urges people, regardless of how distasteful the experience may be, to read Decision Points...

Are Brazil’s President-elect Dilma Rousseff and U.S. President Barack Obama capable and ambitious enough to create an alliance that would define the Western Hemisphere in the decades to come? According to columnist Moises Naim of Spain’s El Pais, if President Obama can grab the chance that his predecessor George W. Bush passed up – the potential opportunities would be enormous. For El Pais, Moises Naim writes in part: A powerful alliance between Brazil and the United States may...

Under its new president, Juan Manuel Santos, Colombian policymakers are preparing for a change in relations with the United States, which, according to columnist Alvaro Forero Tascon of Colombia’s Semana, has been based on Colombian weakness and the-now-diminishing American influence. For Semana, Alvaro Forero Tascon writes in part: What President Santos calls “speaking in equal terms” with the United States is not overconfidence on his part, but his reading that there has been a change...

In the past 24 hours, we’ve posted two very hard-hitting articles from China’s state-run Global Times that bear attention. The first article, an editorial headlined American Arrogance Will End Dollar’s Dominance, is Beijing’s reaction to the FED’s “QEII” – the second round of U.S. quantitative easing now underway that involves the FED buying $600 billion on U.S. Treasury Bonds at $75 billion increments for the next year – in effect printing...

This is a challenging moment in history, and according to columnist Peter Ehrlich of Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, President Obama is a victim of it: The United States, relative to other nations, is growing comparatively weaker. And with economics rather than military prowess the modern measure of true influence, Ehrlich contends that presidents of the United States, starting with Barack Obama, will have to adjust. I’d like to insert a personal note on this narrative to say,...

Now that President Bush is back with an autobiographical book defending his tenure, so are those who want him arrested for torture. In this article from France’s Rue 89, Jean-François Lisee informs that every country – all 146 of them – that are signatories to the U.N. Convention Against Torture, are obliged to arrest Mr. Bush, and Lisee points out that a few have already begun proceedings against Bush Administration officials. For the Rue 89, Jean-François Lisee writes in part: If...

Notable for their expressions of admiration for how the U.S. midterm elections demonstrate the healthy workings of democracy, these two articles from Eastern Europe, one from Poland and the other from Romania, disagree on the staying power and intelligence of the Tea Party platform. According to columnist Marek Magierowski of Poland’s Rceczpospolita, the 2010 midterm election results are a sign that American voters are smarter than their European counterparts. Magierowski writes in part: Obama...

For those who haven’t heard, former Pakistan president/dictator and retired general, Pervez Musharraf, has just launched his own political party and wants his old job back. But if this editorial from Pakistan’s Frontier post is anything to go by, he has precious little chance of winning an election. The newspaper rips him for According to the editorial, his coddling of ‘cowardly’ U.S.-led invaders’ and failure to defend Pakistan’s military and intelligence services...

Can the Federal Reserve revive the U.S. economy with a second round of ‘quantitative easing’, also known as QEII? In essence, this means injecting $600 billion that never existed before into the U.S. and global economy in $75 billion monthly increments. Reflecting the growing interconnectedness of the global economy, two of the articles we’ve posted on QEII demonstrate growing international discontent with the move, which may benefit the U.S. economy, but will undercut the currencies...