What’s Europe’s perception of President Bush, now that he’s appearing at his last NATO Summit? From Le Figaro, France’s largest and most pro-American newspaper, comes this editorial. Written by Pierre Rousselin, the judgment of Bush’s legacy is a harsh one. Rousselin writes, “If the American president would take a sincere accounting of his actions, he would observe that he leaves a weakened Atlantic Alliance in military difficulty in Afghanistan, politically divided in the face of a more aggressive Russia, and ever-hesitant about its missions, its scope of activity and its raison d’être in the 21st century.”
Rousselin goes on to say, “Beyond the press releases glorifying painstaking compromise, the summit, which is to be followed on Friday by an unprecedented dialog with Vladimir Putin, highlights the lack of American “leadership” in the world at the end of a period marked by the Iraq War and the transatlantic crisis that it has unleashed. It is a sad result for a presidency that at its inception placed itself under the rubric of putting the use of force at the service of a conquering ideology.”
Editorial By Pierre Rousselin
Translated By Sandrine Ageorges
April 3, 2008
France - Le Figaro - Original Article (France)
The NATO summit in Bucharest is the final farewell of the allies to George W. Bush. If the American president would take a sincere accounting of his actions, he would observe that he leaves a weakened Atlantic Alliance in military difficulty in Afghanistan, politically divided in the face of a more aggressive Russia, and ever-hesitant about its missions, its scope of activity and its raison d’être in the 21st century. Read the rest of this entry »
Wonder how the NATO Summit in Bucharest is being covered in the Russian press? Russian concerns about the meeting, infighting over why President Putin isn’t being given a platform to speak at the summit, and the details of Thursday’s events are all covered in somewhat excruciating detail in this analysis from Russia’s Kommersant. Apparently, the Kremlin is upset that President Putin won’t be able to address the public at the conference, suspicious that the Alliance is trying to prevent a repeat of his Munich Speech of last year, in which Putin criticized the United States.
According to Dmitry Rogozin, Russian Ambassador to NATO, “The leadership of the Alliance is committed to curtailing most of the debate. The Russian President will be unable speak publicly on the most important questions of world politics. This is an ugly spectacle, and attempts to blame it on the rules are inappropriate.
By Mikhail Zygar and Vladimir Solovyev
Translated By Igor Medvidev
April 2, 2009
Kommersant - Russia - Original Article (Russian)
The NATO summit opens today in Bucharest, and it may be the most scandalous summit in the history of the organization. Ukraine and Georgia will attempt to obtain entry into the Alliance’s Membership Action Plan, while Russia and its key economic partners try to prevent this. The format of the Russia-NATO meetings won’t give Putin a chance to make another Munich speech. But the presidents of Georgia and Ukraine and former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov will be given a chance to speak.
[Editor’s Note: In his speech to the Munich Conference on Security Policy last year, President Putin said, among other things, “One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this? And of course this is extremely dangerous. The result of this is that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this no one feels safe! Because no one feels that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them!” Read the rest of this entry »
With the most significant NATO summit in decades about to begin, among other issues, the problem of what to do about Afghanistan is high on the list. Chief among European concerns in this regard is the apparent lack of a strategy beyond killing members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. For France’s Liberation, Bernard Guetta writes of British plans that France should take part in:
“The Taliban have learned from the defeat they suffered in 2001 … They now realize that they will achieve nothing if they persist with their cocktail of jihad and Sharia; they have become less fanatical, more political, and we could in a word, seek a compromise with them.” As far as the Americans are concerned, Guetta writes, “This is where the French reinforcements could play not only a military role, but a political one as well. They could permit the assertion of a Franco-British pole in Afghanistan, which would be so significant that it could encourage George Bush’s successor to endorse this strategy.”
By Bernard Guetta
Translated By Sandrine Ageorges
April 1, 2008
France - Liberation - Original Article (France)
Attention! Everything seems to plead - naturally - against sending more French troops to Afghanistan. But the Atlanticism of Nicolas Sarkozy is so compulsive, his foreign policy so confused, this war in particular - so close to being completely lost - that we have no choice but to conclude that to do so is merely an intolerable, dangerous, positive gesture toward George Bush. As it is, this decision is nothing but troubling, but beware! Contrary to the Iraqi adventure, the Afghan intervention was approved by the United Nations. It’s legal. It is, above all, legitimate, since the Taliban not only protected the organizers of the September 11 attacks, but seven years later, their victory would become a tragedy for this country and would complete the destabilization of neighboring Pakistan. Even worse, it would strengthen the networks of Jihadists giving them a territorial sanctuary and more importantly, nourish their myth about the inevitable defeat of the “crusaders” before the rising masses of Islam. Read the rest of this entry »
January 22nd, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
I wonder how people can at this moment manage to visualize ‘life after Bush’, especially when the present US president has almost a year to go before he demits office. Well, The Independent reports that “Prime Minister Gordon Brown is preparing the world for ‘life after Bush’ by seeking an outline agreement this year on major reforms to international bodies and eventual moves to dismantle nuclear weapons.” Click here to find out more…
Why did the terrorists want so badly to eliminate Benazir Bhutto? Because, according to one of France’s leading writers and philosophers, Bernard Henry Levy, her very existence posed a threat to everything they stand for - including the proper place of a woman.
“It is a woman, first of all, that they have killed. A beautiful woman. … the exact opposite of those shamed women, hidden and damned creatures of Satan, who are the only women tolerated by those apostles of a world without women … Behind the remains of this great lady, there should be the greatest possible number of heads of State, making her funeral a silent demonstration of the world’s adherence to the values of democracy and peace.”
By Bernard Henry Lévy*
Translated By James Jacobson
December 28, 2007
France - Liberation - Original Article (English)
It is a woman, first of all, that they have killed.
A beautiful woman.
A visible woman - an even conspicuously, dramatically visible woman. A woman for whom it was a point of honor not only to hold meetings in one of the most dangerous countries in the world, but to do it with her face uncovered – the exact opposite of those shamed women, hidden and damned creatures of Satan, who are the only women tolerated by those apostles of a world without women.
With Daniel Pearl, they killed a Jew.
With commander Massoud [of the Afghan Northern Alliance ] , they killed a moderate Muslim, a literate man and a free spirit. With Salman Rushdie , they tried for years to kill a man who dared to say that being human sometimes means to choose one’s destiny.
Well with BB, Benazir Bhutto, they killed a bit of all of this. But they also killed a woman, this woman, who was an intolerable provocation. It was the radiance of her unveiled face, nude, defenseless and magnificently eloquent - they killed her, because it was this woman, because it was her face - at once powerless and with a force that can’t be replicated, because she lived her destiny as a woman who refused the looming curse against the human face of all women, according to these new fascists who call themselves jihadists; thus they killed the one who was the very embodiment of the hope, spirit and will of democracy, not only in Pakistan, but in the lands of Islam in general.
Pervez Musharraf was a counterfeit adversary of al-Qaeda. He pretended to fight them while he played his double game with his occult alliances - his way of keeping his stock of terrorists under his elbow and releasing them one by one in dribs and drabs, all according to the needs of the alliance with his great and complicated American friend - he did their bidding under the table.
Benazir, if she had won, what can one say? If she had lived, simply lived, she wouldn’t have ceased saying at the risk of her own life, her very being, her very presence, that she was their resolute, absolute, irreconcilable adversary; for these people she was a threat - more than just a political one, an ontological one; she would have left them nowhere to hide. They knew this and they killed her.
I am reminded of an afternoon on December 2002 in London, when I investigated the death of Daniel Pearl - and therefore this powder keg, the rear-base for al-Qaeda, even though the forward base was already in Pakistan; Pearl was beautiful, yes; and incredibly courageous in his will to return - whatever the cost - to that country which had already uprooted Benezir’s two young brothers and her father in events redolent with the air of a Shakespearian tragedy. [All were killed under suspicious circumstances during Benazir Bhutto’s two terms as Pakistan President].
September 28th, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Bob Shrum, the longtime political consultant who is a great analyst and talking head but whose record in winning big U.S. elections is not stellar, has now become enmeshed in another controversy — in Great Britain.
Shrum has been under fire for his influence on Prime Minister Gordon Brown and in a new controversy a newspaper suggests that some of Brown’s speech phrases even seem lifted from American politicians.
Bob Shrum has fought eight US presidential elections and lost them all. That has not stopped his re-emergence as an influence on Gordon Brown, an old friend to whom he has played host in Cape Cod.
The veteran Democratic strategist helped to write the Prime Minister’s conference speech and is even said to have been given a desk at the Cabinet Office from where he is helping to plan Labour’s election campaign.
Even before Tony Blair’s departure Mr Shrum was travelling to London to dispense advice to Mr Brown. The Times disclosed that in March last year he delivered a speech at a private seminar at the John Smith Institute attended by Brownite notables such as Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander. He suggested that Labour needed to distance itself from Mr Blair’s record and eschew the politics of “triangulationâ€, they meant that leaders had to set their compass by the direction of others, he said.
Who says the U.S. has lost its influence in the world?
After the London bombings two years ago, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan had some advice for Tony Blair: “They should have been doing what they have been demanding of us to do–to ban extremist groups like they asked us to do here in Pakistan and which I have done.â€
Musharraf was a little testy about the revelation that at least two of the 2005 bombers had been in his country a few months earlier.
He will no doubt be giving similar advice to the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the wake of this week’s aborted car bombings.
But British investigators may find that Musharraf’s war on terrorists has been a little spotty, as in the case of one of his ministers who recently advocated suicide attacks in Britain to protest the knighting of Salman Rushdie and has been associated with “militant madressahs†that train suicide bombers.
If the perps of these latest attempts to kill Londoners turn out to be its graduates, the British can be thankful that their schooling left something to be desired.
A burning car has been rammed into the terminal building of Glasgow Airport in Scotland, heightening terrorism fears with the UK already on alert over the discovery of two cars loaded with explosive materials in London.
Police and witnesses described an SUV-style vehicle in flames being driven at full speed towards the building.
Two people were arrested at the scene, police said in a statement.
It was not immediately clear whether there were any injuries, although unconfirmed witness reports described a man on fire at the scene.
Two men rammed a flaming Jeep Cherokee into the main terminal of Glasgow airport Saturday, crashing into the glass doors at the entrance in what appeared to be the third attempted terror attack on Britain in two days, witnesses said. Police wrestled the two men to the ground - one of them engulfed in flames - arresting both and taking one to the hospital.
There were no reports of injuries but the airport - Scotland’s largest - was evacuated and all flights suspended, a day after British police thwarted a plot to bomb central London, discovering two cars abandoned with loads of gasoline, gas canisters and nails. Hundreds fled screaming from the terminal as one of the men poured gasoline over the Jeep and tried to force it further inside the terminal, one witness said.
“One has to conclude … these are linked,” Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of Britain’s joint intelligence committee, told Sky News. “This is a very young government, and we may yet see further attacks.”
Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, a Scot who took office only Wednesday, was holding a meeting of the government crisis committee later Saturday and was being kept updated by officials, Downing Street said.
A British government security official said the incident was being treated as “possibly terrorist related at this stage.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
Security officials had no direct intelligence linking the incident to the thwarted plot to bomb London but “are keeping an open mind,” the official said.
It’s a bit to early lin this story to know all the details — but it means the new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gets no honeymoon as his government has to move swiftly to see if there are any links between these incidents — and to find out whether more attacks are in the offing.
The Washington Post has an article up by Molly Moore, carrying the title: “New Leadership Trio Could Put Europe Back on Political Map.” Subtitle: “Merkel, Sarkozy and Brown Seen Reenergizing Region.” Indeed: very, very positive (almost overly positive in my humble opinion). One thing that has to be mentioned: Brown? Brown reenergizes the region? We are talking about Gordon Brown, right?
Brown is quite unpopular. Both with Tories ánd with Labor voters.
That being said, Molly’s article provides for a good, interesting read.
Europe is undergoing its most dramatic changing of the guard in more than a decade. New leaders in the European Union’s three preeminent countries — Britain, France and Germany — not only may transform their nations individually but also have the collective clout to blast Europe out of its lethargy and revitalize it as a global and diplomatic powerhouse.
“They could get the European heart beating again,” said François Heisbourg, a foreign policy analyst at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.
All three new European leaders are replacing predecessors who had become national and international liabilities. Nicolas Sarkozy, 52, took over the presidency of France on Wednesday from septuagenarian Jacques Chirac, who served 12 years. Gordon Brown, 56, will become prime minister of Britain on June 27 when Tony Blair leaves after 10 years. And Angela Merkel, 53, was named chancellor of Germany in 2005, after Gerhard Schroeder’s seven years in power.
The new axis of leaders is expected to moderate Europe’s relationship with the United States, striking a more evenhanded tone than the emotionalism of Blair’s perceived subservience or Chirac’s hostility, many analysts here say.
The expected result: “In this view, a new U.S. president in less than two years could work with a more united, engaged Europe to leverage Middle East peace efforts, persuade Iran to curtail its nuclear ambitions and negotiate with Russia over contentious energy issues.”
Of course, that sounds nice and all but, as Molly points out, Europe has its own internal problems: the Constitution was turned down, both in France and in the Netherlands, many citizens object to the rapid expansion of the EU (from 15 to 27 member states in only three years time), many Europeans fear that Turkey will become a member, which they do not want, and, finally, there is a lot of debate about what the role of the EU exactly should be. How much power should the EU have, how much sovereignty should member states give up?
An interesting change in France’s policies is / will be that Sarkozy’s administration will, most likely, support Israel ánd America. France under Chirac was, of course, pro-Arab and anti-Israel, and of the main Western critics of the US. Sarkozy is a completely different politician and is expected to be a completely different president than Chirac (was).
I have to say that I am quite a fan of Sarkozy and, to a lesser degree, of Merkel as well. I don’t have much faith in Gordon Brown (like most of the British themselves), but the first two are two great politicians who seem to be dedicated and strong. It is interesting to see that, although Molly does mention Brown at the very start of the article, she does not refer to him anymore after the first few paragraphs. The reason? Well, there’s not really that much positive to write about Brown.
Will Sarkozy and Merkel be able to take Europe to the next level? It seems to me that they just might. France and Germany are Europe’s, better, the EU’s, most powerful countries. If these two countries find each other and move towards the US ánd want Europe to unite, well, things could go forward quite rapidly. We will see what happens, but for now, I’m positive and hopeful.
May 2nd, 2007 by MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
Au revoir, Tony Blair.
As the The Guardian is reporting, “Blair began the final countdown to his departure [yesterday] by promising a resignation announcement next week and anointing Gordon Brown as his successor”. Said Blair: “Within the next few weeks I won’t be prime minister of this country. In all probability, a Scot will become prime minister of the United Kingdom, someone who has built one of the strongest economies in the world and who, as I’ve always said, will make a great prime minister for Britain.” (Yes, Brown is a Scot.)
Blair and Brown, who don’t like each other, are making nice (in a phony way), and Blair is doing what he can, so it would seem, to ensure a smooth transition of power (for fear of David Cameron’s Tories, one suspects), but in some key ways and on some key issues a Brown premiership will be much different than the Blair premiership. Start with the Iraq War, which, as Kevin Drum rightly notes, Brown has never much supported — which means that “the British withdrawal from Iraq will proceed, if anything, on an even quicker pace than before” — for my comments on that withdrawal, see here and here. Needless to say, there won’t be quite as much warmth between London and Washington as there has been in recent years.
Anyway, get ready for a seven-week leadership campaign — which Brown is almost certain to win. And get ready for the retirement of a still-youthful and -energetic Blair. Whatever will he do with himself?
For my recent thoughts on Blair as a liberal interventionist, see here. For more on Brown, see a post by my brother, something of an expert on British politics, here.
It seems that Gordon Brown “is becoming a growing electoral liability to the Labor Party.” He is, in the polls, falling further and further behind David Cameron.
The poll points to Labour’s worst local election performance in two decades, with the party poised to lose hundreds of seats in England and Wales. Labour is also facing a catastrophic loss of power to the nationalists in Scotland, opening up the prospect of a referendum on the end of the Union within four years.
The Tory leader has surged into a 10-point lead after voters were asked if they would prefer a Cameron-led Conservative government to a Brown administration.
The rapidly growing gap has triggered the first signs of panic within the Labour Party leadership that the local elections will give a powerful boost to Mr Cameron’s aim to be regarded as a potential prime minister.
The results: When asked “whether voters would prefer a Cameron or Brown government,” 45% said they favored Cameron, 35% said they favored a Brown government. Keep in mind that “18 months ago a majority of voters indicated the opposite.”
Besides that, a narrow majority now also said that they believe that the Tories are better best suited to run the economy, Labor, on the other hand, is believed to be best able to ruin it.
The Brits would be wise to vote the Tories into office. Britain has some real challenges, that have to be dealt with. Labor is, quite simply, not able, or not willing, to do so. The idea that Labor is better suited do run the economy is, of course, close to hilarious. If there is one weakness Labor / social democrats have, it is the economy.
