PARIS: “One must fight both terrorists and the causes of terrorism with the same determination.” That formula, coined ten years ago in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, by leaders as diverse as Javier Solana, then (...)
PARIS: And the next French President will be…the Socialist Party's candidate François Hollande. A month ago, any prediction uttered with such certainty would have sounded imprudent, if not foolish. Uncertainty prevailed. Four candidates dominated (...)
PARIS: Is democratic time too slow to respond to crises, and too short to plan for the long term?
At a time of deepening economic and social crisis in many of the world's rich democracies, that question is highly relevant. In Italy, for example, (...)
PARIS: Russia is not Egypt. And Moscow is not on the eve of revolution as Cairo was less than a year ago. Indeed, Russia's powerful have at their disposal assets that former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's regime lacked.
As an energy (...)
PARIS: A few days ago, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab television network, that he would use his warships to prevent Israeli commandos from again boarding Gaza-bound ships, as they did last year. And in a (...)
PARIS: It is difficult not to be struck by the contrast between the “Asian”-like energy of Israel's economy and civil society and the purely defensive nature of its approach to political change, both within and outside the country. A recent law bars (...)
PARIS: Japan in March 2011 and Norway in July 2011: any comparison between the madness of nature and the pure madness of man in Norway may sound artificial. Yet, confronted with their respective tragedies, Japan and Norway displayed a very similar (...)
PARIS: Are women in Europe on the verge of becoming an engine for political change? In economic-development circles, experience and common sense suggest that progress, accountability, and hard work start with and depend on women. Micro-credits, for (...)
PARIS: Twenty years ago, in the immediate aftermath of Germany's reunification, French magazines were full of caricatures of Chancellor Helmut Kohl wearing the traditional pointed Prussian helmet. The new Germany was perceived as a threat to the (...)
PARIS: In 2003, France, under President Jacques Chirac, took the lead in opposing America's planned invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin's flamboyant speech at the United Nations encapsulated the “spirit (...)
PARIS: Is Tunisia the first Arab authoritarian domino to fall? Or is it a unique case that should not be viewed as a precedent for either the Arab world in general or the Maghreb in particular? The region's dictators have sought to dismiss the (...)
PARIS: Could the world be on the verge of a new period of re-ordering itself, similar to the one experienced nearly 20 years ago?
In the 1990s, the fall of the Soviet empire and the brutal implosion of Yugoslavia led to a spectacular increase in (...)
PARIS: Kishore Mahbubani, a prominent Asian voice from Singapore, and a man often highly critical of Europe, was recently asked what Asia could learn from Europe. His reply: Europe was above all the continent of peace, compassion, and (...)
PARIS: “Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.” Winston Churchill's famous denunciation of the delaying tactics of the British and French on the eve of World War II should be a warning to (...)
PARIS: Is football (soccer) just a mirror that reflects the collective emotions of a country? Or should it instead be seen as a magnifying glass, if not sometimes a distorting mirror, that reveals on the playing field the frustrations, fears, (...)
PARIS: What is wrong with Israel? In the last few years, the Jewish state seems to have done more than all of its combined enemies to delegitimize itself in the eyes of the world. Its leaders' apparent inability to think in strategic terms, and (...)
PARIS: The contrast between the Schuman Declaration of May 9, 1950, which launched the European unification project through the Coal and Steel Community, and the fearful bid to save Greece and rescue the euro of May 9, 2010, could not be more (...)
PARIS: Some countries are naturally at ease with the concept and the reality of strategic power. Such was clearly the case of France under Louis XIV, the Sun King in the seventeenth century, and such is the case today of China, whose leadership is (...)
PARIS: What is the significance of France's recent sale of four powerful Mistral-class warships to Russia? Was it business as usual or an irresponsible move contributing to a dangerous shift in the balance of power in the Baltic and Black (...)
PARIS: In 2040/2050, will demographers speak of "the white man's loneliness in the way historians once referred to "the white man's burden to describe the so-called "imperial responsibilities of some European nations?
Demography is not an exact (...)
PARIS: A referendum in Switzerland forbids the construction of new minarets. Racial violence explodes in the southern Italian region of Calabria. An intense and controversial debate takes place in France on the issue of national identity. These (...)
PARIS: "Do not forget India. That warning made sense 10 or 15 years ago; not any longer. India is now impossible to ignore, much less forget, owing not only to its rapid economic growth, but also to the country's increasing geopolitical (...)
PARIS: A nation's relationship with its past is crucial to its present and its future, to its ability to "move on with its life, or to learn from its past errors, not to repeat them.
There is the past that "isn't dead and buried. In fact, it is (...)
PARIS: Elections stolen in Iran, disputed in Afghanistan, and caricatured in Gabon: recent ballots in these and many other countries do not so much mark the global advance of democracy as demonstrate the absence of the rule of law.
Of course, (...)
PARIS: Whoever wins September's parliamentary election in Germany, the time has come once again for a major Franco-German initiative. Regardless of their economic conditions or their confidence - or lack of it - in each other, France and Germany are (...)