Europe Archive

One of the more prevalent military hardware stories that’s been flying just under the radar for the past few years is the shortage of helicopters for multilateral deployments. The EUFOR Chad force ultimately had to accept a Russian offer of eight copters, along with their operating teams, in order to cover the huge theater of operations under their jurisdiction. This Defense Industry Daily article describes how Coalition forces in Afghanistan have been forced to lease copters for non-military use from private contractors, in order to free up military copters for operations. This is a false shortage, to the extent that […]

It turns out the deal to purchase Russian copters for Iraq that I flagged last week is screwy after all, but not for the reasons I imagined. Sharon Weinberger explains why over at Danger Room.

Andrew Bast’s accompanying interview with Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF and currently a professor atMIT and editor of the Baseline Scenario blog, can be found here. Low expectations preceded last Thursday’s G-20 summit in London, but by day’s end a curious consensus had emerged. Prior to the summit, a rift had emerged between the United States, which was pushing for more economic stimulus, and the Europeans, who urged stricter regulation reforms. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had even threatened to walk out were he not satisfied with the measures taken. (Asked about it upon landing in London, he […]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s debut NATO summit at the Franco-German border over the weekend was a triumph of style over substance. Although allies put on a public face of unity, they were unable to agree on any of the major problems facing trans-Atlantic security. As NATO marks its 60th birthday, the alliance is mired in a profound identity crisis offering little reason to celebrate. The summit was dominated by the problem of Afghanistan and what to do about it. European allies heaped praise on Obama’s new Afghan strategy, which sets benchmarks for progress in fighting al-Qaida and the Taliban in […]

STRASBOURG, France — It’s a virtual certainty that the concerto played by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter at NATO’s 60th anniversary dinner Friday night wasn’t chosen because of its nickname. Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 is known as the “Turkish Concerto” because the composer used oriental themes in the final movement. But as it happened, the one discordant note in an otherwise harmonious summit was the down-to-the-wire threat by NATO member Turkey to veto the nomination of former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the alliance’s new secretary general. It took frantic, behind-the-scenes efforts, which delayed the start of the Saturday […]

Perhaps the most significant development coming out of last week’s G-20 summit meeting in London is the news that the world’s leading economies will triple the International Monetary Fund’s lending powers to some $750 billion. The massive investment raises an immediate question: How is influence shifting within the workings of the Fund? To tease out the nuances of these developments, WPR columnist Andrew Bast spoke with Simon Johnson, chief economist of the IMF in 2007 and 2008, and currently a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Many consider Johnson’s blog, The Baseline Scenario, a must-read on the global […]

I’m not going to make a habit of doing this, but today’s two selections reflect my previous post about the disconnect between the political theater of this weekend’s NATO summit, and the political substance that underlies it. And in trying to make a final choice between the two of them, I realized that neither one fully does justice to the situation, whereas together they describe it perfectly. The first selection reflects the political theater and its theme of conciliation, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the song was loaded into President Barack Obama’s iPod before he left for […]

Yigal Schleifer gives a rundown of Turkey’s opposition to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s candidacy for NATO secretary general. Essentially, because Rasmussen refused to condemn the publication of the Mohamed caricatures way back when, Turkey is considering vetoing his appointment (NATO operates under consensus rules). T(here’s also the question of a Danish news outlet that allegedly serves as a PKK mouthpiece, but that doesn’t support the point I’m about to make, so I’ll downplay that part.) Turkey’s argument is based on the image problems Rasmussen’s “involvement” in the incident will create in the Muslim world. I would argue that […]

What stood out most in President Barack Obama’s various press conferences I watched today was the divergence between the political theater in the run-up to the NATO summit, and the political substance that underlies it. On the political theater side, Obama acknowledged the French and German contributions to the war effort, while French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared their full support for Obama’s Afghanistan strategy. On the political substance side, Obama made it clear that France and Germany need to contribute more troops, and Sarkozy and Merkel said, Non, and Nein, respectively. It’s not that there’s no […]

LONDON — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown might have been excused for savoring the sweetest moment of his political career yesterday evening. By the time the final slaps on the back had been delivered and the G-20 world leaders had left London, Brown’s stock had never been higher. It had been his crisis summit. And at first glance, it was a success, as summits go. For 24 hours, Brown had enjoyed what for him has become the unusual comfort of high praise, luxuriating in the warm words of fellow leaders. And none were warmer than those of the undoubted superstar […]

The 2012 London Olympics may still be several years away, but yesterday, the city played host to a different type of games altogether — the G-20 summit on the global economic crisis. This time, the competitors were not the world’s premier athletes but rather political leaders representing the world’s most powerful economies. By the end of the conference, though, no single country emerged atop the podium. Instead, the clearest winner appears to be the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which received another boost in its quest to reassert itself as the protector of global economic stability. Still, if the world’s rising […]

World Politics Review managing editor, Judah Grunstein, will appear as a guest commentator on France 24, from 9-12 EST, during live coverage of President Barack Obama’s arrival at the 60th anniversary NATO summit in Kehl, Germany and Strasbourg, France.

This one’s datelined April 1, but DefenseNews doesn’t strike me as an April Fools kind of site. It’s a bit hard to unravel from the story, but apparently the Pentagon is paying a U.S. contractor to buy and modify to spec 22 Russian MI-17 helicopters through a UAE-based sub-contractor, for delivery the Iraqi government. I’ll be checking in with our resident expert on the Russian arms industry, Richard Weitz, on this one. I, for one, can’t make any sense of it. Update: Richard Weitz weighs in: It might be an interoperability issue. Given that the Iraqis have purchased Soviet- and […]

French President Nicolas Sarkozy got a side meeting in London with Chinese President Hu Jintao after all. France, like Britain before it, reiterated its longstanding Tibet policy — which amounts to public relations stunts to burnish human rights bona fides, while officially giving Tibetan aspirations for independence the shaft. For its part, China agreed to take the diplomatic high road and let bygones be bygones. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev got acquainted in a very lawyerly way during their side meeting. They have agreed to agree on what they agree on (START negotiations), while reserving the […]

There’s been a thought-provoking discussion of the centrality of Pakistani — or other — safe havens to al-Qaida’s operational capacity. Andrew Exum kicked things off here, Spencer Ackerman added some thoughts here, and Matthew Yglesias has some comments of his own here. The upshot is that safe havens are neither necessary nor sufficient to launch a terrorist attack, that it’s unrealistic to expect we can eliminate them because there will always be unstable corners of the world, and that focusing on physical space risks overlooking the role played by virtual space (i.e. the internet) in terrorist networks. Juxtapose that to […]

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — The newly appointed High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina takes office as the country’s finances are on the verge of meltdown, making the need for an arbiter to break the stalemate of the country’s dysfuntional political system more urgent than ever. The 59-year-old Austrian diplomat, Valentin Inzko, is the seventh high representative since the Dayton Peace Agreement created the position 14 years ago. Unlike each of his three immediate predecessors, Inzko was not expected to be the last to exercise the office when he was introduced last Thursday. The acceptance of the continued need for […]

Three posts about the upcoming summits (G-20 in London, NATO in Strasbourg) got me thinking about the politics of President Barack Obama’s transatlantic diplomacy: James Joyner wonders whether European Obamamania will survive the week, Heather Hurlburt points out how the diffusion of global power has diluted and complicated diplomacy, and Art Goldhammer scolds French President Nicolas Sarkozy for his threat to walk out of the G-20 summit. A few scattershot thoughts: My sense is that for a number of not necessarily coherent reasons, European Obamamania has already faded significantly since the election, and even a bit since the well-received Munich […]