WPR Blog Archive

The Lisbon Treaty is still not entirely out of the woods, but after the Irish referendum in favor over the weekend, it looks like an increasingly safe bet. And if that seems like a metaphor for Europe’s broader chances, it probably is. The question in terms of foreign and defense policy now becomes, What, if anything, will Lisbon change? The answer is, A whole lot. Maybe. As Jolyon Howorth explains, the treaty creates a number of offices and institutions that represent potentially significant poles of power, both within the EU and vis à vis the member states. Most of the […]

I didn’t really think much of the news that Christian Brose, who was running FP’s Shadow Government blog, will be taking over as John McCain’s new national security adviser. I’d known Brose had already worked at State during the Bush administration. What I hadn’t realized is that he is now just 29 years old. This is kind of like what happened to baseball in the early 90s, when Theo Epstein and Brian Cashman became GMs on either side of their 30th birthdays. And to state the obvious, this sort of thing was simply unimaginable when I was growing up (essentially […]

I admit to being pleasantly surprised when I saw the initial reports on the outcome of yesterday’s talks on the Iran nuclear program. To be sure, this is not a sufficient step to any stable resolution of the conflict. But it was a necessary one, in that any further progress would have been impossible without first passing through this gate. One thing to keep in mind, though, to understand why yesterday’s outcome avoided the worst and does not guarantee future success, is that this was a so-far-isolated instance in this ongoing standoff where a positive outcome was in everyone’s interests. […]