If you haven’t seen it yet, click through and take a look at Mark Perry’s Foreign Policy article on some recent shifts in the U.S. military’s strategic framing of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Although the story ran in the aftermath of Vice President Joe Biden’s disastrous trip to Israel, the events it reports took place beforehand, and give some background for where Biden’s alleged “This is getting serious for us” quote came from. Laura Rozen smartly places the “meta” narrative in the context of a pre-emptive White House defense against any Israeli efforts by way of congressional supporters to limit the [...]
You’ll probably see a lot of headlines today about how French President Nicolas Sarkozy took a beating in the first round of France’s regional elections yesterday. Take it with a grain of salt. Abstention hit a record in the low 50 percent range (i.e., most voters stayed home), the election was an off-year regional affair with no national impact, and it’s hard to imagine any incumbent doing that well in the current economic climate. It’s also unclear whether the Socialists and the Green coalition that came in third nationally will be able to work together to cut the necessarily deals [...]
Germany. Whether it’s the gathering meme blaming German trade imbalances and “hidden” protectionism (labor cost competition) for the current crisis, or the increasing likelihood that the monetary/debt crisis will drive further EU budgetary coordination and economic government, the Germans are looking more and more like they’ll turn out to be the big losers from the Greek debt crisis. After the Greeks, that is — and even there, I’m not so sure.
