The ironclad partnership between France and Germany has been the most frustrating geopolitical reality for Britain since the 1950s.  For hundreds of years, the British worked to maintain a European balance of power which in effect gave them the ability to tip the balance for or against any other power.The Franco-German entente ended that; the […]

Here is a cheery little prediction from those fun-loving Russians: Nuclear War!!!“Under certain conditions local and regional conflicts may develop into a full-scale war involving nuclear weapons”. So says General Nikolai Makarov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian military. The Washington Post has the story: Makarov specifically referred to NATO’s plans to […]

The new US activism in Asia is intended to be bold, but not rash.  That at least is how we are reading the tea leaves at Via Meadia.There’s no doubt that the announcement of new US deployments in Australia will not please Beijing — especially when paired with Australia’s decision to sell uranium to India.  […]

It seems the problems that struck China’s $3.6 billion dam project in Myanmar opened a small window for Japan. Reuters has the story on the cautious increase in Japanese aid and the promising beginnings of democratic thaw in Myanmar: Tokyo sees growing investment opportunities in Myanmar as the reclusive state embarks on political and economic reforms, […]

Brazil is of course happy to let foreign companies invest in its vast but difficult to access offshore oil reserves. China is interested in that oil — perhaps too interested. The FT recently reported this story: China’s second largest state-controlled oil major Sinopec has signed a $5.2bn deal to buy 30 per cent of the Brazilian […]

I have some thoughts on the bitter contest between France and Germany to control the future of Europe that is at the heart of the EU’s failure to master its financial crisis in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. Germany and France are locked into their most bitter struggle since the panzers exploded out of the […]

Obamacare isn’t dead, but the NYT is already writing its obituary. Two years ago, governors who filed lawsuits challenging the healthcare bill’s constitutionality were dismissed as Red State extremists and ideologues with names like “Butch” Otter. Hadn’t they read the Commerce Clause, the bien pensant press would ask.  What kind of Flat Earthers were these […]

One of my admittedly arcane little hobbies is to discover behavior in our avowedly secular society here in 21st-century America that looks, feels and quacks not like a duck, but like what in earlier ages would have been recognized as obviously religious in character.When I describe a behavior as religious in character I mean something […]

In more ways than one, Brussels is a fitting choice for capital of the European Union. Aside from its central location and placement in the middle of the Germany-France-UK cockpit which has shaped European politics and conflict for 500 years, Belgium shares many other qualities with the EU as a whole: internal cultural conflict, an […]

Via Meadia posted an essay not long ago on identity conflict, calling it the ‘scariest thing in the world’. Nationalism and conflict between peoples, cultures, and races over the same space tore Europe and the Middle East apart in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Africa and Asia are now starting to see the same types […]