Barack Obama was supposed to be the President who mended ties and restored America’s image around the world. Instead, the world is rallying against U.S. leadership on many important issues. Internet governance is only the latest sample of the consequences of the President’s bad management.

An independent Scotland, it now appears, would not be able to keep the pound in a currency union with the UK and it would not be able to charge British university students higher tuition rates than other EU students. That throws two big monkey wrenches into the SNP’s case. Voters in the referendum on September 18 may just decide to stick with the devil they know.

Putin is the thorn in Obama’s side, the pebble in his slipper, the fly in his borscht. Whenever Washington seeks to get something productive done abroad, the Kremlin makes sure to drop a few banana peels on the road. A smart piece from Victor Davis Hanson over at the National Review makes a point about Putin that […]

Banished from Spain in 1492, Sephardic Jews around the world may finally be seeing some indemnification. A new bill proposed in Spain promises the possibility of dual-citizenship for the Sephardic diaspora.

Happy Tuesday from the AI staff! Here’s what we’ve been mulling over this week:1. “Jesus is poisonwood.”2. One if by land, two if by drone.3. Are faculty too quick to “blame the administrators”? (H/T Megan McArdle)4. Penguins, Hindus and egg-throwers.5. Scientific progress: On one hand and on the other hand.6. Honey, while you’re out, could you pick me up […]

While U.S. and EU diplomats quarrel over niceties in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is surreptitiously gaining hold on countries ever farther west. A deal approved in Hungary’s parliament last week makes it quite clear that Putin wishes to drape an invisible curtain across the European continent, imposing energy and economic dependence on those countries that fall under it. How western leaders respond to his challenge will be an important gut check.

In voting to restrict immigration, the Swiss joined a larger, Europe-wide trend of national electorates rejecting the EU, rebelling against the political establishment, and asserting their mastery over their own national fate. EU member states can’t hold similar referenda on the free movement of peoples within the Eurozone, of course. But what if they could?

It has been in vogue lately to compare China’s rise and its relations with other world powers to the relationships between Germany and Great Britain in the years preceding The Great War. Others counter with rival historical analogies. But debating specifics of these comparisons risks losing sight of a broader point about great power politics.

When Silvio Berlusconi was expelled from Italy’s parliament last November, most observers around the world breathed a sigh of relief. Now it appears that he has risen from the political ashes once again and plans to run for a seat in the European Parliament. As the parliamentary leader of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party declared: “In May we will attack a Germanised Europe.”

As the Obama Administration ratchets up the rhetoric over China’s ambitions in the South China Sea, allies and enemies alike continue to wonder whether the United States really means what it says—or if this is yet another “red line” like the one Assad faced down with ease in Syria.