Europe

Last summer, I spent some time in and about Port-en-Bessin-Huppain in Normandy. The little fishing village and its surrounding towns on the English Channel (“La Manche,” “the sleeve” en français) is delightfully picturesque in that rugged, elemental way that proceeds from the collision of tempestuous sea and commanding headland. Expansive fields of corn and other crops ripened fast, orderly in their serried, midsummer ranks. Orange-red poppies punctuated the grassy, flower-strewn verge and complicated the landscape, heavy with age and history. Poppies are for remembrance — and there’s a lot to remember in these parts.

A record number of countries will hold elections this, including Britain on July 4 and the United States on November 5. These two great powers — each with a veto at the UN — have enjoyed a bond that has survived for so long, is it known on both sides of the Atlantic as “the Special Relationship.” There have been stand-offs: Britain refused to join the war in Vietnam, and when Argentina seized the Falkland Islands in 1982, the US did not intervene. But Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher worked in tandem to bring down the Berlin Wall. And if the view on Ukraine and Gaza is not always the same, there is a shared commitment to the sovereignty of Russia’s neighbors and to a peace in the Middle East that secures the rights of Jews and Palestinians alike.

The 2024 presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is a dead heat. At most, a few percentage points separate them in the polls. Thousands of miles away, however, European leaders are operating as if Trump has already won, not wanting to be caught flat-footed yet again. When Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, European officials scrambled to establish contacts with the incoming administration. This time, the same wonks are proactively reaching out to Trump-friendly lawmakers and think-tankers, not only to understand what Trump’s foreign policy would look like in a second term but to press their own priorities. The Europeans, of course, are right to be worried.

Happy NatCon day, one and all. Yes, it’s that time of year again, when some of Europe’s most vocal right-wing exponents get together in a room for the annual National Conservatism conference. Last year’s shindig was in Westminster and spawned numerous headlines about British Members of Parliament Miriam Cates and Lee Anderson. This time though it’s being held in Brussels: home of well-paid Eurocrats and overzealous officials. Where better to make a stand for conservatism? The line-up includes Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and Nigel Farage. The former UKIP leader encountered some difficulty this morning after arriving on stage at the Claridge venue in the Belgian capital.

Lord Cameron, the UK foreign secretary, is stopping off at Mar-a-Lago tonight before once again making the rounds in Washington, DC to tub-thump for Ukraine aid. Cameron, who served as Britain's prime minister from 2010 to 2016, is meeting with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has been skeptical about Ukraine’s prospects of beating back the Russian invaders. A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office downplayed the significance of Cameron meeting Trump as "standard practice." “The foreign secretary is on his way to Washington DC, where he will hold discussions with US secretary of state Blinken, other Biden administration figures and members of Congress," the spokesperson said.

The drums of war are reverberating across Eastern Europe. Every geopolitical decision made by global powers carries immense weight. Amid the fear of growing conflict, one figure has emerged, wielding a sharp tongue and a pointed finger, challenging hesitant American lawmakers to bolster Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression. Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski has embarked on a media offensive, chastising Republicans for their reluctance to green-light the Biden administration’s proposed $60 billion military aid package for Ukraine. Despite his purported noble objectives, Sikorski’s appeal deserves closer examination.

If you didn’t know any better, you might think that Pope Francis was no longer welcome in Ukraine. His recent interview with a Swiss broadcaster, excerpts of which were released over the weekend, has caused a whirlwind of disappointment and anger in Ukrainian policy circles as well as with some of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters in the West. The subject of derision: whether Ukraine should do a little less fighting and a lot more talking. Asked to comment about the debate between those who seek a negotiated end to Russia’s two-year-long war in Ukraine and those who oppose such a stance, Pope Francis chose the side of dialogue.

Dutch populist leader Geert Wilders win has shocked Europe’s elites. At this point, one has to wonder why they continue to be surprised when voters absolutely frustrated with bickering and incompetence turn to someone who has never held political power. Wilders’s win is much less of an endorsement of his views than it is yet another rejection of the elites’ business as usual. Voters in the Netherlands have been signaling they want change for many years now. Wilders’s Party for Freedom (PVV in Dutch) led polls until the last days before the 2017 election. It faded when Prime Minister Mark Rutte told Holland’s mostly Muslim immigrants to “act normal or go away”.

For decades, the European Union was dominated by a combination of French élan and German economic clout. By the late 2010s, a conservative Budapest-Warsaw alliance seemed poised to challenge this arrangement. The ideological firepower was supplied by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who emerged as an unlikely spokesman for the international right, while Poland’s booming economy and large population lent the partnership some much needed heft. The Polish elections in mid-October not only marked the end of the Law and Justice party’s near-decade of conservative rule; they offered another blow to a Polish-Hungarian relationship already fraying over the war in Ukraine.

There’s a school of thought that says the events in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021 were the great communal wound of Western democracy, an outrage seen around the world when a retired cowboy dared put his boots up on an aide to the speaker of the House’s desk (he later got four-and-a-half years for his trouble), and the commander-in-chief tried to grab the steering wheel from a Secret Service agent to turn his SUV around in the direction of the mob so he could join them. “I did not seek the fight brought to this Capitol, but I will not shrink from it either,” President Biden announced through clenched teeth in a speech delivered just outside the House chamber a year later. “I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation.

Lampedusa, Italy The motorcade carrying Italy’s prime minister is being held up by a wild-eyed pirate. With a bushy black beard, sun-blasted face, tattooed forearms and a single earring, he stands in front of the convoy of a dozen police cars, extending a flattened palm. Blue lights flash, engines idle and somewhere behind blacked-out windows sit Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, and her important guest, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. The pirate is Giacomo Sferlazzo, leader of the protests that began on the island of Lampedusa after around 100 small boats carrying migrants arrived there on a single day in September. Really he’s a local musician, professional puppeteer and, as he describes himself, a Marxist-Leninist follower of Antonio Gramsci.

My ancestors presumably had something to do with trees — and true to my heritage, I enjoy some amateur forestry on my land in Vermont. The crack, the whoosh and the thunder of a tree coming down exactly where you aimed it thrills the Upper West Side me, chainsaw in hand.  But it grieves me when a good tree is blown down or uprooted. I cut only those that have to be removed because they are dying or might crush house or head if not tended to.  The Spectator reports on the murder of the Sycamore Gap, a 300-year-old tree along Hadrian’s Wall, chainsawed by a vandal when no one was looking. The culprit apparently is a sixteen year-old boy. It was an act of gratuitous violence. But not a singular act.

When Volodomyr Zelensky came to Washington last December, he inhabited a very different political environment than he does today. At the time, Ukraine remained a largely bipartisan effort. Polls found most Republicans supported sending continued weapons to Ukraine — just nine months later, the faction opposed to sending even one more dime to support Zelensky’s cause in the conflict has dramatically soured.  This is due in part to the very predictable slog of this war, but it’s also due to choices by Joe Biden’s administration. Much as they have turned on the spigot in a time of economic uncertainty and rising inflation concerns, the Biden team has even received criticism from their own party for dragging their feet on the weapon systems Ukraine claims it needs to win the war.

Cockburn wouldn’t be so skeptical of the radical left nearly as much if they didn’t have an insatiable need to suck the joy out of holidays. First they replaced the Christmas tree with the Kwanzaa bush. Then they told us that tofurkey tastes just as good as the real thing. Now, they are attempting to crush Oktoberfest too.   The two-century-old German tradition, which kicked-off in Munich on September 16, is under attack for its skimpy costumes and environmental impact. The man leading the charge: Luitpold Rupprecht Heinrich, the seventy-two-year-old Prince of Bavaria whose great-grandfather was the last Bavarian king.   “When I see Chinese-made folk costumes made of plastic, pseudo-costumes with tight dirndls, then the whole thing becomes a carnival.

It turns out the Revolutionary War was fought in vain. According to a US News and World Report survey, most Americans prefer the United Kingdom to these United States. In Cockburn’s estimation, this a betrayal, a national embarrassment and the least patriotic thing an American could say. We might as well join the Commonwealth.  According to the US News annual Best Countries ranking released on Wednesday, Americans believe the UK is the best country in the world. The report, which aggregates data from respondents worldwide about cultural influence, quality of life and power among other categories, ranked Switzerland first for the fifth time in eight years. America came in fifth, falling one spot since last year.

Kyiv Because I was born on the same day as Ukrainian Independence, there were always fireworks on my birthday. Until I was eight, I thought these rockets were in my honor. I even asked my mother to bring a bag so that I could catch a “firework” and it would keep shining for me all night long.  In addition to fireworks, there were concerts and cotton candy, and the fountain on the main square would be transformed from ordinary to multi-colored. It was like the Fourth of July in America, only on August 24 in Ukraine. But my childhood is over, I’ve become an adult and this year after eighteen months of Russia’s full-scale war, I’m not expecting fireworks. I’m hoping there won’t be Russian rockets or Iranian drones either. War forces us to adjust.

The temperature, at last, is starting to drop — and for Europeans that only means one thing: peak season is over. The crowds in the piazzas and on the beaches are starting to thin. And in the tavernas that were TikTokked you can finally think about getting a table. It’s time. Like the clockwork of migrating swallows — the Americans are going home. And knowing you can finally count on a breeze and far fewer strong-dollar spenders than a few weeks earlier, a stingier tipping class of European grande bourgeoisie in West London or the 8ème arrondissement — that has long since given up on July and August for the Mediterranean — is now contemplating a holiday. It’s still, however, at least conversationally, Europe season in the United States for a few more weeks.

It was on my third glass of James Bond’s favorite Champagne, Bollinger, that I suddenly remembered why I was here in Norway. “I’m going undercover in Russia next week,” a woman told me. I can’t remember her name — and even if I did I wouldn’t tell you. I wished her luck; she looked confused. “I’ve done worse,” she said. This wasn’t her first rodeo that could potentially end in imprisonment or death.  I was at the Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual event put on by the Human Rights Foundation. It’s marketed as a global gathering of human rights and pro-democracy activists.

War has a stronger appetite than any of the countries that wage it. Aggressors, defenders, small states and superpowers are all on the menu. Take the war in Ukraine, for example. The war really started in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and fomented secession in the Donbas. America slapped Moscow back with sanctions. This was virtue-signaling. Sanctions might sting Vladimir Putin and his cronies, but how could they change Russia’s interest in Crimea? The peninsula is Russia’s gateway to the Mediterranean. Sanctions can’t alter geography. Ukraine had a friend in Vice President Joe Biden, and it had his son Hunter on a Ukrainian oil company’s payroll. Then disaster struck — the Bidens were gone and Donald Trump became president.