Europe

Tuesday

Daniel DePetris

America still won’t risk a war with Russia over Ukraine

Anybody who thought this week’s intense diplomacy between American, European, and Russian officials would magically resolve the ongoing crisis in Ukraine should lie down until the feeling passes. Crisis diplomacy isn’t a walk in the park; if anything, it’s a slow-moving car ride through rush-hour traffic, with plenty of speed bumps along the way. On Monday, January 10, Washington and Moscow met for a round of discussions in Vienna to sound each other out and present their list of seemingly endless grievances. After eight hours of talks, both delegations left the room with, coincidently, similar assessments as to how it all went.

Tuesday

Roger Kimball

Joe Biden’s summer vacation

Tomorrow, The Committee will bundle up Joe Biden, titular president of the United States, and take him for a nice ride across the big, big ocean in a very shiny airplane. Weeee! No details have been released yet about what flavors of ice cream he will enjoy, but The Committee’s press arm has been full of stories with titles like 'Three things to watch on Biden's first foreign trip’. This is not a difficult assignment. The big boys and girls who arrange Joe’s play-dates have told all his favorite friends in the media exactly what to say. And just a couple of days ago they surprised Joe with an article in one of his favorite newspapers, the Washington Post. It was just so nice. A couple of the minders got together and wrote the article and then put Joe’s name on it.

joe biden vacation

Sunday

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

When migrants come, their culture does too

The challenge of integrating immigrants from the non-western world is not new to Europe. But a large influx of new migrants over the last decade, and a significant increase in harassment and sexual assault against women across multiple European countries, make it one that Europe can no longer avoid addressing. This story has its origins in the decades of economic recovery after World War Two, when many European countries faced a growing worker shortage for industry work. ‘Guest worker’ programs were created, notably in Germany, on the assumption that such workers would return home. But many workers preferred to stay in Europe and pursued family reunification. Jobs and welfare entitlements made Germany preferable to Turkey, France preferable to Algeria.

migrants

Monday

Dominic Green

The next American empire

Americans have never been sure of their standing in the world, and the world has never been sure of Americans’ standing. In their first century as a nation, Americans believed that their principles made their civilization not just different but also better than Europe’s. Meanwhile, the intellectual and political leaders of Europe were unconvinced that America was a civilization at all. In their second century as a nation, other, older civilizations were obliged to admit that Americans were not just different: they were better at modern life. The Americans achieved this recognition first by the force of their industrial and military power, and then by the flattery that other civilizations could become equally forceful and seductive by adopting the American way of life.

empire
donald trump compiègne
John R. Schindler

Trump had an opportunity to redefine American foreign policy. He blew it

Donald J. Trump is home from his whirlwind weekend trip to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War’s end. Even by The Donald’s formidable china-breaking standards, this was a doozy which will be discussed with opprobrium by the Transatlantic smart set for some time. President Trump seemed to go out of his way to upset his French counterpart and host Emmanuel Macron, who’s hit a political rough patch and needed some brotherly love. That bromance is dead and buried, however, and Trump fired off a mocking tweet at Macron as he boarded Air Force One for Paris that denounced the French president’s backing of a European army as ‘very insulting.

Wednesday

Roger Lewis

Homes, sweet homes

The moment lockdown restrictions eased, my wife Anna booked up trips to Europe, to visit houses and villages I thought I’d never see again, such were the initial predictions about the zombie apocalypse. I’d not been to Barenton, Normandy, for example, since last autumn, but that hadn’t stopped the plumber and the builder from sending me regular bills. It is in this decaying granite villa, stretching over four floors, that the accumulated junk from the Herefordshire Balkans has been shoved — thousands of books, crates of manuscripts and letters, the children’s toys, even the children. Oscar, the middle son, spent time here, depleting the cellar after he broke up with a girlfriend. He ran back to England terrified when a mouse leapt out of an oven glove.

homes

Tuesday

Dominic Green

‘A system at odds with the Constitution’

This article is in The Spectator’s February 2020 US edition. Subscribe here.How did America’s house divide for a second time in the 1960s? By a tragedy of good intentions and bad-faith actions, Christopher Caldwell argues in his new book, The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties. He talks to our Life & Arts editor about how we got here from there, and how activism inside and outside the courts has refounded American politics on an undemocratic basis. DG: The Age of Entitlement argues that the Civil Rights Act divided the country by establishing what you call a ‘second constitution’. CC: That is a big part of it. The book is about the evolution of American society since the Kennedy assassination.

caldwell lockdown

Tuesday

Edward Elliott and Dina Smeltz

The enduring power of the Special Relationship

The resignation of Theresa May, continuous Brexit chaos, and probable anti-Trump protests will all present a lively backdrop to President Trump’s upcoming state visit to the UK. Despite the US and the UK appearing to move toward inward-looking foreign policies in recent years, new survey data show that the public in both countries share more of a global outlook than their leaders might realize. Trump was elected on an ‘America First’ platform and has applied tariffs to trading partners, questioned the utility of alliances, and continues to push for more restrictive immigration policies. May was elected on a promise to deliver the UK’s departure from the EU, with cutting back on immigration a key part of that promise.

special relationship

Tuesday

Dominic Green

Notre-Dame is a sign of the times

Notre-Dame is the symbolic heart of Paris and France, and a symbol of European Christianity second only to the Vatican in Rome. The apocalyptic destruction of a monument of such beauty and significance would be a sign of the times at any time. In our time, however, no one seems sure of what the sign means. I doubt I was alone in my first response. When I saw footage of the falling, burning spire, I assumed that this was an act of terrorism rather than, as seems most likely, an accident caused by renovation work. This is a sign of the times, even though it would be incautious to admit it in polite society.

notre-dame sign

Wednesday

Barbara Boland

Merkel’s immigrant boom wreaks havoc in Germany’s prisons

Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than one million migrants into Germany has caused a crisis in Germany’s prison system. About half the prisoners in Berlin and Hamburg are now foreign-born, according to the latest figures in the German press, and in prisons across the country, German is becoming a foreign language. This surge in outsiders on the inside coincides neatly with the 2015 decision to allow in migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. All regions of Germany report a ‘very strong increase’ in the number of foreign and stateless prisoners, according to data from the past three to five years. Prisons throughout Germany are overcrowded and struggling to handle the influx in population.

germany prisons

Thursday

Christopher Caldwell

Macron vs Salvini: the ideological battle for Europe’s future

The first sign that Matteo Salvini was destined to do battle with Emmanuel Macron came in June, a few days after he was named Italy’s interior minister. Salvini, whose party, the League, wants to cut immigration drastically, announced that a German-registered rescue ship carrying 629 aspiring migrants from Africa would not be allowed to dock in Sicily. Macron reacted with disgust. ‘The policy of the Italian government,’ a spokesman for his political movement announced, ‘is nauseating.’ Salvini responded that if the French wanted to show their open–heartedness, they might make good on their unfulfilled pledge to feed and shelter some of the 100,000 African migrants Italy had until recently been receiving each year.

salvini macron spectator cartoon

Tuesday

Andrew Roberts

Churchill was all in favour of a united Europe — as long as it didn’t include Britain

Dr Felix Klos is an extremely personable, highly intelligent American-Dutch historian who has undertaken much archival research, worked extremely hard and is an excellent writer. In trying to persuade us that Churchill favoured Britain joining a federal Europe, however, he comes up against several immovable obstacles. The most serious of these is that in the four years that Churchill was prime minister, between 1951 and 1955, he personally, regularly and decisively blocked all movement towards Britain joining any of the European federal institutions that existed. However engaging Klos may be, and however well written his book, he is utterly wrong in his central thesis.