The weekend of 20-22 March in Brussels saw the fourth edition of the Brussels Forum, an annual conclave of government, think tank, and journalistic interest from both sides of the Atlantic. Moderated by such well-known figures as Nik Gowing and Lyse Doucet from the BBC, it’s a chance for elected officials (the US Congress [...]
NDLR pour les francophones: mon clavier QWERTY n’ayant pas d’accents, je mets mon texte EN LETTRES MAJUSCULES. Celcui est le texte d’une présentation lors d’un débat organisé le 16 mars par l’Institut Européen de Relations Internationale (IERI), en présence de Guy Spitaels et Katya Long.
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IL Y A DEUX MOIS, LORS DE L’INVESTITURE DE BARACK [...]
According to the latest AFP dispatches, the situation in the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe appears to be settling down after their winter of discontent. These French overseas departments, known by the old Crusader term of Outremer that was first applied to the Holy Land, are remnants of a French Caribbean presence [...]
This is my answer - which first appeared in The Hegemonist - to the question: “What is the biggest foreign policy challenge the U.S. faces?”
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Others will say it’s brokering a Middle East Peace, solving climate change and resolving energy dependence, or defeating obscurantist terrorist groups. All these are important, vitally so. But I say the [...]
With the just-completed NATO foreign ministerial meeting and Hillary Clinton’s “twofer” openings to both Russia and Iran, Transatlantic diplomacy is back, and it’s about time. In the conduct of Transatlantic relations in the political-military realm, NATO has one big advantage over the European Union: the U.S. has a seat at the table, instead of across [...]
“Etats Généraux de Bruxelles” sounds grander than “Citizens’ Forum of Brussels,” but that is what has been going on over the past several weeks, culminating in an end-of-March final plenary session. I attended one of the conferences last night, “Brussels as an International City,” with a Power Point summary of the brussels-international-city (.pdf) study [...]
The Good News: Donors pledge $3 billion to rebuild Gaza
The Bad News: Better check donors’ record of honouring prior pledges
Last year, I wrote about “dead beat donors” who attended international pledging conferences and then failed to pony up when the bill came due.
That was before the world financial crisis really hit. Do we think [...]
In case you haven’t noticed, around the world, in former bastions of free enterprise, market economics, and damn-the-unions, we don’t need no government handouts capitalism, things are changing. Handouts are being handed out, and chicken feed they are not. Now we learn that AIG, in addition to the $150 billion it already received, needs another [...]
Irish, American, and Errant European, Gerald Loftus was a diplomat from 1979 to 2002, and worked in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Settled in Brussels, his blog “Avuncular American” looks at America and the world from Europe. more.
