Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities, a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune and a foreign affairs writer for Newsweek.
If you thought the last two years of transatlantic relations were bad, things are about to get even worse. Donald Trump and his hard-charging secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, have scheduled a Middle East security conference for February 13th and 14th. Poland, perhaps the only country in Europe that looks fondly upon Trump as a
Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, is one of the most controversial politicians in Europe. The 45-year old chief of the League party exudes a down-to-earth demeanour with his common-man social media posts, in which he shares pictures of himself eating Barilla pasta and Nutella. To his many opponents, Salvini is a thick-headed, semi-fascist
For Angela Merkel, the chief guardian of Europe’s centrist politics, 2018 was a year of tribulation – and she admits it. In her New Year’s speech, the German chancellor acknowledged the hardship of the last twelve months while begging her countrymen to unite in the year ahead. “We will only master the challenges of our
About this time every month, diplomats, UN delegates, and humanitarian officials sit around the circular table in the UN Security Council chamber to take stock of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The meetings are a constant fixture on the Security Council’s agenda, yet the lack of any tangible diplomatic progress in the Middle East’s oldest dispute means
One of the most important duties of being an ambassador is serving as a counsellor of sorts. When relations between two countries are on the rocks – or a president or prime minister says or does something another nation regards as hostile – the ambassador is often called on to ensure that any diplomatic fallout
The US secretary of state Mike Pompeo strutted into Brussels yesterday like a man on a mission. His task was almost impossible from the start: to convince America’s friends and allies in Europe that the United States under Donald Trump is still the leader of the liberal world order European politicians care so deeply about. It’s
It would be the understatement of the century to say that the normally constructive and cordial relationship between the United States and Germany was experiencing a few hiccups in the age of Donald Trump. Notwithstanding talk about mutual respect and friendship during shared photo sessions, Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are not exactly two
When Emmanuel Macron won a resounding victory over far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen in the 2017 French presidential elections – claiming 66 per cent of the vote – Matteo Salvini was a little known Italian politician largely scoffed at as a clown by the status-quo parties. While Salvini was posting selfies on Facebook and making outlandish comments
The German politicians who were once larger-than-life figures, dominating their political parties as easily as they dominated Germany’s political discourse, are fast becoming dinosaurs. First it was Martin Schulz, who resigned as chairman of the Social Democratic Party in February after some backbenchers opposed the party’s decision to enter into another grand coalition with Angela
Midterm elections are traditionally nightmares for the party of a sitting president. Just ask former president Bill Clinton, who suffered the humiliation of seeing his Democratic Party lose 54 seats during Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Republican Revolution. Ask George W. Bush, whose blunders in Iraq cost the GOP control of both chambers of Congress in 2006.
If politics were a science, the Bavarian-based Christian Social Union would be the automatic and overwhelming victor in every regional election. Bavaria is doing quite well: it’s the richest region of the richest country in Europe with the lowest unemployment (2.8 per cent) and crime rates. Bavaria, in fact, is so wealthy that it serves
The European Union finds itself in a bind. Donald Trump’s reintroduction of sanctions against Iran has left European diplomats desperately scrambling to salvage twelve years of nuclear diplomacy. On Friday, Jean-Claude Juncker underlined the EU’s commitment to keeping the deal alive, saying that ‘Europeans must keep their word and not give in to a change of
Just as Theresa May’s Chequers plan for Brexit was being savaged in Salzburg, EU leaders also found time to engage in their usual response when it comes to the question of migration: a lot of talk, glad-handing, and pats on the back, but very little concrete action. The summit was a two-day affair that encapsulates all
There aren’t many EU politicians with a high profile, but Federica Mogherini, the former Italian foreign minister and, since 2014, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, is one of the exceptions. Mogherini’s five-year term is up next year. Where she will go after her time expires – back to a fractious and circus-like Italian political
It wasn’t long ago when Italy used to be referred to colloquially as “the sick man of Europe,” a country whose economic situation was stuck in the doldrums, whose political system was always a crisis away from collapse, and whose political class was divided into those who were ineffectual and those who were corrupt. The Italians
German chancellor Angela Merkel has a lot on her plate. In addition to keeping her rabble-rouser junior coalition partners in the tent, constantly looking over her shoulder for the increasingly renegade Horst Seehofer, and trying to come up with a European solution to the headache that is illegal migration, Merkel will be sitting down with
There was a time not too long ago – less than three years to be exact – when German Chancellor Angela Merkel was at the very top of her game. She dominated German and European politics for over a decade with her clear, effective, but cautious leadership, watching as the German economy solidified its place
On Monday, August 6, the long-arm of the U.S. Treasury Department reached into Europe and violently shook the continent. The first wave of U.S. secondary sanctions on entire sectors of the Iranian economy are now back in force, which means major European conglomerates and large-sized businesses have a potentially existential choice to make. Do we
Donald Trump has finally met a European leader he can stand for more than a moment: Italy’s bookish new premier, Giuseppe Conte. The former law professor, who was plucked out of obscurity by 5Star’s Luigi Di Maio and the League’s Matteo Salvini to be the nominal consensus pick of Rome’s anti-establishment government, is the kind
When European leaders met earlier this month to thrash out an agreement on migration, they succeeded in rescuing German Chancellor Angela Merkel from the precipice. But it is already becoming clear that the deal they struck was more a temporary papering over of ideological differences on migration than a permanent solution. While the EU agreed on the
