Posts Tagged ‘Europe’

Germany is shifting from geopolitics to geo-economics, says Ulrike Guérot:

The implication of this shift is that Germany is replacing foreign policy – including European – by trade policy. The export dependency of Germany means that the German heart goes where the export goes. A German civil servant, asked why developing a common European policy towards China is so hard – and why the existing German position is so different from the average European one – simply replied: “Because our trade figures with China are so different from all the other EU states’”. More precisely: because Germany is the only European country that has a real trade (and therefore strategic) interest with China.

If the German economy moves increasingly beyond the borders of Europe, then the German heart moves away from Europe. And this is not by any anti-European intention, nor according to narrow national ambition – but only because Germany needs to “go global” to secure its economic future. “Europe”, by contrast, is not a political project that can be pursued or held against economic trends.

A realistic way of characterising the new Germany is that a European Germany is going global with or without its fellow Europeans, and that the choice of whether to follow will be theirs and not Germany’s.

The European Council on Foreign Relations: Germany goes global: farewell, Europe? By Ulrike Guérot

There is no such thing as transatlantic relations under President Barack Obama, says Roger Cohen:

Europe, for the first time in hundreds of years, has become a strategic backwater. Europe is history.

Since taking office, President Obama has reached out to the Muslim world as a whole, to China, to Turkey and to Iran, but has devoted scant serious diplomatic energy to Europe. In many ways, he is the first post-Atlanticist president, drawn by temperament, upbringing and circumstance to focus elsewhere.

“Europe is the object of benign U.S. neglect,” said Camille Grand, a prominent Paris-based defense analyst. “Obama has not established or re-established a strategic relationship with any single European country or with Europe as a whole.”

New York Times Op-Ed: Europe and Benign Neglect

A nice quote from Jeff Weintraub on European hypocrisy:

For example, when it comes to the Middle East, Europeans always seem to believe that they are not only right but morally superior, too, despite the frequent cynicism, smugness, superficiality, bigotry, fecklessness, and moral irresponsibility of their views and policies on these and other matters.

Jeff Weintraub: What they really think of us (contd.)

Fair enough:

… if the European Union is so concerned about humanitarian aspects of life in Gaza, it should take the reins of responsibility with its own hands.

Shlomo Avineri: Disengage from Gaza once and for all