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By Elliot D. Cohen
$17.14
By Charlotte Mosley
$26.37
$19
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Shutterstock photo of EU roundtable.
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By William Pfaff — It is not simply the euro zone that is threatened by the dramatic economic discrepancies that now exist among its members. Now it is the European Union itself that is in danger.
Posted on May 14, 2013
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U.S. Navy/MC2 Edwin L. Wriston
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By William Pfaff — The present debate in the United States over making policy for a Middle East that has been profoundly changed by the events of the past three years unhappily echoes past policies that failed.
Posted on May 7, 2013
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Shutterstock photo of EU flags.
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By William Pfaff — The “More Europe” remedy favored by German Chancellor Angela Merkel seems plausible enough as a slogan, but so did the single currency.
Posted on Apr 30, 2013
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Shutterstock photo of recession.
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By William Pfaff — The blood runs cold when one fully appreciates how vulnerable official policymakers and the Western policy community are to slogans and to magical thinking.
Posted on Apr 23, 2013
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Shutterstock photo of the euro.
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By William Pfaff — A new “Alternative for Germany” political movement has erupted as a backlash against the euro, and against Germany’s fellow members of the EU.
Posted on Apr 17, 2013
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Shutterstock illustration of a drone.
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By William Pfaff — War is war and murder is murder. The law draws the distinction. The American armed drone is a weapons system of war, not of policemen.
Posted on Apr 9, 2013
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AP/Biswaranjan Rout
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By William Pfaff — A day will undoubtedly come when Osama bin Laden will occupy the same place in 21st century history books as Gavrilo Princip holds in the histories of the 20th century. Both committed acts that provoked great wars, brought down empires and profoundly altered their times.
Posted on Mar 12, 2013
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By William Pfaff — Switzerland just had a referendum in which it voted to give company and bank shareholders veto rights over the salaries, bonuses and overall compensation packages of senior executives and board directors.
Posted on Mar 5, 2013
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AP/Richard Drew
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By William Pfaff — A Gallup poll issued this month says that 99 percent of the American public now has become convinced that Iran’s civilian nuclear program will threaten “the vital interests of the United States in the next ten years.” Eighty-three percent say this will be “a critical threat.” Why?
Posted on Feb 28, 2013
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By William Pfaff — In 2009, the former head of the international law department of Israel’s military establishment, Daniel Reisner, said that “International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it.”
Posted on Feb 12, 2013
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By William Pfaff — Is the Sahara the newest great threat to the United States—“a terrorist training ground,” hotbed of extremism, the new Afghanistan—in the Great War against Islamic terrorism that still preoccupies the American political class and the foreign affairs community?
Posted on Jan 29, 2013
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White House/Pete Souza
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By William Pfaff — The overall failure of American foreign policy during the first Obama presidency was foreseeable.
Posted on Jan 22, 2013
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U.S. Navy/MC1 Eileen Kelly Fors
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By William Pfaff — The utopian and missionary qualities of American political belief began in the Puritans’ Calvinist theology of “the Elect,” the chosen people.
Posted on Jan 15, 2013
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U.S. Army/Sgt. Matthew C. Moeller
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By William Pfaff — Not all of the world—certainly not the Islamic world—wants America’s version of global security, which has required repeated American military interventions abroad, provoking guerrilla and terrorist resistance.
Posted on Jan 8, 2013
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U.S. Army/Specialist Ken Scar
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By William Pfaff — Christmas has provided a day of distraction from war, the usual condition for most of the world, and the steady-state of the modern American nation, so to speak.
Posted on Dec 29, 2012
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By William Pfaff — The United States and the European Union remain impotent or irresolute observers of the most important issues of political “governance” of concern these days.
Posted on Dec 18, 2012
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By William Pfaff — In the past, the accusation of WMD possession has been the usual formulation when threatening foreign intervention or an attack.
Posted on Dec 11, 2012
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By William Pfaff — France has a double crisis. Its ruling political party, Francois Hollande’s Socialist, is in a state of catatonia, usually defined as a condition of incoherence with alternate periods of stupor and activity. More after the jump about that.
Posted on Nov 29, 2012
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U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Lorie Jewell
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By William Pfaff — As a former serviceman, I have been long bemused by the proliferation of ribbons and other decorations on the chests of today’s high-ranking army officers, now mired in scandal.
Posted on Nov 13, 2012
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David Drexler (CC-BY)
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By William Pfaff — Abroad, the widely noted aspect of Barack Obama’s re-election victory was its social and class character. The president was re-elected by a majority of American minorities.
Posted on Nov 7, 2012
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By William Pfaff — It is a profound but nearly universal mistake among Americans (and others) to think that the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in 2013 or 2014 will end the American war with the Muslim world that began on September 11 in 2001.
Posted on Oct 30, 2012
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U.S. Marine Corps/SSgt Jeff Kaus
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By William Pfaff — The United States is intellectually adrift upon an exceptionally turbulent sea running in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, and on the larger scene, Washington is blundering into serious trouble with Russia and probably with a China that is on the edge of both foreign and domestic crises.
Posted on Oct 23, 2012
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Photo by Peter Pearson (CC-BY-SA)
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By William Pfaff — From the beginning of the Arab Awakening (“Arab Springtime,” as it was, but alas two springtimes have already passed), my opinion has been to stay out of these events, as far as possible, and certainly not to attempt to control them.
Posted on Oct 16, 2012
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U.S. Marine Corps/Cpl. Reece Lodder
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By William Pfaff — It is no surprise to find a businessman who is clueless with respect to America’s international relations, but when a businessman is running for the American presidency, you would expect an effort to read and learn.
Posted on Oct 9, 2012
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Photo by Luis Argerich (CC-BY)
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By William Pfaff — The West Europeans are contemplating handing their independent arms and aerospace companies over to a conglomerate that would bestow on the United States an effective veto over the greater part of Europe’s rival defense industry.
Posted on Oct 2, 2012
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By William Pfaff — Mr. Morsi said what had not been said before, that if the United States wishes Egypt to continue to respect the Camp David agreement made 34 years ago, it must honor its own simultaneous commitment to Palestinian self-rule.
Posted on Sep 25, 2012
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By William Pfaff — Mrs. Clinton, the secretary of state, appears to believe that the Arabs and Egyptians should be grateful to America, and most Americans would probably agree.
Posted on Sep 18, 2012
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By William Pfaff — The major threat in the Middle East to international peace is Syria’s civil war, not the rhetorical battles between Iran and an Israel that claims to be straining against its American leash.
Posted on Sep 11, 2012
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Photo by TaxFix.co.uk (CC-BY)
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By William Pfaff — Most of the damage to the European economy was done by innocent submission of credulous policymakers to the conventional wisdom of the international marketplace.
Posted on Sep 4, 2012
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U.S. Marine Corps/Cpl. Isaac Lamberth
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By William Pfaff — Nobody in the U.S. and the allied countries, except for the relatives of the victims, gives a damn about Iraq. That will be true of Afghanistan, too, when it’s over. Or when it is replaced by war with Iran.
Posted on Aug 21, 2012
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U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Joseph Wilbanks
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By William Pfaff — Foreign affairs will be the most important issue of all to address as the United States staggers forward into the void, yet the matter will seldom appear in what’s left of the presidential campaign.
Posted on Aug 14, 2012
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By William Pfaff — Mitt Romney’s bumbling in Israel nonetheless introduced a subject few other American politicians know anything about, nor do, it seems, the staffs of the NSA, CIA and other American political and military planners.
Posted on Aug 8, 2012
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By William Pfaff — My unexaggerated but depressed opinion of the outcome is the one that current electoral voting polls suggest: a stalemate, much like the one the nation now suffers.
Posted on Aug 2, 2012
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By William Pfaff — The American public does not want still another war. Surely, that is clear even to the post-neoconservatives raising their heads again in Washington.
Posted on Jul 24, 2012
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By William Pfaff — The European Union is at risk of being destroyed by the euro. The credit crisis founded upon the swindle by Wall Street that was retailed to Europe’s banks has created divisions in Europe which are undermining what was supposed to be mutual confidence and solidarity among the 17 members of the euro zone.
Posted on Jul 17, 2012
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Photo by motiqua (CC-BY)
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By William Pfaff — Nearly every step in the federalist direction has produced unnecessary complication and strain in the EU. Portugal is not Iowa. Italy cannot become California.
Posted on Jul 11, 2012
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Photo by WEF/Remy Steinegger (CC-BY-SA)
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By William Pfaff — The latest, and 20th, European “summit” meeting, held last week in Brussels, was symbolically a defeat for Germany’s Angela Merkel, who agreed that Europe’s permanent bailout fund could directly recapitalize certain troubled eurozone banks.
Posted on Jul 3, 2012
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Photo by Rock Cohen (CC-BY-SA)
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By William Pfaff — On Tuesday the European Council published a new proposal for European monetary reform that rests on continued monetary union—the source of the present crisis.
Posted on Jun 26, 2012
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By William Pfaff — At a time when corporate America is exploring and exploiting its new Supreme-Court-bestowed role in the management of American election results, the theories of James Burnham, the godfather of neoconservatism, should be recalled.
Posted on Jun 19, 2012
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U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Jerry Morrison
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By William Pfaff — President Barack Obama’s acts consciously undermine the civilized order of modern society. The United States has quite deliberately made itself an outlaw state.
Posted on Jun 12, 2012
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Photo by (CC-BY-ND)
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By William Pfaff — The reaction of Hillary Clinton and some others in the West has been in the full Cold War mode, denouncing the Russians as obstacles to peace. In fact, the Russians could be very useful in finding a settlement and seem to ask simply that their own interests in the Middle East be respected.
Posted on Jun 5, 2012
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U.S. Army / Spc. Matthew Freire
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By William Pfaff — Counterinsurgency is out. Drones, assassination teams, targeted killings and special forces are in.
Posted on May 29, 2012
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By William Pfaff — To understand what is happening in the eurozone, it is necessary to understand something of the past.
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Photo by (CC-BY-SA)
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By William Pfaff — The weekend elections in France and Greece seem widely to have been taken, at least on the European and American left, as a solution to the great European economic crisis.
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By William Pfaff — A novel aspect of the Republican campaign for the party’s presidential nomination has been the importance placed by some candidates, their admirers and some voters on the Catholic religion and certain claims to formal academic certification or endorsement.
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