By Paolo von Schirach February 22, 2012 WASHINGTON – Whatever happens with the Republican nomination process, the winner is unlikely to truly inspire America. For different reasons, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are all very weak candidates. (I shall not even try to assess Ron Paul, who lives all by himself in a [...]
By Paolo von Schirach February 16, 2012 WASHINGTON – The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on February 16 in favor of a resolution that condemns Syria’s government violent repression of the ongoing uprising. The vote was 137 to 12, with 17 abstentions. So, the message is clear. The world condemns Syria.
By Paolo von Schirach February 14, 2012 WASHINGTON – General Electric is hosting a major event in Washington, DC, titled American Competitiveness: What Works. Given GE’s convening power, lots of interesting people from industry, government, the media and think tanks are attending and speaking. And mostly the panelists and speakers talk about the right things. [...]
By Paolo von Schirach February 10, 2012 WASHINGTON – The normally level headed The Economist came up with a fanciful and really complicated plan that should lead to the forced retirement of Syria’s Bashar Assad. It would not be an invasion, nor a bombing campaign against Assad’s loyal army relentlessly pounding the lightly armed rebels in Homs [...]
By Paolo von Schirach February 9, 2012 WASHINGTON – The confused and fractious Republicans appear terminally incapable of getting their act together, as the latest contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri won by comfortable margins by conservative Rick Santorum show. By now it is pretty obvious: a large chunk of the rank and file GOP activists really do not [...]
By Paolo von Schirach February 6, 2012 WASHINGTON – Remember Yale historian Paul Kennedy and his 1987 tome “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers“? At that time there was a lot of interest in, and indeed concern about his fairly comprehensive narrative focusing on how all major Western Powers, primarily because of the huge [...]
By Paolo von Schirach February 4, 2012 WASHINGTON – What a mess in Afghanistan. Given the high cost of what very charitably could be called an expensive and inconclusive stalemate, it is really surprising that president Obama has not been damaged politically by a war effort with no focus and no end game, except for [...]
By Paolo von Schirach February 3, 2012 WASHINGTON – Famed Harvard economist and co-author, with Carmen Reinhart, of “This Time is Different“, a major work on financial crises, writes that America needs voters who understand economic policy. In his The Financial Times contribution, (Our ignorance will yield more crises in capitalism, February 2, 2012), to [...]
By Paolo von Schirach January 31, 2012 WASHINGTON – Wolfgang Ischinger, former German Deputy Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, former Russian Foreign Minister, and San Nunn, former US Senator, and once Chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, in their current role as co-chairmen of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative voice their concern about the future [...]
By Paolo von Schirach January 26, 2012 WASHINGTON – It is quite depressing to observe Washington total political paralysis, accompanied by cheap and openly divisive populism. Admittedly, it is difficult to govern when the two parties are so deeply divided. But the president has to try. This is what he was elected to do and what he gets paid [...]