European Institute

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) recently announced that, consistent with its mandate of providing succor to war’s victims in an entirely neutral fashion, it had provided medical care and training to members of the Taliban in Afghanistan, including distributing about 70 first aid kits to Taliban fighters. That spurred an outcry that was immediate, predictable and heated: one official in Kandahar’s local government said: “The Taliban do not deserve to be treated like humans.” An American blogger wrote that “the Red Cross is aiding an enemy that is hopelessly entrenched with an 11^th-century mindset. I hope this one comes back to bite them in the ass. Idiots!”

For German leaders today, most born after 1950 and many since 1960, both the EU and the Franco-German relationship are now part of Germany’s policy choices, among others -- and no longer a central goal as it was for the post-1945 generation amid their determination to set Germany on a new course in a new Europe that precluded any return to past tragic failures. During the last two decades the political and economic geometry of Europe has altered in favor of a more dominant position for Germany. While France can continue to strut on the world stage of the UN as one of the five permanent veto-wielding members of the Security Council and aspire to position itself as a power with global reach, Germany has become the dominant player in Europe.

Hubert Védrine gets it right when he remarks that “there is a lot of fetishism in talk about the Franco-German relationship.” In saying that, France’s former minister of foreign affairs wants to make the point that the French-German couple long ago “lost that loving feeling” – meaning the commitment and energy that fueled their success as a pace-setting duo for Europe has died out. As his comment suggests, some ritualistic reflexes remain possible in dealings between Paris and Berlin. But the mutual passion has drained; the affair is over. In the current circumstances, where the EU is struggling financially and economically amid the continuing after-shocks of the crisis, the torment is not caused by a breakdown between Berlin and Paris. If there is trouble in the EU’s situation and future, it does not stem from some dysfunction in the two capitals’ political libidos. Nor is there any solution for Europe in seeing these two capitals “make up.” These two nations have become too dissimilar to maintain a “relationship.” Just to take one central issue, Germany now ranks as one of the leading global economic players while France has not yet been able to halt its tumble in the ratings.

On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 launched from Cape Canaveral. A few days later, on Christmas Eve, its crew became the first humans to enter the gravitational pull of another body away from the home planet. The crew’s reading of Genesis from lunar orbit captivated a worldwide audience, and the astronauts brought home what may have been the most profound photograph in history: the famous “Earthrise” showing the blue planet Earth rising over the moon’s desolation, suspended in the dark of space. This was a stunning moment in the history of exploration, leading to the Apollo 11 landing a few months later.

Roma, a neighborhood in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, may seem a long way from New York’s Harlem, but just as African-Americans in Harlem experienced the effects of discrimination and poverty, “the Roma”– a branch of the Romani people (also known as gypsies) -- who are concentrated in the Budapest area known as Roma suffer from similar long-standing social stigma, discrimination and injustices.

For years, U.S. policy intellectuals have vehemently moaned that Europe is committing “demographic suicide” with its declining birth rates. Part of the alarm is that the European social model – of a safety net extending from cradle to grave – is bound to be overwhelmed by debt as the age pyramid becomes top-heavy. Part of the “better” American approach, these intellectuals said, was high immigration, traditionally a sustaining force behind stable U.S. birthrates.

The Global Lingua Franca is Globish, Which is NOT English -- And Never Will Be

Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language

By Robert McCrum.

W.W. Norton & Co, 352 pages.

Reviewed by Michael Mosettig

When you Google for the source of the oft-quoted aphorism that "English is the easiest language to speak badly," the answer quickly pops up: George Bernard Shaw. This lead sentence of mine incarnates the theme of this book on the spread of English as the world's default language. In my sentence, a corporate name, Google, becomes one of the most widely used verbs in the lexicon. And that particular corporation is the symbol of the exploding worldwide web and communications technology that expresses itself in English.

Gaullist Modernization France had some Seminal Roots in Much-Reviled Third Republic and Vichy – A Revisionist View

France's New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era

By Philip Nord

Princeton University Press, 2010, 383 pages.

Reviewed by Jennifer Wnuk

Even Charles de Gaulle, almost universally hailed as the savior of modern France, is subject to the revisionist diligence of Philip Nord, a Harvard historian who has written a meaty book challenging some of the conventional wisdom about the sources of France’s postwar modernization.

The Dirty and Dangerous Details of Nuclear Technology Smuggling

Peddling Peril

By David Albright

Free Press, 2010, 254 Pages

Reviewed by Kurt Moss

This account of the global clandestine traffic of nuclear-weapons technology is written by David Albright (no relation to Madeline), one of the most knowledgeable American experts on proliferation. Albright minces no words about his conviction that the most dangerous threat today to international security is the threat of nuclear weapons falling into “the wrong hands:” terrorists, criminals or irresponsible governments. He is equally clear about what needs to be done in self-defense against this threat. Western democracies and their allies should not rely on pre-emptive military action as their first line of defense against nuclear-armed rogues. Instead, Albright argues that Western democracies and other responsible governments should make it a security imperative to combat the global nuclear smuggling that is spreading this weapons technology amid comparative indifference to this particular dangerous threat.