by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 15, 2016 | News
Amidst fears about Islamist mass-murderers getting into the European Union via Turkey, that nation has missed a E.U. deadline that if Turkey had met it would have allowed its citizens visa-free travel through most of Europe.
E.U. leaders had conditionally promised the Turkish government that 79 million Turks would get access to Europe’s 26-country border-free Schengen travel zone by this month, as part of a controversial bargain on migration. But that depended on Turkey meeting 72 E.U. conditions on border security and fundamental human rights, including changes to increasingly authoritarian Turkey’s tough anti-terrorism laws.
Intensifying European worries is that Islamist terrorists can sometimes make their way from Syria and Iraq across Turkey and then into Europe.
Still, E.U. officials are expected to approve the opening of negotiations on one part of Turkish E.U. membership talks, which some people call a charade.
For the full story, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 10, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
Roger Cohen warns in The New York Times of the perils that lie just ahead with what he sees as the terrifying possibility that the European Union could collapse if the United Kingdom decides to leave the E.U.
Mr. Cohen implied that would make Russian President /Dictator Vladimir Putin and would-be tyrants in central Europe very happy.
Mr. Cohen concluded:
….I listened the other evening at the American Academy in Berlin as Henry Kissinger, the personification of realpolitik, insisted that the “necessity of the coherence of the Atlantic world” had become ‘even greater.’ With him was the American ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, the recipient of this year’s Kissinger Prize — and long the personification of liberal interventionist idealism. In many ways they formed a strange duo. But their togetherness was also a statement: That, until now, America’s postwar European and internationalist commitment has held across the foreign policy spectrum.
“Realpolitik and idealism meet in the unity of Europe. The unthinkable, on both sides of the Atlantic, must be resisted before it is too late.’’
For the full column, hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 7, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
(June 13th, 2016) An increasingly militaristic and aggressive Russia is building new military sites along what the Kremlin sees as its western frontline in a growing confrontation with NATO.
At the same time the NATO alliance is staging major military exercises and increasing deployments on its eastern flank in response to Russian aggression against Ukraine and threatening actions by the Russian air force over and near the Baltic Sea.
Russia and NATO member states share borders around the Baltic Sea; further south Ukraine and Belarus separate the two blocs.
Russia has pulled out of the treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, a post-Cold War pact that limits the deployment of troops in Europe. This makes it feel freer to move extra troops and military equipment to its western border.
For more information, hit this link.
