The seventeenth-century philosopher and satirist Jean de La Bruyere once quipped that, “Corneille portrays men as they should be, Racine depicts them as they...
“We in France should take Italy much more seriously than we do. There is a lot we can learn from this highly successful country.”That may sound like a quote...
In 1841, the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi completed his celebrated opera Nabucco. “Va, pensiero,” his famous aria describing the fate of the Hebrews in the...
In his book The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, political scientist Edward Luttwak credits Byzantium’s longevity to the quality of its diplomacy. By...
I have a British friend who never travels without his Irish passport, at least not since June 2016, when the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union....
Seven months ago, when Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front had a chance of winning the French presidency, Germany feared for France’s future. But...
The Middle East is often viewed as a region waylaid by feelings of collective humiliation and violent rivalries, both between and within countries. But South...
“I am not afraid,” chanted the crowd that took to the streets in Barcelona after a van was driven into pedestrians on the Las Ramblas promenade, killing at...
The list of crises plaguing the Middle East is growing. In Yemen, a civil war rages amid an uncontrollable cholera epidemic. In Jerusalem, religious violence...
A new triangle of geopolitical emotion has emerged in Europe: Great Britain has ceased feeling superior to France, and France has stopped feeling inferior to...
Before the just-concluded French presidential election, the United States’ National Public Radio (NPR) requested that I give an interview about the outcome....
Relief and pride are the main emotions many French citizens are feeling after the first round of the French presidential election, in which Emmanuel Macron...
Sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, France is poised to hold an election that could make or break the European Union. A victory for the...
“Tell me what you fear and I will tell you what has happened to you,” the psychologist D.W. Winnicott wrote in the early 20th century. It sounds...
Just after British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech, in which she outlined her government’s objectives in the upcoming negotiations on the...
After the terror attacks in Paris last November – a carefully coordinated series of assaults carried out by multiple attackers, resulting in 130 deaths –...
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt once proclaimed that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The United Kingdom’s “Brexit” referendum, in which...
“I feel so proud of my city,” my interlocutor says, referring to the election of the first Muslim, Sadiq Khan, as mayor of London. She is...
In a little more than a year, the French will vote to elect their new president. It is, of course, far too early to make any predictions. If “one week is a...
“The United States, China, and maybe the European Union, if Great Britain stays within it” will lead tomorrow’s world; in fact, continued EU membership is the...
Ever since the terrorist attacks in January on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket, Parisians knew that barbarism lurked around the...
“Germany, Germany,” shout thousands of refugees, faced with the obvious bad will of Hungary’s authorities, in front of Budapest’s Keleti railway station. They...
Populism is on the rise throughout Europe, as both economically depressed and prosperous countries become increasingly frustrated with their established...
This month’s agreements on the Greek crisis and Iran’s nuclear program are undoubtedly important achievements. But the comparisons that have accompanied both...