Anne Applebaum

President Barack Obama reaches out to all nations with vow to ‘remake America’

A friend emailed Tuesday morning from New York: “In tears already and it hasn’t begun.” Another wrote me that her husband, horrified by reports of crowds in Washington, was “afraid there will be a stampede or something awful”. Which summed it up, really: the levels of emotion built up in advance of the 2009 presidential …

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Arthur at Camelot

Before sitting down with this hefty doorstopper of a diary, first ask yourself whether you agree — or can imagine yourself agreeing — with the entry Arthur Schlesinger, Jr made on 27 March 1950: ‘I adore sitting around hotel rooms with politicians and newspapermen exchanging gossip over drinks.’

Short End of the Pipeline

Like every continent, Europe has its rituals. In the spring, the storks return to the Low Countries from their winter nests in Africa. In the autumn, the French return to Paris from their beaches in the south. And in the winter, the Russians threaten to cut off the natural gas supplies to Ukraine.

It’s a War Process

Circumstances change; so do the names of the leading players. Peace negotiators come and go; so do the details of their agreements. But in the end, one aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the same: When all else has failed, you can be absolutely certain that someone, somewhere, will issue a statement calling for peace.

Venting in Athens

Fires burned in courtyards, shops were looted and Molotov cocktails whistled through clouds of tear gas. Hundreds of schools and campuses were occupied by students and, for more than two weeks, riots brought a major European capital to a halt. The police seemed powerless, the politicians helpless, the media confused.

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