Foreign Policy Category Archive

These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.

Email Comment Ignore Commenter Follow Commenter

Europe in Free Fall

The Saker • August 27, 2015

• 2,300 Words • 189 Comments • Reply

Europe is in free fall. Nobody can doubt that any more. In fact, the EU is simultaneously suffering from several severe problems and any one of these could potentially become catastrophic. Let's look at them one by one. The 28 member EU makes no economic sense The most obvious problem for the EU is that... Read More

A Cold Summer for Europe

Israel Shamir • August 8, 2015

• 2,600 Words • 56 Comments • Reply

Summer reigns all over Europe, from Greece to Sweden. Vacations have emptied the offices, and filled the beaches. Flowers bloom all over, and their fragrance flows like a river. Endless festivals, performances and art compositions embellish the quaint old cities. But things are not as ever before. The old continent is sick. Living is easy,... Read More

EU’s Greek Debt Austerity Plan Rejected By the IMF

Paul Craig Roberts • July 30, 2015

• 200 Words • 4 Comments

I have maintained since the so-called Greek Debt “crisis” began back in 2010, I believe it was, that the imposition of austerity on Greece could not possibly work and that the only solution was to write down the debt to a level that Greece could service and introduce reforms that loosen the hold the oligarchs... Read More

Greece and the European Union

First as Tragedy, Second as Farce, Thirdly as Vassal State

James Petras • July 26, 2015

• 3,100 Words • 5 Comments • Reply

Introduction: The Greek people’s efforts to end the economic depression, recover their sovereignty and reverse the regressive socio-economic policies, which have drastically reduced living standards, have been thrice denied. First, the denial came as tragedy: When the Greek majority elected Syriza to government and their debts increased, the economy plunged further into depression and unemployment... Read More

The Greek Debt Crisis Threatens 70 Years of Peace

We forget that wars in Europe were the norm before the EU

Patrick Cockburn • July 25, 2015

• 1,200 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

Political crises in the Middle East and North Africa since 2011 have either produced extreme violence or caused countries to dissolve into civil war. The territorial settlement that followed the defeat of the Ottomans in 1918 is collapsing, but there is no clear sign of what will replace it, other than conflicts which nobody knows... Read More

Is the Iran Nukes Deal Aimed at Crushing Putin?

Mike Whitney • July 17, 2015

• 2,000 Words • 42 Comments • Reply

The Iran nuclear agreement has less to do with proliferation than it does with geopolitics. The reason Obama wants to ease sanctions on Iran is because he wants to push down oil prices while creating an alternate source of natural gas for Europe. In other words, the real objective here is to hurt Russia which... Read More

Greece: Sound and Fury Signifying Much

Paul Craig Roberts • July 15, 2015

• 1,000 Words • 9 Comments

All of Europe, and insouciant Americans and Canadians as well, are put on notice by Syriza’s surrender to the agents of the One Percent. The message from the collapse of Syriza is that the social welfare system throughout the West will be dismantled. The Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has agreed to the One Percent’s... Read More

Why Greece’s Debt Is Illegal

Michael Hudson • July 11, 2015

• 3,100 Words • 21 Comments • Reply

The Financial Attack on Greece

Where Do We Go From Here?

Michael Hudson • July 7, 2015

• 2,500 Words • 29 Comments • Reply

The major financial problem tearing economies apart over the past century has lain more with official inter-governmental debt than with private-sector debt. That is why the global economy today faces a similar breakdown to 1929-31, when it became apparent that the volume of official inter-government debts could not be paid. The Versailles Treaty had imposed... Read More

Greece: the Pearl Cast Before Swine

Israel Shamir • July 7, 2015

• 1,500 Words • 59 Comments • Reply

Greece is the pearl of Mediterranean, the place generations of foreigners from Lord Byron to Graves to Fowles have fallen in love with. From philosophy to feta, from history to yoghurt, from poetry to honey they provided the example to follow. Their priests preserve the pristine faith; their fighters defeated Mussolini; their Helen is the... Read More

Greece and the EU Situation

Paul Craig Roberts • July 7, 2015

• 1,000 Words • 3 Comments

I doubt that there will be a Greek exit. The Greek referendum, in which the Greek government’s position easily prevailed, tells the troika (EU Commission, European Central Bank, IMF, with of course Washington as the puppet master) that the Greek people support their government’s position that the years of austerity to which Greece has been... Read More

Greece: Why No Means Yes

Greece Rejects the Troika. Where Do We Go From Here?

Michael Hudson • July 6, 2015

• 1,400 Words • 23 Comments • Reply

Just after 7 PM Greek time on Sunday, I was told that the “No” vote (Gk. Oxi) was winning approximately 60/40. The “opinion polls” showing a dead heat evidently were wrong. Bookies across Europe are reported to be losing their shirts for betting that the financial right wing could fool most Greeks into voting against... Read More

Greeks Vote NO to EU-Imposed Austerity

Paul Craig Roberts • July 5, 2015

• 500 Words • 2 Comments

With 90% of the votes counted, the Greek people have voted 61% to 39% against accepting the latest round of austerity that the EU is trying to impose on the Greek people for the benefit of the One Percent. What is amazing is that 39% voted for the One Percent against their own interests. This... Read More

The Grim Reaper Knocks on Greece's Door

Eric Margolis • July 4, 2015

• 900 Words • 11 Comments • Reply

PARIS – As the squalid drama of Greece’s bankruptcy unfolds, many alarmists claim the European Union is about to disintegrate. British and Americans are cheering the ills of the EU. On top of all this, it’s a blazing 39.8 C here in the City of Light. In spite of all the bad news from Greece,... Read More

Europe's Real Existential Crisis

Pat Buchanan • July 3, 2015

• 800 Words • 10 Comments • Reply

However the Greek crisis ends, whether with Athens leaving the eurozone, or submitting and accepting austerity at the dictates of its creditors, the European Union appears headed for an existential crisis. Greece borrowed and spent beyond its means, like New York City in the '70s, and Detroit, Illinois, and Puerto Rico today. But the crisis... Read More

Sunday’s Vote Will Determine Liberty or Serfdom

Paul Craig Roberts • July 2, 2015

• 300 Words

According to history books, democracy originated in Greece. Of course, historians could be mistaken, but this is the prevailing view among Western populations with enough awareness to be interested to know. What we are witnessing today, July 2, 2015, is that after 2,500 years in the Western World only the current Greek government is interested... Read More

Greece Again Can Save the West

Paul Craig Roberts • July 1, 2015

• 1,000 Words • 10 Comments

Like Marathon, Thermopylae, Plateau and Mycale roughly 2,500 years ago, Western freedom again depends on Greece. Today Washington and its empire of European vassal states are playing the part of the Persian Empire, and belatedly the Greeks have formed a government, Syriza, that refuses to submit to the Washington Empire. Few people understand that the... Read More

Greece: On Behalf of Europe

Michael Hudson • June 30, 2015

• 2,900 Words • 20 Comments • Reply

Resisting Financial Conquest

Michael Hudson • June 30, 2015

• 1,500 Words • 4 Comments • Reply

Back in January upon coming into office, Syriza probably could not have won a referendum on whether to pay or not to pay. It didn’t have a full parliamentary majority, and had to rely on a nationalist party for Tsipras to become prime minister. (That party balked at cutting back Greek military spending, which was... Read More

Greek Democracy Is Failing

Paul Craig Roberts • June 24, 2015

• 500 Words

The Greek debt is unpayable. It is simply too large to be repaid. The austerity that the EU and IMF have imposed on Greece has worsened the problem by driving down the Greek economy, thus making the burden of the debt even heavier. Despite the obvious fact that the EU’s austerity policy is a failure... Read More

Starvation Is the Price Greeks Will Pay for Remaining In the EU

Paul Craig Roberts • June 15, 2015

• 500 Words • 9 Comments

Syriza, the new Greek government that intended to rescue Greece from austerity, has come a cropper. The government relied on the good will of its EU “partners,” only to find that its “partners” had no good will. The Greek government did not understand that the only concern was the bottom line, or profits, of those... Read More

Syriza: Plunder, Pillage and Prostration

How the ‘Hard Left’ embraces the policies of the Hard Right

James Petras • June 15, 2015

• 1,800 Words • 43 Comments • Reply

Introduction: Greece has been in the headlines of the world’s financial press for the past five months, as a newly elected leftist party, ‘Syriza’, which ostensibly opposes so-called ‘austerity measures’, faces off against the “Troika” (International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and European Central Bank). Early on, the Syriza leadership, headed by Alexis Tsipras, adopted... Read More

Camp of the Stupids

John Derbyshire • April 23, 2015

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

The mass drowning of eight or nine hundred—nobody knows precisely—illegal immigrants in the Mediterranean last Sunday triggered a lot of commentary about these boat people, most of it stupid. Here are some of the grosser stupidities. They’re just seeking a better life. Who isn’t? I guess there are some Lotus eaters among us who are... Read More

Hope on the Horizon and It Comes from Greece

Paul Craig Roberts • April 12, 2015

• 400 Words • 2 Comments

Washington in its arrogance, seeing itself as “indispensable,” poses a continuing threat to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The extraordinary number of dead that Washington has murdered in the 21st century–”The American Century”–is dismissed as “collateral damage” in the “war on terror.” The war on terror is a hoax. It is a... Read More

Europe’s Accidental Autocrat and Her Two Accidental Missions

Karel van Wolferen • March 7, 2015

• 2,600 Words • 21 Comments • Reply

The European Union is not a state or a federation of states, it is something not seen before, but is assumed to grow state-like characteristics like a center of political accountability. It does not have a head of state or head of government. But political entities of any kind will at some point, when under... Read More

Ironman Varoufakis’s Revolutionary Plan for Europe

Don't Tell Anyone in Berlin

Mike Whitney • February 19, 2015

• 2,200 Words • 4 Comments • Reply

If you haven’t been following developments in the Greek-EU standoff, you’re really missing out. This might be the best story of the year. And what makes it so riveting, is that no one thought that little Greece could face off with the powerful leaders of the EU and make them blink. But that’s exactly what’s... Read More

Greece and the Eurozone

Monday's Deadline

Mike Whitney • February 16, 2015

• 1,000 Words • 5 Comments • Reply

Monday is a crucial deadline in Greece’s struggle against Brussels-imposed austerity. Eurozone finance ministers are set to meet in the morning to decide whether Greece has made sufficient progress on previous agreements to justify further support. The new leftist government of Greece, Syzira, has rejected provisions in the so-called bailout, saying that the loans have... Read More

Obama Buggers Europe: Sanctions Deepen the Recession

James Petras • August 23, 2014

• 2,200 Words • Leave a Comment

Introduction: The Obama Administration actively pressured Europe to impose harsh sanctions on Russia in order to defend the violent takeover (‘regime change’) in the Ukraine. England, France, Germany and the rest of the European regimes gave in to Washington’s demands. Russia responded by imposing reciprocal sanctions, especially on agriculture goods, and is establishing alternative trading... Read More

A Doomsday View of 2012

James Petras • December 24, 2011

• 2,100 Words • Leave a Comment

Introduction: The economic, political and social outlook for 2012 is profoundly negative. The almost universal consensus, even among mainstream orthodox economists is pessimistic regarding the world economy. Though even here their predictions understate the scope and depth of the crises. There are powerful reasons to believe that beginning in 2012, we are heading toward a... Read More

Communist China and the Western Commentariat Finally Get on the Same Page About This Stupid Democracy Thing

Peter Lee • November 10, 2011

• 800 Words • Leave a Comment

It’s finally become clear to everyone the key problem in the current Eurozone crisis is just too much democracy. Pesky voters opposed to austerity measures get in the way of efforts to cut government expenditures in order to reduce deficits and make repayment of national debts more likely. China’s Global Times on Greece, November 2:... Read More

France's Magnificent Non!

CounterPunch Diary

Alexander Cockburn • June 4, 2005

• 1,200 Words • Leave a Comment

Itinerant pundits touching down briefly in Paris lost no time in stigmatizing the French for their resounding Non! in last week's referendum on the proposed Constitution for Europe. The French were charged with selfishness, self-absorption, nostalgia for a lost empire, unwholesome obsession with Descartes and Jacobinism and other crimes too frightful for individual citation. Actually... Read More

"Eurozone" Items Across Entire Archive

Category Classics

9/11 Was an Israeli Job

How America was neoconned into World War IV

Laurent Guyénot

• 381 Comments • Reply

John McCain and the POW Cover-Up

The “war hero” candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.

Sydney Schanberg

• 148 Comments • Reply

America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars

Shouldn't they recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East?