Foreign-policy writing is not meant to be passionate. As in other endeavors where the stakes are too high, it has a cult of calculation. Whether its basis is national interest or something more ideological or expansive, foreign policy is supposed to be much more head than heart. Perhaps for just...

At a private meeting in Rome of the Nicolas Berggruen Institute's Council on the Future of Europe, the dominant note was of nervousness at the state of Spain's financial system, combined with resolve to rally German opinion behind greater fiscal coordination, debt mutualization, and moves toward...

"In a paradoxical sense," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said, "maybe in a poignant sense, this is an opportunity." He was speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York yesterday morning. He came back to the point several times. Having arrived in the United States as a boy, in...

I'm as gripped as anyone by the Iran drama, but I can't think of anything significant to add. There's been such excellent bloggregation going on: my colleague and pal Rob Mackey, for example, has been outdoing himself at The Lede, and CFR has been doing excellent work....

I'm not the first to equate Barack Obama with Roger Federer. (HuffPo colleague Brian Ross did so last December.) But the near-coincidence of the French Open and Obama's Cairo speech brought the comparison to mind again. Each man raises the level of play with a cool focus and economy...

One of the HuffPo's few guidelines for blogging is: No vague headlines. Nothing cute, and nothing "literary," along the lines of, e.g., The Narrow Road to the Deep North, or A Time of Gifts (much less The Departure Lounge). No, the headlines should be sharp and topical: Sotomayor Must Go....

World leaders have been acting strangely in the run-up to the G20 summit in London this Wednesday and Thursday. (There's also the big Afghanistan meeting in The Hague on Tuesday, featuring Iran, and Obama's first Nato summit, also in Europe, on the Friday and Saturday.) Late last week Lula of...

The FT columnist Gideon Rachman wrote a column a couple of months ago about the need for world government, and he got more and different readers than he expected (lots of gun enthusiasts). Indeed, he sounded worried. Nevertheless, that column was on the paper's most-emailed list for ages. Following Rachman's...

Not that I have a reliably functioning Zeitgeist meter, but it does seem as though a consensus is emerging that the economic crisis is an international problem being addressed with national remedies. And just in time for Davos! The heaving heart of international-solution mongering! But will a global solution be...

There are enough protectionist pressures these days that maybe it is worth considering, in the spirit of democratic responsiveness - rather than the spirit of global-elite managerial domination, not that there's anything wrong with that! - whether the times aren't right for protectionism.

Certainly there is enough evidence of a...

Not long ago, at a conference, I heard a distinguished Democrat of long experience dilating on the theme of saving. Americans, he said, used to save. They knew the value of a dollar, and they knew to keep some for a rainy day. Their incomes and their expectations worked as...

The meeting of the Group of Rio wrapped up on Thursday, in a Brazilian holiday spot, with a ringing endorsement of an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba. The Group of Rio was created in 1986 by eight Latin American states and grew to 22 (plus Caricom, the Caribbean...

Thanksgiving, not surprisingly, followed tradition: family arguments, jogging, food, family reconciliations. Very little about Pilgrims. The kids already know about Squanto and have mixed feelings at best regarding white settlers. The process of American disenchantment with certain classic stories began when I was their age, in the late 60s and...

A few weeks ago, together with my Times colleague Helene Cooper, I interviewed retired Marine Gen. James Jones, so it's nice to see him confidently tipped for National Security Advisor. He is an impressive person with a heroic resume. He spent most of his childhood and youth in France, beginning...

VIENNA -- Between the world wars, the theater director Max Reinhardt had, by his own account, a lovely time owning the Schloss Leopoldskron. He put in a mirrored Venetian Room and a Chinese Room --which in its strange excess might better be called Oriental -- and put on productions through...

from Schloss Leopoldskron, near Salzburg, Austria

"Schloss," which means castle in German, sounds silly to my Anglophone ear. I remember a comedy routine from years ago built around the idea that certain words are unavoidably funny. The only one I can remember is pickle; but I'll bet a majority have...