The European Council on Foreign Relations

On the site this week: May 27th 2011

Date: 27th May 2011  |  Author: Nicholas Walton,

Categories: Europe and the world,
Tags: None

Dear friends and supporters,

With President Obama visiting Europe, we have not been short of events and issues to analyse over the last week (some of us in ECFR’s London office managed to join the rather excited crowds outside Westminster Abbey where the soft power of this American presidency was well in evidence).

• Ulrike Guérot listened to Obama’s speech through German ears, and thought she heard him deliver a reality check for Berlin – here’s her latest Germany in Europe blog post.
   
• Hans Kundnani charts the progress of President Obama’s foreign policy from hard-nosed realism to an idealism that isn’t too different from George W Bush.
   
• Our Madrid office released a podcast with José Ignacio Torreblanca analysing Mr Obama’s visit.
   
• Richard Gowan contributed a blog post looking at the current weakened state of the G8, and dug up two arguments for its existence.

Elsewhere:

• We published two different pieces on the succession to Dominique Strauss Kahn at the IMF. ECFR Council Member Andre Wilkens wrote a blog post arguing that any European insistence on providing the replacement for DSK would be a misjudgement. Richard Gowan also believed that insisting on a European candidate would be a mistake, as it suggests that Europe is trying to hide something from the scrutiny of the IMF.  
   
• Richard also contributed an article warning that South Sudan and Palestine could provide serious tests for the United Nations over the summer.
   
• Daniel Korski published an article in support of the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, lamenting the fact that she was being used as a scapegoat by others who should examine their own performance.
   
• I wrote a piece reacting to the arrest of General Mladic for our blog, after having served as the BBC correspondent in Sarajevo a few years ago. Hopefully the arrest will allow both Serbians and Bosnians to close another of the doors on a ghastly recent history.
   
• I also wrote a short blog post introducing a new series of podcasts that I’m presenting, interviewing authors of books on European subjects for the New Books Network – the first is with Charles Emmerson, looking at the Arctic.
   
• Finally, recent articles by François Godement and José Ignacio Torreblanca have continued to stoke an argument over just where the EU is going, and whether it is now too divided to function. Have a read and let us know what you think.

That’s it for another week. We’re also advertising for an intern for our new Middle East-North Africa programme – here’s the link to the advert. Don’t forget that you can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or subscribe to our podcasts via itunes (or other podcast services). If you want to unsubscribe from this or other ECFR emails, then contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and we’ll sort things out.

Best wishes,

Nicholas Walton.