Tag: Rule of Law
The Inevitable Indictment of Donald Trump
As an appellate judge, Merrick Garland was known for constructing narrow decisions that achieved consensus without creating extraneous controversy. As a government attorney, he was known for his zealous adherence to the letter of the law. As a person, he is a smaller-than-life figure, a dry conversationalist, studious listener, something close to the opposite of a raconteur. As a driver, his friends say, he is maddeningly slow and almost comically fastidious.
And as the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer,
The paradox of Ursula von der Leyen – POLITICO
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Ursula von der Leyen’s whirlwind tour of the United States started in New York at the United Nations General Assembly, where she rubbed shoulders with the world’s most senior leaders, from U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
From there, the president of the European Commission was whisked across the Hudson River and into New Jersey, to Princeton University. In a wood-paneled hall in one of America’s most storied Ivy
Giorgia Meloni’s march on Brussels – POLITICO
Giorgia Meloni has a dream: to put the European Union in its place.
In late 2020, long before the far-right leader of the Brothers of Italy party was the runaway favorite to become her country’s next prime minister, she stood in front of the camera and delivered an end-of-the-year address.
It was the year of the coronavirus, when the narrative in Brussels was that the EU had stood up — rallying from a cutthroat, chaotic response to join hands in
Russia’s Invasion Is Making Ukraine More Democratic
On a recent trip to a village near Ukraine’s border with Russia, during a break between the seemingly constant explosions and skirmishes taking place nearby, a teenage Ukrainian soldier told me of how he did not want to live under a leader like Vladimir Putin, someone “who believes he may tell others what they should do.” Another volunteer fighter, a former Thai-boxing coach, chimed in that whereas Russia offered only “stagnation,” Ukraine was “a place where things are developing
Russia’s long history of show trials in Ukraine – POLITICO
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The trappings said courtroom — a lawyer, a defendant, a judge, charges being read. Everyone’s behavior said otherwise.
As Ukrainian serviceman Bohdan Pantyushenko heard he was being accused of trumped-up terrorism charges that could carry the death penalty, the judge chattered away on her cell phone, discussing an upcoming manicure. Pantyushenko’s appointed attorney bluntly told his client he was not there to defend him.
“I realized what absolute trash it all was,” Pantyushenko
The von der Leyen Commission’s half-time scorecard – POLITICO
If Ursula von der Leyen’s five-year term can be likened to a soccer match, her team is heading for the half-time break with the scores even and a few bruised shins (mostly from self-inflicted errors).
It’s been a wild ride.
When they took the field in December 2019, von der Leyen’s squad of commissioners envisioned a diplomatic offensive in which Brussels would sneak a few goals past its chief geopolitical counterparts, China and the United States. Tactically, the formation was
Republicans Are Playing Into Putin and Xi’s Hands
Russian President Vladimir Putin pines for the old Russian empire and takes Ukraine’s independence as a personal affront. But the invasion of Ukraine is not a limited regional dispute between neighbors. Putin is also motivated by a deep opposition to democracy more broadly. That is why he has waged a long-running shadow war to destabilize free societies and discredit democratic institutions in the United States and around the world. Ukraine is one flash point in a larger global struggle
China Wants to Rule the World by Controlling the Rules
To truly understand the contours of the growing competition between the United States and China, look beyond the corridors of power in Washington and Beijing, past the tensions in the waters and skies around Taiwan, away from the bellicose rhetoric at international forums, and even off the tennis court, the new front opened by the trauma of Peng Shuai. Instead, look to the courtroom.
In the U.S. and much of the liberal West, the concept of the “rule of
Autocracy Is Winning – The Atlantic
The future of democracy may well be decided in a drab office building on the outskirts of Vilnius, alongside a highway crammed with impatient drivers heading out of town.
I met Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya there this spring, in a room that held a conference table, a whiteboard, and not much else. Her team—more than a dozen young journalists, bloggers, vloggers, and activists—was in the process of changing offices. But that wasn’t the only reason the space felt stale and perfunctory.
Belarus Manufactured a Migrant Crisis on Europe’s Doorstep
A small Kurdish boy is sitting on the ground in a damp Polish forest, a few miles from the eastern border with Belarus. The air is heavy with cold and fog. The boy is crying.
Around the boy, sitting in a circle, are his parents, uncles, and cousins, all from the same village near Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan. There are 16 of them, among them seven children, including a four-month-old infant and an elderly woman who can scarcely walk. They