Europe

HAINBURG, Austria – Lounging by the pool in this medieval Austrian town, overlooked by 17^th century castle ruins on a hilltop nearby, you can enjoy a schnitzel, a schnappsor an eiskaffee mit schlag. But listen closely, and virtually all you hear on the blankets of fellow sun-bathers is the Slovak language.

Last Tuesday, Intelligence Squared sponsored a debate on whether or not President Barack Obama’s foreign policy signaled America’s decline as the driving force in global affairs: Dan Senor and Mort Zuckerman argued yes; Wesley Clark and Bernard-Henri Levy argued no.

It’s winter in Europe, time for snow, St. Nicholas, and the annual Russia-Ukraine dispute over natural gas supplies. On Wednesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned his counterparts in Ukraine not to try to modify a 10-year gas supply contract between the two countries.

It was all suppose to turn out so differently.  The Orange Revolution, was suppose to be the birth of a true and lasting democracy in Ukraine, a peaceful uprising in late 2004 against what were widely seen as rigged presidential elections.  Tens of thousands of Ukrainians took to Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (“Independence Square”) and in similar places around the country with a simple demand – to have their votes fairly counted.  A young, Western-leaning president was swept into office in what has held up as an example of people power to all the pseudo-democracies o

On Friday, former Senator Bob Dole took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to sound the alarm over Bosnia.  Without American intervention, Dole warns, Bosnia could again be torn apart by its own conflicting internal forces.