The socialist-conservative coalition led by Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, which collapsed on July 7, had been faltering for months. When I arrived in Vienna two days later, the only surprising element in what appeared to be a mundane story concerned its immediate cause. Eighteen months of endless bickering over Austria’s economic, fiscal or social policy could...
Author: Srdja Trifkovic (Srdja Trifkovic)
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Socialists and Democrats Will Rule Serbia
The political situation in Serbia is both unprecedented and unexpected. No analyst had predicted, three or four months ago, that the election on May 11 would result in such impressive gains by the Democratic Party (Demokratska ...
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Olmert’s Troubles
Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been in trouble many times in the course of his long and colorful political career. As mayor of Jerusalem, he was suspected of accepting bribes in the “Greek-island affair” involving former premier Ariel Sharon and his son, Omri (who was eventually convicted and jailed for seven months); but the...
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Obama the “Patriot”
“So should we vote for Obama?” Having devoted some thousands of words to the unveiling of John McCain low character and sordid record, online and in the current issue of Chronicles, I am asked this question with some regularity. Of course not, I reply; being anti-cancer does not make one pro-HIV. McCain is a neurotic...
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The Dream Ticket
“While the natural instincts of democracy lead the people to banish distinguished men from power,” Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, “an instinct no less powerful leads distinguished men to shun careers in politics, in which it is so very difficult to remain entirely true to oneself or to advance without self-abasement.” Some 170 years...
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The Dream Ticket
[McCain and Soros: The Most Dangerous Man in America, Bankrolled By the Most Evil Man in the World] “While the natural instincts of democracy lead the people to banish distinguished men from power,” Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, “an instinct no less powerful leads distinguished men to shun careers in politics, in which it...
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Ireland Rejects the Lisbon Treaty
The European Union’s Lisbon Reform Treaty was decisively defeated by the Irish electorate in a referendum on June 13. The Euro-federalist project will be at least delayed, if not derailed, thanks to the vote. The victory of the “No!” campaign was due to a variety of factors, but whatever its causes it reflects the fatal...
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It’s 2028, and All Is Well: The Diary of an Aging Counterrevolutionary
Thursday, June 1—My final American Interest was published today in Chronicles. In the aftermath of the Second Revolution, the column has outlived its purpose. Pontificating on the evils of one-worldism, empire, global hegemony, propositional nationhood, jihadist infiltration, foreign interventionism, and “nation-building” was a necessary and often frustrating task, back in the awful days of George...
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Belgrade’s Dilemma: Kosovo or “Europe”
A month has passed since the parliamentary election of May 11, and Serbia is still without a new government. The new National Assembly was convened briefly on May 10, while the Municipal Council of Belgrade remains paralyzed for at least another month. A new general election, some time in early fall, may prove to be...
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The European Union, A Prison of Nations
Various multiethnic states (imperial Russia, the Habsburg Monarchy, pre-World War II Kingdom of Yugoslavia) have been labeled—often unfairly—as “prisons of nations.” That designation will apply more aptly to the European Union when the Lisbon Treaty, signed by all 27 EU heads of states ...
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Defending the West in Vienna
A select few who see the peril to which their neighbors are oblivious and who proceed to save their community against overwhelming odds, is a familiar literary and cinematic concept. Earlier this month (May 11-12) I had the pleasure of addressing one such real-life group ...
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It’s 2028, and All Is Well
Thursday, June 1—My final American Interest was published today in Chronicles. In the aftermath of the Second Revolution, the column has outlived its purpose. Pontificating on the evils of one-worldism, empire, global hegemony, propositional nationhood, jihadist infiltration, foreign interventionism, and “nation-building” was a necessary and often frustrating task, back in the awful days of George...
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Serbian Election: Socialists, the Unexpected Kingmakers
Last Sunday night, as the results of Serbia’s parliamentary elections became known, the country’s President Boris Tadić made a remarkable statement. “I warn the parties that have lost this election,” he declared, “not to play games with the will of the citizens and try to form a government that would take Serbia back to the...
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Smokers in the Arsenal
Several years after he was forced into retirement, Otto von Bismarck was asked what could start the next major war. “Europe today is a powder keg,” he replied, “and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal . . . I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you...
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Kosovo Crisis Becomes Global
The unilateral declaration of independence by the Albanian leadership in Kosovo on February 17, and the subsequent recognition of the new entity by the United States and most E.U. countries, crowned a decade and a half of iniquitous U.S. policy in the former Yugoslavia. By recognizing “Kosova,” the White House has made a great leap...
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Waiting for the Big One
The global economy is like the St. Andreas Fault. You know that a terminal disaster is inevitable, but you keep your fingers crossed and try not to think about it. When a tremor occurs, you often fear it could be the Big One and sometimes panic, but then, when the dust settles, you sigh with...
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Bobby Fischer, R.I.P.
Bobby Fischer, the reclusive, troubled, and often unpleasant chess genius from Brooklyn who single-handedly crushed the myth of Soviet invincibility, died of kidney failure in Iceland on January 17 at the age of 64. Robert James Fischer was born out of wedlock to a prominent Hungarian atomic physicist, Pal Nemenyi, who was involved with the...
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Kosovo: A Threat to Israel’s Survival
There are many self-styled friends of Israel in the United States who have been enthusiastically supportive of Kosovo’s independence for years. People like Sen. Joe Lieberman, Rep. Elliot Engel, Morton Abramowitz, William Kristol, Douglas Feith and ...
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Kosovo: A New Day of Infamy for a New Century
The grotesque charade in Pristina on Sunday, February 17, crowned a decade and a half of U.S. policy in the former Yugoslavia that has been mendacious and iniquitous in equal measure. By encouraging its Albanian clients go ahead with the unilateral proclamation of ...
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So Goes Old Europe
Last December 10, after four months of futile shuttle diplomacy, the mediating effort by the U.N. Contact Group “troika” to reach an agreement on the final status for Kosovo predictably collapsed. “Neither party was able to cede its position on the fundamental question of sovereignty,” the U.S.-E.U.-Russian group reported to the U.N. Secretary General. The...
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The Empire: Not So Great in ’08
Iraq will continue to top the list of American foreign-policy concerns in 2008. While tactical successes in Baghdad and the Anbar Province were achieved in 2007 through the U.S. forces’ marriage of convenience with various Sunni Arab tribal leaders and former Saddam loyalists who detest Al Qaeda even more than they dislike the Americans, translating...
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Putin Versus the Kremlin on the Potomac
Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party scored an overwhelming victory in the country’s parliamentary elections last Sunday, winning almost two-thirds of the vote and 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma. The election was widely seen as a referendum on the past seven years ...
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Kosovo as a Symbol of Anti-Postmodernism
A nation’s cultural space is marked by its spiritual fruits and not by the frontier posts. It is possible to maintain a cultural space devoid of territory (the Jews). It is also possible to lose that space under the auspices of an ostensibly functioning state—and ...
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A New Balance of Power
Seven years is a well-rounded time span, for better (“Behold, there come seven years of great plenty”) or for worse (“And there shall arise after them seven years of famine”). As we enter the final year of George W. Bush’s presidency, it is time to look at his septennial foreign-policy scorecard without malice, which his...
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The Death of Genocide
A congressional resolution recognizing as “genocide” the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 collapsed on October 25, when its sponsors—led by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)—asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to set the matter aside until “the timing is more favorable.” The nonbinding resolution passed the Foreign Affairs Committee two...
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Remember the Red October?
Had the Soviet Union not collapsed, today would have been a festive day in Moscow. The 90th anniversary of the October Revolution (“October” since in 1917 Russia was still using the Julian calendar) would be marked by a big military parade, with Western correspondents and military attaches on the lookout for new types of ICBMs...
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Debate on U.S. Kosovo Policy Brewing in Washington
As we near the deadline of December 10 for the Contact Group “Troika’s” report on its attempts to negotiate a solution to the problem of Kosovo, the voices of reason in the United States are finally becoming more influential and more articulate than ever before. Over the past two weeks alone, John Bolton, Christian Science...
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Staying the Course
Those of us who grew up under communism remember well the ritual of the Leader’s Speech. At a Party congress—invariably dubbed “historic” even before it began—or on the occasion of the opening of a new steel mill, the Dear Comrade would deliver a much-heralded oration. It usually contained three main ingredients: “We” are making great...
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Kosovo Negotiations Stalled
An international conference that would jump-start the stalled talks on the future status of Kosovo could be held after elections in the Serbian province next month, European diplomats said Monday. The current round of negotiations, supervised by an international âTroikaâ of the EU, Russia and the United States, is scheduled to end on December 10....
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Sudden Jihad Syndrome in Vienna
Austrian authorities announced on October 2 that they arrested a second Bosnian-Muslim suspect in the plot to attack the American Embassy in Vienna. Mehmed D. (34) was apprehended following the arrest of Asim C. (42) last Monday, after the latter tried to enter the ...
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A Divided Subcontinent
A 31-gun salute boomed at daybreak on August 14 in Islamabad to mark Pakistan’s 60th anniversary of independence from British rule—or, to be precise, her birth as a Muslim state that resulted from the bloody partition of India in 1947. That event was accompanied by the largest mass migration in history, as over ten million...
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Remember Diana?
I was in London on a brief visit last weekend, which happened to be the tenth anniversary of the accidental death, at the age of 36, of Princess Diana, the divorced wife of the heir-apparent to the British throne. In marked contrast to the ...
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The President’s Painted Corner
A prudent power will always seek to keep open as many options as possible in its foreign-policy making. An increasingly rigid system of alliances, coupled with mobilization blueprints and railway timetables, reduced the European powers’ scope for maneuver in the summer of 1914 and contributed to the ensuing catastrophe. The United States, by contrast, entered...
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The President’s Painted Corner
A prudent power will always seek to keep open as many options as possible in its foreign-policy making. An increasingly rigid system of alliances, coupled with mobilization blueprints and railway timetables, reduced the European powers’ scope for maneuver in the summer of 1914 and contributed to the ensuing catastrophe. The United States, by contrast, entered...
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Waiting for Greatness
According to John O’Sullivan’s version of recent history, in the fullness of time, three great conservative leaders—Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher—came unexpectedly to occupy positions of power, to shatter post-World War II orthodoxies, to facilitate the collapse of the Soviet empire, and to make the overall revival of their institutions and...
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Conservative Russia, Imperial America
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to yield to Western pressure and accept Kosovo’s independence at the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm has prompted a new round of Russia-bashing at both ends of the political spectrum. Editorial columns were filled with references to Putin’s “posturing,” “bluff,” “intimidation,” and “empty rhetoric.” His “hard line” may “reignite ethnic violence,”...
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Balkan Blowback
On May 1, at a hearing on the future of Kosovo, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democrat Tom Lantos of California, made a truly remarkable statement: Just a reminder to the predominantly Muslim-led governments in this world that here is yet another example that the United States leads the way for the...
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The Summer of Italian Discontent
“The only thing that keeps the ruling coalition together is the loathing of Berlusconi,” Sylvia Poggioli, NPR’s veteran Rome correspondent, told me over the morning coffee last week, “and the fear that after the next election they’d no longer be in power.” In other ...
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Wolfowitz in Love
Two years ago, upon learning of President Bush’s nomination for president of the World Bank, I expressed relief (Cultural Revolutions, May 2005) that, “at his new post, [Paul] Wolfowitz will not be able to do nearly as much damage as he has done at the Pentagon.” The damage, however, has continued. For the past three...
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Living With the Albanians
In the current debate on the future of Kosovo, it is often overlooked that hundreds of thousands of Serbs and other non-Albanians had fled the province under Albanian pressure well before the KLA terror campaign of 1996-1998. Under Tito, the Albanians’ share of the population thus rose from 64 percent in 1953 to 77 percent...
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Our Daily Lies, From Tbilisi to Tripoli
A prominent opposition figure was shot dead last Sunday in the capital of a former Soviet republic. Had it been a “pro-Western reformist” in Moscow, you’d be force-fed the victim’s name for days on end. A legion of editorialists and “analysts” would be telling you that Vladimir Putin is behind the crime and that we...
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Northern Ireland’s Immaterial Accord
On my first visit to Belfast, on a BBC World Service assignment 24 years ago, I was taken on a tour of the troubled areas by an RUC patrol in bulletproof vests. They were all Proddies, of course, tough and persevering, with low life expectancy. Our Land Rover—not a fully-clad Tangi but a regular Army...
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Kosovo Blowback Reaches America
The story: four Albanian Muslims from Kosovo, plus a Turk and a Jordanian, are arrested for conspiring to attack Fort Dix, a military base in New Jersey, with AK47s and “to kill as many soldiers as possible” (U.S. Attorney’s Office). The Mainstream Media spin: “Four ...
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France’s Fateful Choice
Nicolas Sarkozy, the Center-Right candidate, will face Socialist Segolene Royal in the run-off of France’s presidential election on May 6. In the first round last Sunday M. Sarkozy had 31 percent of the vote, Mlle Royal just under 26 percent, “extreme-centrist” Francois Bayrou 18 ...
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“A Pure American Type of a Rather Rare Species”
Dean Gooderham Acheson was born in Middletown, Connecticut, on April 11, 1893, into a stable world of which Europe was the center and where America was poised to attain hemispheric dominance. That world’s certainties were shattered in the trenches of Northern France, but the shock was less profound among America’s northeastern aristocracy—to which Acheson belonged...
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A Mainstream Conservative
In a sane world, Dinesh D’Souza would not merit a single inch of this column. The greater Middle East, Islamic terrorism, Korea, the Balkans, the imperial mind-set, and many other problems and challenges America faces around the world would take precedence over the musings of a self-designated “conservative intellectual” with few original ideas and little...
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Sharia Comes to Germany
The husband routinely beat his 26-year-old German-born wife, the mother of their two young children, and threatened to kill her when the court ordered him to move out of their Hamburg apartment. Police were called repeatedly to intervene. The wife wanted a quick divorce—without waiting a year after separation, as mandated by German law—arguing that...
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A Tale of Two Cabals
Imagine yourself at a fashionable party, a century ago, in Belgravia, the Upper East Side, or the Ballplatz. After-dinner brandy is served, Augustas are lit, and the talk turns to world affairs. The host asks his guests what they deem to be the issue that threatens peace and stability more than any other. A senior...
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Kosovo Gets Interesting
The problem of Kosovo, an already complex equation with many unknowns, is getting more vexing by the day. On February 2, U.N. special envoy Martti Ahtisaari unveiled his much-anticipated plan for the final status of the southern Serbian province, which has been under NATO-U.N. occupation since Bill Clinton’s war against the Serbs in 1999. While...
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Exiting Iraq: The Least Undesirable End
When a patient is diagnosed with lung cancer, it is tempting but not useful to harangue him on the evils of his three-pack-a-day habit. But when he refuses to kick that habit, or to accept its link with the disease, or even to acknowledge the seriousness of his condition, it is reasonable to assume that...