Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Two Birds With One Opinion Piece

This author condemns the Obama administration for its failures to promote rule of law in the Balkans and Eastern Europe:

Obama’s global influence, or lack thereof, also led to a spike in chaos and corruption throughout Eastern Europe, harming American interests. I’ve personally seen this on recent think tank trips, speaking and touring for a collective three months in 12 European countries to include 7 former Soviet Republics and several satellite states.

The writer has a point. Although he focuses on Moldova as the worst case of what he says is a regional trend.

But consider that despite lack of American attention to combat that trend, why hasn't the European Union been more successful within its own sphere?

Shouldn't any failure by America been made up by the nearby EU foreign policy bureaucracy to show their mettle?

Yet still there is a spike in chaos and corruption?

America at least has an excuse: things are screwed up in so many places that we have plenty to keep our people busy.

What about the European Union that has pretensions of being an autonomous power in its own right?

Why has this well-paid body spent more time condemning the British for Brexit than in maintaining stability in an expanded democratic free Europe that the American-led NATO provided to Europe?