Word: councill
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...other parts of the world. There is the old idea, which still resonates, that you support the ideals you hold. Not to impose, but to help with issues like nation building. To do that, we should be ambitious. There is no lack of ambition in the Foreign Affairs Council. I have to do it within the constraints of needing to build a consensus and with the resources we have. But there is no lack of ambition when we start to talk...
...Lisbon Treaty, establishing the new offices of the President of the European Council and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, was supposed to change all that. In practice, however, the new E.U. will be run by a complex mechanism with four axes: the President and Foreign Minister; the country holding the rotating presidency; the President of the European Commission and national heads of state and government. The new setup looks like a parody of all that is wrong with the E.U., bureaucratic and complicated, built on least-bad options and seemingly designed to encourage turf wars rather...
...financial crisis in 2008 and 2009), and strengthening ties with Russia, to the chagrin of Britain and France. "Behind the scenes Germany is still pretty much the puppet master in the E.U., pulling many strings," says Ulrike Guérot, head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. "But sometimes Berlin is deciding not to pull any strings at all now, in which case nothing happens. Germany is starting to become good at avoiding Europe in a very subtle...
...failure of the E.U. to find a single voice. China, for example, has become skilled at playing the E.U.'s individual members off against each other. "There is a complete absence of a strategic debate in Europe about China," says Daniel Korski, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Instead of tackling that failing - an obvious priority for this century - Europe has spent much of the past few months obsessing over how Washington views it. Obama has visited Europe six times since taking office, and made just one trip to China. But the U.S. President's decision...
...Africa - another good Sarkozy idea - to see if they can be brought within the European zone of prosperity. Doing nothing, giving in to inertia, will win the E.U. few friends. "An unsentimental President Obama has already lost patience with a Europe lacking coherence and purpose," according to the European Council on Foreign Relations. "In a post-American world, the United States knows it needs effective partners. If Europe cannot step up, the U.S. will look for other privileged partners to do business with...