Posts under ‘Post election’

When George Bush used the phrase Axis of Evil in 2002, he was making a moral judgment about certain countries and their leaders. Today, we are faced with some of the similar leaders in what I prefer to call the Axis of Irrationality. In both cases, the policy of Open Hand of the Obama Administration […]

President Obama has made his first major foreign policy decision. On Thursday, he announced that he was stopping the planned missile defense system programmed to be installed in Poland and the Czech Republic and that he would replace it with a more mobile system on ships which eventually will be located in Turkey or southern […]

President Obama’s Wednesday night speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on health care reform was interrupted by an interjection from a member of the House of Representatives. “You lie,” cried out Joe Wilson from South Carolina when Obama was explaining his proposal concerning health care for immigrants. The audience was stunned, President […]

When Barack Obama went to the State Department two days after taking office, he introduced George Mitchell as Special Envoy for the Middle East and Richard Holbrooke as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mitchell gave a well prepared, diplomatic presentation about the difficulties of finding solutions, but he also spoke of his optimism based […]

The death of Senator Ted Kennedy this week evoked eulogies declaring the end of the Kennedy era, but also reminders that at the Democratic convention in 2008, his endorsement of Barack Obama was seen as the passing of the flame from the Kennedys to Obama. At the recent World Track and Field Championships, the American […]

The violent reaction to President Obama’s health care reform proposals must surprise many non-Americans, especially those living in Switzerland. After all, who could object to some form of nationalized health insurance that guarantees a minimum coverage for all? Why have the town hall meetings across America turned so ugly with references to Hitler and communism?
The […]

Justice is an elusive concept. It was studied in detail by the ancient Greeks, but no lasting definition exists. In modern times, the Harvard philosopher John Rawls wrote his impressive thesis A Theory of Justice based on logical reasoning that everyone should agree upon following an initial veil of ignorance. But I do not think […]

The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American President of the United States was supposed to be the culmination of the civil rights movement, the end of the struggles that began with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War right through the marches and Dr. Martin Luther King’s ringing words. We dreamed that America […]

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey is scheduled to meet with U.S. Foreign Minister Hillary Clinton at the end of July in Washington. High on their agenda, we assume, will be the pending case between the United States and UBS. Although both are Foreign Ministers and not Ministers of Justice and neither has an official capacity […]

The death of former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara last week brought back memories of another era, as did the visit of President Obama to Moscow. McNamara was a Whiz Kid, the brilliant pragmatist who turned around the fortunes of the Ford Motor Company just as he was supposed to bring the U.S. Department of […]