Word: unionizers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Europe does not have one for Russia - unless you want to call "Let's not rile the Bear" a strategy. Nor is "Let's annoy him a little bit" the epitome of statecraft. The latest example is Georgia. In the wake of the Russian invasion this summer, the European Union froze talks about a new economic partnership. But on Nov. 14, that killer sanction was lifted after just 10 weeks when the E.U. and Russia embraced at a summit in Nice...
...much for the courtship. The intimidation of Europe's East - the Baltics, Poland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic - is also doing fine. Ukraine and the Baltics, after all, were once part of the Soviet Union, and the others were satrapies until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Never mind that all of them, with the exception of Ukraine, are now firmly embedded in E.U. and NATO; for Russia they are either the "near abroad" or what the tsars used to call Russia's "sphere of influence...
...other side, Russia remains true to the quip of former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt about the Soviet Union: "An Upper Volta with nukes." OK, today it is not just rockets. The Kremlin's power also flows (more effectively, in fact) from those pipelines that have hooked Europe on Russian oil and gas. But for all of its fabulous riches in the ground, Russia remains a kind of Third World country, an extraction economy whose welfare and clout fluctuate with the price of oil. Today, oil fetches less than one-half of what it did when Russia, flush with cash...
...Greece says it can prove crossed over from Turkey, only 1,600 have been accepted back. "They are not cooperating at all," claims Alexandros Zavos, president of the Greek government-funded Hellenic Migration Policy Institute, who says Ankara sees "immigration as a bargaining chip" toward membership in the European Union. Interior Minister Pavlopoulos argues that "Turkey has to respect E.U. law if it wants to be a member. As long as it acts like this it will be impossible to move forward with accession." Turkish officials, who point out that they too are struggling to cope with huge flows...
...first two are good reasons for Congress to take the carmakers' pleas seriously--a shutdown of GM is not what anybody wants now. The third argument is more problematic. Yes, GM and the other automakers have cut costs sharply, especially since 2005, and the United Auto Workers union has made historic concessions. But GM could accomplish even more along those lines, plus reduce the big debts it has incurred trying to settle pension and retiree health-care obligations, under Chapter 11 protection...