Xtra News Community 2
March 28, 2024, 08:51:18 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Welcome to Xtra News Community 2 — please also join our XNC2-BACKUP-GROUP.
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links BITEBACK! XNC2-BACKUP-GROUP Staff List Login Register  

100 years on from the Armistice, is Europe headed for another Great War?

Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: 100 years on from the Armistice, is Europe headed for another Great War?  (Read 212 times)
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32231


Having fun in the hills!


« on: November 11, 2018, 02:49:58 pm »


from The New York Times…

Can Europe's Liberal Order Survive as the Memory of War Fades?

As leaders commemorate the end of World War I, some of the same forces
that threatened democracy and peace 100 years ago are resurgent today.


By KATRIN BENNHOLD | Saturday, November 10, 2018

Tyne Cot cemetery in Belgium is the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world. Nearly 8,400 of roughly 12,000 soldiers buried there remain unidentified. — Photograph: Tomas Munita/for The New York Times.
Tyne Cot cemetery in Belgium is the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world. Nearly 8,400 of roughly 12,000 soldiers buried there remain unidentified.
 — Photograph: Tomas Munita/for The New York Times.


THE REVEREND JOSEPH MUSSER's family has always lived in the region of Alsace, but not always in the same country.

His grandfather fought for the Germans in World War I, and his father for the French in World War II. Today, no one is fighting anymore. His great-niece lives in France but works in Germany, crossing the border her ancestors died fighting over without even noticing it.

It is this era of peace and borderless prosperity that champions of the European Union consider the bloc's singular achievement.

“The foundation of the European Union is the memory of war,” said the Reverend Musser, 72. “But that memory is fading.”

On Sunday, as dozens of world leaders gather in Paris to mark the centenary of the armistice that ended World War I, the chain of memory that binds Mr. Musser's family — and all of Europe — is growing brittle.

The anniversary comes amid a feeling of gloom and insecurity as the old demons of chauvinism and ethnic division are again spreading across the Continent. And as memory turns into history, one question looms large: Can we learn from history without having lived it ourselves?

In the aftermath of their cataclysmic wars, Europeans banded together in shared determination to subdue the forces of nationalism and ethnic hatred with a vision of a European Union. It is no coincidence that the bloc placed part of its institutional headquarters in Alsace's capital, Strasbourg.

But today, its younger generations have no memory of industrialized slaughter. Instead, their consciousness has been shaped by a decade-long financial crisis, an influx of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, and a sense that the promise of a united Europe is not delivering. To some it feels that Europe's bloody last century might as well be the Stone Age.


A migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. Europeans have been shaped by a decade-long financial crisis, an influx of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, and a sense that the promise of a united Europe was not delivering. — Photograph: Mauricio Lima/for The New York Times.
A migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. Europeans have been shaped by a decade-long financial crisis, an influx of migrants from Africa
and the Middle East, and a sense that the promise of a united Europe was not delivering.
 — Photograph: Mauricio Lima/for The New York Times.


Yet World War I killed more than 16 million soldiers and civilians, and its legacies continue to shape Europe.

‘‘The war to end all wars’’ set the scene for an even more devastating conflict and the barbarism of genocide. Winston Churchill, Britain's legendary wartime leader, thought of 1914-1945 as one long war.

“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it,” he said in 1948.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose decision to welcome more than a million migrants to Germany in 2015 first became a symbol of a liberal European order, then a rallying cry for a resurgent far-right, said the jury is still out on whether Europe will heed the lessons of its past.

“We now live in a time in which the eyewitnesses of this terrible period of German history are dying,” she said of World War II. “In this phase, it will be decided whether we have really learned from history.”

Indeed, the last World War I veteran died in 2012. And the number of those who experienced World War II and the Holocaust is rapidly shrinking, too.

Politicians are apt to use history selectively when it suits them. But the history in this case is ominous.


A model of the River Clyde, a British ship that took part in the World War I landings in Gallipoli, Turkey. — Photograph: Tomas Munita/for The New York Times.
A model of the River Clyde, a British ship that took part in the World War I landings in Gallipoli, Turkey.
 — Photograph: Tomas Munita/for The New York Times.


Now as then, Europe's political center is weak and the fringes are radicalizing. Nationalism, laced with ethnic hatred, has been gaining momentum. Populists sit in several European governments.

In Italy, a founding member of the European Union, Matteo Salvini, the nationalist deputy prime minister, has turned away migrant boats and called for the expulsion of Roma. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary speaks of a “Muslim takeover” and unapologetically flaunts his version of “illiberal democracy.”

“In 1990, Europe was our future,” he said earlier this year. “Now, we are Europe’s future.”

The political discourse is deteriorating in familiar ways, too. In Germany, the far right has become the main voice of opposition in Parliament, mocking the mainstream media as “Lügenpresse,” or lying press — a term that was first used by the Nazis in the 1920s before their ascent to power.

Traute Lafrenz, the last surviving member of the White Rose, an anti-Hitler student resistance group in the 1940s, said she got goose bumps seeing images of Hitler salutes at far-right riots in the eastern German city of Chemnitz recently.

“Maybe it's no coincidence,” Ms. Lafrenz, now 99, told Der Spiegel. “We are dying out and at the same time everything is coming back again.”

After World War II, the European Union sought to prevent anything like it from happening again by gradually creating a common market, a common currency, a passport-free travel zone and by pooling sovereignty in a number of areas.

But on Sunday, standing next to Ms. Merkel and her host, the fiercely pro-European French president, Emmanuel Macron, will be a number of nationalist leaders who would like nothing more than to pull the European Union apart — among them President Donald J. Trump, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.


A photograph of the main square in Ypres, Belgium, during World War I is featured in a restaurant in the city. Half a million men or more died or were wounded there from July 31 to November 10, 1917. — Photograph: Dmitry Kostyukov/for The New York Times.
A photograph of the main square in Ypres, Belgium, during World War I is featured in a restaurant in the city. Half a million men or more died
or were wounded there from July 31 to November 10, 1917. — Photograph: Dmitry Kostyukov/for The New York Times.


Historians guard against drawing direct parallels between the fragile aftermath of World War I and the present, pointing to a number of notable differences.

Before World War I, a Europe of empires had just become a Europe of nation states; there was no tried and tested tradition of liberal democracy. Economic hardship was on another level altogether; children were dying of malnutrition in Berlin.

Above all, there is not now the kind of militaristic culture that was utterly mainstream in Europe at the time. France and Germany, archenemies for centuries, are closely allied.

“What is being eroded today, is being eroded from a much higher level than anything we had ever achieved in Europe in the past,” said Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European history at the University of Oxford.

Still, Mr. Garton Ash sees 1918 as a warning that democracy and peace can never be taken for granted.

“It's a really sobering reminder that what seems like some sort of eternal order can very rapidly collapse,” he said.

In that sense, if Europe's motto after World War II was “never again,” the lesson of World War I is “it could happen again.”


The fields of Verdun, France. The Battle of Verdun, fought from February 21 to December 18, 1916, was the longest single battle of World War I. — Photograph: Tomas Munita/for The New York Times.
The fields of Verdun, France. The Battle of Verdun, fought from February 21 to December 18, 1916, was the longest single battle of World War I.
 — Photograph: Tomas Munita/for The New York Times.


Daniel Schönpflug, a German historian who recently published A World on Edge: The End of the Great War and the Dawn of a New Age an evocative book tracking 22 characters in the interwar period, points out that for centuries, periods of prolonged war in Europe's violent history have been followed by periods of prolonged peace.

“But once the generation with living memory of fighting had died, the next war came along,” Mr. Schönpflug said. “History teaches us that when the generation that experienced war dies out, caution diminishes and naiveté toward war increases.”

“That means we have to be very careful today,” he said.

In 1918, the artist Paul Klee made The Comet of Paris, a tightrope walker hovering precariously in the air with a comet searing through the sky above and the Eiffel Tower below. What is unnerving about the image is that one cannot discern the rope even though one knows it is there.

“It sums up where people were then, and in a way where we are today,” said Mr. Schönpflug.

No one knows what might come next. Europe has entered the unknown.

In 1929, as it happened, people entered a murderous decade without even knowing.

“That's what's so eerie looking back,” said James Hawes, a historian and author of The Shortest History of Germany. “Right up to 1931-32, no one realized what was about to happen. They thought they were just entering another decade.”


The annual Eichsfeld Day festival, a gathering of the National Democratic Party, a group of avowed neo-Nazis. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has acknowledged the jury is still out on whether Europe will heed the lessons of its past. — Photograph: Mauricio Lima/for The New York Times.
The annual Eichsfeld Day festival, a gathering of the National Democratic Party, a group of avowed neo-Nazis. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany
has acknowledged the jury is still out on whether Europe will heed the lessons of its past. — Photograph: Mauricio Lima/for The New York Times.


What might future historians write about the Europe of 2018?

Antony Beevor, author of a numerous best-selling history books, is pessimistic. The moral dilemmas of the future will undo European liberal democracy, he predicts. The migration crisis of 2015 was only a foretaste of what is to come.

“Future waves of migration are inevitable and Europe is their main destination,” Mr. Beevor said, pointing to the disruptive forces of poverty and climate change in developing countries as the main reasons.

“European leaders will face the choice of turning back starving refugees or of handing ammunition to the far right and eroding the fabric in their own societies,” he said.

Others see it differently. Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, says the biggest problem facing Europe is not populism but the incomplete currency union of the euro.

“The major threat of Europe at the moment is not Orban or Salvini, the major threat is that the E.U.’s institutional arrangement is unstable,” Mr. Ferguson said. Mr. Macron's ambition has been to fix that; but there is no consensus backing him.


A mural honoring Gavrilo Princip, the Serbian nationalist who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, setting off World War I. It is featured in Andricgrad, a model village in Visegrad, Bosnia. — Photograph: Andrew Testa/for The New York Times.
A mural honoring Gavrilo Princip, the Serbian nationalist who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, setting off World War I.
It is featured in Andricgrad, a model village in Visegrad, Bosnia. — Photograph: Andrew Testa/for The New York Times.


Whatever the future of Europe's institutions, one big difference from 100 years ago is that the Continent is no longer at the heart geopolitics.

"A century ago, Europe was the center of the world — even if it was the dark tragic center of the world,” said Dominique Moïsi, a French author and thinker. “Today we might be back to tragedy but not to centrality.”

“History is moving elsewhere,” he said.

That, too, should be a motivation to shore up European integration, says the Reverend Musser in Alsace. One of his grand-nieces is doing an internship in China, not Europe.

Bones, bombs and bullets remain in the soil of Alsace, a region switched back and forth between various incarnations of France and Germany five times between the Thirty Years' War that ended in 1648 and the devastation of World War II.

Local residents joke that Alsatians still keep German street signs in their basements, just in case.

The Reverend Musser puts it this way: “Alsace is a reminder of how much has been won in Europe — and how much can be lost.”


__________________________________________________________________________

Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting to this article from Berlin.

Katrin Bennhold, the Berlin bureau chief, has been a correspondent for The New York Times since 2004. Based first in France and then in Britain, she has been writing on a range of topics from European politics and terrorism to gender and immigration. Ms. Bennhold was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2012 and 2013. Born in Germany, she lives with her husband and three children in London.

• A version of this article appears in The New York Times on Sunday, November 11, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York print edition with the headline: “Century Later, War's Demons Revisit Europe”.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/world/europe/europe-armistice-merkel-macron-peace-war.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32231


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2018, 02:52:22 pm »


And then a stupid, ignorant moron blundered into Europe for the Armistice commemorations…



from The New York Times…

Bonhomie? C'est Fini as Trump and Macron Seek to Defuse Tension.

President Trump's meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France appeared far chillier
than their earlier warm sessions, demonstrating how the relationship has soured.


By PETER BAKER and ADAM NOSSITER | Saturday, November 10, 2018

President Emmanuel Macron of France welcomed President Donald Trump at the Élysée Palace in Paris on Saturday. — Photograph: Tom Brenner/for The New York Times.
President Emmanuel Macron of France welcomed President Donald Trump at the Élysée Palace in Paris on Saturday.
 — Photograph: Tom Brenner/for The New York Times.


PARIS — They shook hands politely and patted each other on the arm stiffly. Their tight-lipped smiles appeared strained and forced. No cheeks were kissed, no friendly rubs were given, none of the bonhomie of their earlier meetings was on display.

So much for the bromance.

After a promising start, the relationship between President Trump and President Emmanuel Macron of France has soured. By the time they met in Paris on Saturday, the trans-Atlantic alliance that was to be showcased by this weekend's commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I appeared to be fraying instead.

“The honeymoon is well and truly over,” said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Trump's visible contempt for allies over trade and the Iran nuclear deal are humiliating for Macron. There were high hopes of Macron's charm offensive, but Trump's actions have shown that it had no policy impact and that it is dangerous for any political leader to tie his reputation to the mercurial mood swings of the American president.”

It did not help on Saturday that Mr. Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought. Aides cited the rain; the Marines who pilot presidential helicopters often recommend against flying in bad weather. But that did not convince many in Europe who saw it as an excuse and another sign of disrespect.

“They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn't even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen,” Nicholas Soames, a Conservative member of the British Parliament and grandson of Winston Churchill, wrote on Twitter. He added the hashtag: #hesnotfittorepresenthisgreatcountry.

Ben Rhodes, who was deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, dismissed the explanation. “I helped plan all of President Obama's trips for 8 years,” he tweeted. “There is always a rain option. Always.”

Mr. Trump will have another chance to pay respects to the war dead on Sunday with a scheduled visit to the Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris following the ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe marking the anniversary of the armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. But he will not stay for a Paris peace forum that Mr. Macron is sponsoring to bring together world leaders to discuss ways to avoid conflict.

“Trump's absence from the Peace forum tomorrow, apparently alone among the 72 heads of state and government, will have a negative impact — the man who did not even pretend to work for peace, as it were,” said François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a research organization.

In a five-minute session with reporters before their meeting on Saturday, Mr. Trump and Mr. Macron sought to defuse simmering tension over security and trade. Mr. Macron reassured his visitor that his proposal to create a “true European army” was in harmony with Mr. Trump's repeated insistence that Europe stop relying so much on the United States for its defense.

“I do share President Trump's views that we need much better burden-sharing within NATO, and that’s why I do believe my proposals for European defense are utterly consistent with that,” Mr. Macron said with Mr. Trump at the Élysée Palace.

Mr. Trump, who had called the idea of a European army “very insulting” in a tweet three minutes after Air Force One landed in France on Friday, said he was glad to hear Mr. Macron's reasoning. “He understands the United States can only do so much, in fairness to the United States,” Mr. Trump said.

The flap may have resulted from misleading accounts of Mr. Macron's comments, which came in an interview in French with Europe 1 radio this week. In the interview, Mr. Macron said that Europe needed to defend itself against the United States as well as Russia and China, but he was referring to cyber-threats, not the American government. The discussion of a European army actually came up later in the interview, and he characterized it as lightening America's burden, not defending against it.

Still, Mr. Macron was critical in the interview of Mr. Trump's move to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, a three-decade-old agreement that eliminated a whole class of missiles stationed in and aimed at Europe. The United States has accused Russia of violating the treaty and Mr. Trump seems focused on whether such missiles might be useful in countering China, but European leaders see it as reopening a threat to their own countries.

“When I see President Trump announcing that he’s quitting a major disarmament treaty, which was formed after the 1980s euro-missile crisis that hit Europe, who is the main victim?” Mr. Macron said in the interview. “Europe and its security.”

The tense meeting with Mr. Trump contrasted with Mr. Macron's joint appearance with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany later in the day. At a solemn ceremony in the woods outside the northern town of Compiègne where the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, the two leaders stood in front of a plaque celebrating peace and Franco-German friendship.


President Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany laid a wreath at a solemn ceremony in the woods outside the northern town of Compiègne, France, where the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. — Photograph: Etienne Laurent/European Pressphoto Agency/via Shutterstock.
President Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany laid a wreath at a solemn ceremony in the woods outside the northern town of Compiègne,
France, where the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. — Photograph: Etienne Laurent/European Pressphoto Agency/via Shutterstock.


It was the first time a German leader had returned to the spot where both World War I and World War II armistices were concluded. After conquering France in 1940, Adolf Hitler forced the defeated French to return to the same railway car used in 1918 to consecrate Germany's defeat, a way of humiliating his vanquished foe.

On Saturday, Mr. Macron and Ms. Merkel entered a similar car that now sits inside a museum at the site and sat glumly side by side for a few moments. The original car was destroyed during the second war and much at the site razed on Hitler's orders. The ceremony, simple yet symbolic, was over in 45 minutes, after the French and German national anthems were sung.

“The symbolism of it is, it's not just a question of military victory, or military defeat, but of friendship between France and Germany, and also that both sides have overcome this defeat,” said Sylvain Fort, a top aide to Mr. Macron. “We've overcome this defeat to build a friendship that's lasted 70 years.”

The meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Macron earlier in the day seemed decidedly chillier than their warm session in Washington D.C. in April when they smiled broadly, hugged, kissed each other on the cheeks and lavished praise on each other. During their short appearance before reporters, Mr. Trump remained formal and distant. When he avoided sharp language in front of the cameras, Mr. Macron appeared relieved and patted Mr. Trump's leg appreciatively.

“We have become very good friends over the last couple of years,” Mr. Trump said, with none of the enthusiasm of last spring. “We have much in common in many ways — perhaps more ways than people would understand. But we are — we're very much similar in our views.”

Mr. Macron referred to Mr. Trump as “my good friend” and said they had “worked very closely together” in countering Syria's use of chemical weapons. “Our people are very proud to have you here,’’ he said.

A major point of contention is Mr. Trump's decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran following his withdrawal from the multinational accord intended to curb the country's nuclear program. The French want to continue doing business with Iran and resent pressure by the Americans.

The Trump administration waived the sanctions for eight countries, but France was not among them. One of Mr. Macron's senior advisers complained about bullying by Washington earlier this week. “Europe refuses to allow the U.S. to be the trade policeman of the world,” Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister, told The Financial Times.

The two sides remain at odds over broader trade issues as well. Mr. Trump has slapped steel and aluminum tariffs on Europe and other trading partners, and has threatened tariffs on cars manufactured in Europe.

Mr. Trump said negotiations to ease the tariff war have been promising. “We've made a lot of progress,” he said. “We'll see if we can get it over the line, as they say.”

Mr. Trump remains deeply unpopular in Europe, especially in France, where just 9 percent think he will do the right thing in international relations, according to the Pew Research Center. The president's seeming indifference to European sensibilities was reinforced by a report in Le Monde, the French newspaper, that in a meeting with the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania earlier this year, Mr. Trump confused the Baltic states for Balkan states and blamed them for the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Mr. Macron understands the importance of maintaining the relationship, said Karen Donfried, president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. But “domestically,” she said, “it may be better for him if the bromance has cooled visibly.”

Charles A. Kupchan, a former Europe adviser to Mr. Obama, said that Europe has all but given up on Mr. Trump and is focused instead on developing its own “strategic autonomy” to make it less dependent on the United States.

“Trump might be able to retain decent working relationships with populist governments in Italy, Poland, and Hungary,” he said. “But the rest of Europe is resigned to running out the clock, hoping and praying that Trump is a one-term president.”


__________________________________________________________________________

Peter Baker reported from Paris, and Adam Nossiter from Compiègne, France. Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Paris.

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times covering President Donald J. Trump. He previously covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Mr. Baker joined The Times in 2008 after 20 years at The Washington Post. He began writing about Mr. Obama at the inception of his administration, through health care and economic debates, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the re-election campaign and decisions over war and peace in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. During his first tour at the White House, Mr. Baker was a co-author of the original story breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal and served as The Post's lead writer on the impeachment battle. During his next White House assignment, he covered the travails of Mr. Bush's second term, from the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina to Supreme Court nomination fights and the economy. In between stints at the White House, Mr. Baker and his wife, Susan Glasser, spent four years as Moscow bureau chiefs, chronicling the rise of Vladimir V. Putin, the rollback of Russian democracy, the second Chechen war and the terrorist attacks on a theater in Moscow and a school in Beslan. Mr. Baker also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was the first American newspaper journalist to report from rebel-held northern Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, and he spent the next eight months covering the overthrow of the Taliban and the emergence of a new government. He later spent six months in the Middle East, reporting from inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq and around the region before embedding with the United States Marines as they drove toward Baghdad. He is the author of four books, most recently Obama: The Call of History, an illustrated history of the 44th president. A native of the Washington area, Mr. Baker attended Oberlin College.

Adam Nossiter has been a Paris correspondent for The New York Times since July 2015. Previously, Mr. Nossiter served as the West Africa bureau chief for The Times, starting in 2009. He served as a N.Y. Times national correspondent in New Orleans from 2006 to 2009. Before that, he did varying stints as a Times reporter from 2005 to 2006 and from 1995 to 1996. He also worked as a Times stringer from 1992 to 1994 and from 1996 to 1997. Before joining The New York Times, Mr. Nossiter worked for the Associated Press as a Louisiana political reporter from 2003 to 2005. From 1987 to 1991, he was a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, specifically focusing on Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Before that, he worked for the St. Petersburg Times as a reporter from 1985 to 1987. Mr. Nossiter began his career at The Anniston Star, where he worked as a reporter from 1984 to 1985. Mr. Nossiter led The New York Times team that won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, for coverage of the Ebola epidemic. He also won a George Polk award in 2015 for the coverage of the disease. Mr. Nossiter is the author of France and the Nazis: Memories, Lies and the Second World War (Methuen Publishing Ltd., 2003) and The Algeria Hotel: France, Memory and the Second World War (Houghton Mifflin Co., Methuen, 2001). He also wrote Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers (Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1994), for which he was a finalist for the Southern Regional Council’s Lillian Smith Award for best Southern non-fiction in 1994. He has had featured articles in The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Le Monde, the National Journal, The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune Book Review. Mr. Nossiter graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in history and literature of France from Harvard University in 1982. He was awarded a University Fellowship to do graduate work in French history from Yale University in 1983, which he politely declined. Mr. Nossiter speaks fluent French and lives in Paris with his wife and two sons.

• A version of this article appears in The New York Times on Sunday, November 11, 2018, on Page A8 of the New York print edition with the headline: “Trump Meets With France's President, and This Time It's Not Buddy-Buddy”.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • The Chemists' War

 • Wilson Went to Paris to Bind America's Ties to the World. Trump Is There to Loosen Them.

 • The Courage and Folly of a War That Left Indelible Scars

 • Macron Hopes WWI Ceremonies Warn of Nationalism’s Dangers. Is Anyone Listening?

 • A 100-Year Legacy of World War I


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/world/europe/world-war-i-trump-macron.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32231


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2018, 11:17:51 am »




(click on the image to view a larger version)
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32231


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #3 on: November 12, 2018, 02:10:05 pm »


from The New York Times…

Trump's Nationalism, Rebuked at World War I Ceremony,
Is Reshaping Much of Europe


As world leaders marked the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended the Great War,
President Emmanuel Macron of France declared that “nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.”


By PETER BAKER and ALISSA J. RUBIN | Sunday, November 11, 2018

President Donald J. Trump arriving at Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris on Sunday as part of the commemoration the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. — Photograph: Tom Brenner/for The New York Times.
President Donald J. Trump arriving at Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris on Sunday as part of the commemoration the 100th anniversary
of the end of World War I. — Photograph: Tom Brenner/for The New York Times.


PARIS — Dozens of leaders from around the globe marched in the soaking rain down the Champs Élysée on Sunday, expressing solidarity for an international order that had its origins in the end of a world war 100 years ago, an order now under increasing pressure on both sides of the Atlantic.

Only after these leaders arrived by foot at the Arc de Triomphe did President Trump show up, protected from the rain as he made an individual entrance. A few minutes later, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia did the same.

For Mr. Trump, at least, the separate arrival was attributed to security concerns. But somehow it felt apt that these two leaders would not arrive with the crowd.

No one has done more to break up the postwar global system in the last couple of years than Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin. As the anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I was commemorated on Sunday, Mr. Trump's brand of “America First” nationalism was rebuked from the podium while he sat stone-faced and unmoved, alienated from some of America's strongest allies, including his French hosts.

But while he may have been out of step with many of the leaders gathered around him, Mr. Trump remains at the vanguard of forces that are redefining the Western political paradigm in countries like Poland, Hungary, Italy and Turkey. In Britain and Germany, two of the Continent's major powers, nationalist movements are gaining influence.


Led by President Emmanuel Macron of France, world leaders marched down the Champs-Élysées in Paris on Sunday. — Photograph: Eric Feferberg/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
Led by President Emmanuel Macron of France, world leaders marched down the Champs-Élysées in Paris on Sunday.
 — Photograph: Eric Feferberg/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.


So a ceremony meant to celebrate the ties that bind the world today in effect showcased the divisions that are pulling it apart.

“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said in a speech at the Arc de Triomphe, welcoming the leaders and extolling an old system now under siege. “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying: ‘Our interest first. Who cares about the others?’”

Recalling the forces that led to World War I, Mr. Macron warned that “the old demons” have been resurfacing and declared that “giving into the fascination for withdrawal, isolationism, violence and domination would be a grave error that future generations would very rightly make us responsible for.”

Mr. Trump, who recently declared himself “a nationalist”, appeared grim as he listened to the speech through an earpiece and clapped only tepidly afterward. He had no speaking role and made no mention of the issues Mr. Macron raised during an address later at a cemetery for American soldiers killed in the war.

The ceremony led by Mr. Macron encapsulated the tension in the international arena as Mr. Trump seeks to rewrite the rules that have governed the world in recent decades. He has abandoned international agreements on trade, nuclear proliferation and climate change, and disparaged alliances like NATO and the European Union.

On the campaign trail this fall, Mr. Trump railed against what he called the “rule of corrupt, power-hungry globalists,” as he put it at a rally in Houston. “You know what a globalist is, right? You know what a globalist is? A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much. And you know what? We can't have that.”


President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived late to the ceremony, and shook Mr. Trump's hand before taking his place. — Photograph: Pool picture by Ludovic Marin.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived late to the ceremony, and shook Mr. Trump's hand before taking his place.
 — Photograph: Pool picture by Ludovic Marin.


Mr. Macron has now, in effect, given a rebuttal. In addition to the speech, he also used an interview with Fareed Zakaria of CNN that aired on Sunday to define himself as “a patriot” rather than a “nationalist.”

“I do defend my country,” Mr. Macron said. “I do believe that we have a strong identity. But I'm a strong believer in cooperation between the different peoples, and I’m a strong believer of the fact that this cooperation is good for everybody, where the nationalists are sometimes much more based on a unilateral approach and the law of the strongest, which is not my case.”

Despite the friction with Mr. Macron, Mr. Trump's views have been embraced by other Western leaders, some of whom, like Viktor Orban in Hungary, have made an anti-immigrant stance the keystone of their policy.

“He's not isolated,” said Bruce Jentleson, a scholar at Duke University, citing nationalist politicians across Europe. “They've all benefited from him as precedent.” Other leaders have even adopted and adapted Trump phrases like “fake news” and “America First” for their countries.

But, Mr. Jentleson said, it “mostly gives him second-tier players like Poland, Hungary, Italy, and not the big guys like Germany and France.”

And even some of those nationalists do not favor unraveling the world order entirely so much as changing the rules, as with President Xi Jinping of China or the Europeans who want better arrangements within the European Union, not a departure from it.

Daniel Fried, a former assistant secretary of state for Europe, said Mr. Trump's nationalism did not reflect a consensus even within his own administration, which still has senior officials with a more traditional internationalist outlook.

“The danger to the world is not that Trump will lead the nationalists, sweeping them to remake the world in an ugly, pre-1914 image or a dystopian counter-world of the U.S. siding with the fascists in World War II,” he said. “The danger is that Trump may take the U.S. out of the game — à la the interwar period — long enough for one of the serious nationalists, Putin or Xi, to do major damage.”


French troops during the commemoration ceremony in Paris. — Photograph: Michel Euler/Associated Press.
French troops during the commemoration ceremony in Paris. — Photograph: Michel Euler/Associated Press.

Aside from the discord with the French president, Mr. Trump's two-day visit to Paris was marred by his decision on Saturday to scrap a planned visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought. Aides cited the rain in canceling a helicopter flight, but it went over badly in Europe.

Mr. Trump had another chance to pay respects to the war dead on Sunday at the Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris, where 1,565 American soldiers are buried. Speaking in a drenching rain, Mr. Trump paid tribute to the soldiers and praised Franco-American relations, largely sticking to his prepared text without responding to Mr. Macron.

“The American and French patriots of World War I embodied the timeless virtues of our two republics — honor and courage, strength and valor, love and loyalty, grace and glory,” he said after visiting a field of white crosses. “It is our duty to preserve the civilization they defended and to protect the peace they so nobly gave their lives to secure one century ago.”

In contrast to the stiff interactions with the American president, Mr. Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, representing two nations that were once bitter enemies, demonstrated the close friendship that has emerged from the rubble of war. In appearances over the weekend, the French and German leaders — who are facing their own political struggles at home — appeared affectionate, and Mr. Macron on Saturday posted a picture of the two holding hands along with the single word “Unis,” or “United.”

Mr. Putin, on the other hand, seemed focused on Mr. Trump, approaching him at the Arc de Triomphe, shaking his hand and giving a friendly pat on the arm. The two later chatted briefly at a lunch for all the visiting leaders, according to the Kremlin, but will wait for a formal meeting until later this month, when both will be in Buenos Aires for a Group of 20 summit meeting.

In marking the centennial of the armistice, Mr. Macron said that from the ashes of that war and the next one came hope. “This hope is called the European Union, a union freely entered into, never before seen in history, a union that has freed us of our civil wars,” he said.

Yet absent from the ceremony was the prime minister of Britain, which is currently in the throes of trying to detach itself from the European Union. Prime Minister Theresa May attended her own country's commemorations on Sunday, although she made a point of visiting France and Belgium on Friday to lay wreaths at the graves of soldiers killed in the war.

Among the leaders present on Sunday were Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, King Felipe VI of Spain, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine and dozens of others.


Mr. Trump at the Élysée Palace after the ceremony. — Photograph: Tom Brenner/for The New York Times.
Mr. Trump at the Élysée Palace after the ceremony. — Photograph: Tom Brenner/for The New York Times.

The ceremony, in some measure Franco-centric by dint of being held in Paris, made a palpable effort to reach out to other countries that lost hundreds of thousands of people.

While the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, opened the ceremony, the most moving moments came when high school students in yellow scarves read century-old letters from eight men and women who either fought or lived through World War I, sticking to the language in which they were written, including English, French and German.

After the ceremony and subsequent lunch, Mr. Macron opened the Paris Peace Forum, a three-day conference to discuss fostering multilateralism. “History will retain an image — that of 84 chiefs of state and of governments united,” he declared.

“What is uncertain for the future is how this image will be interpreted,” he continued. “Will it be a ringing symbol of a durable peace among nations or the photograph of the last moment of unity before the world goes down in new disorder?”

Mr. Trump was not there to help answer that question. He skipped the forum and headed back to the United States.


__________________________________________________________________________

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times covering President Donald J. Trump. He previously covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Mr. Baker joined The Times in 2008 after 20 years at The Washington Post. He began writing about Mr. Obama at the inception of his administration, through health care and economic debates, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the re-election campaign and decisions over war and peace in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. During his first tour at the White House, Mr. Baker was a co-author of the original story breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal and served as The Post's lead writer on the impeachment battle. During his next White House assignment, he covered the travails of Mr. Bush's second term, from the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina to Supreme Court nomination fights and the economy. In between stints at the White House, Mr. Baker and his wife, Susan Glasser, spent four years as Moscow bureau chiefs, chronicling the rise of Vladimir V. Putin, the rollback of Russian democracy, the second Chechen war and the terrorist attacks on a theater in Moscow and a school in Beslan. Mr. Baker also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was the first American newspaper journalist to report from rebel-held northern Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, and he spent the next eight months covering the overthrow of the Taliban and the emergence of a new government. He later spent six months in the Middle East, reporting from inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq and around the region before embedding with the United States Marines as they drove toward Baghdad. He is the author of four books, most recently Obama: The Call of History, an illustrated history of the 44th president. A native of the Washington area, Mr. Baker attended Oberlin College.

Alissa Johannsen Rubin is the Paris bureau chief for The New York Times. She joined The Times in January 2007 as a correspondent in Baghdad and covered Iraq and Afghanistan, becoming bureau chief in Baghdad in the fall of 2008, and then moving to Afghanistan in October 2009, becoming bureau chief there a couple of months later. She was in Kabul for almost four years, leaving in the late summer of 2013 to take up the job as Paris bureau chief. However, she continued to work on projects in Afghanistan and joined the team covering the Islamic State's takeover of northern and western Iraq in 2014. That August, she was seriously injured and nearly killed in a helicopter crash in Kurdistan, covering the beleaguered Yazidis. Before joining The N.Y. Times, she was the Los Angeles Times co-bureau chief in Baghdad, and its bureau chief for the Balkans for five years. She started at the L.A. Times' Washington bureau in 1997, covering health care policy and financing, abortion politics and legislation, and the fight over tobacco legislation on Capitol Hill. Before the Los Angeles Times, she was a reporter for Congressional Quarterly magazine, where she covered health care and then taxes and trade on Capitol Hill. She came to Washington after working for four years as a reporter in Wichita, Kansas, for the Knight-Ridder newspaper then known as The Wichita Eagle-Beacon. She also covered taxes there as well as the troubled farm economy. Her career in journalism started at The American Lawyer magazine where she was a researcher. While in Washington, D.C., she freelanced for The New Republic, The Washington Monthly and The Washington Post's Outlook section as well as The Washington Post Magazine. Ms. Rubin, was born and brought up in New York City and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1980 from Brown University with an honors degree in Renaissance studies and a minor in classics (Latin). She received a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities to pursue her graduate studies in modern European history (with a focus on the history of the Catholic Church) at Columbia University, where she received an M.A. in 1986. She is a winner of a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting; the 2015 John Chancellor Award for journalistic achievement; a 2010 Overseas Press Association award for a piece on women suicide bombers titled “How Baida Wanted to Die”, and a 1992 Washington Monthly award for a piece that appeared in the Washington City Paper, “What People Talk About When They Talk About Abortion”. In 1992 she won an Alicia Patterson Fellowship to report on the medical and religious roots of the abortion controversy in the wake of the United States Supreme Court's 1989 Webster decision. She was twice part of teams that won the National Farm Writers of America Award at the Wichita Eagle in 1986 and 1988 for their coverage of farm issues. She also won the William Allen White Award in 1989 for her coverage of Kansas' overhaul of its real estate taxes. Her college thesis, which was a translation and annotation of some of the letters of Lionardo Bruni, a Renaissance humanist, was published in Allegorica, an academic journal. Ms. Rubin lives in Paris with her husband, James E. Castello, a lawyer who specializes in international arbitration.

• A version of this article appears in The New York Times on Monday, November 12, 2018, on page A3 of the New York print edition with the headline: “‘America First’ Gets a Rebuke At Ceremony”.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • In Photos Unpublished for 100 Years, the Joy of War's End on Armistice Day

 • Remembering World War I, 100 Years Later

 • The War Stories Their Families Never Forgot


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/us/politics/macron-trump-paris-wwi.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32231


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #4 on: November 12, 2018, 02:12:34 pm »



Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Im2Sexy4MyPants
Absolutely Fabulously Incredibly Shit-Hot Member
*
Posts: 8271



WWW
« Reply #5 on: November 12, 2018, 07:37:19 pm »

Macron is not intelligent at all, he filled his country up with gangs of Muslim thugs
the same invaders have turned France into a war zone.

Emmanuel Macron thinks nationalism being a nation-state is bad.
Macron at the age of 14 yrs old was a sex toy for the elite he was fucked in all his holes in every way.
now he's an elite fucker that wants to fucken control the world his argument is sick.

The unelected EU was Hitler's perfect Nazi dream, if he had won WW2 he would be in charge of it all.
It was nationalism-nation states that stopped Hitler and ended his madness.

Macron is full of shit.
Yes the EU is ruled by corrupt, unelected, power-hungry globalists who serve themselves
Fuck Macron that queer little-broken arse pussy weak frog cunt.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2018, 08:21:49 pm by Im2Sexy4MyPants » Report Spam   Logged

Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32231


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #6 on: November 13, 2018, 10:40:30 am »


Macron knows how to play Donald J. Trump like a fiddle.

Just like the leaders of China and North Korea.

Getting one over Donald J. Trump is obviously as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

Good for those countries that Trump is such a stupid dumbarse, eh?

No wonder they can play him.
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 

Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Open XNC2 Smileys
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum


Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy
Page created in 0.065 seconds with 18 queries.