So what did Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron really talk about throughout their effusive buddy-buddy Parisian act?This being France, let’s start where things matter: gastronomy. Yes, that dinner at Alain Ducasse’s overpriced Jules Verne restaurant at the Eiffel Tower. Cool window table with a view. Only the principals, along with wives Melania and…
President Donald Trump’s second foreign trip, to attend a G-20 summit meeting, demonstrated how far and how fast U.S. global leadership and influence have fallen. This observation is warranted despite the usual tendency in the media to overplay summit meetings and the atmospherics surrounding them, in contrast to inattention given to ordinary but important diplomacy…
A future history of the G20 in Hamburg might start with a question posed by President Donald Trump – actually his speechwriter – a few days earlier in Warsaw: “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” What initially amounted to a juvenile/reductionist clash of civilizations tirade written by Stephen Miller – the…
Violent confrontations between police and protesters continued in Hamburg in the early hours of Sunday morning, even after all of the G20 leaders had left. Police said they had to deploy water cannon against demonstrators who were burning vehicles. The violent riot took place in the Schanzenviertel area of the center of Hamburg, police said…
From the start, the “positive chemistry” in the Mother of All Sit-Downs was a given. The format – with only the four principals, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and two translators – prevented any leaks. What was originally scheduled for 35 minutes went on for 2 hours…
“Welcome to Hell!” is the slogan with which G20 protesters greet the self-appointed leaders of the world to their summit on 7 and 8 July 2017 in Hamburg, Germany, under Madame Merkel’s auspices to discuss the calamities of our globe and how to resolve them. Never mind that the distress of Mother Earth has been…
