Elizabeth Pond
Elizabeth Pond is a Berlin-based journalist and the author of Beyond the Wall and The Rebirth of Europe.
A Specter Is Haunting Europe
The thirteen-year era of “Mutti” (“mama”) Angela Merkel just ended—not with a bang, but with a whimper. Germany’s most beloved politician for a long decade was not voted out of …
Truce At Last?
The biggest surprise in Ukraine this month is the dog that didn’t bark. In the first week of September not a single Ukrainian soldier was killed in the Ukrainian-Russian battleground …
Putin’s Long War
A year after Russian President Vladimir Putin shocked Europe by annexing Crimea and fomenting rebellion in Ukraine’s previously quiet Donbas region, his undeclared war on the Russians’ East Slav brothers …
The Day the Berlin Wall Really Fell
Contrary to popular lore, the Berlin Wall did not fall on November 9, 1989. Nor did it fall in Berlin. It fell on October 9 some 120 miles away, in …
Merkel’s Leadership in the Ukraine Crisis
Willy-nilly, the Ukraine crisis turned German Chancellor Angela Merkel into the geopolitical as well as financial leader of Europe. President Joachim Gauck, in the company of Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier …
Why Putin Fears Ukraine
An eon ago, when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union imploded, the Kremlin still feared Germany. Its angst was anachronistic, but useful. Today President Vladimir Putin fears Ukraine. …
Outgunned and Without Friends
“To be in this government is to commit political suicide,” said Arseniy Yatsenyuk as he became Ukraine’s emergency prime minister seven weeks ago. That was just after Viktor Yanukovych’s riot …
Stupid Intelligence
For an intelligence agency, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is remarkably unintelligent. It’s rather like a new husband, who starts hacking his wife’s cellphone on their wedding day, with …
How Long Will the Center Hold in Germany?
Germany’s party system is on the cusp of something. The big question is whether that something might be erosion of the stable political center that the country has enjoyed over …
