Archive | February, 2010

Prime Minister too powerful: Canadians

According to a recent poll conducted by Nanos Research, 42% of Canadians think the Prime Minister’s Office has too much power  (Campbell Clark, “PMO too powerful, Canadians say,” Globe and Mail, 24 February 2010). Nine percent of Canadians think that the PMO has too little power, while 40% responded that it has the right amount. By comparison, […]

Gates: "Pacification" of Europe threatens security

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has condemned the “pacification” of Europe. Speaking to a meeting of NATO officials and security experts, Gates declared that “The demilitarisation of Europe, where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it, has gone from a blessing […]

Five NATO countries want US nukes out of Europe

Five NATO countries plan to call for the removal of all U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, reports Agence France Presse (Pascal Mallet, “Allied bid for Obama to remove US European nuclear stockpile,” AFP, 19 February 2010). The five–Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway–include three of the four or five European NATO members that […]

Dutch government falls over Afghanistan issue

The Dutch coalition government “collapsed” on Saturday due to differences over how the Netherlands should respond to a NATO request to extend the Dutch mission in Afghanistan past its scheduled end in August (“Dutch cabinet ‘collapses’ in dispute over Afghanistan,” BBC News, 20 February 2010). The nearly 2000-strong Dutch force deployed in Uruzgan province has […]

Hard power, fuzzy logic

Prime Minister Stephen Harper used the occasion of a visit to Canada’s aid efforts in Haiti on Tuesday to praise the virtues of his government’s spending on “hard power” items like the C-17 transport aircraft: “This fleet of new aircraft, the C-17 fleet, is a big part of making this response possible. I single out […]