International Affairs is a collection of columns about stuff that happens outside America by a writer who's chosen to live outside America.

The writer is me and I am of course an American citizen, proud of my country if I'm not always proud of what it does. Mark Twain rather famously said "patriotism is supporting your country all the time and the government when it deserves it" and I think I agree with him.

Living as I have for more than a decade in the Czech Republic gives me a unique perspective on what my country does and how it does it. Perhaps you'll agree with my take on it, perhaps not. But then, courteous disagreement is what it's all about.

• A Pig is Worth More After It’s Butchered
  The French and the Japanese are about to barbecue General Motors and they’re calling it a three-way alliance. Which is pretty much the same as calling the eating of pork chops an alliance with the pig.
• Major Explosions in the Middle East
  Not car bombs this time, but the permanent incursion of Arab-language news into a Middle East that has always been news-starved and media-abusive.
• Welcome to International Politics, to Deal With China, Press 9
  Decades ago, we told China it had to become more Western, embrace Western culture and develope a capitalistic worldliness to raise the standards of their impoverished people.
• The Flow of Charles Krauthammer's River
  Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post’s conservative columnist, wrote a column today that proposes “First a wall, Then amnesty” on the hot-button topic of immigration.
• Thinking the Unthinkable, An American-Mexican Barricade
  America’s enormous appetite for workers to produce at the low end of the wage scale (landscaping and various maintenance chores, household help and service sector jobs) can be better, as well as legally served by unrestricted worker access from Mexico.
• Iran Proposes Nuclear Destruction Of the Dollar
  No longer backing its currency with gold, the U.S. had to find a damned quick alternative or lose its monetary leadership. That alternative was oil. Every nation in the world consumed oil and if the currency of oil became the dollar, the American buck would be the standard against which world currencies were valued. We pulled it off.
• The Problem With Show Trials
  History hasn’t meted out justice very even-handedly across the decades in show trials and what worked reasonably well at Nurnberg after World War II has been far less successful with the likes of O.J. Simpson, Yugoslavia’s Milosevic, Iraq’s Saddam and lately, America’s sentencing trial of terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui
• Dubai or Not To Buy, That Is the Question
  Whether 'tis nobler in the Houses of Congress and ye, upon the streets themselves, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous complaints, or to take arms against this sea of nonsense, and by enlightening end it.
• Secretary of State Rice, a Surgeon in Galoshes
  Condi Rice staggered into the operating room where American Israeli-Palestinian credibility lay on the table, fighting for its life. She knocked over an IV stand, bumped surgical instruments onto the floor and made a snap-judgment as to the clinical procedure required. "Hold all liquids." Galosh, galosh.
• So Much for Democratic Elections
  Well, although it’s inconceivable that Bush and Rice didn’t consider it, wasn't even on their horizon, Hamas took the day.
• It’s Always Canada and the U.S. in the Final . . Or is It?
  U.S. Women on a Cold Spell at Olympics, is the headline and the sub-text reads Hockey Team's Shocking Loss to Sweden Is Latest Disappointment. That’s a bit harsh of Barry Svrluga at the Washington Post.
• Condi Rice's Diplomacy of Ever-Increasing Pressure
  Sometimes, Condi, the work of the Secretary of State is to lessen pressures throughout the world.
• A Stick in the Chinese Eye
  Not only that, but the same old tiresome victim, those yellow hordes a half a world away, the Chinese. Shades of middle twentieth-century isolationism and communist hysteria.
• Paul Farhi's Turn To Be An Absurdist
  Paul Farhi, a Washington Post staff writer, took on the Winter Olympics yesterday in as shortsighted, ignorant, mean-spirited and just plain stupid an article as I’ve read in . . . I don’t know, quite a while anyway; "Where the Rich and Elite Meet to Compete."
• Democracy With a Lid on It
  Davos is the cogent evidence that social and economic inclusion are more powerful than men and nations. The democracies that have thrived have come not at the point of a sword, but at the offer of a job.
• Nuclear Proliferation Has Its Place
  So, having cashed-in at least some of our cold-war prejudices, we can get to work on demystifying the old nuclear power bugaboos, one of which has always been what to do about the reprocessing of spent fuel rods.
• The Tokyo Exchange Spotlights a Potential Disaster
  By the time the snow was at the bottom of the mountain, some $300 billion had been wiped off market valuations.
• Writing in Silence, Editing at Risk
  Who could find Belarus on a map, or even knows such a country exists?
• Entrapped by French Philosophy, Without a Clue
  Philosophy has either taken a wrong turn semantically or else it’s just the popular thing to write and speak obscurely, so no ordinary soul could possibly understand.
• America May Strike Out at the World Baseball Classic
  In its infinite wisdom, Major League Baseball is introducing the Inaugural World Baseball Classic next year, a March celebration of baseball as it’s played and enjoyed throughout the world.
• Injustice Ain't Blind, Condi
  Condoleeza Rice, our current Secretary of State, has just published as an Op-Ed piece the most condescending collection of clap-trap I’ve seen in ages.
• Asia Can Afford to Turn Its Back
  President Bush came back from Asia and it may as well have been South America, for all the respect he got.
• Another Opportunity Slipping Away
  Remember Pakistan, the earthquake? It was on your ‘to-do’ list last week.
• Swoon and Wilt Take On a Whole New Meaning
  When was the last time you described a six-tenths of one percent movement in the price of a commodity as a swoon or a wilt?
• What Does a John Bolton Appointment Mean for a Bill Clinton Election?
  So, if Jimmy Carter has been a continual irritant to Republicans since leaving office, Bill Clinton at the United Nations would be a real stick-in-the-eye. But of course that’s only one of the many reasons it’s a great idea.
• The Civilized Mind
  The London bombings pose the question of society’s civilized mind and how much at risk it may find itself in these fragile times.
• The Failed Arithmetic of Seven Plus One Equals Eight
  Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia, Canada, France and Britain represent 7/8ths of what has come to be known as the G-8, a loose group of the world’s most industrialized (or otherwise important) nations.
• Spreading Democracy
  President Bush has painted boldly his desire to be the Johnny Appleseed of democracy throughout the world and it’s an ambitious goal.
• A Win for Everyone But Big Oil
  Farmers win, the consumer at the pump wins, our nation's relief from the grip of the oil cartels wins, even the Florida and Gulf coast sugar industry wins if we follow and expand a tested and successful model.
• The Incentive Killers
  There are damned few incentives left in modern-day Europe to pull it out of its economic doldrums and the recent bashing the EU has taken on referenda on the proposed constitution are emblematic of continental malaise.
• al-Jazeera, an Accidental Ally
  Al-Jazeera brings news to every illiterate Arab, charges the conversations over tea in market places, brings dialogue to populations whose only prior source was what was heard and rumored in the mosque.
• The Naked Weather Girl
  Over here in what used to be Eastern Europe, our Czech TV Nova station has its own formula for RAMPING UP and ROLLING OUT and it’s called the 11:10pm Naked Weather Girl.
• Dissent and My Right to It
  My earliest political memories are of my old daddy’s raging against FDR.
• The American Century, Five Years Behind Us
  Long time foes, recent time edgy negotiators, China and India have just fallen into one another’s arms like star-struck lovers.
• Bobby and Me, Partners in Crime
  Bobby Fischer’s been in the slammer, in Japan of all places, since last summer.
• A Wolf at the Door of the World Bank
  The interesting thing to me is how quickly opposition polarized based on Paul Wolfowitz’s record within the Bush administration on Iraq policy.
• The Force of the Few Submits to the Power of the Many
  People who will not go away have mastered Ghandi’s lesson, fifty years after Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s some forty years after his death.
• What's the Correct Wine with Crow?
  If a guy’s honest with himself, his politics and his readers, it follows that recent events in the middle East and elsewhere may make it necessary to tuck the old napkin under the chin.
• In Case You Missed It
  In the avalanche of imagery that buries our daily memory of what’s happening in the world, you may have missed this picture of a Ukrainian man, crying in the Independence Square of Kiev.
• Will Kiev in ’04 unfold like Prague in ‘68?
  Only the next few weeks will tell, but it’s a tingly feeling up the back of my neck to be here in Prague, watching as Leonid Kuchma gets called back to Moscow.
• Nobel Prize Takes a Giant Step Up
  Confirming that last year's choice was no fluke, the committee this year selected Wangari Maathai, at age 64 one of Kenya's and Africa's first modern women.
• The Intention of Unintended Consequences
  Unintended, not in the sense that they weren't planned and carried out with malice aforethought, but in the reality that their impact on events simply isn't well enough recognized by the public at risk
• Enron and World Com in Europe - a Tough Explanation
  Here in Europe where I live, it's been an education in the social sciences to try to explain to my neighbors how this Enron-WorldCom slip-slide has been allowed to turn into an avalanche.
• Israel & Palestine, Always a Bomb Away from Peace
  When Israel and Palestine painstakingly come to the negotiating table, someone is sure to become a human bomb and the negotiators back off.
• United Nations
  No one it seems is happy with the United Nations, certainly not our congress and the media pundits are quick to smell blood and join in the UN-bashing
• Human Rights
  I see by the papers, that Congress is again going to tie human rights issues to our aid program in China
• Are We Abandoning the United Nations?
  We may no longer have the patience to work within the organization we created
• Israel
  The United States and Israel seemed locked in a dance of mutual dependence, theirs a matter of perceived survival, ours a power-base in the middle east as well as our significant Jewish population
• There Goes the Neighborhood
  There's a guy on my block who's irritating the hell out of the neighborhood and for the past ten years my neighborhood has been Europe
• Monetary Foolishness
  Well it's quite an uproar, all this trouble with Russia's financial collapse, stolen billions and finger pointing to the International Monetary Fund, or Al Gore for turning the other cheek, or poor old Boris Yeltsin for not being able to leash his hungry dogs
• Long Tailed Cats
  The turmoil credited to September 11th and the Enron collapse has provided unprecedented peacetime cover for political shenanigans and Europe is perhaps more aware of this than America
• John Paul-In-A-Box
  It is irreverant to allude to Pope John Paul II's address marking International Women's Day as a Jack-In-The-Box response. But why not?
• Jihad vs McWorld---Not
  I have just read Benjamin Barber's Jihad vs. McWorld, yet another attack on the globalization of business, proffering that the world is destined to deal with either ethnic strife or a homogenization of western styled culture
• An Increasingly Isolated America
  It's a lonely and unsatisfactory life to be the toughest kid on the block and we as a nation have been that for the twelve years since the fall of communism
• The Fox is Home and the Cat Will Roam
  The House of Commons has acquitted itself admirably in the ban on foxhunting in Britain and I congratulate it. Next I propose a ban on house cats
• The Blind Eye
  Explaining Enron to my European neighbors
• Is Wednesday Okay?
  In case you've been occupied elsewhere, after four months of wrangling and near war, Saddam finally agreed to have his palaces inspected.
• Timing is Everything
  Well, Princess Diana will be missed, a young woman of great charm and an icon of her times if there ever was one.

Get out of the Archives and read what Jim's writing today