The European Union's Brussels summit on December 8-9 is its latest, most urgent attempt to calm the bond markets, save the euro, and create firmer mechanisms that promise to ensure long-term fiscal discipline among eurozone nations.

But what is coming out of Germany? What do we hear? Nothing! Nothing but deafening silence! It seems as though the political class is speechless before an American president who has adopted the liberal triad of political freedom, human rights and economic development as preventive medicine against all kinds of crises.

On both sides of the Atlantic, “citizenship” is the subject of vital and often contentious policy debates. In the United States, a nation famously founded on a creed rather than blood ties, the question of what it means to be an American citizen has always been central to the country’s...

On both sides of the Atlantic, "citizenship" is the subject of vital and often contentious policy debates. In the United States, a nation famously founded on a creed rather than blood ties, the question of what it means to be an American citizen has always been central to the country's...

On both sides of the Atlantic, “citizenship” is the subject of vital and often contentious policy debates. In the United States, a nation famously founded on a creed rather than blood ties, the question of what it means to be an American citizen has always been central to the country’s...