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U.S. Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, held three way talks with Egypt's president, Mohamed Morsi and the head of the military, Hussein Tantawi. Panetta said of Morsi- " I was convinced that President Morsi is his own man." Panetta said Morsi is committed to democratic reforms and representing all Egyptians. President Morsi sent a letter to Israeli president Shimon Peres expressing deep thanks for a Ramadan greeting and expressing hope for new peace talks with the Palestinians. The U.S. preparations for a potential conflict with Iran and the civil war in Syria to oust the Assad regime have given new urgency to reduce tensions in Egypt between the different factions including the military.

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This Editorial in the WSJ says Obama's complete inaction in Syria led to problems later on. It destabilized the entire Middle East in a way that Reagan destabilized the region with intervention in the region. Russian unease with NATO at its borders was not sensed in US and EU- and no efforts to address these concerns to reach an agreement to create the right kind of environment for peaceful coexistence that is only now being beginning to be seen as needed. Other serious consequences were the migration from the Middle East to Europe after Arab Spring in 2011- migration to Greece and Italy and onwards to Hungary, Austria and Germany. During the Merkel years little was done to identify and act on the sources of the problem- instability in the Middle East and Africa and dealing with the problem at the source. This led to AfD in Germany taking up the unease felt by the German people at the size of the illegal migration. This led in ricocheting manner to migration fears in Britain and Reform UK taking up the unease felt by the  British people.  This problem of migration found new sources in 2024- Venezuela and Central America for the US and cross Channel migration in the UK and again it's size stirred up unease- because of the size of illegal migration in the millions. ...

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The Obama administration announced a policy of increasing the number of refugees accepted in fiscal 2017 to 110,000. This will be an increase from 85,000 in 2016, and 70,000 in the prior 3 years. Secretary of State Kerry says the target is consistent  with the idea that all countries need to do more, and if we could do more we would. After 3 years of cautious policy president Obama now follows Chancellor Merkel's lead.

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Alexander Kudascheff of DW.com, says the Berlin Christmas market attack on the Kurfstendamm, is likely to change the way Germany looks at the terrorist threats in the world. Smaller attacks had hit Germany earlier in 2016. This one resembling the attack in Nice on Bastille Day is likely to touch a nerve with Germans who did not see something like this possible for a Christmas tradition of Christmas markets in Germany, and right in Berlin's centre.  This means stormy waters for chancellor Merkel's refugee policies. The comments to this opinion in the DW.com show the public dissatisfaction with current policy. Many of the comments focus on too open an approach of liberal media, what is perceived as a spin on stories for refugees, and on the use of words "suspected terrrorist attack" even when it had become clear to most people that it was a terrorist incident. In other ways this incident is different as it puts Germans in the same situation as Americans, Spaniards, Turks, French, and other people in the way terrorism has made people less safe or unsafe in 2015-2016. Most of this is a result of the situation in Syria and Iraq, as is the refugee situation that has divided European opinion, and American opinion.  ...

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WSJ reporters Chow, Schechner and Kostov provide this exceptional report from the 11th Arondissement in France, scene of the terrorist attacks in Nov. 2015, describing the conflicting visions of French society- one secular and the other in other parts of the country anti-immigrant. The National Front of Marie Le Pen sees immigration as "a mortal threat to France" and won about 25% of the vote in France in the 2014 European parliament elections, a first for a anti-immigrant party in Europe. It did very well in rural areas and small towns of northwest France and southern France. The debate on immigration is now dominating headlines in Europe, including Denmark, Norway, Germany, France, Rumania, Hungary, and other countries. The Syrian refugee crisis has exacerbated the situation.

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Greece's new Syriza government plans to put a bill through parliament on the minimum wage as one of its first steps. It will reverse plans to sell the government's 67% stake in the port of Piraeus, and a planned sale of the state controlled utility will be held back. Sigmar Gabriel, the Social Democratic leader in the coalition government in Germany says Germany is ready to show solidarity with the Greek people, and says the new government has the opportunity to take better action against corruption and tax evasion in Greece than previous governments. Previous governments including governments of the Pasok and New Democracy parties which make up the ruling political elite in Greece failed to make the serious changes in tax collection needed in Greece whereby the upper class in Greece pay the fair amount of taxes due. The IMF's Lagarde also emphasized the tax collection, and separated it from austerity issues where most of European and American opinion believes growth oriented policies are the right path....

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Zapotosky of the Washington Post explains what the Supreme Court's partial approval of the Trump travel ban means for visitors to the U.S. He points out that the Supreme Court's version is limited because it only applies it to persons without any bonafide relationship with a person or entity in the U.S.. In addition the Court urged the administration to complete its vetting procedures review. The travel ban was for 6  countries Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen and Syria. There are conflicts and wars in most of the countries on the list. Also important to bear in mind is that the administration presented its case as one in which this was a temporary measure till vetting procedures are addressed to reduce the "investigative burden."

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This WSJ editorial says only now are European leaders realizing the errors made in leaving the Middle East to its own problems, and not intervening where necessay. It says the risks of not intervening are often higher than of intervening as is being proven in this situation after years of inaction and withdrawal in the Middle East. It points to the difficulties experienced by the Bush administration in turning things around in Iraq, but says by the end of the Bush administration in 2008 things were gradually returning to normal in Baghdad. With the withdrawal from Iraq and no action in Syria under the Obama administration policies of withdrawal from the Middle East, the entire region is unravelling. Europeans and Americans would prefer that what happens in North Africa remains there, says the Journal, but that is not the way it has worked out -with millions of refugees now making their way first to Turkey, Jordan and now to border countries Serbia, Hungary, Greece, overwhelming their resources. Germany's acceptance of 800,000 refugees is a great effort but it too faces the challenge of doing this without creating more anti-immigrant sentiment....

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Rachel Donadio and Liz Alderman of the New York Times interview Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Syriza party that is expected to win the June 2012 elections in Greece. He says his party calls for suspension of payments on loans for 3 years till Greece's economy recovers, and renegotiation of the agreements that require large layoffs in the public sector and other austerity measures.

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In 2013 the Greece government of Antonis Samaras made a study of wartime costs incurred by Greece for damaged infrastructure during the Nazi occupation of Greece and Nazil loans forced on Greece between 1942-1944. The estimate exceeded 200 billion dollars. Die Linke, a socialist party in Germany in the European parliament allied to Syriza, also supports debt forgiveness.

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DW.com sees "back paddling" in Trump's latest foreign policy speech, replacing bigotry against immigrants with the idea of a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. with "extreme vetting" of new immigrants, including an ideological screening test. Trump it says repeated his claim that he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, which it says is false. Trump's statement that he would reduce the current nation building strategy pursued under president Bush, it says doesn't make sense because the current situation in the Middle East ( rise of ISIS and chaos in Syria) arises from American retrenchment reversing in the opposite direction the policies of president George W. Bush. It is also true that Bush started his presidency with no intention of nation building, it was only after 9/11 that he adopted this policy. The elder Bush, George W. Bush's father, is reported to have said that his son as president was ill served by bad advisors in the invasion of Iraq over weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Obama's retrenchment has also led to differences in policy, with Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton believing the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction, as shown in LyrArc's coverage. The speech was read using a teleprompter to avoid the frequent gaffes in previous speeches. Clearly an effort to make immigration and terrorism issues to win voter support, after previous efforts resembling bigotry and intolerance. ...

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Brinksmanship on both sides as Greece's Syriza government continues negotiations with the EU in June 2015. Syriza's Tsipras attends the St. Petersburg Economic Forum as the IMF's Lagarde calls for restoring dialogue "with some adults in the room." The German media describes Greece's finance minister Yannis Varoufakis as "amateurish." Germany says a Greek exit from the eurozone is an option. Creditors are pushing for changes to the pension system before releasing $7 billion, including $1.6 billion owed to the IMF on June 30, 2015.

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Palaiologos of the Kathimerini newspaper in Athens, Greece, says the early euphoria of support for Tsipras is fading, as the negotiations with the EU require Tsipras to go back on his election pledges and require difficult choices. He points to a poll from the University of Macedonia putting government support of its negotiating strategy in April 2015 at 45.5%, down from 72% in February 2015. He says the Syriza government has conveyed different and contradictory messages, wasting a lot of the goodwill in Europe for Greece's position, and by backtracking on agreements put Greece back into recession. Greece needs to take responsibility for how deep the crisis is compared to a country like Ireland or Portugal, because of dysfunctional public administration and political systems, says Palaiologos. The EU and Greece need to make a fresh start after all the false starts of the early part of 2015.

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Following the defeat of chancellor Merkel's CDU party in the 2016 Berlin state election, getting just 17.6% of the vote, chancellor Merkel looked reflective and a bit emotional about the result. She urged Germans to understand that this decision on refugees will benefit Germany in the long run. She said she would work to regain the people's trust. Looking back she said-"If I could, I would turn back time by many, many years to better prepare myself and the whole German government for the situation that reached us unprepared in late summer 2015." She says the decision was "absolutely right" to admit the refugees from war torn Syria, but accepted that "it led to a time when we did not have enough control over the situation." Both the CDU and the SPD, the main parties, lost about 6-7 percentage points each in votes cast. Gainers were the Free Democratic Party with 6.7% of the vote, who gained votes from the CDU. For the SPD votes were lost to the Greens and the left party Die Linke each party winning over 15% of votes.  Both the CDU and the SPD had candidates who did not attract voter interest. A popular former Mayor of Berlin from the SPD did not run in this election. The anti-immigrant AfD party gained  about 14% of votes.  ...

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Belgium's justice and interior ministers acknowledge the error in not taking action after being alerted by Turkish authorites of Islamic radicals suspected to be a serious terrorist threat. Turkey's president raised this issue in the media about the Belgian officials failure to act on a Turkish request to take into custody a radical arrested in Turkey for trying to enter Syria. The individual was one of two brothers who were suicide bombers in the attack at the Brussels airport and subway in March 2016.

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Syriza party's young leader Alexis Tsipras retains popularity even as Greece accepts the third bailout program from the EU with conditions for pension reform and tax changes. He now says some of the pension reforms were necessary even in the absence of the bailout conditions, saying it is not normal for someone to retire at age 45 or 50. He also says that he is fighting tax evasion so that the rich pay their share of taxes. The mainstream parties have lost confidence because the programs did not ensure a equitable sharing of tax and other measures, and more of the burden falling on the poor. In contrast to Portugal where the tax burden is shared more equitably, more of the burden in Greece has fallen on the poor and less affluent.

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This was one of the last reports written by Anthony Shadid, New York Times foreign correspondent, before his death in Syria. It covers the Islamist movement's shift to modernism and incorporating an outlook that includes ideas of liberal democracy from Britain, as seen from Tunisia. No longer is the main source of ideas coming from Egypt. A diverse group of thought is being developed in Arab and North Africa, and in places like London, where emigres from the Middle East during the years of repression gathered to discuss ideas for the future. Said Ferjani's as one of these emigres is one of sources of the new thinking and approaches of Islamist thought.

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Matina Stevis provides this exceptional account of 3 Greek leaders who fought hard for reforms to put Greece in the right direction for euro currency membership responsibilities, and lost. They tell Stevis they were savagely attacked in the media, by labor unions, and in their own party, so that the fight came at a high personal cost. The 3 politicians now mentioned inside Greece as having done the most to ensure euro currency responsibilities were taken seriously are- Alekos Papadopoulos, who as finance minister fought with Pasok party premier Simitis in 2002 about the dangers of cheap credit coming with the euro currency, Tassos Giannitsis who as labor minister was driven out of Pasok for proposing pension reforms in 2001, and Stefanos Manos who was driven out of New Democracy Party in 1998 after warning of risks in the economy from wasteful spending, including mismanagement of railways, and proposing changes. As Greece commits to a new program under the Syriza left government as a matter of "national responsibility," with reforms to pensions, fixing tax evasion to ensure the tax burden is evenly distributed, reduced military spending, and changes in other areas, the questions in the EU about Greece are about the degree of commitment to changes. In an intervew with WSJ's Bret Stephens Tsipras is candid about the situation when he says the country on its current course would build up the debt all over again, if the debt were to be written off. Problems Tsipras cited in that interview- bribery in health care, tax evasion, burden of taxes on the middle class and honest citizens, large inefficient bureaucracy. Yet 2 years after that intervew in the WSJ, Jan. 28, 2013, Tsipras headed a Syriza government that had no proposals on tackling tax evasion, aggravating the problem of moral hazard seen by the Europeans and the IMF under Lagarde. Stefanos Manos writes in the foreword to his book that its incomprehensible how the public good is ignored by so many people who seek only individual gain. ...

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Joachim Gauck is the first of 11 presidents of the Federal Republic of Germany who is not from a political party. His work in the German citizens movement, as a pastor in the former East Germany, and his guidance in difficult times lends authenticity and a sense of restoring Germany's place in the world. He stood for values- engagement, a balanced wise approach, courage when freedom was under attack, candor. During the 10 years after reunification he headed the authority investigating former files of the Stasi, secret police network of East Germany. His role in recent years also remained relevant and his words worth listening to. Early on in the refugee crisis, when he visited a refugee camp at the Turkey-Syria border in June 2014, he cautioned for a wiser middle approach that took into account both the humanitarian crisis and what was politically possible, and the need for a wider European solution- "a honest, pragmatic, and sober debate." Germany would have been well served says DW.com if his words were taken into account. Gauck also told Germans to take a more active role in defense, and adopt a posture of confidence in foreign policy, which is happening today.   ...

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This NYT report by Eric Schmitt describes the efforts of U.S. troops in Europe under Lt. Gen. Frederick Hodges to build  a fast movement capability to counter the threat from Russian forces on the borders of countries in Eastern Europe. Hodges says speed of movement is crucial. American forces are deployed in smaller numbers than the Russian forces. A 10 day exercize under Hodges involved 25,000 American and allied forces across Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Russian forces exercizes involve more than 100,000 troops. The war in Ukraine involved a breakaway region in the east supported by Russian forces.

Commanders and younger officers were trained to address the Cold War threat with the soviets. Then for over a decade the focus shifted to Afghanistan, then Iraq and Syria. Now the focus shifts back to the Eastern European area with a new Russian threat.

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The Saudi government announced sharp cuts in spending and subsidies to cut the deficit in 2016. The deficit in 2015 was about $98 billion or 367 billion riyals , according to Al Arabiya Saudi news channel. In 2016 the budget is designed to cut the deficit to $87 billion or 326 billion riyals. The 2016 budget is for 840 billion riyals, compared to 975 billion riyals in 2015. Saudi Arabia's foreign exchange reserves of $640 billion could be exhausted at this rate by 2020, experts say. Actions being taken by the government include increasing the price of some grades of gasoline sold domestically by 50%, as subsidies are being cut. The drop in oil prices to about $35-$40 is hurting Russia, Saudis and Venezuela. The Saudis have increased defense spending for conflicts in Yemen, and in other areas, as they oppose Iran and Russia in the Iraq- Syria conflict.

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Improvements in birth rate and more immigrants in Germany are making the demographic picture look better in Germany. About 13 million people are expected to reach retirement age in just a few years, according to Prof Enzo Weber, Institute of Employment Research. This means 13 million new pensioners. Birthrate today is about 1.4 children per woman. At this level of birthrate and even a low rate of immigration of 100,000 per year Germany's population of 83 million today would decline over time. Between 1990 and 2008 more people left Germany than came in with a net outflow. Some level of immigration would be the only way to keep the level of people in the workforce of 43 million today to become stable in the future. This would be needed to support the increasing number of pensioners. Yet the general aging of the population is expected to continue. And a high level of immigration in too short a time such as from the Syrian refugee crisis creates other tensions in the social fabric of society. Germany's very homogenous society faces a challenge that goes beyond the politics of the refugee crisis of today. Too many immigrants in too short a time is not the solution, immigration has become too politicized in today's context, good and early integration of immigrants through language and culture training needs to be established. Prof. Weber points out that the influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe has helped the labor market, and there is no reason that the labor market could not dry up with the number of people retiring soon. Tackling that will involve making family and career life choices easier and enabling flexible work-life choices, increasing retirement age, and some level of healthy immigration. A demographic summit will be held on March 16th in Berlin to look at the problem. ...