Tag: United States

Why Rednecks Should Stop Worrying and Love Europe

The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in February 2017.

I was a redneck, but a year in Europe changed my life.

My hometown was Harlan, Kentucky, a coal-mining hub set deep in Appalachia. By 1989, through circumstance and chance, I gained a scholarship to study at a prestigious prep school in Massachusetts. My classmates included a Hilton, a Roosevelt and a son of the King of Jordan. Deerfield Academy offered a career trajectory far higher than I had any right to expect, if I could seize it.

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How NATO Can Reach Tomorrow’s Leaders Today

The following article appeared on the website of the Atlantic Council in October 2015.

A few months ago, I confronted NATO’s greatest threat. It wasn’t a line of Russian tanks or insidious cyber-code. It was a group of students at my high school alma mater, Deerfield Academy.

I paid a visit to the campus in May, and my gracious host, Director of Global Studies David Miller, invited me to a student meal. Intros went around. But before we tucked into our turkey, I had a question. Who is the NATO Secretary General?

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Bin Laden Would Like Trump’s America

The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in September 2014.

HELL IS REAL, says the billboard on my right.

Driving through Indiana, I think: ain’t that the truth.

As the town of Gary – at this point, just a crumbling monument to U.S. Steel’s past greatness – comes into view, my partner gasps from my Prius C’s passenger seat. A Spaniard, she’s used to seeing clean and modern roadways and pristine infrastructure built, in part, with European Union funds. “It’s like a third-world country,” she says, staring at the abandoned factories.

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Are Europeans and Americans Drifting Apart?

The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in 2014.

Broader surveillance was supposed to be about catching terrorists, not about eavesdropping on a German leader who’s been one of America’s best friends.

Revelations that the National Security Agency tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s private mobile phone have made a big impression here in Brussels and across Europe. They have given concrete form to a long-held European suspicion: that sometimes when America talks about protecting the West from terrorism, it really means conducting surveillance for its own economic and political advantage. It turns out that it’s not about your security, this example seems to say; it’s about our prosperity.

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Is New China the Old Germany?

The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in 2014.

As I write this, a MacBook Air I’ve purchased from Apple’s online store is on a flight over the East China Sea towards my home on the other side of the globe.

As I await my new toy, fighter jets from Japan, South Korea, China and the United States track each other warily over the very same sea. Trade between our economies has not created true trust between our governments. Soldiers and political leaders now play a tense diplomatic and military game with weapons that are not toys. One reckless move could put an end to my laptop’s voyage, the gadget-driven consumerism it embodies and a generation’s worth of global economic growth.

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