John O'Sullivan

Also by John O'Sullivan

• June 30, 2012

  Why The Euro Summit Will Fail (Even Though It Succeeded)

  John O’Sullivan takes a skeptical look at the euro and argues that the root of the single currency's problems lies in its past.

• February 25, 2012

  Christopher Hitchens Observed

  It requires a slight feat of memory to recall a time when the late Christopher Hitchens wasn't the celebrity "Hitch" but an unknown, young, ambitious and aspiring journalist just down from Oxford. But there was such a time and, as reporters like to say, I was there.

• January 14, 2012

  The Iron Lady Battles On

  “The Iron Lady” is a term originally coined by a Red Army newspaper in 1975 to demonize Margaret Thatcher. It proved instead to be an uncanny prediction of her part in weakening the Red Army and destroying the Soviet Union.

• August 26, 2011

  The Next Awakening

  As the Canadian writer Mark Steyn repeatedly reminds us, the history of the last two centuries is the story of how vast, dominant, and well-rooted powers have crumbled and dissolved almost overnight from the Czarist autocracy to the Soviet Empire. There is a reason why the experts are confounded by revolutions and the fall of empires every twenty years or so. The one variable they cannot measure is the change in the mentality of the subjects of the power.

• September 28, 2009

  Merkel Victory Holds Seeds Of Major Political Realignment

  Angela Merkel had presented herself as the prisoner of the consensus, constrained by her Social Democratic governing partners. Since this weekend's victory, she has used coded language to suggest that she won't allow the Free Democrats to upset the social balance with radical policies.

• May 22, 2009

  Can Britain's Parliament Redeem Itself?

  Party-assisted resignations could convince voters not to cast out many of the MPs now in Westminster. But in the least bad system of government called democracy, says RFE/RL's John O'Sullivan, reform and renewal are ultimately the voters' responsibility.

• May 14, 2009

  British Parliament Put To Test

  Countries across Eurasia have had to take a good deal of lecturing from Western governments. So, RFE/RL's John O'Sullivan says, the world is bound to gloat as it watches the British expenses scandal unfold.

• March 12, 2009

  Irish Republicans Must Renounce Nationalist Myth

  Surely murder and terror were never more universally condemned than during the long decades when 3,300 people were murdered in the Northern Ireland "Troubles." And that's the problem.

• August 29, 2008

  Caucasus Diary: Lurching From Crisis To Crisis

  Arriving in Yerevan is a little like arriving in Las Vegas. The terrain, yellow desert and scrubs, is similar to Nevada, and the road from the airport is banked by neon-lit casinos. There is even a smaller version of the Las Vegas cowboy sign whose swinging arm directs gamblers to a particular casino.

• August 28, 2008

  Lessons Of A Postmodern War

  Seated in an open-air restaurant overlooking the Mtkvari River, enjoying a light lunch of mountain trout and Georgian salad, one finds it hard to believe that Russian tanks are only about 25 kilometers away -- indeed that they may be even closer by the time the Turkish coffee arrives.