Radek Sikorski's Vision for the Future
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski arrives on June 16, 2008 for a General Affairs Council meeting at EU headquarters in Luxembourg. (JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images)
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski delivered a systematic and learned review of the year's foreign policy to Polish parliamentarians. He concluded with this thought:
I would like to mention a recent analogy by a European politician who compared the EU to Thomas Mann's novel, Buddenbrooks: the first generation establishes a promising family company, the second does a good job at managing it, and the third generation squanders everything. Continuing that analogy, the politician added that today's Europe is being governed by members of the third generation, who received the Nobel Prize in honor of the first.
It's an urgent warning in this week of Cyprus crisis. (And you don't have to be a very subtle reader to guess the identity of the politician so coyly alluded to.)
About the Author
David Frum
David Frum is a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast and a CNN contributor. He is the author of eight books, including most recently the e-book WHY ROMNEY LOST and his first novel Patriots, published in April 2012.
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