The Romanian legislative elections of December 2016: A disaster for decent people, a bitter victory for the anguished majority deprived of a sense of its dignity, a season of fearful Socialism to come, and an opportunity for American grand strategy. Though the picture is bleak, this is what NATO-Eastern Europe will have to work with in the coming years. Before I attempt to write something worthwhile about Poland, the other country of some importance in Eastern Europe, let me wrap up the series I started on the political situation in my native Romania with a report about the anti-government protests. I’ll tell you how this new government got into office which in one month managed to create the scandal I’ve already covered for Ricochet.

We have to talk foreign affairs, the less urgent half of politics, but the one concerned with war and the threat of war. Conservatives now run America’s foreign policy and that seems rather providential, because the world stage is bleak and unfriendly, and conservatives are the less likely party to believe in a fairy tale peace. Foreign affairs, after all, means dealing with America’s enemies and the threat of war. The oldest and most openly bellicose of America’s three major enemies is Russia, and therefore Americans who are interested in politics should care to an extent about Eastern Europe, where lies my unhappy native country, Romania.