European Institute

The U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, including the 30,000 “plus-up” currently underway, represents one of the most difficult logistical challenges in the annals of war – a challenge even for the United States, which is the world champion of supply solutions.  Afghanistan is harder than the Vietnam “land war in Asia” or the Berlin airlift or Iraq I and II. These previous engagements, although difficult logistically, pale in comparison to the task of supplying 100,000 troops and as many contractors in Afghanistan over nine years and counting. Landlocked, mountainous, beset by civil war, banditry and extreme underdevelopment, Afghanistan is surrounded by a clutch of hostile, suspicious, barely functioning sovereignties.

High speed rail is a long-overdue concept for the U.S. economy whose time has finally come. But only European companies can bring it to pass.

President Barack Obama has promised $8 billion in stimulus funds to build the first real U.S. high-speed trains. The announcement, made by the President the day after his annual State of the Union speech in January, in which job-creation was a major theme, came in Tampa, Florida, the terminus of a planned link with Orlando. That is a prime high-speed project, along with two others: Sacramento and San Diego in California and a third one, a nine-state proposal in the Midwest with Chicago as its hub.

It is safe to say that Gordon Bajnai, the young, mild-mannered prime minister of Hungary, is hardly a household name in the United States or even in most of Europe. It is also safe to say that his imminent return to private life – he has announced that he is not standing for re-election in the parliamentary vote scheduled for April, in which the opposition center-right party Fidesz is heavily favored– will not grab headlines on either side of the Atlantic.