Eideard

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She makes fun, in private, of the way he walks and talks, of his rapid, jerky gestures and facial grimaces. He mocks her deliberation, her reluctance, her matronly caution. She has compared him to Mr. Bean and to the French comic Louis de Funès, with his curly hair and large nose. He sometimes calls her La Boche, the offensive French version of “Kraut,” and goes out of his way to give her an embrace and a double-cheeked kiss in the French fashion, the kind of contact that he knows very well, aides say, she cannot stand.

While the agonies of the European Union — sovereign defaults, deficits and bubbles — unfold like a great wonk drama, at their core is something more intimate: the fractured tale of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. They have been photographed across Europe giving the appearance of happy partnership. They are the best hope Europe has for continued unity. But they do not like each other at all.

As with any couple in trouble, economic difficulty has added to the strain. Two years ago, at the beginning of the crisis, Sarkozy burst out in public, saying, “France is acting, while Germany is only thinking about it!” Later, before a European Union meeting in Brussels on the Greek bailout, the French president was in a rage at his inability to persuade Merkel to do more for that country. After yelling at the E.U.’s president, Herman Van Rompuy, he threatened to boycott the meeting, muttering, according to French officials, “The Germans haven’t changed.” Later, when Sarkozy took camera crews in with him to a meeting, Merkel insisted they leave and, aides said, told Sarkozy, “I won’t let you do this to me.”

So it is not an easy relationship. But they know that they need to keep going for the sake of the kids — that is, for the sake of Europe. They have instructed their top foreign-policy advisers, Jean-David Levitte and Christoph Heusgen, both consummate diplomats, to make the relationship function. Some of the symbolism is a stretch — joint cabinet meetings, ceremonies at the Arc de Triomphe and the Berlin Wall. But there is an extraordinarily close coordination between the two staffs, and before every major European Union summit meeting, Sarkozy and Merkel hash out a joint position to take to the other 25 member states. This isn’t very democratic; it probably isn’t very pleasant either. Yet if the European Union is to function, Sarkozy and Merkel have to get along.

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When the president decided to send more troops to a distant country during an unpopular war, one powerful senator had enough. He warned that the U.S. military could not create stability in a country “where there is chaos … democracy where there is no tradition of it, and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life.”

“It’s unnatural and unhealthy for a nation to be engaged in global crusades for some principle or idea while neglecting the needs of its own people,” said Sen. J. William Fulbright, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in 1966 as the Vietnam War escalated.

Fulbright’s warning is being applied by some to Afghanistan today. The U.S. is still fighting dubious wars abroad while ignoring needs at home, says Andrew J. Bacevich, who tells Fulbright’s story in his new book, “Washington Rules: America’s Path To Permanent War.”

As the Afghanistan war enters its ninth year, Bacevich and other commentators are asking: When does it end?

They say the nation’s national security leaders have put the U.S. on an unsustainable path to perpetual war and that President Obama is doing little to stop them…

Bacevich has become a leading voice among anti-war critics. He is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army, a former West Point instructor and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He’s also a Boston University international relations professor who offers a historical perspective with his criticism. He says Obama has been ensnared by the “Washington Rules,” a set of assumptions that have guided presidents since Harry Truman.

The rules say that the U.S. should act as a global policeman. “Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing Cleveland or Detroit,” Bacevich writes.

His solution: The U.S. should stop deploying a “global occupation force” and focus on nation-building at home.

RTFA. He offers an understanding of history similar to what I grew up with. Especially my studies in military history with veterans of WW2. I was “lucky” – I got to follow it as it happened, not just read about it.

Detail, analysis, and that old American bugaboo – history for people who neither wish to study history or learn from history.