Newsweek 12/21/2018

2002 During the anxious months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was, according to writer Evan Thomas, a “Warrior Princess.” He noted that as the first woman to serve in the position, she put “an end to occasional outbursts of ‘locker-room joking.’” Rice played a critical role in crafting the “intellectual framework” for the Iraq War, which eventually resulted in a promotion: secretary of state. Her insistences that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, of course, have since been discredited. 1965 Charles de Gaulle (as painted by Georges Rouault) had been re-elected president of France. Reviews of the war hero’s first term were mixed, according to Newsweek. “The general has achieved much…but he has also antagonized his erstwhile allies.” Perhaps, but his legacy is air tight:…

Demonstrators protest economic distress near the Arc de Triomphe on December 8. Named the “Yellow Vests” for their fluorescent hazard attire, thousands of protesters took to the streets for the fourth weekend in a row. Initially focused on a fuel levy, which President Emmanuel Macron eventually canceled, concerns have broadened to France’s high taxes and cost of living. Demonstrators burned cars and blocked roads. Nearly 1,400 were arrested nationwide. ADEM ALTAN/AFP/GETTY; CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/GETTY; ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/GETTY…

THE SOUTH PARS GAS FIELD IN THE PERSIAN Gulf was an offshore discovery that, for oilmen, is the stuff of dreams. The largest natural gas field in the world, it stretches across the maritime border between Iran and Qatar. American economic sanctions, however, had kept it off-limits to Western energy companies for years. When the U.S. and other world powers negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal, that unlocked the potential bounty. The French oil giant Total soon signed a deal to help develop a key portion of the field and started work last year. Then Donald Trump was elected. His administration pulled out of the deal and, in late November, imposed severe economic penalties—again. Facing the threat of “secondary sanctions”—U.S. sanctions on any foreign companies doing business in Iran—Total withdrew from the South…

SHERROD BROWN IS HAVING a moment. The Democratic senator and liberal firebrand from Ohio easily won a third term in November as Republicans swept the state’s constitutional offices and maintained their edge in House seats. His victory in an increasingly red state stands as proof, he says, that “progressives can win, and win decisively, in the heartland.” Democrats hope so. After losing Ohio—and white working-class voters—to Donald Trump two years ago, some party strategists and political pundits now see Brown as a potential presidential contender and his successful Senate campaigns as the blueprint for 2020. A lifelong progressive who started out in Ohio’s legislature in the 1970s, Brown is a champion of labor and a proponent of stricter regulations on Wall Street. But, like Trump, he is critical of trade deals like NAFTA…

IN GERMANY, THEY CALL HER simply AKK; even there, her name is a mouthful. And Chancellor AKK does have a certain ring to it. Speculation is that the 56-year-old will win the election to run Germany when Angela Merkel steps down in the fall of 2021. If Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer does succeed in that, she will be replacing one of the most powerful politicians of the modern era, one who had the greatest influence in shaping the European Union—for good and, say critics, bad. AKK beat two candidates, both men. She is a moderate centrist who shares Merkel’s humility, as well as, some analysts say, a greater ability to reach consensus with other parties. Her résumé includes stints as minister of interior, of education and of social affairs; she has been governor…

IN A PACKED MADRID CINEMA in late November, a group of Spanish teenagers sat rapt as they listened to stories of their country that they’d never heard. Stories of children torn from their mothers at birth, of innocent people executed and buried in mass graves, of torture and of successive generations fighting for justice and recognition before their plight is forgotten forever. The young people had come to watch our film The Silence of Others, which follows survivors of crimes of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Francisco Franco and their struggle for justice in the face of Spain’s collective amnesia over a dictatorship that terrorized the country from the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) until the general’s death in 1975. To this day, young people are taught painfully little about that period in…