Christopher Sands

The Camp David Group of Eight (G8) Summit was oddly clarifying. With Europe riven with divisions over the euro and the sclerosis of welfare states in aging societies, the United States wrapped up in increasingly parochial domestic politics, Japan adrift and Russia backsliding into authoritarianism, Canada stood alone...

President Obama and the leaders of the world's most successful alliance -- one that deterred nuclear war and kept the peace in Europe after centuries of conflict -- gather in Chicago this weekend to talk about the future.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, has seen more fighting since...

French voters dumped a controversial conservative president who imposed austerity (albeit a very modest dose) and elected a socialist to take his place last week. One year ago, many acknowledged the unpopularity of Nicolas Sarkozy, but few thought he was beatable. French Socialists were in disarray following the...

In a recent article for Commentary Magazine, international relations scholar and former Reagan administration official Henry Nau suggested two metaphoric approaches to U.S. foreign policy.

The first is the jigsaw puzzle, where players (governments) work together with the pieces to realize an outcome that all...

The reelection victory of Premier Alison Redford's Progressive Conservative Party over Danielle Smith's Wildrose Party in Alberta's provincial election will have implications as far away as Washington, D.C.

Alberta's oil sands have a high profile in the United States, and the Keystone XL pipeline project has become a political football...

Washington's cherry blossoms have come and gone -- a sure sign that now it is "Summit Season." Over the next few weeks, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper will attend a series of summit meetings. As the two leaders meet and greet one another from one venue to...

U.S. President Barack Obama hosts Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Washington for a North American Leaders' summit today. The significance of the summit, which former Prime Minister Jean Chretien used to call "the three amigos," is largely in the fact that it is taking...

This time last year, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched two U.S.-Canada initiatives, one to negotiate greater federal regulatory cooperation, and the other to negotiate border security improvements. One year later, how are they doing on the border?

In Seattle last week,...

In the first season of the British miniseries, Downton Abbey, middle sister Lady Edith Crawley vents her frustration with her older sister, Lady Mary, by writing to the Turkish ambassador in London to pass along a rumor that will embroil Mary in a scandal and damage her reputation....

President Barack Obama delivers his 2012 State of the Union address to Congress tonight, and it will be discouraging on many levels.

First of all, the state of the United States is not all that great. Unemployment is stubbornly high, household-name brand companies are declaring bankruptcy, and uncertainty casts a...

So President Obama decided not to approve the presidential permit for the Keystone XL pipeline project, but is open to reconsidering if TransCanada, the company that wants to build the pipeline, applies again with a different route.

When analyzing policy decisions, Cicero used to ask...

Open partisan warfare between Democrats and Republicans, between the Obama administration and Congress, is underway and the latest clash is the Battle of Keystone, the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline.

By attaching a deadline for a decision to legislation extending the payroll tax holiday by two months, Congress tried...

Last week, Martin Reisch of Montreal was reported to have used a scanned image of his passport to cross into the United States. Having realized that he had forgotten his actual Canadian passport, he showed the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer his driver license and an...

Team Canada's heartbreaking defeat at the World Junior Hockey semifinals in Calgary has many Canadians thinking ruefully about their Russian rivals on ice: the Russian juniors beat the Canadians in the gold medal game last year too, and now Canada will miss the finals altogether. Fans can only hope for...

British Prime Minister David Cameron's veto of a Franco-German deal to address the European debt crisis cheered many British "Eurosceptics" sceptical of the whole project of European integration and jealous defenders of Britain's sovereignty and independence as the best safeguards for the rights of Britons. Canadian Prime Minister...

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington had a profound effect on me, and on the way the world looked to me. The man who took credit for the attacks, Osama bin Laden, was killed by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs on May 2. The...

Holiday parties gave me the opportunity to talk to Washingtonians about Canada, and the most frequent question this year is not about the Keystone XL pipeline, but about Canadian attitudes about Mexico. Why is Canada so hostile to U.S. attempts to address problems trilaterally?

Misapplying the template of U.S. politics...

Michael Barone is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and writes regularly for National Review and the Washington Examiner. He is also a fellow Detroiter, and co-author of the Almanac of American Politics which is an invaluable, constituency-by-constituency guide to U.S. elections. His Boxing Day column...

Stephen Harper says that Canada is going to have to try to sell Alberta oil to China, since U.S. politics have blocked the Keystone XL pipeline. Barack Obama says that if Congress forces him to make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline before he is...

Have you noticed how difficult it is to build "shovel ready" public infrastructure these days?

The new bridge between Detroit and Windsor is caught up in local Michigan politics, not being built.

The Keystone XL pipeline is caught up in Nebraska politics and presidential politics, not being built.

Canadian projects...