Nick Ottens is a journalist, former political risk consultant and former research manager for XPRIZE, where he designed prize competitions to incentivize breakthrough innovation in agriculture, food and health care. He has reported from Amsterdam, Barcelona and New York for various Dutch- and English-language media, including the Atlantic Council, EUobserver, NRC, Trouw and World Politics Review.
Nick writes about the politics of France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States in Atlantic Sentinel and Wynia’s Week. In his spare time, he edits the online magazines Never Was and Forgotten Trek.
He is a member of the board of Liberal Green, the sustainability network of the Dutch liberal party VVD.
President Barack Obama was unusually defiant in his weekly televised address this Saturday, attacking special interests and “their allies in Washington” for resisting financial reform. The recession, according to the president, was caused by the financial industry. Indeed, it could have been avoided “if Wall Street firms were more accountable, if financial dealings were more […]
Note to the left: not everything is about race.
The Obama Administration’s Middle East policy appears to have swung from the slightly idealistic to the definitively realistic in recent weeks, with the opposition continuing to denounce the supposed naiveté of the president’s intentions. Barack Obama began his offensive in Cairo, Egypt last year where he called upon the Muslim world to end “the cycle […]
Tonight ITV hosted the first televised debate between the leaders of Britain’s three major parties in the run-up to next month’s parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his foremost contender, Conservative foreman David Cameron attacked each other repeatedly while Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg tried to present himself as a fresh alternative to the traditional […]
There was some troubling news coming out of Kabul last week. Afghan President Hamid Karzai not only invited his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to come visit; he supposedly told guests at the presidential palace recently that the Americans had invaded his country in order to dominate the region and that as such, they pose an […]
Ayn Rand described as the proudest distinction of Americans, “because it contains all the others,” she believed, the fact that they were the first to coin the phrase “to make money.” Men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity, she noted in “The Meaning of Money,” published in For the New Intellectual (1961), […]
The president’s former speechwriter doesn’t tell the whole story when he tries to defend his old boss’ record.
The nuclear treaty with Russia is separate from America’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran and North Korea.
Government monopolies cause food shortages and shopping frenzies in Venezuela.
In the wake of the release of the Defense Department’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review and President Barack Obama’s signing of a new START treaty with Russia, what will the future American nuclear arsenal look like? Under the latest START agreement, the United States will maintain no more than 1,550 strategic warheads; seven hundred deployed intercontinental […]
President Kurmanbek Bakiyev flees the capital.
NATO forces exercise north of the Arctic Circle to test cold weather operations and interoperability.
The United States Congress may very well rank another pro-capitalist lawmaker among its numbers this fall as Rand Paul is leading in the polls to claim retiring Senator Jim Bunning’s Kentucky seat. Paul is a son of Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s who is known for his unwavering opposition to “big government.” He officially announced his […]
In spite of President Dmitri Medvedev’s great designs for Russia, his country is still in trouble, plagued by archaic power structures, aging military hardware and leadership and being the last of the BRICs to move out of recession. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has some advice to offer. Writing for The New York Times, he […]
With health-care reform passed, the Obama Administration is gearing up to tackle the next item on its agenda: financial reform. The president is expected to push Congress in the coming weeks, hoping to have some progress to show for by the fall when the midterm elections are set to ravish the country’s political landscape. Treasury […]
