TSG IntelBrief: Boko Haram Still Resurgent

Yesterday marked one hundred days since the kidnapping of over 200 Nigerian schoolgirls and international awareness of the long-in-progress Boko Haram terror campaign.

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Based on past experience, here is the likely outcome of the current Israeli-Palestinian fighting:

A cease-fire will come in a few days – perhaps by Monday when the fasting month of Ramadan ends – and will last for a year or two. Another confrontation will follow, once Hamas has replenished its store of rockets and rebuilt tunnels to infiltrate Israeli land.

Israel eventually will trade hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for the body of at least one Israeli soldier who has gone missing in the current conflict. Hamas will try to seize more Israelis – alive or dead – to bargain for more of its prisoners.

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Report Says TPP Strengthens Western Hemisphere; Benefits Start at Home and in Our Continent

July 23, 2014 - The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an ambitious trade and investment agreement currently under negotiation, can catapult the United States, Latin American partners, and Asia-Pacific countries into a new era of geopolitical cooperation and commercial growth, according to a report released on July 23, 2014, by the Atlantic Council.

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Ukraine is once again at a turning point in its young history. The Ukrainian leadership has a unique opportunity to make a decisive break with its authoritarian past and move confidently toward an open, market-oriented society. A Roadmap for Ukraine: Delivering on the Promise of the Maidan is a collection of the Council’s Ukraine in Europe Initiative papers focusing on the economy, energy sector, security, public diplomacy, and various scenarios for Russian actions in Ukraine.

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Addressing near-term security challenges and long-range global trends requires a broader approach in the execution of America’s regional national security policy, argues All Elements of National Power: Moving Toward a New Interagency Balance for US Global Engagement, a new report by the Atlantic Council’s Combatant Command Task Force. Improving interagency cooperation and integration reduces risks resulting from disjointed efforts in US global engagements and against uncertainty in a dramatically changing world. The report, chaired by General James L. Jones, Jr., USMC (Ret.), analyzes and provides recommendations on how the United States can resource and restructure to create a more balanced, forward-deployed regional approach essential to improving the integration of national instruments of power—diplomatic, informational, military, economic, and others—to advance US interests at the regional level.

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A Malaysian Airlines passenger plane with 295 aboard was shot down by a surface-to-air missile in Ukraine near the Russian border a day after a Ukrainian military jet was downed, Fox News has confirmed.

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July 16 - The Obama administration must quickly adopt a range of transformative policies to avoid an energy crisis in the Caribbean and Central America, given the possibility that Venezuela's financial support for energy imports to the region could erode quickly, according to the Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center's new report titled Uncertain Energy: The Caribbean's Gamble with Venezuela. While a long-term plan toward renewables is a laudable goal, the first step is to embrace a conversion of the region's dependence on costly high-carbon fuels to natural gas, allowing the Caribbean region to alleviate its dependence on Venezuelan crude oil and petroleum products. The United States should consider declaring the export of natural gas and crude oil to the Caribbean in the national interest to accelerate commercial attention to the region.

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While U.S. and Iranian negotiators labor to reach a long-term nuclear agreement, other Americans and Iranians are stepping up contacts in a new wave of people-to-people diplomacy.

In recent months, three American religious delegations have visited Iran while the first group of female Iranian seminary students came to the United States.

Sports exchanges are also on the rise again, spearheaded by American wrestlers who find far more numerous and passionate fans in Iran than in many countries, including the U.S.

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The following is the prepared remarks of Atlantic Council Board Director Stephen J. Hadley before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 9 about Russia and the ongoing developments in Ukraine.

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