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Atlantic Council blogs provide short-form analyses from Council experts and a wider community of global voices on the world’s most important news stories.
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New Atlanticist

Aug 19, 2016

#ThisFlag’s Pastor Evan Mawarire Condemns Continued Crackdown in Zimbabwe

By Julian Wyss and Chloë McGrath

“If we cannot cause the politician to change, then we must inspire the citizen to be bold,” said Pastor Evan Mawarire, founder of Zimbabwe’s #ThisFlag movement, at the Atlantic Council on Wednesday, August 17. Mawarire gave his remarks draped in a Zimbabwean flag, the symbol of the movement. “We are rising up to say that […]

South & Central Africa
Labor Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, August 4, 2014

NATOSource

Aug 19, 2016

UK Party Leader Joins Trump and Others in Questioning Commitment to NATO Allies

By Henry Mance, Financial Times

Jeremy Corbyn has become the latest politician to cast doubt on the future of Nato, in a move that critics say could embolden Russia in its approach to eastern Europe.

NATO Russia

UkraineAlert

Aug 19, 2016

The West Has a Ukraine Challenge, and It’s Not Going Away

By Ariel Cohen

Since the Middle Ages, Kyivan Rus—the loose network of warring principalities whose borders vaguely coincide with today’s Ukraine—has been exposed to waves of invaders from neighboring states. This list of aggressors includes the Normans, Mongols, Poles, Ottomans, Habsburg Austrians, Germans, and Nazis—and not least, Muscovite Russians, the Romanov Russian Empire, and Bolsheviks. Each invasion destroyed […]

Russia Ukraine
NATO VJTF exercise, June 18, 2015

NATOSource

Aug 18, 2016

NATO Is America’s Greatest Strategic Advantage

By Hannes Hanso, Wall Street Journal

Debates about NATO’s role and burden-sharing have been around since its founding. GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s sharp criticisms of the Western Alliance are just the latest flare-up.

NATO Northern Europe

New Atlanticist

Aug 18, 2016

Two Surprising Proposals for Peace in the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

By Matthew J. Bryza

It has been a long time since I have sensed any cause for optimism about the prospects of a political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Indeed, Armenia and Azerbaijan nearly resumed full-scale war in April, when their troops clashed along the line of contact with a level of ferocity unprecedented during the twenty-two years since […]

Russia The Caucasus

SyriaSource

Aug 18, 2016

The Nusra Front’s Victory

By Saleem al-Omar

Syrian opposition websites and publications no longer make any mention of the Nusra Front or al-Qaeda; Jabhat Fateh al-Sham is now the most referenced group. Syrian opposition military and political circles have welcomed it, and the Syrian Opposition Coalition and the High Negotiations Council both issued statements supporting its break. The Muslim Brotherhood also welcomed […]

Syria

MENASource

Aug 18, 2016

Yemen Talks at a Standstill

By Daniel DePetris

The month-long break in UN-facilitated Yemeni peace talks announced on August 6 wasn’t a surprise; indeed, it was preordained and widely expected. But this doesn’t make the relative breakdown in the negotiations any easier for the international community and the UN Security Council to stomach.  UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called upon the parties to […]

Yemen
Danish fighter jet, Sept. 20, 2014

NATOSource

Aug 17, 2016

NATO Can Do More to Destroy Islamic State—If We Ask

By Dianne Feinstein, Wall Street Journal

Only a quarter of the alliance is attacking ISIS. Invoke the treaty’s defense clause to expand the effort.

International Organizations Iraq

New Atlanticist

Aug 17, 2016

Understanding the Role of Russian Propaganda in the US Election

By Ben Nimmo

It may seem strange, but the Kremlin’s propaganda machine is not backing US Presidential Republican Candidate Donald Trump. It has a bigger goal: Discrediting democracy in the United States. The Kremlin’s main propaganda outlets in the US are the television station RT—formerly Russia Today—and the radio and online outlet Sputnik. Both are headed by Kremlin […]

Ukraine

FutureSource

Aug 17, 2016

A Glimpse of the Future in One Newspaper Section

By Robert Manning

Many futurists have argued that we will see more technological change in the next twenty years than we saw during the rise of information technology and the Internet in the 1990s. But rarely have I seen so much change captured in one section of one newspaper.