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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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NATOSource

Nov 16, 2011

Robert Simmons appointed policy coordinator for upcoming NATO summit in Chicago

By the State Department

From the State Department:  The United States will host back-to-back G8 and NATO Summits May 19-21, 2012, in Chicago.  The White House has the overall lead for summit planning through various working groups chaired by the National Security Staff.

United States and Canada

MENASource

Nov 16, 2011

EgyptSource blogger Magdy Samaan speaks on elections and censorship

By Mara Revkin

EgyptSource blogger Magdy Samaan spoke at an event co-hosted by the Hariri Center, the Wilson Center and Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) in Washington announcing the blog’s launch and previewing Egypt’s elections. Michele Dunne, director of the Hariri Center, participated in the discussion with panelists Magdy Samaan and Ibrahim Houdaiby (who joined the conversation […]

New Atlanticist

Nov 16, 2011

Beginning of the End for Assad?

By Barbara Slavin

Actions by the Arab League this week have given a regional seal of approval to Syrian opposition forces and could mark the beginning of the end of the Assad family dictatorship that has ruled Syria for more than 40 years. Regional experts and members of the Syrian opposition expect the process to be long, complicated […]

Syria

New Atlanticist

Nov 16, 2011

Iran: Not Necessarily a Nuclear Apocalypse

By Harlan Ullman

Last week, the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency released an assessment of Iran’s nuclear programs. While not overly alarmist, the report warned that, based on inputs from nearly a dozen different national intelligence agencies, Iran was developing programs in virtually all categories essential for production of nuclear weapons as well missile delivery systems. Iran […]

Iran Nuclear Nonproliferation

MENASource

Nov 15, 2011

News Update: November 15, 2011

By Mara Revkin

The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and other major political forces signed a statement threatening to stage mass protests on November 18 if the SCAF refuses to withdraw its controversial draft constitutional principles by November 16.  Meanwhile, a major court ruling affirmed the right of former NDP members to compete in upcoming elections.  Semi-official […]

New Atlanticist

Nov 15, 2011

Stalemate in Afghanistan

By Afrasiab Khattak

While a horrifying military conflict is continuously raging in Afghanistan there seems to be a complete stalemate on the political front. As 2014 is drawing closer there is little hope for any breakthrough in terms of some consensus among the most important players who are egoistically clinging to their positions on post-withdrawal arrangements. Zero-sum games […]

Afghanistan

NATOSource

Nov 15, 2011

Russian envoy visiting NATO capitals to warn of retaliatory “military steps” against missile defense system

By Kim Sengupta, the Independent

United Kingdom United States and Canada

New Atlanticist

Nov 15, 2011

The Strategic Influence Game 5: A German Europe or a European Germany?

By Julian Lindley-French

Germany has never found the leadership of Europe easy to attain or to execute. And yet Germany today finds itself the unrivalled leader of the European Union. Can Germany for once get leadership right? Only at the very 1871 beginning of modern Germany’s uneasy existence was Berlin led by a man who grasped both the […]

European Union Germany

NATOSource

Nov 15, 2011

Russia Can Be a NATO Ally

By Steven Pifer, the Moscow Times

From Steven Pifer, the Moscow Times:  The major obstacle blocking missile defense cooperation stems from Moscow’s demand for a legal guarantee that U.S. interceptors would not be directed against Russian strategic missiles.

United States and Canada

MENASource

Nov 15, 2011

Charting Egypt’s New Political Terrain

By Mara Revkin

Jacopo Carbonari has shared via The Arabist a schematic diagram that sheds some much-needed light on the relative ideological orientation of Egypt’s political parties. In addition to positioning the parties along two axes — religious/secular and left/right — the map shows the distribution of parties among the four major coalitions: 1) the FJP-dominated Democratic Alliance; […]