Atlantic Council blogs

Pakistan Needs More than Aid

By Harlan Ullman

That no good deed goes unpunished is both cliche and irony. No better illustration can be found than in the uproar that accompanied the House of Representative’s passage last week of the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill that “authorizes” an additional $1.5 billion a year for five years in non-military aid to Pakistan. “Authorize” is a key word.

Darfur: The World Averts Its Eyes

By Don Snow

One of the offshoots of the current fixation with Afghanistan is that it tends to redirect our attention away from other crises in the world that might otherwise attract our attention, and even possibly corrective action.

Scope of common security and defence policy remains divisive

By the Irish Times

From the Irish Times: Gen [Henri] Bentégeat [chair of the EU military committee], who will retire next month, has had the tricky job of implementing the military aspects of ESDP missions in this complex political environment over the past three years. So has there been progress? “On the military side there has been some progress […]

Nuclear security summit will be held in Washington in April – Lavrov

By Interfax

From Interfax: A nuclear security summit will be held in Washington in April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a news conference after talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In the area of nonproliferation, “Russia and the United States agreed to work on several tracks, including preparing a review conference of the […]

Estonia urges NATO to hold land-based drills in the Baltic

By RIA Novosti

From RIA Novosti: NATO should hold large-scale exercises of its Ground Forces in the Baltic region in response to recent military drills carried out by Russia and Belarus near the alliance’s borders, the Estonian president said Monday… “The protection of the airspace over the Baltic region is a visible and necessary measure, but it would […]

New Seminar on Strategic Concept

NATO has announced that the “discussion on the new Strategic Concept of NATO is entering a more intensive phase. On 16th October, 2009 a high level seminar addressing fundamental security tasks of the Alliance will take place in Luxembourg.” The seminar will be led by Madeleine Albright and hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs […]

10 Questions on Afghanistan

By Jeffrey Lightfoot

As President Obama and his national security team debate the way forward in Afghanistan, they must answer a series of difficult and complex questions. The administration must consider not only how the new U.S. policy will affect Afghanistan but also reflect upon the second and third order strategic consequences of the decision.

In Search of Strategy

By Derek Reveron

The Obama administration is rethinking its strategy in Afghanistan. NATO is developing its new strategic concept. And the United States military is conducting its strategic defense review. It seems that one cannot talk about international affairs today without first thinking about strategy.

Russia’s envoy to NATO opens Twitter account

By RIA Novosti

From RIA Novosti: Russia’s envoy to NATO has opened his own account on the popular social networking and micro-blogging service, Twitter. “Recently, I discovered on Twitter messages from NATO’s new secretary general [Anders Fogh Rasmussen]. I decided to keep up with him,” Dmitry Rogozin wrote in his on-line journal. Rogozin posts in Russian and English, […]

Rasmussen: NATO must be Visible Across its Entire Territory

By the Estonian Ministry of Defence

From the Estonian Ministry of Defence: NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Minister of Defence Jaak Aaviksoo, who met yesterday in Tallinn, declared that the main objective of NATO is and will continue to be collective defence based on Article V.At the meeting, Minister Aaviksoo stated that in the current security situation, it’s important […]