Atlantic Council blogs

This Week in South Asia: December 14-20

Commentary from the South Asia Center on the most relevant news from the region, and suggested “must-read” analyses from the week.

NIST Attempts to Lift All Boats with Draft Cyber Framework

By Danielle Kriz

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released its important and much-anticipated Preliminary Cybersecurity Framework (PDF). The Framework plan was put forward in February 2013 as part of  President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity Executive Order to push a collaborative concept in which NIST takes the lead in coordinating with all interested stakeholders in the development […]

Why are European Allies Arming China?

By David Lague, Reuters

If the People’s Liberation Army went to war tomorrow, it would field an arsenal bristling with hardware from some of America’s closest allies: Germany, France and Britain.

Student Protests: A Microcosm of Egypt’s Street Dynamics

By Rana Muhammad Taha

With several months passing since the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s universities have become a frontline in the fight between two polarized segments of Egyptian society. While the capital city’s universities – Cairo, Ain Shams and Al-Azhar – universities have witnessed constant protests and clashes for weeks, the struggle has extended into the […]

Top News: Egypt a World Leader in Detaining Journalists, Says Report

By EgyptSource

Egypt was the ninth worst offender this year for jailing journalists in a list topped by Turkey, Iran and China, according to a study released by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Wednesday.

Youthful Saudi Reformers Only Safe in the Twittersphere

By Kristin Smith Diwan

The emergence of social networking has opened novel means of communication and connection worldwide. But perhaps nowhere were these new vistas more welcomed than in Saudi Arabia. The virtual communities of Facebook and Twitter offer a means to circumvent the gender confines and sociopolitical restrictions of the Kingdom’s highly segmented and controlled public life. And […]

Three Cheers for China!

By Robert A. Manning

At a moment when few give the Obama administration much credit for either competence or strategy, a cascade of events in East Asia in recent days, not least John Kerry’s trip to Southeast Asia, point to important gains for the stabilizing and offshore-balancing role of US policy toward the Asia-Pacific.

Syria: Will Russia Deliver at Geneva?

By Frederic C. Hof

Moscow’s decision to block a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning human rights abuses in Syria—catastrophic abuses authored in the main by a family regime posing as a government—should cast serious doubt on any expectation of Russia facilitating a Syrian political transition at the conference scheduled for Montreux and Geneva on January 22. Moscow seems perfectly […]

Key Conclusions from EU Security Summit

By Council of the European Union

The Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) will continue to develop in full complementarity with NATO