Atlantic Council blogs

EU ambassadors blast Belarus over diplomatic spat with Sweden, mull new sanctions

By Reuters

From Reuters:  Belarus’s relations with the West took a turn for the worse on Friday as EU governments agreed to reprimand Minsk for expelling the Swedish ambassador in a row over a pro-democracy stunt involving an air drop of teddy bears on Belarus’s territory.

Belarus: Lithuania ‘must answer to us’ for role in ‘teddy bear incident’

By the Local (Sweden)

Obama’s Europe Pivot

By John Vinocur, the International Herald Tribune

Egypt’s Constituent Assembly in a Race against Time

By Salem Mostafa Kamel

The Constituent Assembly has made quick progress with the writing of the constitution, spurred on by the postponement of a court case calling for its dissolution. It is unclear whether the current Assembly is capable of writing a constitution which truly represents the will of the Egyptian people. A law Morsi ratified in July gives […]

Top News: Six Sinai Attack Suspects Arrested Friday

By Egypt Source

Six suspects in the Sunday attack in Sinai were arrested following a joint operation between the police and the armed forces in Sheikh Zuwayed, North Sinai, state television reported on Friday. The operation was part of a larger crackdown in the Sinai area after a series of assaults were launched against security checkpoints, beginning with Sunday’s attack […]

Romney’s Not Obama Doctrine

By Julian Lindley-French

All American presidents like to establish a doctrine; a coherent set of foreign and security policy goals that underpin US leadership in the world. What does Mitt Romney’s recent foreign tour say about a future President Romney’s foreign and security policy? Can the beginnings of a Romney Doctrine be discerned?

Egypt’s Sinai Problem Long Predates Morsi

By Michele Dunne

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has responded to the August 5 Sinai raid, in which militants killed sixteen Egyptian border guards, by sacking Director of Intelligence Murad Mouwafi, North Sinai Governor Abdel Wahab Mabrouk (provincial governors are presidential appointees), and replacing several other senior security officials.

The US has ‘neither the money, nor the forces, nor the will, nor the concepts’ for new interventions

By Paradigm Cure

From Paradigm Cure:  The idea of putting in tens of thousands of troops to enforce order, generating a “civilian surge” of development and state building experts, and otherwise launching ourselves into yet another “stability operation” of indeterminate length has zero appeal, and for good reason. 

U.S. and Gulf Allies Pursue a Missile Shield Against Iranian Attack

By Thom Shanker, the New York Times

From Thom Shanker, the New York Times:  The United States and its Arab allies are knitting together a regional missile defense system across the Persian Gulf to protect cities, oil refineries, pipelines and military bases from an Iranian attack, according to government officials and public documents.