Atlantic Council blogs

The Comprehensive Approach: Groundhog Day?

By Julian Lindley-French

For the past few days I have been acting as rapporteur for a large conference on enhancing and improving civil-military interaction in crises – the so-called Comprehensive Approach. The fifty heavy pages of notes I have before me testify to the intense nature of the debate and the challenge of writing the conference report. Over […]

Does America Still Want to Lead the World?

By Fred Kempe, the New Atlanticist

From Fred Kempe, the New Atlanticist:  For all their bitter differences, President Obama and Governor Romney share one overwhelming challenge. Whoever is elected will face the growing reality that the greatest risk to global stability over the next 20 years may be the nature of America itself. Nothing – not Iranian or North Korean nuclear […]

Memo to NATO: Stay Out of Syrian Conflict

By Joshua Foust, the New Atlanticist

From Joshua Foust, the New Atlanticist:  This past week, however, firefights near Syria’s border with Turkey have raised the prospect of another way to intervene: NATO.

Lost in Space: NASA’s Sixty-three Million Dollar Russian Taxi Rides

By Arnaud de Borchgrave

The Space Shuttle Discovery flying piggyback on a Boeing 747 for its “Last Hurrah” flight around the Washington Monument and the White House was a grim reminder of misplaced and misspent priorities. The storied 30-year space shuttle program, which began with the launch of Columbia, April 12, 1981, ended last July, when Atlantis landed back […]

Does America Still Want to Lead the World?

By Frederick Kempe

For all their bitter differences, President Obama and Governor Romney share one overwhelming challenge. Whoever is elected will face the growing reality that the greatest risk to global stability over the next 20 years may be the nature of America itself. Nothing – not Iranian or North Korean nuclear weapons, not violent extremists or Mideast […]

Presidential Disqualifications: Judicial Independence or SCAF Meddling?

By Tarek Radwan

Last week, the news that the Supreme Presidential Elections Commission (SPEC) had disqualified 10 candidates in Egypt’s race for the presidency dominated the headlines.  The decision barred the three most polarizing figures who had decided to run: Hazem Abu Ismail representing the Salafi bloc, Khairat al-Shater representing the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), […]

NATO’s ‘bleak future of military marginalization and trans-Atlantic rancor’

By the Editors of the New York Times

From the Editors of the New York Times: [N]o matter how important the stakes, European militaries are unable to conduct sustained air operations on their own, even in their own neighborhood.

Top News: Brotherhood Joins Calls for Mass Protest in Tahrir Square

By Mara Revkin

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party announced its intended participation in a mass demonstration planned for Friday April 20 that had originally been organized by April 6 and other secular groups citing as one of their grievances the Brotherhood’s alleged alliance with the SCAF. The April 6 Youth Movment and over 34 political groups have […]

The Russians are coming to Chicago! (maybe)

After participating in today’s meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen disclosed for the first time