Atlantic Council blogs

Can the Turkish opposition kick out Erdogan?

By David Kenner, Foreign Policy

Afghanistan: Time for Unified Policy

By James Joyner

General Stanley McChrystal’s widely-publicized comments deriding senior Obama administration officials and their roles in the Afghanistan strategy have, as he himself has acknowledged, "compromised the mission."   He’s meeting with said team this morning and could well be fired.  Regardless, it’s time to come up with a unified and coherent policy.

NATO Secretary General Regrets Denmark sending “wrong signal to our forces and to other Allies”

By the Copenhagen Post

From the Copenhagen Post: [Danish] Defence Minister Gitte Lillelund Bech’s announcement that the state is set to abandon three upcoming Nato projects has former prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen breaking his promise not to get involved in Danish politics, reports Politiken newspaper.

Turkey Bets on East Over West

By Arnaud de Borchgrave

Geopolitical tectonic plates began grinding menacingly five years ago when Turkey embarked on negotiations for membership in the European Union but it didn’t take long for Ankara to conclude that EU was play acting. There was little appetite for adding 70 million Turkish Muslims (80 million by the end of a projected 10-year negotiation) to […]

McChrystal’s Loose Lips May Sink Afghan Ship

By James Joyner

General Stanley McChrystal, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, has been ordered home by an angry president after several intemperate remarks made in a Rolling Stone interview. The piece, "The Runaway General," originally scheduled to debut Friday, has been rushed online.   Phil Stewart and Adam Entous, reporting for Reuters, summarize the most controversial bits: […]

Kyrgyzstan investigating whether troops involved in ethnic violence

By Matthew Chance and Nic Robertson, CNN

From Matthew Chance and Nic Robertson, CNN: Kyrgyzstan will investigate allegations that government troops were involved in ethnic violence, an official said Sunday. Col. Kursan Asanov, appointed by the Kyrgyz interim government to run the reconciliation operation in the southern city of Osh, did not say whether the investigation would include independent investigators. Asanov said […]

Belarus orders cutoff of Russian gas to Europe

By Deutsche Welle

From Deutsche Welle:  Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday that Russia and Belarus were facing a "gas war," similar to Russia’s 2009 conflict with Ukraine. He ordered that the flow of Russian gas to Europe via Belarus be stopped, saying Gazprom owes transit fees of $260 million (211 million euros) for the first half […]

Russia’s Foreign Policy: What’s Next?

By Nikolas Gvosdev

When President Barack Obama welcomes President Dmitry Medvedev to the White House on June 24th, he should ask the Russian president one blunt question: What do you want? In the last several weeks, I’ve attended several meetings on and heard numerous commentaries about the U.S.-Russia relationship, and one consistent theme has resounded: what are the […]

Stephen Walt: “a large U.S. presence isn’t central to European security any longer”

By Stephen Walt, Foreign Policy