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Atlantic Council blogs provide short-form analyses from Council experts and a wider community of global voices on the world’s most important news stories.
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New Atlanticist

Sep 5, 2018

Trump picks Zalmay Khalilzad, Atlantic Council board director, as special representative on Afghanistan

By Ashish Kumar Sen

Khalilzad’s appointment is a “good sign that the administration recognizes that if it’s going to be serious about trying to achieve a negotiated settlement, that requires having some real diplomatic muscle applied to the task,” said Laurel E. Miller, a senior foreign policy expert at the RAND Corporation.

Afghanistan Pakistan

IranSource

Sep 5, 2018

A Humanitarian Responsibility: End of US Support for Saudi-led Coalition in Yemen

By Masoud Mostajabi

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and ally United Arab Emirates (UAE), pledged decisive victory when they entered into war in March 2015 against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The results thus far have not been the Houthis’ defeat, but tens of thousands of deaths, a cholera epidemic and famine — what the United Nations has deemed […]

Iran Saudi Arabia

MENASource

Sep 5, 2018

Finding salvation through the chaos in Libya

By Karim Mezran and Federica Saini Fasanotti

On the night of September 2nd, most of the personnel from the Italian embassy in Libya—the only operating embassy—were quickly evacuated on a ship bound for Malta.

Libya

UkraineAlert

Sep 5, 2018

Straight Talk: Odesa Businessman Says Foreign Investors Aren’t Worried About What You Think

By Oksana Bedratenko

Andrey Stavnitser is a second generation businessman with a clean reputation in Ukraine. He’s also young and ambitious. The bushy-bearded thirty-six-year old turned his father’s TiS company into the largest private port in Ukraine and the largest of all Ukraine’s ports by dry cargo turnover. By investing aggressively in infrastructure, Stavnitser is proving that the […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Sep 5, 2018

Mass detention of journalists exposes emerging shifts in Belarus

By Maxim Eristavi

The crackdown is the product of a transitioning Belarus, in which the forces of modernization are clashing with efforts to slow down or even halt the changes.

Belarus

New Atlanticist

Sep 5, 2018

Russian Sovereign debt in the crosshairs

By Brian O’Toole and Josh Rudolph

McCain was right. As noted before, inconsistent words and actions have precluded the Trump administration from establishing a sufficient deterrence to Russian aggression.

Financial Sanctions and Economic Coercion Russia

IranSource

Sep 5, 2018

Europe Cannot Save the Iran Deal, But it Must Try

By Cornelius Adebahr

You would not know it from reading the news, but the Iran nuclear deal is still alive. The Europeans, however, are faced with an impossible task: to preserve an international agreement that cannot survive without Washington’s backing in the face of an aggressive US posture toward Tehran. In May, US President Donald J. Trump pulled […]

Iran

New Atlanticist

Sep 4, 2018

US-Pakistan dialogue of the deaf

By Shuja Nawaz

The United States has been down this road before: trying to bully Pakistan into doing things that do not appear to suit Pakistan’s regional interests.

Afghanistan Extremism

New Atlanticist

Sep 4, 2018

Europe cannot save the Iran deal, but it must try

By Cornelius Adebahr

Europe, in short, does not have the political power to defend the Iran deal with Washington gone rogue on its commitment. It cannot keep up economic ties against US pressure, much as policymakers in Iran demand precisely that.

European Union International Organizations

New Atlanticist

Sep 4, 2018

2+2 dialogue offers the United States and India an opportunity

By Bharath Gopalaswamy

New Delhi and Washington remain at odds over the Trump administration’s decision to reimpose sanctions on Iranian oil exports.

Geopolitics & Energy Security India