New Atlanticist

Women’s Ascension in Latin America

By Capricia Penavic Marshall

When former US secretary of state and then-presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton visited the Atlantic Council in November 2015, she spoke of Latin America’s strides to achieve gender equity at the highest levels. “It may be predictable for me to say this, but there’s a lot we can learn from Latin America’s success at electing […]

NATO’s Man with Many Helmets

By Teri Schultz

Bearing a title that obligates him to manage evolving security threats, NATO Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges Sorin Ducaru has his hands more than full.  With the threat landscape against the alliance changing constantly in unpredictable ways, many of them breaking new terrain in warfare, Ducaru and his staff have to be prescient, […]

Trump’s ‘Disastrous’ Proposal to Cut Foreign Aid

By Ashish Kumar Sen

Republican official says defense spending should not come at the cost of foreign assistance US President Donald J. Trump’s proposal to ramp up defense spending at the cost of foreign aid is attracting flak from within his Republican Party and retired generals who believe such a move is not in the United States’ best interests. […]

Trump’s Address to Congress: ‘A New Trajectory’

US President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on February 28 marked “a new trajectory” for the administration by reassuring allies while ensuring continuity of US foreign policy when it comes to international alliances, according to Atlantic Council analysts. Trump’s speech “covered some ground that needed to be covered, NATO, commitment to […]

The Arctic’s Changing Frontier

By Peter Engelke

Our world is changing, and quickly. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Arctic region. For decades, Arctic sea ice has been shrinking, the result of higher temperatures driven by climate change. So too has Greenland’s ice sheet, for the same reason. While each new winter has brought with it evidence of deterioration in […]

America is Not an Ethno-State

By Daniel Fried

My forty years in the Foreign Service—and the careers of many of my friends—became associated with the fall of the Soviet Empire and the putting in order of what came after:  the building of a Europe whole, free and at peace.  It is hard to recall today how improbable victory in the Cold War appeared.  […]

Here’s Why Mexico Matters

If the current tension in the US-Mexico relationship gets out of hand it could disrupt crucial cooperation between the two countries on checking the flow of unauthorized migrants into the United States, said an Atlantic Council analyst. “The great danger here is that, in all of this tension, something is going to boil over,” said […]

Don’t Expect a New NATO Strategic Concept Any Time Soon

By Stanley Sloan

The uncertainty created by US President Donald Trump’s questioning of whether the Alliance remains in the US’ interest has stalled the production of a new NATO strategic concept. The last NATO strategic concept—the Alliance’s consensus statement on the threats and intended responses—was agreed in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2010. In 2016, some astute observers suggested that […]

NAFTA in Need of an Update

Former US, Canadian, and Mexican officials make pitch to keep strategic trade deal US President Donald Trump has called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) “the worst trade deal,” but former US, Canadian, and Mexican officials, speaking at the Atlantic Council on February 22, warned against abandoning the strategic deal that binds their three […]

China Taking Clean Energy Leadership from the United States

By Madison Freeman

With commitments to clean energy and combatting climate change wavering under the new US administration, leadership in renewable energy is quietly shifting away from the United States across the Pacific, where China is rapidly building its dominance. US President Donald Trump has been clear about his support for fossil fuels. Though his stance on renewable […]