New Atlanticist

Sharp insights and bold ideas from across the Council

From climate change to the China challenge and the contest between democracy and dictatorship, the New Atlanticist is where top experts and policymakers at the Atlantic Council and beyond offer exclusive insight on the most pressing global challenges—and the US role in addressing them alongside allies and partners.

The Council’s flagship section features big ideas, groundbreaking research, lightning-fast expert reactions, in-depth analyses, and thought-provoking commentary to shape public policy.

Trans-Adriatic Pipeline Project Surging Ahead of Rival Nabucco-West: Part II

New Atlanticist
Mar 6, 2025

How European leaders are responding to Trump’s approach to Ukraine and Europe

From London and Berlin to Paris and Brussels, European leaders have taken several notable steps this week on security. This follows the blow-up between the Ukrainian and US presidents on February 28.

New Atlanticist
Feb 26, 2025

Why the US should not lift sanctions against Russia

By
Charles Lichfield

Sanctions are having an unmistakable effect, albeit below the inflated expectations of many in the West in early 2022. Lifting them now would be a mistake.

Conflict
Economic Sanctions

New Atlanticist
Mar 5, 2025

The Egyptian plan for postwar Gaza is a good starting point—but it needs changes

By
Thomas S. Warrick

While many obstacles remain, the Egyptian proposal could form the starting point for negotiations over a workable plan for postwar Gaza.

Conflict
Crisis Management

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Our experts decipher and annotate major speeches and policy documents to break down big ideas and lay them out in plain language.

New Atlanticist

Apr 1, 2013

Trans-Adriatic Pipeline Project Surging Ahead of Rival Nabucco-West: Part II

By Vladimir Socor

The gas producers’ consortium at Shah Deniz in Azerbaijan is holding parallel negotiations with the pipeline project companies, Nabucco and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), to select one of these routes to Europe. March 31 is the deadline for submission of Nabucco-West’s and TAP’s competing offers to the Shah Deniz consortium. The producer consortium’s decision on pipeline […]

Economy & Business Energy & Environment

New Atlanticist

Mar 29, 2013

Building BRICS

By Julian Lindley-French

They represent 25.9 percent of the world’s land mass, 43 percent of the population and 17 percent of global trade. The UN Development Program states that by “2020, the combined economic output of three leading developing countries alone Brazil, China, and India–will surpass the aggregate production of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States.”

Brazil China

New Atlanticist

Mar 29, 2013

The Measured Madness of North Korea

By Rajan Menon

You’ve got to hand it to North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un: the man is a past master at panic promotion. He learned from the master, his dad, Kim “Dear Leader” Jong-il, whose tantrums, threats, and theatrics routinely rattled South Korea, Japan, and the United States. The reactions that followed were invariably the same: the […]

New Atlanticist

Mar 29, 2013

Trans-Adriatic Pipeline Project Surging Ahead of Rival Nabucco-West: Part I

By Vladimir Socor

Among the roles of Gazprom’s South Stream pipeline project was that of aborting the EU-backed Nabucco, merely by threatening to preempt Nabucco’s markets along the same route downstream. Conversely, Nabucco’s European rival Trans-Adriatic Pipeline project (TAP) can abort Nabucco by preempting the gas supply source upstream. Both TAP and the reformatted Nabucco-West depend fully on […]

New Atlanticist

Mar 28, 2013

A Visionary Reinvention of the Two-State Solution

By Anne-Marie Slaughter

Imagine a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine in which Palestinians would have the right of return; Israelis could settle wherever they could purchase land in the West Bank; and Jerusalem need not be divided. This is not a fanciful vision, but a creative and eminently sensible reinvention of 21st-century statehood. And President Barack Obama’s […]

European Union International Organizations

New Atlanticist

Mar 28, 2013

An Inconvenient or Irritating Truth: Applying Law to the New Face of Modern Warfare

By Jason Thelen

In war, there are rules. Some were written long ago in treaties. Others are found in binding customs written in volumes of commentary compiled over time. The point is that these rules can all be found in written form to cite and to reference. They can be used to describe who can be targeted in […]

Cybersecurity Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

Mar 28, 2013

Paradigms and National Security

By Derek Reveron

To make sense of our complex world, we rely on paradigms to offer insights to solve problems. After World War II, for example, the dominant paradigm was the Cold War, which envisioned a world divided between free and unfree or democratic-capitalist and authoritarian-socialist countries. The paradigm prevented global cooperation and miscalculations almost led to war. While […]

Cybersecurity National Security

New Atlanticist

Mar 27, 2013

Reason Finally Gets a Voice: The Tallinn Manual on Cyber War and International Law

By Jason Healey

No longer can a professed cyber expert pronounce, “When is a cyber attack an act of war? This is an interesting question.” The Tallinn Manual, compiled by a distinguished group of legal scholars and to be launched tomorrow at an Atlantic Council event, asks this and many more questions and—a novelty for the field of cyber […]

Cybersecurity Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

Mar 27, 2013

Shocking and Awing

By Harlan Ullman

Ten years ago this month, the United States launched Operation Iraqi Freedom against Saddam Hussein.

Iraq Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

Mar 27, 2013

A New Syria Must Have US Support

By Frederic C. Hof

To most Americans, Syria looks like a mess best left to Syrians and their neighbors to sort out. Yet the conflict that President Bashar al-Assad unleashed against his people threatens to produce a large, ungovernable space, with refugees racing for the borders; terrorists setting up shop; chemical and biological weapons unguarded and available for seizure; […]

Politics & Diplomacy Syria

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