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New Atlanticist

Jun 5, 2013

Southern Gas Corridor: Godot Finally Comes?

By David Koranyi

If all goes well, by the end of this month the multinational Shah Deniz Consortium will select the European leg of a grand pipeline project known as the Southern Gas Corridor to ship Caspian gas to Europe.

Energy & Environment

New Atlanticist

Jun 5, 2013

Lebanon inches toward disaster

By Rajan Menon

It has been Lebanon’s unenviable fate to be the playground for the deadly games of its more powerful and rivalrous neighbors. What has made Lebanon particularly vulnerable to the fears and ambitions of adjacent states—or in the case of Iran, those aligned with them—is the effect outsiders’ machinations have had on the delicate balance among […]

Middle East
Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

Jun 4, 2013

Chuck Hagel’s Shangri La La?

By Julian Lindley-French

In James Hilton’s fictional 1937 novel Lost Horizons, Shangri-La is a heaven on earth, a happy island of peace, permanently isolated from the outside world (no, not Britain).  For the High Lama (a sort of David Cameron) harmony, “is the entire meaning and purpose of Shangri-La.  It came to me as a vision long, long ago.  I saw all […]

New Atlanticist

Jun 4, 2013

How Shinzo Abe Could Win the Nobel Peace Prize

By James Clad and Robert A. Manning

Shinzo Abe has summoned the ghosts of nationalism in the Pacific. Neighbouring countries are worried by the Japanese prime minister’s revisionism concerning the historical behaviour of his country. The impact of this on Sino-Japanese relations tends to receive most attention in the western media. But there is also an increasingly fractious relationship between Japan and […]

China
Japan

New Atlanticist

Jun 3, 2013

Erdogan’s Self-Inflicted Wounds

By Ross Wilson

In soccer, an “own goal” is scored when a player accidentally hits the ball into his own net. The poor handling by Turkish authorities of demonstrations in Istanbul’s Taksim Square that spilled over to Ankara, Izmir and cities all over the country constitutes an own goal that now undermines the political prospects of Prime Minister […]

Politics & Diplomacy
Turkey

New Atlanticist

Jun 3, 2013

What’s Russia Doing in Syria and Why

By Rajan Menon

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has killed some 80,000 of his citizens and driven another 1.7 million into neighboring countries. Unsurprisingly, he has few foreign friends these days. But two have played a pivotal part in his survival: Iran and Russia.

Missile Defense
National Security

New Atlanticist

Jun 3, 2013

Social Media: A Revolution in Military Affairs

By William Edwards

With the two year anniversary of the “Arab Awakening” recently behind us, the emergence of social media as a tool of social change in modern conflict became clear. The use of Facebook, Twitter, and now YouTube has shown revolutionary thought. In particular it demonstrated that anyone could arrange military support in an encrypted communications environment […]

Cybersecurity
Intelligence

New Atlanticist

May 31, 2013

EU’s Foreign Policy of the Willing

By Vivien Pertusot

The EU’s foreign policy is in disarray after clear disagreements on the lifting of the arms embargo on Syria, many say. Is it really? This reading of events is skewed, because it assumes that every EU foreign policy action requires a consensus and an active participation of each member state. But this has seldom been the […]

European Union
International Organizations

New Atlanticist

May 31, 2013

Influencing the World or Organizing Europe?

By Julian Lindley-French

As I was about to board a plane at Oslo Airport yesterday I found myself confronted by a dilemma. Do I read the latest Dan Brown novel, based at it is on Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth century classic “The Inferno,” or do I read the new “Towards a European Global Strategy,” Europe’s eternal infernal? Push came to […]

European Union
Germany

New Atlanticist

May 30, 2013

Syrian Supernova?

By Harlan Ullman

Syria is dying. A further tragedy is that there is little the outside world can do to end that war.

Syria