New Atlanticist

Why Mitt Romney Needs a Picture with Lech Walesa?

By Daria Dylla

For his first overseas trip, Mitt Romney chose to visit three countries: Israel, Great Britain and Poland. Whereas choosing Israel and Great Britain did not surprise anyone, there is room for speculation about the decision to visit Poland. 

A Continuing Misalliance?

By Shuja Nawaz

The tattered relationship between the United States and Pakistan has been patched up yet again—with the political equivalent of duct tape. A low-level Memorandum of Understanding has been signed by bureaucrats, not political leaders, to provide a diplomatic fig leaf.

North Korean Makeover: Reminiscent of Post-Mao China

Radical changes are taking place in North Korea. It’s been seven months since the state commissioned new leader Kim Jong-Un, and now the Supreme Leader is challenging military control, exposing the Kim family to the public, and reassessing North Korea’s economic strategy and its approach to external cultural influences. We may be seeing the beginnings […]

Diplomacy Is the Best Tool for Iran

By R. Nicholas Burns

Are we are on a collision course to war with Iran? With negotiations flagging, sanctions inconclusive, and an intransigent Iran speeding boldly ahead with its nuclear enrichment program, the US government appears determined to stop Iran one way or another. My Harvard colleague, Graham Allison, calls it “a Cuban missile crisis in slow motion.” Iran […]

The End of the Old World

By Kenneth Weisbrode

Europe, or rather the idea of Europe, has long been a part of American politics. In fact, Old World/New World distinctions—embodying the doctrine of the two spheres—predate the independence of the United States. Americans for most of their history have been identified—and have identified themselves—in contradistinction to Europe.

How Much Is Enough?

By Harlan Ullman

During the Kennedy-Johnson-McNamara years of the Cold War, the ritualized question over national defense was “how much is enough?” The “how much” referred to what military capability was needed to defend and deter against the Soviet China and Red China, largely measured in numbers of nuclear weapons, and what should be spent on acquiring the […]

Pakistan’s Unfinished Challenges

By Shuja Nawaz

As it completes its 65th year as an independent state, Pakistan faces a host of challenges that only it can resolve, if its people and leaders have the will to do so.

Surrender Not Britain’s Only Option

By Julian Lindley-French

Those of you of a certain vintage will remember those flinty, somewhat silly British war movies of the 1950s. The story line was always roughly the same; a plucky British soldier, invariably called Tommy, armed only with a broken toothbrush, elastic band and a piece of chewing gum would, after suffering much adversity, defeat an […]

Romney’s Not Obama Doctrine

By Julian Lindley-French

All American presidents like to establish a doctrine; a coherent set of foreign and security policy goals that underpin US leadership in the world. What does Mitt Romney’s recent foreign tour say about a future President Romney’s foreign and security policy? Can the beginnings of a Romney Doctrine be discerned?