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.

Expect the Best Behavior from Our Troops

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.

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Expect the Best Behavior from Our Troops

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

Expect the Best Behavior from Our Troops

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.

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Content

New Atlanticist

Jan 19, 2012

Expect the Best Behavior from Our Troops

By Kurt Sanger

The video showing Marines urinating on dead enemy bodies in Afghanistan has refocused America’s attention on the behavior of service members. We have been painfully aware of the strategic implications of this kind of action since we saw the photos from Abu Ghraib. How could something like this happen now? Something is broken. We remember […]

Afghanistan

New Atlanticist

Jan 19, 2012

On Iran, Emulate TR

By R. James Woolsey and Robert MacFarlane

In the first week of 2012, President Obama finally approved tough sanctions on Iran’s central bank, aiming to cripple Iran’s oil trade and thwart its advanced efforts to possess a nuclear weapon. Iran’s armed-forces commander, Gen. Ataollah Salehi, threatened military action against the USS John C. Stennis, an aircraft carrier operating in international waters: “We […]

Iran

New Atlanticist

Jan 18, 2012

Worries Mount over Blowback of Israeli Attack on Iran

By Barbara Slavin

A former senior adviser on the Middle East to the last four US presidents says that “the negatives far outweigh the positives” of war with Iran and the United States should augment Israel’s nuclear weapons delivery systems to dissuade it from attacking the Islamic Republic. Bruce Riedel, who served on the White House National Security […]

New Atlanticist

Jan 18, 2012

Egyptian Style Democracy

By Arnaud de Borchgrave

U.S. democracy-building organizations — one Republican, one Democrat, both funded by the U.S. taxpayer — that have been telling Egyptians how to be good democrats, how to demonstrate peacefully and have truly free elections didn’t sit too well with the Egyptian military, which has ruled Egypt since 1952. The only real democracy Egyptians have known […]

North Africa

New Atlanticist

Jan 18, 2012

Why Britain Can Never Accept German Leadership

By Julian Lindley-French

Britain will never accept German leadership even though Germany will emerge from the economic crisis as Europe’s leading power. History is still far too close for that ever to happen. When I made that assertion in my in my blog of last week from the No Snow Meeting in Lithuania, with its heavy Churchillian overtones, […]

European Union Germany

New Atlanticist

Jan 17, 2012

The Perils of Europe’s Navel Gazing

By Ana Palacio

While the world anxiously awaits the climax of the eurozone drama, its leaders’ behavior resembles the political equivalent of what physicists call “Brownian motion,” with officials bouncing randomly from one crucial bilateral consultation and vital European summit to the next. The impact of make-or-break declarations that are supposed to solve the monetary union’s problems dissipates […]

European Union International Organizations

New Atlanticist

Jan 17, 2012

Analyzing the Great Game Between the West and Iran

By Sarwar Kashmeri

Hardly a day goes by without Iran featuring in media headlines. In his latest New Atlanticist Podcast, Atlantic Council senior fellow Sarwar Kashmeri spoke with Boston University Professor of International Relations and History Andrew Bacecvich on the great game between the West and Iran.Download the PDF

Iran

New Atlanticist

Jan 13, 2012

Australia Policy Shift Signals India’s Key Role

By Ronak Desai

Australia ended its decades’ old ban on exporting uranium to India, opening the world’s largest uranium reserves to New Delhi’s lucrative nuclear market. While the sudden policy shift has been framed as one aimed at improving bilateral ties , it is part of a larger strategic realignment in the Asia-Pacific region being led by the […]

India Nuclear Nonproliferation

New Atlanticist

Jan 13, 2012

No Snow in Lithuania

By Julian Lindley-French

The Snow Meeting is famous. Every January Lithuania brings together prime ministers, foreign and defence ministers from across what is increasingly referred to as the Nordic Baltic region, together with senior American, French, and German officials and commentators. The British were of course not there. Shame.

United Kingdom

New Atlanticist

Jan 12, 2012

A More Practical Approach To National Sovereignty

By James Joyner

Dutch defense minister Hans Hillen argues that transatlantic defense cooperation must be deepened and that this requires “a more practical approach to national sovereignty.”

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