Category: Blogs

Special Summit Series: The United States and NATO

By James Joyner

In the run-up to September’s NATO summit in Wales, the Obama administration is sending decidedly mixed signals to its European allies, simultaneously demanding that they contribute more to their own security and signaling that they needn’t bother.

Top News: Iraqi Parliament Delays the Vote For President After Deadly Bombing in Baghdad

By MENASource

Iraq’s parliament delayed the vote for a new president after the Kurds asked for an extra day in order to agree on a candidate for president. The failed session comes as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Baghdad that killed thirty-one people.

Inside Assad’s Playbook: Time and Terror

By Bassam Barabandi and Tyler Jess Thompson

Early in my career as a Syrian diplomat, I learned to respect the strategic planning of the Assads. One clear memory is from 2007, during a visit from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. I remember sitting behind a two-way mirror in a room adjacent to the banquet hall at the Four Seasons Damascus.

EconSource: Tunisia’s Supplementary Budget Law

Follow the latest in economic news and developments about the Arab transition coutries. 

Is Iraq Backsliding Toward Another Civil War?

By Omar al-Dulimi

Iraqi politicians are gathering today to elect a new president, in their continuing struggle to take a small but vital step toward ending political deadlock and creating a power-sharing government.

Protecting Ukraine Means Supplementing the OSCE

By James Rupert

International Diplomacy on the Russia-Ukraine War Has Been Dominated by Moscow As the international community works both to calm the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in southeast Ukraine and to assure a credible investigation of the Malaysian Airlines disaster there, the main body in that effort is the Organization for Security and Cooperation and Europe. But the OSCE […]

Shouldn’t Europe Pay More for its Own Defense?

By Graham Allison, Los Angeles Times

Two decades after the end of the Cold War, the twin trends of overdependence on U.S. power and underinvestment in military might have left European defenses at risk of becoming dangerously irrelevant.

TTIP’s Sixth Round concludes in Brussels

Bridging the Pacific: The Americas’ New Economic Frontier? Please join us at the Atlantic Council in Washington tomorrow morning from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. for the launch of our new report examining opportunities to expand commerce between the United States, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific via an ambitious and robust Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Speakers will […]

Top News: Yemen’s Al-Qaeda Wing Seeks To Set Up Emirate in Hadhramawt

By MENASource

Yemen’s al-Qaeda wing has ordered men and women in Hadhramawt to obey its strict interpretation of Islamic law, saying it aimed to set up an emirate in the remote area. Al-Qaeda has been shifting its operations to Yemen’s eastern Hadhramawt province after the army, backed by US drones, helped drive it out of the south […]