Category: Blogs

Biden Defines Europe Policy

By Damon Wilson

More than any other official, Vice President Biden has helped define the Obama administration approach to Europe.  While the President has made an unprecedented three trips to Europe during his first six months in office (including heavy lifts in Turkey and Russia), his visits were built around obligatory summits more often focused on global issues […]

U.S. officials: Russia tries to ‘divide West’

By the Washington Times

From the Washington Times: “There are signs of Russian efforts to divide the West and prevent what they see as undue American influence,” said Philip H. Gordon, assistant secretary of state for European affairs. Alexander Vershbow, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, agreed, saying the Russians are “seeking to create divisions between the […]

The Next Stage in U.S.-China Relations

By Banning Garrett

The China-U.S. relationship for the 21st Century is being forged in a new, strategically interdependent world—a globalized world no longer characterized by the zero-sum strategic competition among the major powers that dominated the Cold War and preceding eras. The United States and China are not strategic competitors but rather face common strategic challenges that can […]

Rasmussen: Afghanistan NATO’s Top Priority

By James Joyner

New NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen has wasted no time in signaling that the war in Afghanistan is the Alliance’s top priority, holding a teleconference on the conflict, reorganizing the mission’s command structure and calling for more EU help in his first days on the job.

Biden Was Right: Russia No Longer a Great Power

By David Smith

As U.S. Vice President Joe Biden returned to Washington from his foray to Ukraine and Georgia, the first copies of a Wall Street Journal article that would plunge him into political controversy rolled off the presses.

Winners and Losers in SG Speech

In his first major speech as Secretary General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen placed a great deal of emphasis on reassuring Russia, but did he do so at the expense of alliance cohesion? As you can see in the video of his press conference, after Afghanistan, Rasmussen identified NATO-Russian relations as his second priority. He […]

Madeleine Albright named head of NATO’s Wise Men

NATO’s new Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, appointed twelve experts to oversee the development of the new Strategic Concept for the alliance. The special NATO committee (popularly referred to as the group of Wise Men), will be lead by a historic female diplomat, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Her Vice Chair will be […]

Kashmir Self-Determination Revisited

By Luv Puri

On 5 May 1946, People’s Age, a communist newspaper, noted in a commentary that granting the right to complete self-determination to all the nationalities living in India would eliminate the possibility of a constitutional solution along communal lines. The right, it continued, could be conceded after a territorial re-division of provinces, done on a scientific […]

Faulty Reset on START

By David Smith

When U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a Joint Understanding on July 6 on a treaty to follow the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), this first press of Obama’s reset button launched U.S. negotiators into a time warp to circa 1969 Cold War-style negotiations against an artificial deadline. The result […]

Guantanamo Detainees: The View from Europe

By Andrew Kessinger

Thanks to renewed transatlantic cooperation, President Barack Obama is one small step closer to keeping his campaign promise to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention center.