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New Atlanticist

Apr 17, 2018

Beyond Syria: Moscow’s Objectives in the Middle East

By Stephen Blank

Syria’s civil war has come close to provoking direct kinetic clashes between the United States and Russia. Yet, despite the urgency to understand both sides’ goals, hardly anyone is assessing Russia’s overall objectives in the Middle East. Syria might be the most urgent issue of what the late Zbigniew Brzezinski called the Eurasian Balkans, but […]

Middle East Russia

New Atlanticist

Apr 16, 2018

Five Questions That Mark Zuckerberg Answered—And One That He Did Not

By Shaun Ee

After testifying to lawmakers in the US House of Representatives and the Senate for more than ten hours on April 10 and 11, Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg appears to have weathered the worst of storm over news that consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested data of 87 million Facebook users. Here are some issues […]

Cybersecurity Security & Defense

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Apr 16, 2018

Russian Americans Say Keep It Up, President Trump

By Dmitry Valuev

The Congress of Russian Americans, a group claiming to represent five million Russian-speaking Americans, recently wrote to US President Donald Trump deploring the state of Russian-American relations, denouncing the expulsion of sixty Russian diplomats from the United States, and denying Russia’s involvement in the recent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England. […]

Russia

New Atlanticist

Apr 16, 2018

Updating Government: Estonia’s Mastery of Digital Statecraft

By Shaun Ee

When asked about her country’s establishment of overseas “data embassies” to back up its data, Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid replied: “There’s nothing about the technology that’s interesting.” In a country known for making policy leaps and bounds in the digital realm, progress can easily be mistaken for technical know-how. However, important as technological innovation is, […]

Northern Europe

New Atlanticist

Apr 16, 2018

Emmanuel Macron: The Trump Whisperer?

By Ashish Kumar Sen

French President Emmanuel Macron said in a television interview on April 15 that he convinced US President Donald J. Trump not to withdraw troops from Syria. “Ten days ago, President Trump was saying ‘the United States should withdraw from Syria.’ We convinced him it was necessary to stay for the long term,” Macron said in […]

European Union France

MENASource

Apr 16, 2018

Can Libya survive without Haftar?

By Elissa Miller & Tarek Radwan

Libya was thrown into further flux this past week amid reports of the death of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. His exact condition remains unclear; Haftar was reportedly hospitalized in Jordan after suffering a stroke before falling into a coma after his transfer to a hospital in France. Other sources reported that eastern strongman passed away […]

Libya

SyriaSource

Apr 16, 2018

Syria: Stop the Bleeding, Build a Strategy

By Frederic C. Hof

Two unsurprising reactions followed in the immediate wake of the recent air attacks on Syrian chemical warfare facilities: Western commentators praised the raids while lamenting the absence of a Trump administration “Syria strategy;” and Bashar al-Assad defiantly declared victory while resuming aerial assaults (albeit non-chemical) on rebel-held residential neighborhoods. One might employ a medical analogy […]

Syria

New Atlanticist

Apr 15, 2018

Strikes Will Not Change Assad’s Calculus

By Ashish Kumar Sen

There is no evidence that US President Donald J. Trump has any intention of changing Bashar al-Assad’s calculus in Syria, according to H.A. Hellyer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. US, British, and French forces conducted airstrikes on chemical weapons facilities in Syria on April 14. […]

Syria

New Atlanticist

Apr 14, 2018

Syria: Mission Accomplished?

By Ashish Kumar Sen

The morning after US, French, and British jets targeted chemical weapons facilities in Syria, US President Donald J. Trump took to Twitter to declare “Mission Accomplished.” That declaration—the two words that former US President George W. Bush came to regret—has left many scratching their heads. “I found the comment itself puzzling because I don’t know […]

Syria

New Atlanticist

Apr 14, 2018

World Reaction to Strikes on Syria

By Ashish Kumar Sen

The United States, the United Kingdom, and France on April 13 launched strikes on Syria in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack which they blamed on Bashar al-Assad’s regime. While US Defense Secretary James Mattis described the strikes as a “one-time” shot, the Western allies warned more strikes could come in the event of […]

France Germany
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