Category: Article

Albania’s Defense Minister Speaks on the Challenges to Security in the Western Balkans

Mrs. Mimi Kodheli Addresses Strategy Session at the Atlantic Council Albanian Defense Minister Mimi Kodheli spoke to an invited audience on October 28 at a policy strategy session hosted by the Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. Here is the text of her address:

Column: Tunisia Shows the Way While Egypt Stumbles

By Barbara Slavin

The final results of parliamentary elections had yet to be announced, but Rachid Ghannouchi, head of Tunisia’s moderate Muslim Ennahda party, called the head of a secular alliance, Nidaa Tounes, on Monday to congratulate him on what appeared to be a decisive secularist victory. Once again, Tunisia – the country where the Arab spring began […]

Column: Lessons of North Korea for Iran Nuclear Talks

By Barbara Slavin

Among the arguments marshaled by those wary of a nuclear agreement with Iran is that past efforts to negotiate away North Korea’s nuclear weapons program failed. Iran’s regime, they argue, is just as untrustworthy as North Korea’s and what’s more, Wendy Sherman, the chief U.S. negotiator with Iran, was also involved in talks with the […]

Column: Support Building for a Palestinian State

By Barbara Slavin

It was the sort of vote that’s still hard to imagine taking place in the U.S. Congress: an overwhelming if non-binding endorsement of an independent Palestinian state by the British House of Commons. The 274-12 vote on Monday was another indication that much of the world is losing patience with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wants […]

Don’t forget Canada and Mexico

By Nicholas Burns

LIKE THE majority of his modern predecessors, President Obama has looked to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia as the regions where America’s vital interests are most often engaged. This year is no different as the United States copes with a lethal combination of challenges from the metastasizing Iraq-Syria civil war to Russian aggression in […]

Column: ‘Islamic State’ Benefits From Opponents’ Conflicting Agendas

By Barbara Slavin

Vice President Joe Biden got into hot water over the weekend when he accused Turkey and other U.S. allies of complicity in the rise of the group calling itself the Islamic State (IS). Biden, who was forced to apologize to President Recep Tayib Erdogan, was factually accurate – if diplomatically gauche – when he noted […]