Issue briefs and reports

Intelligence Sharing: Getting the National Counterterrorism Analysts on the Same Data Sheet

Colonel Daniel Putbrese, USAF, an Atlantic Council Senior Fellow, argues in  “Intelligence Sharing: Getting the National Counterterrorism Analysts on the Same Data Sheet” that it is imperative that national counterterrorism centers be able to access undisseminated  data before it has been analyzed, filtered, and/or packaged and that doing so requires a radical change in the […]

Russia’s Shrinking Population and the Russian Military’s HIV/AIDS Problem

Russia’s rapidly declining population will soon no longer be able to support the current size of the Russian military. The number of Russian males turning 18-years-old is forecasted to drop by about 50 percent in the next 10 to 15 years. This approaching population decline requires significant structural reform within the Russian military. Yet, Russia’s […]

China’s rise and US influence in Asia

Following the publication of his most recent book, China’s Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils, Dr. Robert Sutter embarked on a research trip in spring-summer 2006 which involved dozens of workshops to explore China’s rise and U.S. leadership in Asia. These workshops were attended by several hundred non-government specialists and elites in 21 cities of […]

Whither the European Union?

The stunning rout of the proposed EU constitution a year ago in the referenda in the Netherlands and France leads one to wonder, a year later, where Europe goes from here. One must also consider what went wrong and whether circumstances have changed, or will change, sufficiently to allow another approach to a European charter, […]

Libya and the United States: The Next Steps

Over the past several years, the Atlantic Council’s International Security Program has taken a position that, in due course, the United States’ adversarial relationships with countries, such as Libya, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and North Korea will eventually be restructured both in recognition of changes in the nature or policies of these difficult regimes, and in […]

Transatlantic Transformation: Building a NATO-EU Security Architecture

Since 1989, the security environment facing the United States and its European allies has changed beyond recognition. The Soviet Union has disintegrated, as has the division of Europe between East and West, and new threats have arisen. The disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s demonstrated that instability and war emerging from failing states could affect […]

Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Ambitions

By Steven Pifer

Since his inauguration in January 2005, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has repeatedly stated that his foremost foreign policy goal is his country’s integration into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions. “Joining Europe” today, be it preparing a country for a bid to enter the European Union or NATO, is an extraordinarily complex business. It will require the […]

China: What could go wrong?

By Harry Harding

China has done remarkably well in its development over the last twenty-five years. It has achieved and sustained high rates of economic growth, lifting millions out of poverty. It has achieved a significant place in the international economy. It is widely regarded as a major power, not only in Asia but also increasingly on a […]