Security & Defense

Elusive Partnership: US and European Policies in the Near East and the Gulf

This report presents the US-Middle East delegation’s assessment of European attitudes and its conclusions and recommendations for the policies of the US government. The authors analyze the history of US–European relations on the topic of the Middle East and discuss the European attitudes toward the problem as well as the directions and dynamics of the […]

Managing Proliferation Issues With Iran

Any government in Tehran will be inclined to seek weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missile delivery options given the realities of its strategic environment. These weapons might help Iran to deter potential external threats, to achieve equality with other major regional powers armed with WMD, and to attain self-reliance in national security, given the […]

The Bulgarian Defense Industry: Strategic Options for Transformation, Reorientation, and NATO Integration

By Jeffrey P. Bialos

This report identifies strategic options available to the Bulgarian government and its defense industry, as well as the United States and its NATO partners, for transforming and repositioning the industry for the 21st century and facilitating its integration into the NATO and European Union industrial base. Since other Partnership for Peace (PfP) countries that are […]

Thinking Beyond the Stalemate in U.S.-Iranian Relations: Volume I

By Elaine L. Morton

This publication addresses the stalemate between the US and Iran. It argues that the stalemate satisfies emotionally many Americans but does not serve overall US interests. According to the paper, it hinders the achievement of several key US geopolitical interests, especially over the longer term. Download the PDF

Enforcing the Peace: An American Bird’s Eye View

By David C. Acheson

This paper examines the factors that make peace enforcement politically and operationally complicated and undermine the will, the resources and the parliamentary consensus to undertake missions of peace enforcement. The author outlines two phases of the peace-enforcement process: one is a combat phase, the application of armed force to suppress hostilities. Phase two, presumptively a […]

Strategic Assesment of Central Eurasia

By Charles Fairbanks, S. Frederick Starr, C. Richard Nelson, and Kenneth Weisbrode

This assessment outlines a basis for U.S. national security planning related to Central Eurasia over the next ten years. The region covered encompasses the five former Soviet states of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and the three former Soviet states of the South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia). Download the […]

European Views of National Missile Defense

By Stephen Cambone, Ivo Daalder, Stephen J. Hadley, and Christopher J. Makins

In this situation, the Atlantic Council decided that it would be timely to send to European capitals a team of respected leaders and experts involved in the missile defense debate in the United States. Their purpose was to engage a wide range of European leaders and experts both inside and outside governments, in intensive dialogue […]

The Kosovo Crisis: The End of the Post-Cold War Era

By Alexei G. Arbatov

Just a couple of years ago very few people in the United States, Russia or Western Europe, beside experts on the Balkans, would have recognized the name Kosovo and still fewer would have known anything about this obscure Serbian province. Since early 1999 all the world’s attention has been concentrated on the events in this […]

NATO In 2010

By Marten H.A. van Heuven

From defense to deterrence, then détente and cooperation, analysts have tracked the evolution of NATO through the second half of the 20th century. Now in the aftermath of the Balkan crises, the international community is confronted with the inevitability—and perhaps necessity—of further modification to the structure and responsibilities of NATO. These uncertainties are explored by […]