Scowcroft Center Commentary, Analysis, & Reports

Explore the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s latest insights, commentary, articles, media hits, and in-depth reports

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New Atlanticist

Jan 27, 2009

The End of Piracy: Can NATO Contribute?

By James Easaw

Now that the piracy crisis centered off the Somali Coast/Gulf of Aden, the Horn of Africa and, to a lesser degree, the West African Coast in the Gulf of Guinea has become big news, the international community, most recently the United Nations, has sprung into action.  The end of piracy draws nigh.  In fact, those […]

NATO Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

Jan 27, 2009

Russian Naval Base to be Built in Abkhazia

By Peter Cassata

The ITAR-TASS news agency reported that a Russian naval base will be constructed this year in the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia.  An Abkhaz official said that the base will not succeed Sevastopol (the Crimean port whose lease Kyiv does not intend to renew in 2017) as the new Black Sea Fleet headquarters.

Russia

New Atlanticist

Jan 26, 2009

Security Implications of the Financial Crisis

By James Joyner

As the global financial crisis deepens, the strongest reactions thus far are coming from the emerging democracies in Don Rumsfeld’s New Europe.  Phillip Pan writes on the front page of today’s WaPo of a protest in Latvia’s capital that turned into a riot

New Atlanticist

Jan 26, 2009

OSCE: Beware the Last Laugh

By David Smith

Last week, Moscow afforded us dour folk who concentrate on international security a real laugh-out-loud. On January 19 and again on January 21, the Russian Foreign Ministry demanded an inspection of Georgian military facilities under the Vienna 1999 document of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

New Atlanticist

Jan 24, 2009

Report: Iran Nearly Out of Uranium

By Peter Cassata

Iran has nearly depleted the stockpiles of uranium it imported in the 1970s, and its own uranium mines hold only small quantities of lower-grade ore, according to a recent news leak.  Western states have now launched a diplomatic push to urge all uranium-exporting countries not to sell to Tehran.

Iran

New Atlanticist

Jan 24, 2009

Obama Orders Pakistan Drone Attacks

By James Joyner

While President Obama has sent some major signals in his first days in office that his foreign policy will differ from President Bush’s, he sent one yesterday demonstrating continuity on a very key issue:  targeting al Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas. 

New Atlanticist

Jan 23, 2009

5 Questions for Thomas Barnett

By James Joyner

Thomas Barnett has answered five questions I posed to him about his new book, Great Powers: American and the World After Bush.  This is the final piece in my week-long series on Barnett for the New Atlanticist.

European Union International Organizations

New Atlanticist

Jan 23, 2009

India-Iran-Afghanistan Corridor?

By Peter Cassata

In a measure to sidestep Pakistan’s dominance of trade routes to Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has negotiated a deal with Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee that will see India ship goods to land-locked Afghanistan via Iran.

Afghanistan India

New Atlanticist

Jan 23, 2009

Russia Offers Afghanistan Cooperation

By James Joyner

Like many other countries, Russia is seizing on a new administration in Washington in an effort to redefine its relationship with the United States. Denis Dyomkin for Reuters: Russia welcomes U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to review policy in Afghanistan and is ready to cooperate, including on supply routes for NATO forces, Russian President Dmitry […]

Afghanistan Russia

New Atlanticist

Jan 23, 2009

Ceasefire with al Qaeda?

By James Joyner

Marc Lynch passes on word that “Mohammed Essam Derbala, one of the leaders of the Egyptian al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, [Thursday] called on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to declare a unilateral four month ceasefire [hudna] with the United States to test Barack Obama’s pledges to establish a new relationship with the Islamic world and to close […]

New Atlanticist

Jan 22, 2009

Europe Lauds Secret Prison Shutdown

By James Joyner

President Obama’s order to “shut secret CIA-run prisons abroad brought renewed calls for their locations to be disclosed as well a fresh denial from Poland, one of two eastern European countries most closely linked to the practice,”  Shawn Pogatchnik and Frank Jordans report for AP

Poland

New Atlanticist

Jan 22, 2009

President Obama to Close Guantanamo Within Year

By James Joyner

President Barack Obama is expected to begin to fulfill his campaign pledge to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, AP‘s Philip Elliot reports. A senior Obama administration official said the president would sign an order Thursday to shutter the Guantanamo prison within one year.

New Atlanticist

Jan 19, 2009

Polls: Obama Presidency and Gaza Blame

By James Joyner

The new Atlantic Council poll is on the obvious topic: The presidency of Barack Obama, which begins tomorrow. Readers are asked to predict what kind of president he’ll be: one of America’s greatest presidents; a failed president, overwhelmed by problems; a rather average president.

New Atlanticist

Jan 16, 2009

Henry Kissinger: Optimist!

By James Joyner

Henry Kissinger has been called many names over the years.  But Atlantic Council president and CEO may have found a new one last night after the conclusion of Kissinger’s Makins Lecture:  Optimist.

New Atlanticist

Jan 16, 2009

Kissinger’s Formula: Goal + Capability + Staying Power

By James Joyner

Brent Scowcroft, who followed Henry Kissinger as National Security Advisor to President Ford, introduced his friend last night as “one of the very few people who have truly strategic minds.”  Kissinger demonstrated just that during the far-ranging speech that followed.

New Atlanticist

Jan 16, 2009

Kissinger: Iran Diplomacy More Than Just Talk

By James Joyner

Perhaps the longest running foreign policy argument during the 2008 presidential campaign stemmed from Barack Obama’s vowing during the July 2007 YouTube debate that he would be “willing to meet separately, without precondition . . . with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides […]

Iran

New Atlanticist

Jan 16, 2009

Gitmo ‘Recidivism’ Claims Don’t Stand Scrutiny

By James Joyner

Earlier this week, I reported on the U.S. Defense Department’s claims that as many as 61 former Guantanimo detainees had returned to terrorism.  My friend Steve Hynd, who blogs at Newshoggers and elsewhere, passes along a rather convincing rejoinder from Michael J. Ricciardelli of the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy & Research.

New Atlanticist

Jan 15, 2009

Time to Lose War on Terror?

By James Joyner

In a Guardian op-ed and a speech in Mumbai, both today, British foreign secretary David Milibrand says that the “war on terror” was a bad idea.

United Kingdom

New Atlanticist

Jan 15, 2009

A Grand Opportunity for a Global President

By Shuja Nawaz

Charles Dickens called Washington a “city of magnificent intentions.” When Barack Obama takes over on January 20th as the 44th President of the United States, he will need to translate his own lofty ideas into realities. What makes the challenge bigger for him is that he may also be carrying another title: the first globally-elected […]

New Atlanticist

Jan 13, 2009

Freed Gitmo Inmates Return to Terrorism

By James Joyner

Whether by mischievous intent or happy coincidence, mere hours after Obama people announced that he would order the Guantanamo Bay detention facility closed, the Bush administration announced that 61 former detainees had returned to terrorism

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