Scowcroft Center Commentary, Analysis, & Reports

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

All commentary & analysis

New Atlanticist

Nov 7, 2008

While We Weren’t Looking…

By Lynn Roche

The Atlantic Council’s Robert Manning recently focused our attention on the October Asia-Europe Summit in Beijing.  We Americans might have missed the significance of the emerging multipolarity and shifts in global power while up to our elbows in election politics and financial woes.

New Atlanticist

Nov 5, 2008

Asian Integration into the Global Financial Leadership

By Hugh De Santis

As almost everyone now agrees, recovery from what promises to be a protracted global recession will require a multilateral effort.   In an increasingly interconnected world, the politics of mutualism, as I have written elsewhere, will force developed as well as emerging countries to rely on each other.

New Atlanticist

Nov 3, 2008

How the New York Times Sees the World

By James Joyner

The above illustration depicts the number of articles devoted by the New York Times to a given country since 2000, compiled by the gang at Gene Expression.

New Atlanticist

Oct 31, 2008

Russia May Leave Europe Out in the Cold

By Christopher Harness

The landmark pipeline deal recently signed between Russia and China connecting the Siberian oil fields with Daqing should send cold chills up Europeans’ spines.  It may very well mean they will be literally cold in the foreseeable future.

European Union International Organizations

New Atlanticist

Oct 30, 2008

Don’t Know Much About Foreign Policy

By James Joyner

Cernig, a pseudonymous “forty-something ex-pat Scotsman living in the USA” whose “abiding interest is foreign policy — or to be precise the domestic policy that America inflicts on foreigners,” jumps off from Bob Manning’s recent reflection on a post-American world to lament the general lack of interest of Americans in world affairs.

New Atlanticist

Oct 30, 2008

American Elections and UK Relations

By James Joyner

Sir Christopher Meyer, British ambassador to the United States from 1997 to 2003, takes to the pages of the Telegraph to answer the question “Which President would be best for Britain?”  

United Kingdom

New Atlanticist

Oct 28, 2008

Restoring the German Army’s Auftragstaktik

By Florian Broschk

The German parliament has extended the Bundeswehr’s mission in Afghanistan for another fourteen months. A discussion is now needed on what goals the German army can realistically be expected to achieve and which strategy will offer the best hope for success.

Afghanistan Germany

New Atlanticist

Oct 28, 2008

Iraq Training Mission Shows NATO’s Future

By David Capezza

At the request of the provisional Iraqi government in 2004, NATO began providing training, assistance, and equipment to the Iraqi Security Forces to assist with the creation of a democratically led and enduring security sector.  This mission has grown from planning and training security forces to include advising and mentoring of security forces, both in […]

NATO Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

Oct 27, 2008

Preconditions, Preparations, and Posturing

By James Joyner

Nick Burns, a career diplomat who recently retired after a quarter century of service as the number three ranked official in the State Department, has a long piece in Newsweek declaring “We Should Talk to Our Enemies.”  It pointedly takes John McCain to task for his repeated hammering at Barack Obama for pledging to negotiate […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 27, 2008

Sneak Preview of the Future: Who Makes New Rules?

By Robert Manning

Don’t look now, but much about last week’s Asia-Europe Summit (ASEM) – from its remedies for the financial meltdown to its obscurity in the U.S. – spoke volumes about emerging multipolarity and the historic shift in global power.  Was America watching?

New Atlanticist

Oct 22, 2008

Republican Foreign Policy Establishment, R.I.P.?

By James Joyner

Ilan Goldenberg, policy director for the National Security Network, argues that Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president sounds the death knell for “the Republican foreign policy establishment as we know it. The final break between traditional pragmatic foreign policy conservatives and Neocons.”

New Atlanticist

Oct 20, 2008

NATO Commander Issues Call to Action

By James Joyner

General John Craddock, the Supreme Allied Commander, gave a talk this morning to RUSI, the UK’s Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, issuing his boldest pronouncements to date on the problems besetting NATO.  He details the problems with cooperation in the mission in Afghanistan that are familiar to regular readers of this […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 17, 2008

NATO Enlargement: The Unanswered Question

By James Joyner

FAS’ Steven Aftergood draws our attention to “NATO Enlargement: Albania, Croatia, and Possible Future Candidates,” [PDF] a recent study by the Congressional Research Service.

NATO Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

Oct 16, 2008

NATO in Kosovo: 10 Years Later

By James Easaw

In the wake of UN Security Council Resolutions 1160 and 1199 of March and September 1998, the international community grappled with how to deal with the atrocities being perpetrated in a little known province of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) called Kosovo.  A decade later, Kosovo, an independent state in Europe, has been moved […]

NATO Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

Oct 16, 2008

Pakistan: No Money, No Energy, No Government?

By James Joyner

A top secret National Intelligence Estimate leaked to the papers earlier this week portrays the situation in Pakistan as “very bleak,” with one drafter saying the country has “no money, no energy, and no government.” 

New Atlanticist

Oct 10, 2008

Grim Prospects in Afghanistan

By Don Snow

The war in Afghanistan is now seven years old, and it is no closer to being over than it was when it began. For years, it has flown beneath the radar cover provided by Iraq. As the Iraq war winds down, however, attention has, as noted earlier this week ("Are We Losing in Afghanistan?"), begun […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 9, 2008

Piracy’s Silver Lining?

By Peter Pham

I recently outlined the growing challenge to international commerce and security posed by the burgeoning piracy in the waters off the Somali coast and lamented that it looked unlikely that the international community would muster the political will to confront the underlying causes of the pirate phenomenon. Nonetheless, there may be an upside to the […]

European Union International Organizations

New Atlanticist

Oct 8, 2008

Why Britain Wants Talks with the Taliban

By Jeffrey Lightfoot

A split has emerged between London and Washington over the best way forward in Afghanistan. Over the last week, British diplomats and military commanders have expressed growing doubts about the success of the current NATO strategy. Faced with an imminent change in leadership in the White House and an increasingly deadly stalemate in Afghanistan, London […]

NATO Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

Oct 8, 2008

Privacy, Biometrics and the War on Terror

By Neil Leslie

Anglo-Americans are the exception when it comes to national ID cards. Almost every other major country that has suffered from terrorism in the past quarter-century has instituted some form of compulsory national identification. Germany, Spain, Israel, Turkey, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan have all done so. The United States and the United Kingdom […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 3, 2008

Focusing the Spy Glass on Pakistan’s ISI

By Shuja Nawaz

Only in Pakistan does the appointment of a new spy chief elicit more commentary than, say, a Prime Minister under today’s political system, where the presidency holds the power strings. The appointment of Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha as the new head of the Inter Services Intelligence earlier this week has raised expectations about a […]

Load More

Newsletter

Stay connected with us by signing up for our weekly newsletter “The Strategist” to be notified of all upcoming events, new publications, recent media hits, and exclusive updates within the Scowcroft Center:

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

Learn more