Scowcroft Center Commentary, Analysis, & Reports

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Issue Brief

Jul 11, 2011

Nuclear Issues for NATO After the Strategic Concept

By Walt Slocombe

Atlantic Council Strategic Advisors Group member and former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Walt Slocombe analyzes how the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept will impact Alliance nuclear politics and posture in “Nuclear Issues for NATO After the Strategic Concept.” Download the PDF

NATO Nuclear Deterrence

Issue Brief

Jul 11, 2011

EUCOM and NATO-EU Relations after the Lisbon Summit

By Leo Michel

In “EUCOM and NATO-EU Relations after the Lisbon Summit: Bank Shots Score Too,” Leo Michel urges the United States to ‘embed’ officers with allied and partner defense institutions and for EUCOM to work with other European institutions on the implementation of the Comprehensive Approach. Download the PDF

European Union International Organizations

New Atlanticist

Jul 8, 2011

Future of the Marine Corps: Looking Beyond Afghanistan

By Magnus Nordenman

I’m zooming across Virginia at 9,000 feet inside a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey, the sometimes maligned aircraft that just recently entered service with the Marine Corps. I am hitching a ride down to Cherry Point, North Carolina to observe part of Exercise Mailed Fist, the largest Marine Corps exercise on the east coast in decades. […]

New Atlanticist

Jul 6, 2011

Keeping Up With Mideast Changes

By Barbara Slavin

The Obama administration took two important steps last week that demonstrated much-needed realism and nuance in the evolving U.S. relationship with political Islam. First, on Wednesday, it unveiled a new counterterrorism strategy that focuses squarely on Al Qaeda and its affiliates. It acknowledges that other groups, like Hezbollah and Hamas, might menace U.S. allies and […]

New Atlanticist

Jul 5, 2011

Flying Crocodiles: The Latest Russian Position On Missile Defense Cooperation with NATO

By Barry Pavel

The Russian government is working hard to evolve their latest position opposing cooperation with NATO on a range of potential missile defense projects.  The latest from Dimitry Rogozin, Russian Ambassador to NATO and Special Envoy of President Medvedev on Missile Defense Cooperation with NATO, is that “crocodiles will fly” before any Middle Eastern nation will […]

New Atlanticist

Jul 5, 2011

How to get Pakistan to break with Islamic militants

By Zalmay Khalilzad

In his Afghanistan speech last week, President Obama said we must “address terrorist safe havens in Pakistan.” He vowed to “press Pakistan to expand its participation in securing a more peaceful future,” “work with the Pakistani government to root out the cancer of violent extremism” and “insist that it keep its commitments.”

Pakistan

New Atlanticist

Jul 5, 2011

Azerbaijan, Armenia will ‘soon be left on their own’ to resolve Karabakh

By Jason Harmala

Borut Grgic, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a member of the advisory board of the European Policy Institute, was interviewed by News.Az on recent developments in the Azerbaijan-Armenia relationship. What are your impressions of the summit in Kazan? Are there grounds for pessimism that no document was signed during this meeting? No, […]

New Atlanticist

Jun 30, 2011

Time for Unity in Europe

By Carles Castello-Catchot

There has not been a time in recent years in which Europe, both as an idea and as a viable political and economic institution, has faced tougher times.

Southern & Southeastern Europe

New Atlanticist

Jun 30, 2011

U.S. Needs Viable Afghan Exit Plan

By Gurmeet Kanwal

There are few people in the United States who understand the American foreign policy better than Henry Kissinger. So, when the former secretary of state, who changed the balance of power in Asia with his “shuttle diplomacy” in the early 1970s, says something about a conflict zone in our part of the world, one has […]

New Atlanticist

Jun 29, 2011

Diplomatic Wounds Leave Half-Healed Scars

By Barbara Slavin

Turkey and Israel are close to resolving their dispute over last year’s flotilla fiasco, but the partnership that existed between them for more than a decade will almost certainly stay submerged. As a new flotilla of ships prepared to set sail for Gaza Tuesday, Turkish and Israeli officials and analysts said that only a major […]

Israel Turkey

New Atlanticist

Jun 27, 2011

Reaching Across the Border

By Raja Menon and Lalit Mansingh

Pakistan’s deceit in cocooning Osama bin Laden in Abottabad as well as the ISI support to the Mumbai attackers has angered Indian public opinion. Unfortunately, Pakistan is a geographical reality and it will always be a neighbour. Punishing Pakistan by not engaging it in areas of our national interest is therefore not wise. Given this, […]

New Atlanticist

Jun 27, 2011

After the bin Laden Raid

By Shuja Nawaz

For the second time in the life of the current government a parliamentary session has produced a unanimous “feel good” resolution, after what must have been serious prodding by the military. Private discussions again leaked badly to the media, making it difficult to ascertain what was really said, given that we cannot judge the motivations […]

New Atlanticist

Jun 22, 2011

NATO’s Surreal World

By Sarwar Kashmeri

From the International Herald Tribune, June 23, 2011: Has the Atlantic alliance outlived its usefulness? The British journalist and writer Geoffrey Wheatcroft raised that question in an opinion article (“Who needs NATO?,” June 16) that drew a strong reaction from Ivo H. Daalder, the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, who argued that the alliance is […]

New Atlanticist

Jun 21, 2011

A Tale of Two Gates

By Banning Garrett

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on June 10th painted a very grim picture of NATO’s possible future – and thus the future U.S. role in Europe and prospects for U.S.-European cooperation. Less than a week earlier, the same Secretary Gates had outlined a bullish future for the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific region – a U.S. […]

New Atlanticist

Jun 17, 2011

The Gates Speech Aftermath

By Nikolas Gvosdev

The “farewell address” delivered by outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the North Atlantic Alliance last Friday was a stark warning that “business as usual” cannot continue much longer.

New Atlanticist

Jun 17, 2011

Could a Turkish Buffer Enable a New Syria?

By Anna Borshchevskaya

Almost 10,000 Syrian refugees have entered Turkey over the last several days, as the Syrian government escalates its crackdown on protesters. While this is a large number, the Turkish daily Posta suggests Ankara fears much worse—that a civil war in Syria could flood Turkey with 200,000 more refugees. During a recent summit in Ankara, Turkish […]

New Atlanticist

Jun 16, 2011

Soft Power Disarmament Will All End in Tiers

By Julian Lindley-French

Leiden. The Netherlands, 16 June. America’s greatest thinker, Groucho Marks, once famously said that military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. One might say the same about European strategic intelligence. I have now just about read every single European security and defence strategy available and they all share a profound similarity. The joke goes something […]

New Atlanticist

Jun 14, 2011

Exeunt Pakistan Experts, Pursued by Bear

By Shuja Nawaz

With apologies to Shakespeare’s for appropriating his memorable line from A Winter’s Tale, I worry about the state of Pakistan expertise that is fading from the scene in key Washington policy making positions.

New Atlanticist

Jun 13, 2011

Turkish Election: An AKP Victory with Limits

By Ross Wilson

The unprecedented third consecutive electoral victory won by Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Sunday’s parliamentary elections owes to a widespread feeling of satisfaction with eight years of the Erdogan government’s rule. According to preliminary results, the party won 50 percent of the vote. This was at the top end of expectations and exceeded […]

New Atlanticist

Jun 13, 2011

Goldilocks and Afghanistan: How Big a Withdrawal?

By Don Snow

President Obama’s stated promise to begin the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan by July 2011, a commitment he made when he committed 30,000 additional troops to the war early in his presidency, is coming near. The major question is how large a withdrawal he will order, and what the consequences of whatever size drawdown […]

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