Scowcroft Center Commentary, Analysis, & Reports

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New Atlanticist

Nov 2, 2010

Obama in India: Expectations and Opportunities

By Shikha Bhatnagar

President Obama will be making his first visit to India next week.  There is no question that the President’s trip is important as a symbol of the growing prominence of India’s role in the global economy, and its strategic importance in regional stability.

New Atlanticist

Nov 1, 2010

Repairing NATO-Pakistan Relations Part II

By Derek Reveron Nikolas Gvosdev and Hayat Alvi

Last month, we considered how NATO and Pakistan could repair relations in the wake of Pakistan asserting its sovereignty in the aftermath of a border skirmish between NATO attack helicopters and a Pakistani border post. Fortunately, the Torkham Gate has been re-opened and Afghanistan-bound supply convoys from Karachi have resumed.   The short-term crisis indicates that […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 29, 2010

Afghanistan Process Will Take Years

By James Joyner

 Ivo Daalder, the US Ambassador to NATO, says that we are "seeing the corner and can peek around it in Afghanistan" and that a province-by-province handover of security responsibilities to the host government will "start in the first half of 2011." 

New Atlanticist

Oct 28, 2010

Cybered Conflict as a New Frontier

By Chris Demchak

Understanding basic cybered conflict begins first with two critical adages for the cyberspace user at any organizational scale: ‘user beware’ and ‘user prepare’.  First, if you or your organization are digitally connected to others to obtain something critical to the ability to operate, neither of you can sensibly fully trust anything reachable from that connect, […]

Cybersecurity Security & Defense

Transcript

Oct 28, 2010

Transcript: Challenges and Opportunities in the Emerging Arctic

Full transcript of a public address and conversation with Grete Faremo, Minister of Defense of Norway.

Northern Europe

New Atlanticist

Oct 28, 2010

U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Again Tested by Nuclear Issue

By Ronak Desai

With President Obama scheduled to visit India in early November, officials in New Delhi are working with Washington to ease American concerns over nuclear liability legislation recently enacted by the Indian parliament that effectively precludes nuclear commerce between the United States and India. Formally entitled, “Civil Liability for the Nuclear Damages Bill, 2010,” passage of […]

Event Recap

Oct 28, 2010

Challenges and Opportunities in the Emerging Arctic: A Norwegian Perspective

On October 28, the Atlantic Council’s International Security Program hosted Grete Faremo, Minister of Defense of Norway, for a public address and conversation.

Northern Europe

New Atlanticist

Oct 27, 2010

Why Great Institutions Fail

By Harlan Ullman

Why have a surprisingly large number of great institutions, supposedly impervious to failure, from super banks and mammoth insurance companies to giant automakers recently failed?  Are these spectacular failures cyclical and thus inevitable whether due to God or man?   Or are there more universal explanations? Do governments, irrespective of political basis or party affiliation, […]

Economy & Business

New Atlanticist

Oct 27, 2010

NATO in an Age of Austerity

By James Joyner

 World Politics Review has published a special issue on "NATO’s Identity Crisis" ahead of next month’s Lisbon summit and the unveiling of a new Strategic Concept. I contributed the lead essay, "NATO in an Age of Austerity."

New Atlanticist

Oct 26, 2010

Save NATO: Merge it with CSDP

By Sarwar Kashmeri

NATO isn’t working, warns Sarwar Kashmeri, who advocates a U.S, Canadian and EU joint project that would "bridge" the Atlantic alliance with Europe’s fledgling defence and security framework. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has been the most successful military alliance in history. Few people on either side of the Atlantic, or anywhere else in the […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 26, 2010

Afghan Peace Solution

By Arnaud de Borchgrave

 America’s 17 intelligence agencies have spent more than half a trillion dollars — more than $500,000,000,000 — since 9/11, most of it on the global war on terror, and the Obama administration still believes that if Taliban supremo Mullah Mohammad Omar Akhund were to return to power in Kabul, al-Qaida would be back too — […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 25, 2010

U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue

By Huma Yusuf

What began last week as a strategic dialogue between US and Pakistani civilian and military leaders ended in strategic disconnect. Despite the US State Department’s efforts to make Washington’s relationship with Islamabad less one-dimensional – 13 working groups discussed development issues as wide-ranging as water and women’s empowerment – security issues remained the focus of […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 25, 2010

An Opportunity to Reimagine Eurasia

By Samuel Charap and Alexandros Petersen

Despite the smiles, hearty handshakes and declarations of partnership, President Obama’s meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in New York last month was actually a symptom of waning U.S. influence in Eurasia.

New Atlanticist

Oct 22, 2010

The U.S. and Pakistan: Uneasy Ties

By Shuja Nawaz

"Pakistan today is like a ship in heavy seas, having lost its propulsion’’ described a recent visitor to Islamabad. The imagery is dramatic but apt as the country reels under the effects of a massive flood and political squabbling that appear to have reduced government to firefighting rather than coming up with a credible long-term […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 21, 2010

If Pakistanis Thought Like Americans

By Harlan Ullman

With the U.S.-Pakistani strategic dialogue resuming in Washington today, the relationship could hardly be worse.  The trust deficit, already vast, has been stressed to the breaking point by NATO incursions into Pakistan and the subsequent ten-day closure of the major land supply route from Karachi to Afghanistan in retaliation. But there is a grimmer prospect.  […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 20, 2010

Cybered Conflict vs. Cyber War

By Chris Demchak

The US military named cyberspace a military domain and spawned endless repetitive conferences trying to fit cyberspace into concepts tied to the air, land, sea, and even nuclear domains.  The domain designation is useful for parsing the bureaucratic lines of authority among military services. It also makes for more accustomed objectives if our military seeks […]

Cybersecurity Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

Oct 19, 2010

Trans-Atlantic Austerity: Can NATO Remain Relevant Amid Defense Cuts?

By Ian Brzezinski and Damon Wilson

When NATO leaders convene in Lisbon in November to adopt a new Strategic Concept, the alliance’s blueprint for the future, they will find that trans-Atlantic security has entered an age of austerity. Burdened by weakened economies, allied governments are cutting their defense budgets, some significantly. However, retrenchment and reduced ambitions are not NATO’s only options. […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 19, 2010

The Afghan Peace Process

By Don Snow

There was encouraging news out of Afghanistan this week–for a change. That news was that the Karzai government in Kabul and the Taliban leadership (which part or parts unspecified) have entered into preliminary discussions about meeting face-to-face to pursue a peace settlement to their civil war, in which the United States insinuated itself in 2001 […]

New Atlanticist

Oct 15, 2010

NATO’s Obsolescence is Greatly Exaggerated

By James Joyner

Daniel Larison responds to "The Case Against the Case Against NATO" with a strong Realist rebuttal.  But it continues to conflate legitimate concerns about American interventionism with the Alliance itself.

Issue Brief

Oct 15, 2010

Triple Crown 2010: Can the Transatlantic Alliance be Strategic?

By Marc Grossman

Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and Atlantic Council Board Director Marc Grossman encourages the Obama Administration to view the bureaucratic challenge of managing the upcoming NATO, U.S.-EU and OSCE summits as an opportunity to create a more coherent, strategic transatlantic relationship that maximizes the capabilities of all three organizations. Download the PDF

European Union International Organizations
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