Scowcroft Center Commentary, Analysis, & Reports

Afghan Realities

By James Stavridis

Gilles Dorronsoro, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argued in the New York Times on Sept. 15 that the Western coalition will not defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan, and “needs to start facing reality and begin negotiating with the Taliban before it’s too late.” NATO’s commander responds.

China displays projection of air power in Central Asian exercises

By Martin Sieff, Central Asia Newswire

Freedom and Defense Spending

By James Joyner

In a rather odd posting at RealClearWorld‘s Compass blog titled “Defense Spending and Freedom,” Greg Scoblette argues: If I’m reading this op-ed from Danielle Pletka and Thomas Donnelly correctly it sounds like they don’t want the Republican party (or the Tea Party) to cut defense spending. Which is fine, so far as it goes. But they […]

Muddling Through to 2025

By James Joyner

Global Governance 2025, a joint effort of the Atlantic Council and its global partners, offers a wide range of trajectories for the international system depending on whether we adequately address known threats.

Please Fence Me In

By Harlan Ullman

Many decades ago, cowboy actor-singer Gene Autry made famous the tune, “Don’t Fence Me In.”   Today, in the diaphanous territory between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a better song could well be “Please fence me in.”  Indeed, that may be one of the few alternatives left if that region is ever to be stabilized and made more […]

NATO and the EU: Achieving Unity of Effort in a Comprehensive Approach

By Leo Michel

Amidst a spate of disturbing reports about Afghanistan and impending deep cuts in the UK, German, and other allied defense budgets and force structures, security affairs cognoscenti could be forgiven for overlooking some positive news about the Euro-Atlantic relationship:  NATO and the EU still enjoy broad support despite their current travails. According to the recently […]

On Strategy in Afghanistan

By Bernard Finel

I think it is worthwhile to spend a little time discussing the issue of “strategy” as a concept because I think a significant source of tension and dispute in recent debates is due to a misunderstanding of some of the key elements of the term.

Nuke Outlaw as Pakistani President?

By Arnaud de Borchgrave

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons renegade, who sold nuclear secrets to America’s enemies (Iran, North Korea and Libya) and spent the best part of the last decade under house arrest, is still Pakistan’s most popular man. Last week, Abdul Qadeer Khan, now a free man, was a guest on ARY, one of Pakistan’s most popular TV channels […]

Brussels Workshop on Protecting the Global Commons

On September 19 the Atlantic Council in partnership with Allied Command Transformation and the Security and Defence Agenda (SDA) gathered experts and NATO, EU, and national representatives for a workshop on NATO’s Role in the Global Commons.

Europeans’ Afghan Apathy and Consequences for NATO

By Steve Hynd

Across the pond, public support for NATO’s out-of-area adventure is cratering. The wide-ranging Transatlantic Trends study by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) also saw deep divisions between Europe and the United States on how to handle Iran’s nuclear ambitions. While 51 percent of Americans said they were confident that Afghanistan could […]

NATO in Afghanistan: Perception and Reality

By James Joyner

Anatol Lieven, the eminent journalist and now professor at the King’s College Department of War Studies, argues that the NATO effort in Afghanistan suffers from disparate and implausible motives and a profound lack of understanding of Afghanistan and the Taliban. In a very long book review essay at Current Intelligence, Lieven offers this assessment of […]

It’s time for the Senate to vote on New START

By George Shultz-Madeleine Albright-Gary Hart and Chuck Hagel

The Senate should promptly vote to approve the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (New START) with Russia for one reason: It increases U.S. national security. This is precisely why Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared at the outset of Senate consideration of the treaty that it has "the unanimous support of America’s military leadership." The treaty […]

Gates’ Remarkable Pentagon Transformation

By James Joyner

Robert Gates has been a reluctant Secretary of Defense, being coaxed out of the cushy presidency of Texas A&M by President Bush and talked into staying by President Obama.  But his impact on the Pentagon has been tremendous. Slate national security columnist Fred Kaplan has an excellent profile in Foreign Policy titled "The Transformer." On why Gates stayed on after […]

Pakistan Relations Poisoned

By Harlan Ullman

In Pakistan, following the catastrophic flooding that literally is drowning an entire nation, could things get much worse? Unfortunately, last week, things did. While trivial by comparison with the human suffering, several snapshots portray the level of poisons within the U.S.-Pakistani relationships as well as with other friends and would-be Pakistani benefactors that could be […]

NATO: A Fat, Bloated, Job Creation Project?

By James Joyner

Lost amidst the welcome news of British-French cooperation on military cost-sharing in some tough talk from their ministers of defense on NATO. Last week, I noted that the FT‘s superb reporter Ben Hall buried the lead, waiting until the 13th paragraph of a story to pass along Liam Fox’s pronouncement that, “We cannot accept a bloated […]

UK MOD Liam Fox: NATO ‘Bloated’

By Ben Hall, FT

From Ben Hall, FT: Speaking after a meeting in Paris, Liam Fox, UK defence secretary, and Hervé Morin, his French counterpart, said they were discussing with “absolute pragmatism” the scope for closer co-operation or even mutualisation of military capabilities and industrial projects amid tight spending constraints.

Cry for me Pakistan

By Arnaud de Borchgrave

The United States spent nine years (1980-89) working closely with Pakistan’s military against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan; followed by 11 years (1990-2001) of punishing Pakistan with all manner of sanctions for its secret nuclear weapons development that it kept denying even existed; followed by nine years (2001-10) making up with Pakistan as "a major […]

European Militaries Shrinking, Becoming More Useful

By Raymond Pritchett

The Germans are talking about military reform and to be honest, it is actually a very interesting issue to follow. This article can bring you up to speed on some of the issues if you are interested, but for more depth to the debate you’ll need to look elsewhere (and most of it is in […]