European Union

The Case for a European Defence Review

By Jorge Benitez

From Marcel Dickow, Hilmar Linnenkamp, and Christian Mölling, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik:  What the EU needs now is a broad assess-ment of the existing national capabilities with regard to their potential for the cre-ation of joint European capabilities – the European Defence Review (EDR).

NATO-EU: Working to fill gaps in defense capabilities

By NATO

From NATO: NATO’s relations with the European Union go back twenty years: the 1992 Maastricht Treaty was the first EU treaty to mention NATO.

EU membership losing its appeal in Turkey

By Kristina Karasu, Spiegel

Through NATO-EU cooperation, Dutch ship frees crew hijacked by pirates

By NATO

From NATO:  On 13 August 2012, the armed boarding team of the Dutch naval vessel HNLMS Rotterdam freed a pirated vessel in the Gulf of Aden and detained six suspected pirates.

EU ambassadors blast Belarus over diplomatic spat with Sweden, mull new sanctions

By Reuters

From Reuters:  Belarus’s relations with the West took a turn for the worse on Friday as EU governments agreed to reprimand Minsk for expelling the Swedish ambassador in a row over a pro-democracy stunt involving an air drop of teddy bears on Belarus’s territory.

Obama’s Europe Pivot

By John Vinocur, the International Herald Tribune

America and Europe’s Pacific Partnership

By Patryk Pawlak and Eleni Ekmektsioglou, the Diplomat

From Patryk Pawlak and Eleni Ekmektsioglou, the Diplomat:  The joint statement touches upon several important issues for the region’s stability: North Korea’s denuclearization, democratization in Burma, territorial claims in the South China Sea, and human rights.

U.S.-EU Statement on the Asia-Pacific Region

By the Department of State

From the Department of State:  Secretary Clinton and High Representative Ashton noted that interdependence between Asia, the United States and the European Union has reached unprecedented levels.

Teddy bear feud escalates: Belarus expels all Swedish diplomats

By Camille Bas-Wohlert, AFP

From Camille Bas-Wohlert, AFP:  Sweden’s ties with Belarus soured further Wednesday as Minsk expelled all Swedish diplomats and closed its mission in Stockholm, five days after the ex-Soviet state expelled the Swedish ambassador.

Italy’s Prime Minister warns of ‘a front line between North and South’ in Europe

By Mario Monti, Spiegel

From Mario Monti, Spiegel:  I can only welcome the ECB’s statement that the market for sovereign bonds in the euro zone is undergoing a period of "severe malfunctioning."