Indo-Pacific

NATO Chief Doesn’t See Karzai Signing Security Pact

By Adrian Croft, Reuters

President Hamid Karzai is unlikely to sign a pact for U.S. and NATO forces to stay in Afghanistan after 2014 and will probably leave the choice for his successor, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Saturday.

New Era in French-American Military Cooperation

By François Heisbourg, New York Times

France worries deeply — as do other European and Middle Eastern allies — about America’s foreign policy shift after Iraq and Afghanistan, its reluctance to put American forces in the front line in the world’s trouble spots.

Will a Counterterrorism Operation in Pakistan Succeed Under Current Conditions?

While Pakistan’s government and its Taliban movement formally have started peace talks, events there suggest that the coming months may as likely bring a Pakistani military offensive, long sought by the United States, against the country’s biggest territorial stronghold of the Taliban and other militant groups. In latter January, the Pakistani military and the Taliban […]

ELP Fellows Convene in Islamabad

Pakistan is a young and increasingly urban society, which lends tremendous opportunity for progress through its demographic dividend. The youth, who account for nearly 60 percent of Pakistan’s population, will ultimately determine Pakistan’s future course. To help empower these young people in Pakistan, the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center launched the Emerging Leaders of Pakistan […]

After Afghanistan, How Will We Fight the Next Multination War?

By Stephen Saideman, Globe and Mail

As 2014 seems to be the year that we look back and ponder what the Afghanistan war means for the future, the question becomes: what of NATO?

Asian Ex-Officials Map Path to Peace In and Around Afghanistan

A team of sixty former officials and other experts from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and neighboring countries is lobbying those governments to stabilize the region by restoring Afghanistan’s strategic neutrality at the center of Asia. The group, including ex-ministers, diplomats and legislators, as well as scholars, has drafted a roadmap to defusing regional conflicts that, if […]