United States and Canada

NATO Still has Vital Role, Secretary General Says

By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

NATO, the alliance born and bred in the Cold War, has provided good value for the U.S. taxpayer

Syria Shows Why Europe Needs to Flex More Muscle

By Gérard Errera, Financial Times

Europe has soft power through its ability to define rules and standards and to extend humanitarian and financial aid. It thinks the US can take the role of policeman of the world.

NATO Chief Backs US Threat of Force Against Syria

By Scott Stearns, Voice of America

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says the United States should keep up its threat of military action against Syria so as to push forward a deal to end Syria’s chemical weapons program.

The Rule of Ten, US Military Power, and 2020 Hindsight

By Harlan Ullman

Legitimate yelps of pain along with klaxons sounding alarms are reverberating throughout the Pentagon. The cause is sequestration and annual cuts of $50 billion for ten years to defense spending mandated by last year’s Budget Control Act. While $50 billion a year against an annual budget of $500-600 billion may not seem draconic, the simple […]

TTIP and the Fifty States: Jobs and Growth from Coast to Coast

A groundbreaking new report from the Atlantic Council, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and the British Embassy in Washington, entitled TTIP and the Fifty States: Jobs and Growth from Coast to Coast, explores the impact of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on the economies of all fifty United States. In summer 2013, representatives of the […]

Over Sixty Aircraft from NATO Members and Partners Training Together in Exercise Arctic Challenge

By USAF and NORDEFCO

From U.S. Air Force:  The first-ever Exercise Arctic Challenge, which includes more than 60 aircraft from five partner nations, here began Sept. 16.

The Syrian Sisyphus

By Harlan Ullman

The framework for elimination of Syrian chemical weapons agreed to last week by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov could, and could is the operative word, potentially become the most stunning geostrategic event in global security since Richard Nixon’s outreach to China and the demise of the Soviet Union. […]

Survey: Turkish Support for EU Membership on Decline, Opinion Divided on NATO

By Nesibe Hicret Soy, Today's Zaman

The desire of Turks to join the European Union has cooled considerably over the past decade and public support for NATO in Turkey is the lowest among NATO countries, according to the Transatlantic Trends 2013 public opinion survey

A Vision for China-US Relations

On September 17 the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Foresight Initiative hosted a distinguished panel discussion for the launch of the China-US Cooperation: Key to Global Future report, the culmination of a yearlong US-China Joint Assessment Project. For the project, the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Foresight Initiative, housed in the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, partnered with […]

It Isn’t the Military’s Place to Weigh in on the Syria Debate

By James Joyner

America’s generals and admirals, junior officers, and enlisted people overwhelmingly oppose military intervention in Syria. We should not know that.