Last year, Russian people stuck it to the Man by painting a giant penis on a St Petersburg drawbridge. The Kremlin’s revenge sends that message right back. It’s much less funny, much more obscene, but also involves a bridge: a $1.3 billion bridge to a remote island as part of an overall $24 billion bill […]
The international community has been involved in Afghanistan since 2001 as a consequence of the 9/11 attacks on U.S. soil. By 2003, NATO took control of the ISAF and expanded its operations across all Afghanistan. Likewise, the Europeans have been involved in Afghanistan through several types of missions. On one side, Europeans have contributed to […]
Even before the onset of hostilities in Libya it was obvious to insiders on both sides of the Atlantic that NATO was increasingly dysfunctional. Libya has now shown the wider public that the emperor has no clothes. Cohesion used to be NATO’s trademark, but there is little of that left. And the reputation of the […]
Bill O’Reilly said it was logical. Donald Trump said it made no sense. Sarah Palin called it disappointing. Regardless of one’s opinion of President Obama’s speech last night on the U.S. military intervention in Libya, though, there no doubt seemed to be hints of an emerging “Obama Doctrine” in his remarks. There will be times, […]
by Sarwar Kashmeri As revolutions sweep the Middle East and leaders supported by the United States for decades are swept away, how should America respond? What lessons can the revolutionaries learn from the American revolution? Is military intervention in Libya warranted? Atlantic Council senior fellow Sarwar Kashmeri posed these questions to Washington Post associate […]
by Sarwar Kashmeri As the situation in Libya becomes daily more chaotic, pressure mounts on President Obama to militarily intervene on the side of the Libyan opposition. He should resist these calls. Without a clear mandate from the United Nations Security Council in support of Libyan intervention, the United States has little to gain, and […]
Joelle Fiss of Human Rights First writes in the EU Observer that NATO’s new Strategic Concept offers the European Union the opportunity for better coordination. “Tellingly, Nato’s strategic concept stretches out globally to incorporate new geo-political realities for its future, opening the door to political consultations with powers such as China, India and Russia,” she […]
Former Afghan Finance Minister and presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani was highly critical of United Nations operations in Afghanistan, lamenting what he said was a lack of transparency. “The UN should shut down in Afghanistan,” he said on a panel about the country’s future. “They are not transparent, they are not accountable, they are not responsive.” […]
LISBON – NATO’s Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen addressed the the Youth Summit here as leaders of the alliance approved the final draft of NATO’s new Strategic Concept. Rasmussen, the former Prime Minister of Denmark, said the ambitious agenda — which focuses on the future of long-term operations in Afghanistan, extensive partnerships with numerous countries, including […]
LISBON – The U.S. Assistant Secretary for Defense for international security affairs, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, affirmed U.S. support for Georgia’s aspirations for NATO membership here at the Young Atlantacist Youth Summit taking place alongside official deliberations over a new Strategic Concept for the transatlantic alliance. Vershbow said that NATO partnerships with Russia, Ukraine and Georgia […]
FPA fellow Sarwar Kashmeri, author of NATO 2.0: Reboot or Delete, spoke to Euronews’ Paul Hackett ahead of today’s NATO summit in Lisbon about the future of the alliance. You can watch the video here. The war in Afghanistan and the relationship with Russia are just some of the issues NATO is trying to grapple with […]
Dominik P. Jankowski from Poland’s J5 Strategic Planning Directorate and Tomasz K. Kowalik, Military Assistant to the Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, offer a military perspective on Central Europe’s efforts to mend rifts and manage strategic capabilities inside NATO at the Center for European Policy Analysis. I met Domink in […]
LISBON – Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates opened up the Youth Summit here with remarks on NATO’s new Strategic Concept, which he modestly branded the “Lisbon Concept.” Sócrates said the two lasting legacies of the summit would be an affirmation of NATO’s partnership with Russia and the start of a “new transition phase” in Afghanistan […]
LISBON – Lisbon is a city that has been on the tongues of many a European multilateralist in recent years. Not only is it the namesake of the European Union’s most recent governing agreement, the Lisbon Treaty, that lays out a number of ambitious goals in creating common foreign and security policy for the body, […]
NATO isn’t working, warns Sarwar Kashmeri in the most recent edition of Europe’s Worldew16uk_kashmeri. Kashmeri instead advocates a U.S., Canadian and EU joint project that would “bridge” the Atlantic alliance with Europe’s fledgling defense and security framework. Kashmeri, who contributes to this blog, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s International Security Program, and a […]