Seeking to limit fallout from the latest North Korean uranium enrichment disclosures, Obama officials have been implying they kind of knew about it all along, which is kind of true inasmuch as concern about the subject reached well back into the previous administration. But Siegfried Hecker, hands-down the leading authority on North Korean nuclear activities, […]
The critics of the Federal Reserve don’t get it. Here are two articles in the WSJ and NYTimes that describe the withering ideological attack the US central bank has sustained since the onset of the global financial crisis. In recent posts, Nov. 15 and Nov. 18, I have argued that deflation risk is real and requires unorthodox thinking and action by […]
Latin America appeared in force at the G-20 Summit in Seoul. Two of the three Latin American presidents there were women, Presidents Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina, who likewise represented half of the female leaders at the G-20. Unprecedented. Latin interests in the G-20 are diverse, given Argentina’s heavy […]
We can be pretty sure Stuxnet targeted Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant, and we know, because of its enormous complexity and sophistication, that large resources went into its development. But did those who built and launched it achieve their objective? The New York Times concluded one of two recent articles on stuxnet with a skeptical […]
As Patrick Frost of the FPA Afghanistan blog noted last week, the Asia Foundation recently released a report on Afghan public opinion. It paints a seemingly optimistic picture of the prospects for an ISAF success. The most newsworthy finding is that a majority of Afghans now show no support for armed insurgents. Only 40% say […]
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 […]
Having largely gone unreported by the Western media in general, a burgeoning arms race between Azerbijan and Armenia has steadily crystalized over the past few years. Predominantly concerning frictions over the disputed regions of Nagorno-Karabakh drawn across ethnic and geopolitical lines, the two nations have begun acquiring military hardware at a frantic rate. Emboldened by the rapid […]
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 […]
Thank God he does! Earlier this week I wrote a piece (click here) about money men who don’t understand country risk writing investment letters prescribing economic policy to the US government. Bill Gross, founder of mega-bond fund, Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO) out of sunny Newport Beach CA, criticized the Federal Reserve and its policy […]
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, […]