When NATO leaders meet this weekend in Chicago, they are expected to announce an Interim Missile Defense Capability in Europe. This announcement might read well in the summit’s declaration, but a lot more will need to be done before the members of the alliance will be protected from the ever-increasing missile threat. According to NATO’s strategic concept, “The greatest responsibility of the Alliance is to protect and defend our territory and our populations against attack, as set out in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.” This core tenant is what …
At the NATO Summit in Chicago this weekend, leaders will gather to discuss a number of issues facing the alliance. Top of the agenda will be Afghanistan, improving NATO’s military capabilities, and extending NATO’s partnerships with regional and global partners. However, nothing agreed at the summit will matter if America’s European allies do not start spending what is required on defense. Defense spending inside NATO is increasingly declining. As Libya and other NATO campaigns have demonstrated time and again, Europe relies too much on the U.S. to pick up the …
Last week, the British government made a decision to change from the Carrier Variant of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) back to the Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) variant of the JSF—as was originally planned before its 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. While this move was politically challenging for the coalition government in the U.K., it was the right decision. The assumed cost of equipping the U.K.’s new generation of aircraft carriers with catapults and arrestor gear that are required for the Carrier Variant of the JSF …
French President-elect François Hollande campaigned on bringing all French troops home from Afghanistan by the end of the year. Therefore, if this election promise is kept, NATO will have a gap of 3,300 troops to fill in an important area of Afghanistan during an important stage of the campaign. Currently, the French have around 3,300 troops in Afghanistan located in the relatively peaceful but geographically important Kapisa Province between Kabul and the Pakistani border. After a rogue Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers and wounded another 16 in January, Afghanistan …
It was reported last week that Turkey has blocked the European Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, and the EU’s President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, from attending the upcoming NATO Summit in Chicago. Neither has any business attending the Summit, and Turkey was correct in blocking their attendance. There are two good reasons why neither Barroso nor Van Rompuy needs to be representing the European Union at Chicago. First, the European Union is largely a supranational entity. The Secretary General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, works for and …
At least five people, including two Turkish officials, were wounded on Monday when a cross-border shooting hit a refugee camp in Turkey’s Kilis province along the Syrian border. This incident has been described by the Turks as a “violation” of its border. It adds another level of complexity to the international community’s efforts to force the recalcitrant Assad regime to end its violence against the Syrian people. Speaking to reporters about the incident, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an said: We have many options. A country has rights born out …
Thirty years ago today, the Argentine army invaded the Falkland Islands, a sovereign British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic. A brutal military regime in Argentina calculated that a weakened United Kingdom, increasingly stripped of the elements of national power, would be unable to respond to a military fait accompli. Recovery of the Falklands [las Malvinas to the Argentines] over which Argentina has claimed sovereignty for decades, would, the generals believed, reawaken national unity and rescue the flagging popularity of a military regime that had waged a Dirty War of …
This week in 1982, Argentine forces were probably preparing their equipment and checking plans ahead of their invasion of the Falkland Islands, to happen a couple of weeks later. Thirty years on, even after heaping cringe-worthy amounts of lavish praise on the Obama Administration during his recent visit, British Prime Minister David Cameron is still no closer to receiving explicit American support for British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. This is a shameful disregard of the Special Relationship. The Special Relationship is not about basketball games, barbeques, state dinners, or …
Earlier this week, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny shocked Europe when he announced that Ireland will hold a referendum on the Fiscal Stability Treaty. This will make Ireland the only member of the European Union that will allow its citizens to vote on the controversial treaty. There are many in Brussels who are disappointed by the Irish decision to offer its citizens a rightful say in what is an important part of Ireland’s future and economic well-being. The Fiscal Stability Treaty that was agreed in December will, among other things, …
The latest round of European Union (EU) sanctions against Syria, agreed today in Brussels, proves why the EU’s “common denominator” approach to foreign policy will never work. Although the EU adopted strong measures against the Syrian central bank, these same measures could easily have been taken much faster outside the bureaucratic structures of the EU. More than 7,500 civilians have been killed by the Assad regime since the start of the uprising. It should not take an EU ministerial meeting to determine that European countries need to adopt tough economic …
