National Journal is hosting an informative online forum this week on the Obama Administration’s strategy in Afghanistan. Heritage’s James Carafano identified the main points of a good strategy: Have the Pakistanis deal with the terrorist threat in their tribal areas, while Coalition forces defeat them in Afghanistan. Work to lessen …
The European Parliament has voted in favor of creating a European army. Although the initiative has a typically innocuous sounding acronym, SAFE (Synchronized Armed Forces Europe) it represents a major step toward the EU’s takeover of Member States’ armed forces. SAFE will be directed by an EU directorate, with its …
The past week saw a significant animation in the U.S.-Russian relationship. Moscow received Under Secretary of State William Burns, National Security Council Director of Russian Affairs Michael McFall, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Patrick Moon. Presumably, the U.S.-Russian relationship agenda is multidimensional – …
Despite Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Europe last week, and Secretary of State Clinton’s meeting with the Czech Foreign Minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, this week, we still don’t know whether this Administration will honor U.S. agreements with Poland and the Czech Republic to deploy elements of a U.S. missile defense …
This past Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden gave a troubling speech at the 45th Munich Security Conference. Heritage Director for Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom calls the speech “one of the weakest projections of U.S. leadership on foreign soil in recent memory. The message was confused, apologetic, over-conciliatory, and remarkably …
On January 21, French Defense Minister Herve Morin announced that the French government would be unwilling to send more troops to assist in NATO-led operations in Afghanistan. Morin’s comments came on the heels of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s announcement the day before that indicated German reinforcements to the NATO mission …
Just as Europe is in the midst of a particularly cold winter, Russia’s quasi-governmental gas giant Gazprom has turned off the gas taps to Ukraine, a major transit corridor for Russian gas into Europe. Gas shortages are being reported in several countries, including Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and the Czech Republic. …
MOSCOW — The drastic military reform plans articulated by Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov in mid-October are meeting with a sweeping opposition in the armed forces. The planned cuts among officers more than twofold — from 315,000 to 150,000 — are a matter of grave concern among mid-ranking officers that are …
TBILISI — Speaking on a special panel this morning, jointly hosted by AmCham Georgia and the think tank New Economic School, former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar described Georgia as “a victim of success.” Tbilisi’s rapid economic liberalization and determination to integrate into the Euro-Atlantic community through NATO and the …
