In his annual address Tuesday to both houses of parliament, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev warned that a new arms race would erupt if Moscow and the West cannot agree on a joint European missile defense program. Medvedev gave the following ultimatum: “Either we reach agreement on missile defense and create …
Speaking to the media this weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CBS’s Bob Schieffer that at NATO’s Lisbon Summit this weekend, many European states including Germany, Poland and the Baltic states had pressed the Administration on the ratification of New START. During one of the summit’s many news conferences, …
President Obama’s flying visit to Lisbon this weekend resulted in a mixed bag of results. On a practical level, NATO made big strides in fashioning the transatlantic alliance for the 21st century. On a personal level however, President Obama did not succeed in turning this weekend’s summits into ones that …
The NATO summit to be held in Lisbon on Nov. 19–20 has a hefty agenda in which Russia features prominently. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is defining its role in Afghanistan; is seeking agreement on joint missile defense; and is hosting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The Lisbon NATO summit is …
With the nuclear New START Treaty causing waves in Congress, President Obama’s recent overseas trips drawing criticism from both supporters and opponents, and the upcoming NATO heads-of-state summit in Lisbon this month, a fundamental question arises: What is America’s role in the world? In the newest installment in the Understanding …
As NATO leaders head to the alliance’s summit in Lisbon later this month, they should applaud the Czech Republic for increasing their troop contribution to the mission in Afghanistan during one of the most crucial periods for the counterinsurgency strategy. In December 2009, President Obama announced that America would deploy …
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw (Radek) Sikorski was probably being polite when he described, in a conference call on Friday with U.S. policy experts, the U.S. government as “a friend of the Eastern Partnership” initiative, a Polish-Swedish venture within the EU, which covers Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and the three countries of …
In late September–early October, China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF)’s SU-27 fighters participated for the first time in the Turkish military’s aerial maneuvers. By including the PLAAF in these maneuvers (known as “Anatolian Eagle”) Ankara is signaling another shift in its geopolitical orientation, as well as the emergence of …
Pakistan’s closure of one of the main NATO supply routes into Afghanistan and the string of attacks on NATO convoys transiting Pakistan over the last few days highlights the vulnerability of the entire coalition mission in Afghanistan to events inside Pakistan. Nearly eighty percent of supplies for the war effort …