Atlantic Council

According to a recent Atlantic Council-Bertelsmann Foundation study of trade experts and policymakers from the United States and Europe, there is widespread optimism that that two sides will be able to successfully negotiate a trade and investment deal.

The Rwanda genocide began in April 1994; within a few weeks, nongovernmental organizations there were estimating that 100,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been massacred. Yet two months later, Reuters correspondent Alan Elsner and State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly had an infamous exchange:

In recent years international lawyers and accountants have built a web of corporate opacity which has enabled tax avoidance and corruption on an alarming scale. Private financial wealth sitting in tax havens has grown to around $21 trillion, of which $9 trillion is from developing countries.

On Wednesday I had the privilege of providing evidence to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee at its first meeting to consider the 2015 British Strategic Security and Defence Review alongside Lord Hennessy and Major-General Mungo Melvin.  Perhaps the most important contribution I made was to suggest to collected British politicians of all shades that whatever reforms are made to Britain’s strategic security and defense structures little will change unless the political class imposes effective oversight. 

Last week, finance ministers and central bankers from around the world gathered in Washington for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund semi-annual spring meetings to promote sustainable and equitable growth.

US President Barack Obama's Syria-related objective remains one of negotiated political transition consistent with what the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (P5) decided in Geneva in June 2012. It is important, therefore, to understand what was actually agreed.

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, several commentators have asked why we label some acts of mass violence "terrorism" while others are considered ordinary crime. Why do we treat those two so very differently, despite the latter being responsible for far more American deaths?

The Terror Label

Karl Marx mused that history first appears as tragedy and then as farce. That may not apply to the United States, as Americans are too often amnesia-prone when it comes to history. Americans' ability to ignore or forget history is legion. Three cases underscore this point.

The funny thing about writing a book on NATO and Afghanistan that is pretty critical of the alliance's performance is that I still end up being a NATO defender.  How so?

 Henrik Liljegren, an Atlantic Council board member, served 42 years in Sweden’s diplomatic corps, including stints as Ambassador to the United States, Turkey, East Germany, and Belgium.  In June 2009, we discussed the Russia "Reset" and the political climate in Turkey. Today, I had the opportunity to revisit these issues with him.