Atlantic Council

Amidst massive defense cuts and perennial squabbling over burden sharing across NATO, the Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark have quietly assumed a real leadership role in the transatlantic security relationship. They are making valuable contributions to the Alliance in personnel, strategic vision, operations, and policy.

Since the very start of armed resistance to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad there have been demands that US President Barack Obama declare and impose a no-fly zone over parts of Syria. Over the past several months these demands have increased exponentially, as the regime has established a deadly pattern of terror: when populated areas are lost, the reflexive response is to subject urban neighborhoods and towns to artillery, air, and even missile assaults.

Now that the dust has settled on President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated trip to Israel, it is possible to analyse the significance of the visit. The trip — the first foreign visit of his second term — carries important implications for US foreign policy.

 Chuck Hagel recently delivered his first major public-policy address since becoming secretary of defense.

“A thorough examination of the way our military is organized and operates will...highlight our inherent strengths.  Our strategic planning must emphasize these strengths, which include leader development, training, mobility and logistics, special operations forces, cyber, space, research and development.”

In his first major policy address as Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel called for a radical overhaul of our armed forces -- "not just tweaking or chipping away at existing structures and practices." While the goal is bold and laudable, history tells us that achieving it is unlikely.

Early last week, operators noted that there were disruptions on multiple undersea communications cables that terminated in Egypt and nearby destinations, including I-ME-WE, TE-North, EIG, and SEA-ME-WE-3. The sheer number of breaks struck some observers as an odd coincidence, but was

Something President Obama said in his speech to India’s parliament in 2010 gladdened lots of Indian hearts.

Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control, warns “nightmare bacteria” with a “fatality rate as high as 50 percent” and a high resistance to antibiotics could soon become a public health crisis. A coordinated international effort to prevent that outcome is imperative.

During the Cold War, the thermonuclear standoff between the United States and Soviet Union was often described as two scorpions in a bottle. The notion was that both scorpions would sting the other to death no matter which struck first. Of course, the prospect of the scorpions being of the opposite sex with options other than mutual suicide was rarely raised.