Atlantic Council

The Atlantic Council of the United States and the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations organized the first "U.S.-China Energy Security Cooperation Dialogue," held in Beijing on 31 October-1 November 2006. Conference participants included foreign policy analysts and energy experts from the U.S.

Although the United States and the European Union have for many years pursued different approaches on the issues of air quality and climate change, those strategies are now beginning to intersect. Their policy objectives are increasingly similar, and they can learn much from each other’s experience with regulation, market incentives, and enforcement.

The Council’s report Transatlantic Leadership for a New Global Economy is the product of a commission co-chaired by Stuart E. Eizenstat, former deputy secretary of the Treasury a­nd Council board member, and Grant D.

This compendium contains the text of major regulations, laws, and other documents governing U.S. interactions with North Korea. Also provided are the text of U.N. Resolutions, agreements, and other documents that represent major policy decisions in U.S. relations with North Korea.

Throughout 2006, allegations of U.S. involvement in “renditions” of suspected terrorists from Europe to prisons in Afghanistan and elsewher­e reverberated around European capitals. Charges that the United States had established secret prisons in some European countries raised the temperature even further.

The United States has few more important policy goals than eliminating North Korea's nuclear weapons program. The risk that the repressive Pyongyang regime could transfer nuclear weapons and materials to rogue states or terrorist groups weighs particularly heavy on the minds of U.S. policymakers.

During the second half of 2006 and in early 2007, the German economic eng­ine seemed to gain speed, moving into recovery after several years of stagnation. Whether this recovery is sustainable is still unclear, however. With its­ reliance on exports, Germany remains vulnerable to any downturn in the global economy.

Although the United States and the European Union have for many years pursued different approaches on the issues of air quality and climate change, those strategies are now beginning to intersect. Their policy objectives are increasingly similar, and they can learn much from each other’s experience with regulation, market incentives, and enforcement. Today, transatlantic cooperation could be enormously beneficial in developing new technologies and new regulatory frameworks, and in reaching out to developing countries, such as China and India.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the face of Europe has been transformed. Most Americans have focused on the geopolitical and security dimensions of these changes, overlooking another signifi cant aspect: the evolution and expansion of the European Union.

The September 11th terrorist attacks and their aftermath have not altered Saudi Arabia’s fundamental importance in the international arena nor its importance to the United States. Saudi Arabia remains the source of much of the world’s oil reserves, the site of the holiest places in Islam, and the crossroad of strategic lines of communication between Europe and Asia.