From Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO:  Many will remember 2011 as a year of austerity. But it has also been a year of hope. The international community united in its responsibility to protect. Much of the Arab world took a new path forward.

From the Globe and Mail:  A Canadian Forces officer who served for a decade inside military intelligence has been charged with passing government secrets to foreign interests over the span of four and a half years – a case that threatens this country’s reputation among its closest allies.

From Iain Murray and James C. Bennett, the Wall Street Journal:  Contrary to an oft-repeated myth, links between Britain and the United States are not reducible to the personal relationships between presidents and prime ministers. The U.S. and the U.K. have always been each other's primary financial partners.

From Heather Conley, the Washington Post:  In April, President Obama signed a new command plan that gives NORAD and the U.S. Northern Command greater responsibility in protecting the North Pole and U.S. Arctic territory.

From Neil Reynolds, the Globe and Mail:  Now, in The New World Order, a study published in November by the London-based Legatum Institute, [American geographer Joel] Kotkin and nine academic associates conclude that the anglosphere will remain the ascendant player on the world stage for a long time to come.

From Doug Saunders, the Globe and Mail:  Ten years and seven weeks ago, this paper’s front-page headline read, in banner letters, “Canadians head off to war.” That would become the longest, and possibly the most controversial, military combat operation in Canadian history.

From J.L. Granatstein,the Ottowa Citizen:  The budgetary chaos abroad and in Washington has clear implications for Canada.

From AFP:   NATO on Sunday guarded against “unrealistic expectations” for peace and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa as violence flared in Syria and Egypt.