U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have an opportunity this weekend as they address the Munich Security Conference to suggest ways to stabilize NATO’s ailing defense capabilities.

The core idea of the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy is that lasting peace and stability can only exist where governments guarantee their citizens security, prosperity, freedom, and equality.

It is not without historical irony that the only other country to stand with Britain over the Fiscal Compact at yesterday's EU Summit was the Czech Republic which Chamberlain sold out to Hitler at Munich in 1938. Last night Martin Callanan, the leader of British Conservatives in the European Parliament accused the Prime Minister of “appeasement”.

On January 27, the Atlantic Council held an off-the-record discussion on developments in Russia and in US-Russian relations with Dr. Sergey Rogov, the director for the Institute for US and Canadian Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

On the tomb of Tamburlaine, King of Persia, there is a dread inscription, “When I rise, the world will tremble”. Faced with Tehran’s seeming determination to develop nuclear weapons the march towards confrontation this week quickened.

The Oxford Handbook of War, edited by Atlantic Council Strategic Advisors Group members Julian Lindley-French and Yves Boyer, has been nominated for the prestigious Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature awarded by the Royal United Services Institute.

Britain will never accept German leadership even though Germany will emerge from the economic crisis as Europe’s leading power. History is still far too close for that ever to happen.

The Snow Meeting is famous. Every January Lithuania brings together prime ministers, foreign and defence ministers from across what is increasingly referred to as the Nordic Baltic region, together with senior American, French, and German officials and commentators. The British were of course not there. Shame.