Atlantic Council

Wired's Spencer Ackerman reports on the Pentagon's measures to fix obvious flaws in its security revealed by the Wikileaks debacle.

Tennis's fourth and final grand slam event of the year, the U.S. Open, gets underway this week in New York City. The diversity of the women's field is a case study in how globalization has infiltrated the world of sports, creating reality that few could have foreseen a generation ago.

Let us be blunt. The U.S. Department of Defense and the entire federal government face a fiscal crisis far worse than any threat posed by al-Qaida, Iran or North Korea.

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, generated quite the buzz with his proclamation last week that, "The most significant threat to our national security is our debt." 

Romanian President Traian Basescu is on a mission to right the wrongs of Stalin, and he does not care what the Western European media have to say about it.  In a recent joint interview with Moldovan Acting President Mihai Ghimpu, Basescu affirmed that Romania has granted citizenship to 17,000 Moldovan nationals this year.

In his 30-year career with the FBI, Oliver "Buck" Revell dealt with all manner of transnational crime and terrorism and held numerous senior positions with the bureau. In mid-1985, he achieved the highest rank in career government service when he became the FBI director's deputy for counter-terrorism and counterintelligence activities.

In the latest installment of the New Atlanticist Podcast Series Atlantic Council senior fellow Sarwar Kashmeri interviews LTG David Huntoon, recently-appointed Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY. Huntoon discusses how the Academy is adapting to a complex and rapidly-changing global environment, and the importance of instilling tomorrow's military leaders with a well-rounded education.

On January 24th the U.N. Security Council – with backing from the Obama administration – decided to remove five former high-ranking Taliban leaders from its global terrorist blacklist.

Wars fundamentally change militaries. For example, the bloody and muddy stalemate of World War I led defeated Germany to invest in the innovative use of armor and firepower to break that stalemate. The U.S. experience in Vietnam led to the rise of the professional and all-volunteer force that is now fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The inexorable growth of China’s GDP has now taken it past Japan and it now takes aim at surpassing that of the USA, whose economy is at present more than two and a half times bigger. It took China a little less than a decade to make a similar leap to overtake Japan.