Atlantic Council

All of we Brits of a certain age remember the film.  Richard Todd  coolly leading his elite squadron of Lancaster bombers into attack the Mohne, Eder, and Sorpe dams.  British stiff-upper lip and brilliant “bouncing bomb” technology combining against the backdrop of a stirring but peculiarly 1950s soundtrack to deal the Nazis a crippling blow.

As part of a larger (but, unfortunately, gated) story on how the terrific new Global Data on Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) might help social scientists forecast violent conflicts, the New Scientist recently posted some graphics using GDELT to chart the ongoing civil war in Syria. Among those graphics was this time-series plot of violent events per day in Syria since the start of 2011

Kenneth Waltz, the most important Realist theorist of the last half-century, died Monday, a few weeks before his 89th birthday.

Early this week, the world looked to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for a response to the bombings in Reyhanli that killed 47 people and left more than 100 wounded. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Turkey since the 2003 Istanbul bombings, shocking the nation and fueling anxiety over the war in neighboring Syria.

As expected, the National Front (BN) coalition won Malaysia’s May 5 election, but not without widespread allegations of electoral fraud, including the use of Bangladeshi migrants as illegal voters and other gerrymandering tactics. The opposition People’s Pact (PR) coalition leader Anwar Ibrahim refused to concede defeat and held a protest rally on May 8, attended by about 100,000.

Here at a conference on Professional Military Education, attention is being focused on one small sliver of the largest challenge facing militaries in general and Western forces in particular: People.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan comes to Washington at a time of domestic crisis over car bombings at Reyhanlı on the Syrian border that killed over 50 and resulted in hundreds of wounded, many seriously. The Turkish public, which has never supported Ankara’s tough line on President Bashar al-Assad, is alarmed.

"If the United States and Europe are to remain competitive—economically, politically, and strategically—in this increasingly multipolar world, they must reach out to partners who share their values and can contribute to a stronger transatlantic economy. That partner is Latin America."

From his 75 percent income tax to his 25 percent approval ratings, François Hollande, the French president who took office one year ago, has already been judged the hapless Louis XVI on the eve of the French Revolution or the feckless René Coty who presided over the demise of the Fourth Republic. But what has caused Hollande to adopt the stance he has?

 Occasionally a public opinion survey surfaces that signals a seismic event. That is the case with a new report from the Pew Research Center that measures the widening tremors of a political earthquake now shaking Europe.