Atlantic Council

On any given day, U.S. military forces are conducting joint naval patrols, training and equipping partners’ military forces, and providing humanitarian assistance. Non-warfighting programs like these increasingly constitute the main line of efforts for US military commands. In 2009, for example, about 150 countries received some form of U.S. military assistance. The programs are driven by an expansive view of U.S. security interests, demands made by many countries who seek to reduce their own security deficits, but also genuine U.S. interests.

The Netanyahou government is at it again, this time in a more spectacular display of ham-handedness and arrogance than usual. The subject of this most recent excursion in “Don’t-give-a-damn-what-the-world-thinks-land,” of course, surrounds the Israeli government sticking a thumb in Vice President Joe Biden’s eye during last week’s visit to Tel Aviv by announcing its intention to build over 1,000 more Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen recently gave a speech in Kansas where he outlined a vision of warfare for the current era. Reflecting on nine years of continuous warfare in Central Asia and twenty years military involvement in Iraq, he proposed three rules that challenge traditional notions of using the military.

NATO has been threatened throughout its existence by diverging interests of its members - or to be precise, by the lack of trust in the solidarity of its members in the light of these diverging interests.

One of the things that struck me in looking at the results was the similarities to Mexico's elections back in the day when the Institutionalized Revolutionary Party (PRI) held sway.

To many, THE issue confronting the United States is a government that is dysfunctional and even badly broken. To others, the immense and swelling fiscal debt and deficits must redressed before the nation slips into bankruptcy. Still others argue that values are the centerpiece of America and unless differences over guns, gays, gestation periods and God can be fixed, the United States is headed for moral purgatory.

General Stéphane Abrial, Commander Allied Command Transformation (ACT), declared that, "With defense budgets under growing competition from other lines of public expenditure it is therefore imperative that we are able to assure our publics that we are wasting nothing, that we have not spared ourselves any necessary reform and ask for nothing that is not essential."

The British journalist Edward Lucas speaks on the need for Ukraine to choose between the Russian dictatorships of the law and the European rule of law.

There's a growing consensus that NATO and the EU must strengthen their cooperation on military planning. Yet the chief obstacles to doing so — they rhyme with Freece and Gurkey — are so taboo Allied leaders are reluctant to mention them by name.

Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s decision to confer the title of Hero of Ukraine on nationalist leader Stepan Bandera on Jan. 22 has unleashed a storm of outrage inside and outside Ukraine. Critics accuse Yushchenko of whitewashing a Nazi-era fascist and betraying the ideals of the Orange Revolution that brought him to power.