Open Think Tank
You are atlantic-community.org. All registered members are invited to contribute to the Open Think Thank.
Publish and share your views on current issues relevant to the wider transatlantic community as Your Opinion, and post your best papers or studies in Your Research.
Your work will be immediately published for peer review and exposure within atlantic-community.org and beyond. Publish here and get noticed by prominent publications.
You can also recommend books and ask the Atlantic Community for any assistance with your studies or work, or provide help and advice to fellow members.
If you are not yet a member of atlantic-community.org, join now. Registration only takes a minute and enables you to network with more than 3500 peers. Contact the editorial team, if you need any assistance. We are here to help.
If you are registered and logged-in, then just click on the SUBMIT button to post your contribution on atlantic-community.org.
Sami Kronenfeld: Representatives from the US, Europe, Russia, and China are meeting with their Iranian counterparts to discuss Iran’s nuclear program. The talks can only be successful if Europe and the US reach an agreement with Russia and China on what to do if Iran does not follow international agreements.
Today, the Western powers, Russia and China will convene with Iranian representatives in Baghdad for the second round of talks regarding the latter's nuclear program. Although the main issue on the table will be the halting of Iran's 20% uranium enrichment, the chief objective of the West should revolve around bringing Russia and China in line with the West’s economic and political pressure if and when Iran would ...More
Marek Swierczynski: NATO’s Chicago Summit announced the first phase of Ballistic Missile Defense as operational. The news was welcomed in Warsaw, but nobody rejoiced, as one of the country’s strategic priorities in transatlantic relations had moved far away from its borders. No one knows if it will ever come back.
Once upon a time a team of Twin Leaders ruled a troubled country in the heart of Europe – Leaders who have long dreamed about changing geopolitics and wanted their country to restore the might it posessed centuries ago – the might that was primarily used to fend off the Evil from the East. Luckily for them, the Great Leader in the West was in need. He asked for troops for his wars and a ...More
Ilija Djugumanov: Only a year and a half since the New Strategic Concept was adopted, NATO has many challenges to deal with. As the global situation changes, so do the priorities of the Alliance. In light of the situation, where exactly are the Balkans on NATO’s agenda?
The summit Chicago was seen as a follow up to the one in Lisbon. In a time when new threats and challenges are emerging, it can be clearly seen that enlargement is not high on the agenda.As a part of the delegation of YATA Macedonia, on invitation from the Public Diplomacy Division of NATO in January 2012, I had the chance to visit NATO’s HQ. In a briefing concerning the NATO Summit in Chicago, five important ...More
Editorial Team: The many good ideas from non-shortlisted authors in the third category of our “Your Ideas, Your NATO” competition have been brought together in this article. A recurring theme was the need for NATO to more precisely define its and the Members’ roles in order for Smart Defense to be implemented successfully.
The current financial woes have underlined the need for more efficient defense spending, not only by individual NATO Members but also by the Alliance as a whole. Smart Defense, "ensuring greater security, for less money, by working together with more flexibility", is one way to address the issue. However, countries have reservations about the pooling of defense resources, seeing as such initiatives might result in diminished sovereignty. ...More
Stefanie Babst: NATO’s Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy appeared at atlantic-community.org’s policy debate in Berlin yesterday via video, offering her reaction to the three Atlantic Memos from the policy workshop competition.
In additional to these remarks, we will have plenty of coverage from our big event, including the memo presentation and reactions from the US Ambassador and German Parliamentary State Secretary, coming this week!
We have already published feedback from Members of the Canadian and Norwegian assemblies and a Policy Advisor for the Dutch House of Representatives: Policy Makers Respond to "Your Ideas, Your NATO"
Joerg Wolf: A plethora of op-eds in the US and German media argue that the Alliance needs to be rescued, revitalized, resurrected, and reinvented. The think tankers want to reaffirm or renegotiate the transatlantic bargain and look for a revolution to overcome geostrategic irrelevance.
Many editorials and op-eds paint quite a gloomy picture of NATO on the eve of its Chicago Summit. Secretary Rasmussen’s signature project Smart Defense is seen most skeptically. A review of eight articles and two Senate testimonies:
1. Patrick Keller and Gary Schmitt, respectively from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, conclude in the Wall Street Journal op-ed “Revitalizing the ...More
Joerg Wolf: Atlantic-community.org’s editor-in-chief was part of a group of 59 politicians, scholars, and other observers invited to take part in the Atlantic Council and Foreign Policy Magazine’s survey on the future of NATO. Here he explains why he answered the way he did and offers some thoughts about why NATO needs to focus on building capabilities, not proving its relevance.
It was an honor to participate in this survey and a good opportunity for
reflection as well as to think about some big questions. In addition to 28
multiple choice questions, we were asked to complete four sentences and I
believe there is a common theme in my answers:
NATO today is... the best "insurance policy" we have to remain free and
secure, when (not if) we are once again surprised by a new threat.
NATO's ...More
Ahmad Rashid Jamal: Corruption is a severe problem in many Asian countries, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This paper assesses the effectiveness of anti-corruption strategies and accountability in these two countries and asks: Can Anti-corruption Agencies turn into effective organizations?
A distinct and single anti-corruption institution cannot function as an omnipotent and supreme institution. In order to combat and eradicate corruption it is necessary to reform all governmental institutions and make them capable of effectively implementing their mandate and developing coordination and inter linkages among entities. Among underlying theoretical models, monitoring and incentives ...More
Ramin Daniel Rezai: Preparations for the Chicago Summit are well underway, as NATO extends formal invitations to its strategic partners, undertakes pre-summit consultations with its members and sets summit priorities. As the summit approaches, the city of Chicago is putting strict security measures in place.
NATO's 25th summit heads to Chicago on May 20-21. The Summit will deliver on decisions that were taken at last year’s summit in Lisbon, as well as set the course for future engagement in Afghanistan and look to adopt a new culture of cooperation among NATO member and partner countries. The following article provides a round-up of commentary and current news stories related to the upcoming event.
Partner Countries are Key
The ...More
NATO: More than half the casualties among the NATO forces in Afghanistan in 2011 were caused by improvised explosive devices (IED). This is also the case for one in three Afghans killed last year. In 2010, NATO adopted an action plan on counter-IED (C-IED) aimed at increasing the detection and neutralization of such devices, as well as the dismantling of the networks that manufacture them.
The NATO C3 Agency (NC3A) is responsible for developing those advanced technologies to combat IEDs. The NC3A has concentrated its efforts in the struggle against IEDs in three main sectors – jammers against radio-controlled IEDs, scanners to inspect vehicles, cargo and pedestrians, and surveillance technologies to improve intelligence on the origins of the IEDs.
"It is difficult to fight these devices," ...More
|
