Peter Galbraith Fired for Speaking Out on Afghan Election Fraud

The UN's number two official in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, has been fired after a clash with head of mission Kai Eide over how to handle fraud in the recent presidential elections.  Galbraith alleges that Eide is covering up massive corruption for reasons of expediency. My New Atlanticist essay, "Galbraith Fired, Refused to Hide Afghanistan Election Fraud" rounds up the reporting on ...

EU Georgia Report False Equivalency

As widely anticipated, an EU report on last year's Russian invasion of Georgia finds plenty of blame to go around, finding that Tblisi "triggered" the conflict but that Moscow violated international law by its invasion and with numerous atrocities thereafter. This leads John Cole to quip, "Was the McCain/Palin campaign right about anything?" As I detail in my New Atlanticist post, "EU: ...

Britain Seeks Ban On Pint Glasses

As part of their ongoing effort to cement George Orwell's reputation by making him the most accurate prophet in history, the British Home Office is now investigating the possiblity of forcing every Pub in Britain to replace pint glasses with plastic pint cups: The BBC reported recently that the British Home Office is seeking a new design for pint glasses that ...

Child Rape in Afghanistan and Hollywood

Joshua Foust continues to call attention to widespread and institutionalized child rape -- mostly man-on-boy -- in Afghanistan, this time with a report that Canadian soldiers had been quietly told to ignore the practice because we needed the cooperation of the leaders doing the raping. Steve Hynd, naturally, wonders why this isn't widely reported and why senior U.S. officials aren't ...

NATO’s Future

I've been busy at the Atlantic Council today covering two huge events. First, Senator Richard Lugar delivered a speech on the Future of NATO.  In addition to the usual niceties about the important of transatlantic cooperation, Lugar argued that we need "boots on the ground" in Eastern Europe to assuage their fears about Alliance commitment and that NATO should consider unconventional ...

Obama Lowering Afghanistan Ambitions?

Obama administration officials are now admitting what has been apparent for weeks: that they are giving serious consideration to radically downsizing the Afghanistan mission.  Peter Baker and Elisabeth Bumiller break the story in this morning's NYT, noting that a combination of factors have President Obama strongly reconsidering the Biden Plan, which he rejected as recently as March, which calls for ...

Why “Befuddled”?

Leslie Gelb, distinguished diplomat, journalist, and scholar, professes befuddlement over President Obama's strategy with respect to Afghanistan: I'm lost on President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy—along with most of Congress and the U.S. military. Not quite eight months ago, Mr. Obama pledged to "defeat" al Qaeda in Afghanistan by transforming that country's political and economic infrastructure, training Afghan forces and adding 21,000 ...

Does Foreign Policy Community Love War?

Glenn Greenwald revisits an old debate, arguing that "Our war-loving Foreign Policy Community hasn't gone anywhere." Building off of Marc Lynch's blog post yesterday pointing out that General McCrystal's strategic review calling for more troops in Afghanistan was written by "a dozen smart (mostly) think-tankers," Greenwald writes,"What would a group of people like that ever recommend other than continued and escalated ...

Debating Afghanistan

An interesting sidebar to the debate sparked by the leak of General McChrystal's Afghanistan strategy review is the question of how such debates should take place to begin with. Peter Feaver complains that the president has been rushed by leaks.  Pat Lang is irked by the fact that the likely leaker wore a military uniform, possibly even a general's stars. Meanwhile, ...

In Which I Disagree with Brent Scowcroft

General Brent Scowcroft issued a statement through the Atlantic Council at noon:  "I strongly approve of President Obama's decision regarding missile defense deployments in Europe. I believe it advances U.S. national security interests, supports our allies, and better meets the threats we face." Given that I work at the Atlantic Council and have blogged on its site taking a different view, ...

Poland and Czech Republic Don’t Feel “Abandoned”

Via Steven Taylor, we note that neither Poland nor the Czech Republic feel "abandoned" by Obama's decision to scrap missile defense replace an expensive, ineffective boondoggle "missile defense system" with a less expensive, mobile, effective land and sea-based SM-3 interceptor force. Here's the Polish Prime Minister: Tusk said that Obama's "proposal of an alternative strategy should not affect the security ...

Did Obama Break Promise on Missiles?

I've been critical of the optics of President Obama's decision to abandon missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland. But I disagree with Jim Geraghty's assertion that it also represents breaking a promise made in April. Here's what he said in Prague: So let me be clear: Iran's ...

Obama Abandons Poland

On the 70th Anniversary of Russia's invasion of Poland, Barack Obama announced that he was abandoning Bush era plans to install ballistic missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, pleasing Moscow and igniting fear among our Eastern European allies. In my New Atlanticist essay "Obama Abandons Poland and Czech Missile Defense," I take exception to the strategic rationale offered ...

Qaddafi Son’s Dissertation

Saif Qaddafi, son of Libyan dictator Muammar, has completed a doctoral dissertation bemoaning the lack of democracy in the world. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said the current system of global governance was "highly undemocratic". He hit out at undemocratic states whose governments were "authoritarian, abusive and unrepresentative". His father Muammar Gaddafi came to power in a coup in 1969 and has ruled ...

Old Europe, New Europe

Back in 2003, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously noted that while "Old Europe" (particularly France and Germany) was hard to work with, America could count on "New Europe."   Fast forward to 2009 and we may have reversed polarity. My latest New Atlanticist essay, "Losing New Europe, Too?" explores this evolution, including why Western Europe is back in the fold and why ...