Nuclear Component Must Be Part of NATO’s Deterrence Policy in Europe’s East, says Latvia’s Foreign Minister NATO’s current presence in Europe’s east is insufficient to provide credible deterrence, must be ramped up, and include a nuclear component, said Latvia’s Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevičs.
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Migrant Crisis, Brexit Distracting EU from Enlargement, Says Albania’s Foreign Minister The migrant crisis and the debate over the United Kingdom’s future in the European Union have shifted focus away from the enlargement of the bloc and this could disrupt the process of building democratic future member states, Albania’s Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati said on February 25.
US Airstrikes in Libya May Produce an Anti-Western Backlash US airstrikes that are neither invited by the Libyan authorities nor coordinated with Libyan armed forces may produce a dangerous backlash against the West, according to the Atlantic Council’s Karim Mezran. US warplanes conducted airstrikes on an Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) base on the outskirts of the western Libyan city of Sabratha on February 19. Noureddine Chouchane, a Tunisian operative linked to two major terrorist attacks in Tunisia last year, was the target of the strikes. More than three-dozen people were killed in the operation. Chouchane is believed to be among the dead. Such foreign intervention “may unleash anti-Western sentiments,” said Mezran, a Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.
Obama’s Cuba Trip Exposes Cruz, Rubio as ‘Outdated’ US President Barack Obama’s decision to make an historic visit to Cuba in March will have a negligible impact on the presidential election in the United States; if anything, it has succeeded in exposing just how out of touch critics of this engagement—particularly Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both Cuban-Americans—are, according to the Atlantic Council’s two top Latin America analysts. US President Barack Obama met Cuban President Raúl Castro at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 29, 2015. Obama will travel to Cuba on March 21 becoming the first US President to make the trip since Calvin Coolidge visited in 1928. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
Iran, Syria, Russia Seen as Top Challenges in the Middle East Iran, Syria, and Russia together pose the biggest challenge in the Middle East today, and any notion that there can be an alignment of the interests of Tehran and Washington is unrealistic, three former US officials said at the Atlantic Council on February 16.
A Mosquito Adds to Brazilian President’s Woes There is never a good time for an epidemic, but Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will agree that the outbreak of mosquito-borne Zika in her country could not have come at a worse time. Rousseff, who is facing impeachment charges, has been the target of massive rallies in Brazil at which protesters have demanded her ouster. Brazil is facing one of its worst recessions ever and Rousseff has been accused of doing too little too late to address this severe economic downturn.