Home

Archive - Mar 2011

Date

March 28th

NATO to take charge of Libyan operations 'within days'

By Michael Knigge

After haggling for days over NATO's role in the air campaign, the alliance has finally decided that it will run the no-fly zone over Libya. Britain said it hopes that NATO will soon take over the entire operation. READ MORE

Pressure building on Obama to clarify mission in Libya

By Karen Tumulty

Of all the decisions that a president must make, none calls for more clarity than the one to go to war. Thus far, President Obama’s move to join other nations in intervening militarily in Libya appears to have generated confusion instead — both as to the scope of the mission and to its ultimate end. READ MORE

March 25th

Political Responsibility in Disarmament Sphere

By Arthur Dunn

Representative of Asia Headed the Conference on Disarmament for the First Time READ MORE

Poland Rebuffs German Call on Nuclear Power

By Marcin Sobczyk

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk Wednesday rejected a German call on Poland to cancel the planned construction of nuclear power plants, saying the Polish public supports the project. READ MORE

Recognizing Palestine: Estonia’s Iceland Moment

By Oliver Loode

Estonia will mark the 20th anniversary of the restoration of its independence in August of this year. It will be a major milestone in a remarkable year – one that brought the European Capital of Culture to Tallinn and the euro to Estonia. It will also be an occasion for numerous speeches and newspaper articles on how our independence was won back, whether this is “the Estonia that we wanted,” and what it means for Estonia to be an independent country in a globalized world. READ MORE

March 23rd

Russian Energy Projects in the Black Sea Reach End of an Era

By Vladimir Socor

Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s, March 16-17 Russia visit capped a four-week period of spectacular changes to Russian energy transit projects, in the Black Sea and beyond. During these critical weeks, Russia abandoned the Trans-Balkan  oil pipeline project, which it had planned for more than a decade to form a transcontinental oil corridor, stretching from Kazakhstan to the Aegean Sea. The Kremlin also abandoned (in all but name) the South Stream gas pipeline project, designed to have stretched from the Black Sea into eight European countries. Moscow also had to register the stagnation of the Trans-Anatolian oil pipeline project, designed to connect Kazakhstan via Russia, the Black Sea, and Turkey with the Mediterranean. READ MORE

Nuclear Plants in Europe Are Delayed

By JUDY DEMPSEY

BERLIN — With the crisis in Japan raising fears about nuclear power, Germany and Switzerland said on Monday that they would reassess the safety of their own reactors and possibly reduce their reliance on them. READ MORE

March 21st

The Libyan War of 2011

By George Friedman

The Libyan war has now begun. It pits a coalition of European powers plus the United States, a handful of Arab states and rebels in Libya against the Libyan government. The long-term goal, unspoken but well understood, is regime change — displacing the government of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and replacing it with a new regime built around the rebels. READ MORE

Solutions for Russian-Ukrainian Gas Brinksmanship

By RICHARD B. ANDRES, MICHAEL KOFMAN AND MICAH J. LOUDERMILK

Tensions between Ukraine and Russia are not new, but their resurgence bodes ill for European energy security. This latest dispute between Europe’s largest natural gas supplying state and its key gas transit state should be a warning flag to Europe that, despite efforts by the IMF and other countries, the underlying causes of the dispute that left Europe without gas for heating and electricity in 2009 remain unresolved and require European intervention. Below we describe the nature of the problem and propose an approach for addressing one of Europe’s most important energy security problems. READ MORE

Secretary general says NATO unprepared for Libya crisis

By Remi Adekoya

Alliance has "no plans to act," but is preparing for eventualities. READ MORE