Atlantic Review

A new decade has started and it's high time to update our blogroll. Many previously good blogs are now inactive or boring. What blogs do you read on international politics in general and transatlantic relations in particular? Which European or North American bloggers analyze best the most important issues? Whose posts shall we feature and discuss here on Atlantic Review?

I appreciate your recommendations!!! Don't limit yourself to bloggers. Feel free to include columnists, think tankers etc. Anybody who is worth reading concerning transatlantic issues. Thank you!

Franz Josef Jung, Germany's former defense minister and current labor minister, resigned on Friday over his handling of a controversial airstrike in Afghanistan. Germany's top soldier Inspector General Schneiderhan and Deputy Defense Minister Wichert resigned on Thursday, reports Spiegel (in English).

The Bundestag's defense committee will most likely establish a parliamentary investigation into the affair, which could erode public support for the Afghanistan mission even further.

The good news is that Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany's current defense minister, has had a promising start since taking over in early October and has started making the necessary changes. "From referring to the Afghanistan mission as a 'war' to announcing a slight increase in troop numbers, he has gained the support of the military," writes Spiegel (in English) in another article.

Endnote: Change has come to Atlantic Review in the form of a software upgrade. Please don't hesitate to contact the editorial team at "AR-team ÄT atlanticreview DOT org", if there is any technical problem. Registered users might have to login in again, before they can comment. Login is here.

This is a guest post from our long-time reader and commenter John Hadjisky, who comments as "John in Michigan" on Atlantic Review

I've been thinking about how to explain the trans-Atlantic relationship to an average citizen on either side, in broad strokes. Part of the problem is a lack of common vocabulary. Here on Atlantic Review we tend to bash away at that problem using a combination of rants and highly technical analysis. I have nothing but praise for a good rant, especially one that attracts readers. But, rants have obvious problems. Technical arguments, meanwhile, at best are wonkish, and at worst are nit-picking.

Occasionally, however, we get some real gems here. So for my first official guest post, I decided to mine the archives and highlight what I like best about Atlantic Review. I hope everyone will add their own "best of" links.

Continue reading "That Vision Thing (Or: The Best of Atlantic Review)"

Dear friends and beloved Atlantic Review readership: 

Due to a change in profession and the subsequent time-consuming training involved in my new position I will be taking a hiatus from Atlantic Review for the next several months. 

I enjoy the privelege of writing and engaging with you on important transatlantic issues, and look forward to the day when I can return as a full editor.  In the meantime, Atlantic Review is always accepting guest articles and applications for new editors.

If you would like to get ahold of me while away, please feel free to shoot me an email at kyle.atwell [at] atlanticreview.org.

Before travelling to Munich to speak at the Security Conference, David Miliband has read Kyle Atwell's Atlantic Review post NATO 2.0: Five ways Obama should bring "change" to Alliance.

The Foreign Secretary mentions Atlantic Review and links to us in his blog post Munich Security Conference.

Yes, Secretary Miliband is a blogger. He began blogging when he was Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and continues to do so as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Here is the transcript and audio file of his speech in Munich.

Everyone is on Facebook. Everyone? There is a small community still holding out outside. But, just like there were still people without mobile phones eight years ago, they are looking more and more forced in their abstention. As Farhad Manjoo writes over on Slate:

Friends—can I call you friends?—it's time to drop the attitude: There is no longer any good reason to avoid Facebook. The site has crossed a threshold—it is now so widely trafficked that it's fast becoming a routine aide to social interaction, like e-mail and antiperspirant. It's only the most recent of many new technologies that have crossed over this stage.

Whether or not Facebook is of use to you will of course depend upon your circle of actual friends. Much like e-mail. Or mobile phones. When they're not using it, there's less use in it for you. Doing without will save you from multitasking cutting up your time even further. And there are downsides to Facebook, as Obama's speechwriter Jon Favreau found out when he was caught statue-groping Hillary Clinton.

As you will guess, this is a roundabout way of saying that the Atlantic Review, too, is on Facebook, and we welcome you to become our 'fans'.

Steve Coll - whose book on the Bin Laden family we plugged - laments the 'end of civilisation' on his The New Yorker blog:

Before takeoff, as usual, I had thumbed through my email on my BlackBerry. As the in-flight wireless signal popped up on my laptop (fourteen dollars, including tax) I remembered all of what was left undone and decided to sign up.

[...]

I note that the Very Important Book, whose last hundred pages I had expected to finish before landing, sits tucked into the seatback pocket in front of me, in no particular danger of being read. My mission now is not to forget about it altogether and leave it on the airplane. These airliner tubes, with their confined hours-long intervals, had been a last refuge from the grid, a sort of enforced library reading room. Those of us in the bound-and-printed intellectual-property creation racket had best reconsider tweeting.

Sound familiar?

When I review my yearly Christmas reading - it is, again, the season - the Worldchanging book from last year sits in the shelf as an occassional reference, while I'm due for a third start-over of Against the Day, a novel I received two years ago. Both wonderful books, but not the type to easily read from cover to cover (I did manage a number of shorter books in between). A dismal record. This year, the reading will be somewhat less... liberal as I've settled on Drezner's 'All Politics is Global'.

Dear loyal subscribers, 

Thank you for your continued commitment to the Atlantic Review. The past few months have seen rising tensions among the allies over the conflict in Afghanistan, a pickup in the US political campaigns, pivotal elections in Russia and Georgia, Germany seeking a ban on Scientology, Pakistan and Kosovo on the brink of conflict, and much more.

Below is a roundup of the most popular topics in transatlantic relations, provided by your editors at Atlantic Review. Again, thank you for continuing to read the Atlantic Review, your source for current news and commentary on transatlantic relations.

But first, the Atlantic Review is proud to introduce the newest editor on the staff, Kyle Atwell. You can find information on Kyle's biography here. 

This month's most talked about issues in transatlantic relations:

* Politics: Obama, Huckabee, and elections in Russia
* Culture: education and religion on both sides of the Atlantic
* Defense: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kosovo heat up
* State of Relations: think-tankers argue at a low, Rice says at a high

Barack Obama's Lack of Real Interest in Transatlantic Cooperation
(41 comments)
Senator Obama is criticized for failing to convene a single policy meeting of the Senate European subcommittee, of which he is chairman. Continue Reading.

Related post in Politics:
• Huckabee: United States Does Integration Better than Europe (33 comments)
• Obama’s Popularity in Germany: The New Kennedy (30 comments)
• Russia’s Elections 2: Russia Should Face Consequences (20 comments)

 

Americans and Europeans Raised in Prejudice and Ignorance
(61 comments)
Denis from the blog SuperFrenchie writes, "Americans by and large all agree on this: America is the greatest country in the world, the American way of doing things is the only possible one, and everybody supports the troops. They learn that in schools from the earliest age, along with the fact that everything else (and everywhere else) is, by definition, flawed." Continue Reading.

Related posts in Culture:
• Arrogant Germans See Their Country as a Superpower (31 comments)
• The Euro-American Religious Divide (16 comments)
• Seeking to Ban Scientology (13 comments)

 

War for Dummies: Step 1, Fighting Is Necessary (6 comments)
"I am not ready to let NATO off the hook in Afghanistan at this point," Gates told the House Armed Services Committee. Ticking off a list of vital requirements -- about 3,500 more military trainers, 20 helicopters and three infantry battalions -- Gates voiced "frustration" at "our allies not being able to step up to the plate." Continue Reading.

Related post in Defense:
• Sarkozy Makes Premature, Unnecessary, Familiar Statement on Kosovo (24 comments)
• Europe has no Pakistan Policy, US has a Bad One (20 comments)
• Transatlantic Bickering over Afghanistan (17 comments)
• Afghanistan: Fighting is Not Most Important (10 comments)

 

The Future of Transatlantic Relations (3 comments)
Nikolas K. Gvosdev and Richard Haas point out respectively, that "shared values are an insufficient basis for partnership without compelling shared interests" and that "transatlantic cooperation will be less predictable and more selective." Continue Reading.

Related posts in the State of Relations:
• "The Strongest Trans-Atlantic Relations…" (37 comments)
• Redefining Transatlantic Relations (2 comments)

 

Recent guest post on Atlantic Review:

The State of the Citizen's European Union (24 comments)
Nanne Zwagerman of the European Tribune criticizes the European Commission's list of 2007 achievements. Being relatively low on the radar the EC does need to advertise itself, but hopefully they will have a little more to boast about next year, says Atlantic Review's guest columnist. Continue Reading.

If you would like to submit a guest article, please contact the editors Joerg, Sonja and Kyle.