Lebanon is one of the most diverse nations in the Middle East. The country is home to many religious communities and serves as an experiment in Middle East pluralism. In part because of Lebanon’s pluralistic makeup, it has been in a near-constant state of conflict for decades.
AP is reporting that Nawaz Sharif’s party has pulled out of cabinet positions from the coalition government with the PPP led by the late Benazir Bhutto’s husband Asif Zardari.
From the same person who broke the story on Prime Minister Tony Blair’s January of 2003 conversation with President Bush that sealed their agreement to invade Iraq regardless of the UN Security Council outcome (and even use a UN plane to bait an attack), Matrix Chambers Barrister and University College London Law Professor Philippe Sands…
Update: The book event with Steve Coll will be streaming live here starting at 12:15pm today.
The concert of democracies idea has been bandied about for quite a while in both liberal internationalist and neoconservative circles. (There is perhaps a reason for that as Professor Tony Smith has argued). But recently it’s been taken up by Sen. John McCain.
UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has begun to cultivate a reputation as a young, thoughtful, and charismatic diplomat amidst more seasoned but less dynamic peers. When he spoke to the Young Atlanticists two weeks ago in Bucharest, he seemed to enjoy playing to this persona.
The slew of stories on the fallout from rising food prices have primarily concentrated on the immediate political effects of riots and social upheaval mostly in developing nations.
(Gas pipeline map from The Economist, Jan. 24, 2008) One of the leads for this week’s Economist emphasizes the role of energy security for Europe, and in particular, pipeline diversification over missile defense.
For the early birds on the east coast (or the late night blog readers on the west coast), President Hamid Karzai will address the Young Atlanticist delegation in Bucharest along with students at the University of Kabul via a video teleconference link – which you can tune into live by going to the Young Atlanticist…
Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves‘s refreshingly wry sense of humor and sharp wit provided welcome relief from an intenisve Young Atlanticist Summit day of speeches, lectures, and meetings (especially for those of us who were still sleepless from jetlag, fretting over lost baggage, and breaking in an assemblage of borrowed attire that was one bolo…