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Westerwelle winds up his career in New York 
September 29, 2013, Deutsche Welle
By Gero Schliess
The contrast could hardly have been starker than four years ago when Westerwelle was a 'nobody' in the US, and negative perceptions preceded him. "I am aware that the expectations within and outside of Germany at that time were quite low," admits Fiona Hill, director of the Center for the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "But he has really grown and acquired a reputation for himself." Hill told DW of one of her meetings with the then freshly appointed minister in the midst of the euro and financial crisis: "He gave an impressive performance in English and held the audience here in Washington in thrall with his account of the role of Germany in Europe.”

EU lawmaker: 'TTIP is not a monster’
September 27, 2013, EurActiv
Kemal Kirişci, a Brookings Institute fellow, argued in favour of Turkey’s inclusion in the agreement. “Countries left outside TTIP and TPP would either have to accept less favorable access to these markets, or would have to adopt the standards laid down by these two partnerships,” he wrote in a recent report. “Geo-strategically, this means that emerging economies would be left at a disadvantage. Ironically, Turkey, a long standing member of this Western-led international economic order, would also be disadvantaged if not included in TTIP,” he added.

Turks may be the swing vote in German poll 
September 18, 2013, Al-Jazeera
By Sam Bollier
More than half of voters with a Turkish background used to back the SPD. But a survey conducted this summer found that only 43 percent would vote for them this time around. Another 22 percent support the Greens, whose chairman Cem Ozdemir was the first ethnic Turk to be elected to the Bundestag. Another 20 percent plan to vote for the CDU. Jonathan Laurence, a professor of political science at Boston College, said the SPD has not done " a particularly good job communicating with [Turkish voters], or viewing them as anything else but a liability".

On Syria, Lavrov stays on Russian message 
September 18, 2013, The Washington Post
By Kathy Lally and Will Englund
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, stayed on task after a meeting here with his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius. He always does. “We have very serious reasons to believe that this was an act of provocation,” Lavrov told reporters, asserting once again that someone was trying to make the Syrian government look bad to prompt an attack against it. “He knows his script and sticks to it,” said Fiona Hill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. She calls him the consummate Russian-Soviet diplomat — his first posting was in 1972 — and one who clearly and formidably advances Russia’s interests. Don’t forget repeatedly. “Central casting couldn’t have done better,” she said. “He has the looks, the gravelly voice, the imposing figure, the hair. You expect to see him in smoke-filled corridors maneuvering everyone into a corner. He knows what his job is.”

Russia Gains Clout With Syria Initiative 
September 15, 2013, The Wall Street Journal
By Gregory L. White
The idea of pushing Damascus to give up its chemical weapons had been discussed by U.S. and Russian officials for at least a year, diplomats say, but Moscow appeared unwilling or unable to force the Assad regime to comply. The current deal has changed that. "The agreement reached [Saturday] is a win for both Moscow and Washington—provided that it is implemented, which remains far from certain," said Steven Pifer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former ambassador. "Implementation could well require the Russians to lean on Damascus if the Syrians drag their feet. Is Moscow prepared to do that?"

Vladimir Putin: Arch Manipulator With a Mission to Check US Will 
September 14, 2013, The Observer
By Peter Beaumont
This is particularly true when he is speaking to his constituency, an alliance of nationalists, conservatives and a vast, sprawling middle ground. According to Clifford Gaddy, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, Putin interposed himself as a key political fixer under the patronage of Yeltsin-era figure Anatoly Chubais in the mid-1990s. Putin, he says, "understood the principles of the British intelligence chief John Masterman's double-cross system: don't destroy your enemies. Manipulate them and use them for your own goals". Putin did, and continues to do, precisely that.

Analysis: Putin scores diplomatic win on Syria 
September 12, 2013, CNN
By Jill Dougherty
"It absolutely is a diplomatic win by Putin right now," said Fiona Hill, expert on Putin and director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. "If we think about this as judo, which is of course Mr. Putin's favorite sport, this is just one set of moves," she said. "And right now, he's managed to get Obama off the mat, at least, and get the terms set down that play to his advantage."

Social Media Erupts Over Putin Article 
September 12, 2013, Voice of America
But Brookings Institution Russia analyst Clifford Gaddy disagreed. The co-author of "Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin" said the Russian leader made a compelling case for his country's priorities and took advantage of U.S. indecisiveness on Syria. "He is just really taking advantage of the opening that U.S. policy on the wavering now, and public sentiment worldwide against U.S. military strikes has offered him. I think he did it pretty well," Gaddy said.

Why France is willing to go to war
September 11, 2013, Macleans
By Michael Petrou
That’s not entirely the case. Hollande has taken a political hit over Syria, says Clara O’Donnell, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe. France pushed early for a robust response. But it now has to wait for the United States, and the American Congress, to decide on its course of action before France can realistically do anything. A French comedy show recently portrayed Hollande asking Obama for permission to use the bathroom.

Is Putin, a Big Assad Supplier, Seriously Going to Disarm Him? 
September 11, 2013, The Daily Beast
By Eli Lake
Regardless, Moscow’s move has given the superpower “wonderful leverage” said Fiona Hill, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution and an expert on Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Hill said that Putin has gained control of the media narrative and created momentum for diplomacy. But she also said that Russia shares America’s interest in keeping chemical weapons out of the hands of terrorists. “I think you have to be careful at painting this in black and white terms," she said. “The Russians know there is a whole world of grief if Syria collapses.”

How Vladimir Putin Became the Chuck Norris Of International Politics 
September 9, 2013, Business Insider
By Adam Taylor
Economist Clifford Gaddy, co-author of "Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin," says the past few weeks have actually revealed just how complex Putin really is. "He's probably the most formidable adversary America has seen in quite a while," Gaddy says. "He's clever and duplicitous, very skilled at playing people's own weaknesses and blunders against them — skills he honed as a KGB case officer."

Russian Proposal Could Offer Obama Escape From Bind
September 9, 2013, The New York Times
By Peter Baker
“Putin knows that everyone wants an out, so he’s providing one,” said Fiona Hill, a former national intelligence officer and co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.” “It seems like a bold idea that will get everyone, including Obama, out of a bind that they don’t want to be in.” But, she said, it may be an idea that derails a strike for now without solving the underlying problem. Indeed, the Senate quickly postponed plans for a vote authorizing an attack.

At G-20, No Obama-Putin Sidebar So Far
September 6, 2013, The Wall Street Journal
By Peter Nicholas
After taking office in 2009, Mr. Obama had hoped to “reset” relations with Russia. But with his second term well under way, ties have frayed. Clifford Gaddy, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said recently that relations are now as poor as at any time since the fall of communism in Russia. “I think the relationship now is really very bad,” Mr. Gaddy said. “And I think the way to gauge it is in terms of what are the prospects for dealing with major issues that still remain between the two countries and that may emerge. And I think it’s very poor, because we simply don’t have any sense of trust in the relationship, especially at the highest level, which is the most important, between the two presidents.”

USA’s lille hjælper vil selv 
September 5, 2013, Dagbladet
By Mette Rodgers
”Konflikten i Syrien er et eksempel på, hvor svært det er at blive enig om en fælles politik i Europa – men selv hvis der var enighed, kunne vi så gå ind? Faktum er, at mange europæiske lande ikke har de våben, der skal til, og dem, der har sofisti-kerede missiler, har langt mindre wbeholdninger end amerikanerne,” siger Clara Marina O’Donnell, der er seniorforsker i London-tænketanken European Centre for Reform samt tilknyttet den amerikanske Brookings Institution. ”Europa kan yde militær støtte, hvis der er tale om et begrænset, præcisionsbombardement. Vi kan tilbyde logistisk hjælp, baser osv., hvilket ville være en hjælp, men Europa har ikke det sofistikerede udstyr,” tilføjer hun.

Transatlantic alliance to cost Turkey ‘$20 billion’ 
September 5, 2013, Hurriyet
Turkey, which will be one of the main losers in the U.S.-EU trade alliance, should engage in a parallel deal with the U.S., Kemal Kirişci, the author of the study, said in research published by the U.S. Brookings Institute and the Turkish Industry and Business Association (TÜSİAD). The research demonstrates that Turkey’s potential income loss would be 2.5 percent, which would amount roughly to a $20 billion loss based on Turkey’s GDP last year.

Frosty ties between Obama, Putin deepen policy clashes 
September 3, 2013, Agence France Presse
By Tangi Quemener
Clifford Gaddy, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, agreed that the Obama-Putin relationship was toxic. “I think the way to gauge it is in terms of what are the prospects for dealing with major issues that still remain between the two countries and that may emerge,” he said. “I think it's very poor, because we simply don't have any sense of trust in the relationship, especially at the highest level, which is the most important, between the two presidents.”

"Moscou joue gros dans la crise syrienne"
September 3, 2013, L’Express
By Axel Gyldén
"Une intervention militaire montrera de manière évidente que Vladimir Poutine et la Russie n'ont pas les moyens d'empêcher les Etats-Unis d'agir, souligne Stefen Pifer, expert en relations internationales et spécialiste de l'ex-empire soviétique à l'institut Brookings de Washington. En pratique, Moscou va apparaitre comme incapable de protéger Bachar el-Assad. Ce qui contredit l'image que Vladimir Poutine veut projeter dans son pays: celle d'une grand puissance restaurée qui compte sur la scène mondiale et possède toujours une influence majeure." 

Obama Syria decision adds a twist to G-20 summit
September 2, 2013, USA Today
By Aamer Madhani
By delaying any military action until he has congressional approval, Obama has avoided having to defend the aftermath of a strike in a summit setting, notes Angela Stent, a Russia analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Syria might still come up, but it won't dominate the G-20 agenda as it might have had there been a military strike," Stent said.

On World Stage, Obama Faces Risks Over War Strategy
September 2, 2013,The Wall Street Journal
By: Peter Nicholas
"That was the unfortunate thing about the president's announcement," said Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The signal to many is going to be hesitance and indecision. If he was going to ask Congress, it would have made sense to bring Congress into the game a week ago."

Путин и сирийский кризис: оценки вашингтонских экспертов 
August 29, 2013, Voice of America
"Не думаю, что Россия сделает ради Сирии что-либо, что подвергнет ее риску, – тем более для того, чтобы просто что-то доказать. Это бессмысленно," – считает Клиффорд Гэдди, эксперт из Институт Брукингса. "Думаю, что до сих пор вся российская политика в отношении Асада и Сирии основывалась на стремлении защитить Россию от возможных негативных последствий всего, что там происходит."

Azerbaijani Opposition Chooses Backup Presidential Candidate
August 23, 2013, RFE/RL
Richard Kauzlarich, U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan from 1994 to 1997, told RFE/RL that there was no question as to whether Aliyev, whose family has ruled Azerbaijan for more than two decades, will win on October 9. "The fix is in for the elections. Ilham's going to win. I don't know that there's any question here," Kauzlarich said. "The real question is will the government conduct these elections as they always have, where it's so blatant that the elections are manipulated, or will they be concerned enough to begin to show a different sign of at least movement toward a more democratic future."

U.S.-Russia relationship turns chilly, again
August 8, 2013, The Washington Post
By Kathy Lally
Undoubtedly there will be spirited debate in the weeks ahead about which is the bigger loser. Steven Pifer, a former ambassador to Ukraine and a Brookings Institution fellow, suspects that Russia and Putin have more at stake. “The question of who needs who now has a whole different dynamic,” Pifer said. “Putin wants to be seen as being the head of a superpower. I don’t think Putin minds being disliked in the U.S., but it would matter to him if he was ignored.”

Obama scraps Moscow summit with Putin
August 7, 2013, AFP
Steven Pifer, a Russia specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the cancellation of the summit, while rare, was hardly surprising. The Americans "just didn't see the value of a summit meeting in terms of moving the ball forward on big issues," Pifer told AFP, though he held out hope for improvements in relations in the long term. "It's a serious bump on the road, but the fact that the administration is saying 'let's go ahead and have the ministers meet' -- my impression is that they're ready to cooperate where cooperation is possible."

Обама отменил встречу с Путиным
August 7, 2013, Voice of America (Russian)
By Natasha Mozgovaya and Alexei Berezin
Доктор Клиффорд Гэдди – эксперт Брукингского института и соавтор книги «Путин: оперативник в Кремле», сказал в интервью Русской службе «Голоса Америки», что, несомненно, речь идет об эскалации напряженности в отношениях. По его словам, стоит ожидать дальнейшего ухудшения отношений между странами. Но главная проблема Вашингтона, по его мнению, заключается в отсутствии стратегии в отношении Кремля.

Barack Obama cancels meeting with Vladimir Putin over Edward Snowden
August 7, 2013, The Daily Telegraph
By: Raf Sanchez
Steve Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said the White House had long sensed that the meeting would not lead to progress on Syria or US plans for a missile shield in eastern Europe. "The calculation at the end of the day was going to Moscow would have yielded no benefit to the President's agenda and he would have paid a political price over Snowden and human rights in Russia," Mr Pifer told The Daily Telegraph. "Looking at the cost-benefit analysis, this trip didn't make a lot of sense."

Obama cancels meetings with Putin over Snowden
August 7, 2013, The Hindu
By: Narayan Lakshman
Speaking to The Hindu, Clifford Gaddy, a Senior Fellow and Russia specialist at the Brookings Institution, however, said that since the collapse of the so-called “reset” in U.S.-Russia ties that Mr. Obama initiated in his first term, “The administration has no real strategy towards Russia and so there is no way to explain the decision [to postpone the summit] in terms of why it does not fit U.S. strategic interests.”

Obama's Russia reset unravels
August 7, 2013, Politico
By Josh Gerstein
"The question the White House has been asking is not about whether Russia is going to give us anything on Snowden…but what will come out of a summit in Moscow that will be useful to the president’s agenda on arms control, missile defense and our economic relationship,” said Steven Pifer, a longtime U.S. diplomat who served in Russia, Ukraine and at the White House. “What I’m hearing from administration officials is that over the last month they’ve had no resonance, no response back from the Russians."

Erdogan’s presidential plans linked to Turkey’s economic fortunes
August 7, 2013, The Sofia Globe
By David Arnold
Political and economic analyst Kemal Kirisci said declaring oneself a “looter” has become something of a badge of honor in recent weeks among a certain segment of the Turkish political spectrum.“It’s a term the prime minister used in a denigrating fashion against the protesters,” said Kirisci, director of the Turkey project at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe. “Now, I think there is a broadly supported consensus that this particular usage of the term did fuel the protest and led to its aggravation.

Snowden Asylum Sets Back ‘Re-Set’ US-Russian Relations 
August 1, 2013, AFP
By Tangi Quemener
"This is not good news," said Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Pifer, for one, suggested a moderate response was the best way forward. "I’m not sure that pushing back really hard is going to help," said Pifer, a former ambassador to Ukraine. "We don’t know what motivated this particular decision by the Russians now, but Putin has shown that he reacts very badly to threats." While Obama is sure to be criticized if he does make the trip, “the real question is, is Putin prepared to make that summit productive enough so at the end of the day there are results that would justify the political cost that the president’s going to pay at home," he added.

Edward Snowden asylum 'insignificant' to Russia -- but not to U.S. 
August 1, 2013, The Los Angeles Times
By Carol J. Williams and Paul Richter
Steven Pifer, a former U.S. diplomat now at Brookings Institution, said he saw a growing likelihood that the White House would disengage from Russia. With the administration in its second term, and needing less help on issues like the war in Afghanistan, “the dynamic is different,” Pifer said. The Russian government may be trying to force the White House to play along with the Kremlin's view that the standoff over Snowden is a back-burner issue rather than publicly protesting a decision it was impotent to prevent.

Snowden Dispute Sparks Deeper Fallout in U.S.-Russia Relationship
July 26, 2013, The Daily Beast
By Josh Rogin
With all that going on, there’s not much positive that could come out of these meetings anyway, said Fiona Hill, a former national intelligence official on Russia, now at the Brookings Institution. For years, the Obama administration pursued a “reset” policy with Russia, with some results; now the relationship is reverting back to the more familiar pattern of mutual antagonism and suspicion from the Cold War. In the end, the Obama administration may see very little upside in continuing to press for engagement with a Russian government that doesn’t seem to be interested in working to pursue a positive and aggressive bilateral agenda, she said. “These guys are basically giving us the finger, so we are saying ‘Why are we going out there and doing these things?’” she said. “You could say that by standing up to Russia, the U.S. is finally getting some balls.” 

Bce contro la tempesta finanziaria L’occasione sprecata dagli Stati 
July 26, 2013, Corriere della Serra
Ma la Germania temporeggia anche per una errata comprensione della crisi su cui pesa il sospetto della convenienza politica. Carlo Bastasin sul Sole 24 Ore ha notato una forte correlazione tra i sondaggi elettorali in Germania e la lettura che vi si fa della crisi. Nel 2009, quando la crisi era addebitata agli errori dei banchieri e alle regole sbagliate, i socialdemocratici, ritenuti più capaci di imporre regole nuove alla finanza, rubavano consensi ai cristiano democratici. Ma da quando, grazie alla Grecia, la crisi è invece addebitata a regole infrante, la signora Merkel, ritenuta più severa nel farle rispettare, guadagna consensi.

Behind the Mask 
July 25, 2013, European Voice
By Andrew Gardner 
Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, both fellows at the US-based Brookings Institution, opt for a format akin to popular psychology, but produce what may, with caveats, come to be seen as the best study of Putin and his system: they present Putin's six dominant traits as individual personae, and attempt to show how they come together in his system. Putin is the Statist, anxious to make the Russian state strong again. He is the History Man, a man of destiny who fits into Russia's past. He is the Survivalist, intent on limiting threats to the state's territory, sovereignty, and national identity.

Activist presses Ukraine for release of Tymoshenko
July 24, 2013, The Washington Times
By Ashish Kumar Sen
Western governments and human rights groups have described the charges against Mrs. Tymoshenko as politically motivated. "Pretty much everybody who followed the trial in December of 2011, at least everybody in the West, regards it as a judicial farce," said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and now with the Brookings Institution.

Worldview: It's time for Obama to tell Putin 'nyet'
July 21, 2013, The Philadelphia Inquirer
By Trudy Rubin
"There is nothing on the [Moscow summit] agenda that they can make progress on," says the Brookings Institution's Fiona Hill, coauthor of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin. "Why would Obama bother going?" Indeed, when the two men met at a G-8 summit last month in Northern Ireland, Putin's demeanor was so frigid that video clips of the scene became grist for TV comics. A summit in Moscow, says Hill, "would be just another exercise in parody and disillusionment."

Obama could accept limited relations with Putin: Analysts
July 21, 2013, AFP
But his colleague at the Brookings Institution, Steven Pifer, argued the Snowden affair is merely the latest of a number of issues that have poisoned the relationship between the two former Cold War rivals, and is not by itself a dealbreaker. … Obama “clearly would like to do something more on arms control, so one question is, are the Russians prepared to respond to the proposals that he made in Berlin in June for reducing the new START limits by a third?” Pifer asked.

Ex-CIA officer tied to abduction of Egyptian cleric allowed to flee Panama for U.S.
July 19, 2013, The Sacramento Bee
By Tim Johnson
Panama on Friday allowed a retired CIA station chief wanted in Italy for his role in the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian Muslim cleric to leave for the United States, permitting the former U.S. intelligence agent to avoid an Italian jail cell. Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Milan, had been arrested earlier in the week as he attempted to cross into Costa Rica from Panama. “It’s a sensitive issue, and it is a source of embarrassment to the two countries. We cooperate on all kinds of things,” said Michael Calingaert, a visiting scholar and expert on U.S.-Italian relations at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

How Putin Uses Money Laundering Charges to Control His Opponents
July 17, 2013, The Atlantic
Andrew S. Bowen
A silent agreement between Putin and business elites was reached in the aftermath of Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky being thrown into jail in 2003 for attempting to challenge Putin politically. As William Partlett of Columbia University and the Brookings Institution said about the incident, "The message to other oligarchs was clear: follow the rules or face devastating legal consequences." … "His (Putin’s) plan was to use reformed formal legal institutions to complement his personalized rule," Partlett notes, "In fact, strong legal institutions were a means to an end--a tool for ensuring that he could punish those who did not comply with his informal rules of the game through selective prosecution."

Snowden Affair: Your Move, Moscow
July 13, 2013, Global Post
According to Pavel Baev, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, the “political calculations change” the longer Snowden remains in Moscow, turning the fugitive whistleblower from a one-time trophy into a liability. “This hot potato is good fun for a while, but Putin is definitely looking for an elegant way to throw it to somebody else's lap,” he said.

Catherine Ashton Emerges as a Key Player in the European Union
July 13, 2013, The Daily Beast
By Eleanor Clift
Fiona Hill with the Brookings Institution, watching them interact at various events, says Ashton “really bonded with Hillary Clinton. They’re both no nonsense women with a bit of steel.” Those qualities helped produce the breakthrough in the Balkans and quieted much of the sniping that she experienced early in her term. “She got a lot of flack, much of it sexist, about how she looks—she doesn’t have a glamorous persona. She’s very substantive, and she didn’t look for style over substance,” says Hill, recalling that even the iconic Margaret Thatcher got a makeover to change her voice and hair when she entered political life. “Catherine Ashton hasn’t done any of that stuff.”

Obama Speaks With Putin On Snowden, But No Sign Of Movement
July 12, 2013, Reuters
By Steve Holland and Arshad Mohammed
The drama has tested U.S.-Russian relations, although no lasting damage has been apparent so far.
"My sense is that both Washington and Moscow have lots of experience in compartmentalizing these kinds of issues when you've got spies or … defectors," said Steven Pifer, a Russia expert who is director of the Brookings Institution's Arms Control Initiative. "They can fence that off from the rest of the relationship."

Europe’s economy has its groove back
July 8, 2013, Macleans
By Tamsin McMahon
But although politicians are keen to paint a picture of a resurgent Europe, problems remain that could yet trample the green shoots of economic growth. While it has helped bring investment back to Europe, the ECB’s generous monetary policy has taken the heat off leaders to tackle the larger issues facing Europe, says Carlo Bastasin, an Italian economist and fellow with the Brookings Institution in Washington. “There is a complacency that brings us to say things are better now,” he says. “But that complacency is exactly the problem, because it prevents us from taking the necessary steps.”

Can Europe shoulder its military burden on its own?
July 2, 2013, Christian Science Monitor
By Sara Miller Llana
The American message that Europe needs to uphold its end of the bargain is not simply about sharing the burden, says Clara O'Donnell, a senior fellow at the Centre for European Reform in London who is currently at the Brookings Institution in Washington. It's also about ensuring a peaceful Europe that won't demand American military attention. "NATO has meant that countries, historically, that had been at war have put those animosities aside and committed to mutual security," she says, "It means that at least there is one part of the world that the US had to worry about before that it now doesn't have to worry about." 

From ethnic slaughter to stability in two decades: Former war zone Croatia joins EU
June 28, 2013, NBCNews.com
By Alastair Jamieson
Former U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina Richard Kauzlarich called Croatia’s entrance into the EU a “positive step” for both the country and the region as a whole. “I can remember the bad old days,” he said. “Croatia experienced a great deal of loss during the war, but the West, the U.S., the EU supported Croatia’s evolution and did everything we could to encourage the kind of leadership that would be necessary to undertake the EU process.” Now a fellow at the Brookings public policy organization, Kauzlarich said that the country had resolved a lot of issues in order to join.

With social media, middle classes in Brazil, Turkey grow stronger, angrier
June 26, 2013, The Washington Times
By Ashish Kumar Sen
The protests turned into an “expression of frustration with a prime minister who has become increasingly paternalistic and authoritarian,” said Kemal Kirisci, director of the Center on the United States and Europe’s Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “In an ironic way, [the protests are] a product of the success of this government in helping to develop a stronger middle class, especially the highly educated section of the middle class that lives in the cities. … The government’s failure to hear their voice and the adoption of policies that these people feel are strangling their individualistic liberties,” Mr. Kirisci said.

Putin: No grounds to extradite Snowden
June 25, 2013, The Washington Post
By Kathy Lally and Will Englund
Of course, Russia is trying to extract maximum advantage and mount some of the “moral high ground” it often accuses the United States of considering its divine right, said Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution. Putin, who detests the U.S. support for human rights groups in his country and accuses it of financing opposition, alluded to Snowden as an activist who hardly deserved jail.

Obama Hit by Snowden Setbacks With China, Russia
June 25, 2013, The Associated Press
By Julie Pace
Russia's ultimate response to U.S. pressure remains unclear. Putin could still agree to return Snowden to the U.S. But he may also let him stay in Russia or head elsewhere, perhaps to Ecuador or Venezuela - both options certain to earn the ire of the White House. Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said she expected Putin to take advantage of a "golden opportunity" to publicly defy the White House. "This is one of those opportunities to score points against the United States that I would be surprised if Russia passed up," Hill said.

US-China Relations Chill Over Snowden
June 24, 2013, The Hill
By Julian Pecquet
Fiona Hill, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, said Russia and China see the Snowden affair as a way to get back at the United States for its criticism on human rights. “Where we are now is the Russians making everything they can of this opportunity to show the United States up in the global field of public relations,” Hill said.

Details of Snowden’s Hong Kong Stay Emerge
June 24, 2013, The Washington Post
By Jia Lynn Yang, Peter Finn and Sari Horwitz
Fiona Hill, the co-author of a biography of Putin and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the Russians, who have been frustrated in their attempts to get opponents of the government extradited from the West, are likely to let the United States “stew in its own juices.” There were contradictory reports about Snowden’s exact location in Moscow on Monday. … And it is unclear whether Russia is secretly negotiating with the United States or interviewing him before they allow his departure. “They don’t want to waste this opportunity to extract what they can,” Hill said, “so they don’t want Mr. Snowden to fly off too quickly.”

Extending a Hand Abroad, Obama Often Finds a Cold Shoulder
June 18, 2013, The New York Times
By Mark Landler and Peter Baker
“Obama doesn’t really take kindly to being harangued, so we knew from the beginning that he and Putin weren’t going to have a good basis together,” said Fiona Hill… co-author of a book on Mr. Putin. As Ms. Hill noted, even Mr. Bush’s friendship did not stop Mr. Putin from crossing him. “With Obama,” she said, “there’s no pretense of personal chemistry, and the results may be the same.”

Why Siberia Could Be Russia's Secret Economic Weapon
June 18, 2013, CNBC.com
By Holly Ellyatt
"True, Siberia has more natural wealth than any other place in the world. But it also has unequaled disadvantages of cold and remoteness," Clifford Gaddy, an economist at the U.S. think tank the Brookings Institution told CNBC. He pointed out that the government also needs to consider a particular problem Russia faces: its shrinking labor force. … "Russia's most critical bottleneck in the next 20-30 years is its shrinking labor force. Under those circumstances it makes no sense to have policies to attract more people to Siberia - that weakens the national economy," he told CNBC.

America, Russia and Syria: So Much for the Reset
June 14, 2013, Macleans
By Michael Petrou
Russia also has particular worries about secessionist movements interlaced with Sunni Islamic extremism. As Fiona Hill writes, he looks at Syria and sees Chechnya, a Russian region where Russia fought two brutal wars against secessionist and Islamist militias. Putin what the precedent set by a successful Islamist uprising in Syria might mean for the Muslim regions of Russia.

Vladimir Putin's Man Crush on Steven Seagal
June 13, 2013, Businessweek
By Claire Suddath
The state-owned RIA Novosti news service reported Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin asked [actor Steven] Seagal to press lawmakers on Capitol Hill to remove barriers to the sale of Russian-made guns in the U.S. “Bizarre is the word that comes to mind,” Clifford Gaddy, an economist at the Brookings Institution who focuses on Russia, said in an e-mail.

Latvia Wants To Join The Eurozone. Why?
June 5, 2013, Marketplace
By Krissy Clark
“It’s very easy to say the euro area is experiencing a crisis, and so joining the club is surprising,” says Carlo Bastasin, a global economist with the Brookings Institution. But there are good reasons to join "Club Eurozone", Bastasin says. For one, the eurozone crisis is probably going to affect you whether you’re in the club or not. So, he says, you may as well reap the membership benefits: more trading partners, a shared currency that makes it easier for people and products to cross borders, and what Bastasin calls “monetary credibility that a smaller country may find desirable.”

Anti-Government Protests Target Obama Ally in Turkey
June 4, 2013, ABC News
By Abby D. Phillip
Yet in pursuit of a stronger alliance with Turkey, the U.S. has ignored Erdogan's growing conservatism and his tendency to govern with a strong arm, said Kemal Kirisci, a senior fellow and Director of the Center on the United States and Europe's Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution. "For some time people had become critical of the American administration's reluctance in bringing up these problems in Turkey," he added. "I suspect now the U.S. is going to try to make up for it; to try to raise these issues in a much more conspicuous and forceful manner, but I wonder if this is not somewhat late."

Playing Moscow’s Game
June 1, 2013, The New York Review of Books
By Amy Knight
In fact, the parallels between Chechnya and Syria cannot be lost on Putin. As Russia expert Fiona Hill observed in March: “For Putin, Syria is all too reminiscent of Chechnya. Both conflicts pitted the state against disparate and leaderless opposition forces, which over time came to include extremist Sunni Islamist groups. In Putin’s view—one that he stresses repeatedly in meetings with his U.S. and European counterparts—Syria is the latest battleground in a global, multi-decade struggle between secular states and Sunni Islamism…”

Russia Sends Arms to Syria As It Tries To Reassert Its Role in Region
May 30, 2013, The Washington Post
By Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick
Russian policy “is not insane or irrational from [Russia’s] point of view,” said Fiona Hill, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution. “They’re just waiting to see how it plays out.” The Russians, Hill and other experts said, see the United States as the irrational player in the region, upsetting the status quo and adding fuel to sectarian conflicts in Russia’s own neighborhood. Recent territorial gains by Assad’s forces — and the Americans’ reluctance to supply their own arms — have only hardened the Russians’ resolve.

US, Turkey Project United Front on Syria
May 23, 2013, AP
"Over the last couple of months, it seemed they were drifting away from each other, and Erdogan was, to put it mildly, disappointed with Obama for not extending the support he thought would come once the U.S. elections were over," said Kemal Kirisci, an expert on Turkish foreign policy at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. "Today, they seemed to want to project an image to the public that they are on the same wavelength."

Closing doors: Three books paint a bleak picture of Russia under Vladimir Putin
May 11, 2013, The Economist
Now three very different new books illustrate how misguided such hope in Mr Putin’s modernisation turned out to be. Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy both work for the Brookings Institution, an American think-tank. Mr Gaddy has been a prolific writer, first about the Soviet economy and now about the Russian one. In the 1990s he advised the Russian government on fiscal federalism. British-born Ms Hill oversaw Russia at America’s National Intelligence Council in Washington, DC. The authors have met and talked with Mr Putin, and they respect him up to a point.

Mr Putin, Operative in the Kremlin by Fiona Hill and Clifford G Gaddy – Review
May 10, 2013, The Guardian
By David Hearst
The many sources of the system he has created are amply and brilliantly clarified in this book. Mr Putin, Operative in the Kremlin (note the mister, not comrade) is a readable and informed portrait painted by two students of Russian history who had, at various times in their careers, a front-row view. Fiona Hill, a Brookings Institution academic, spent 2006-9 as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the US National Intelligence Council. The economist Clifford Gaddy once advised the Russian finance ministry on regional tax and has investigated how Putin's financial dealings relate to his KGB past.

Decades of Distrust Restrain Cooperation Between FBI and Russia’s FSB
May 8, 2013 , The Washington Post
By Peter Finn
Putin once named the United States as the “main opponent,” and the United States and Europe are the targets of aggressive high-tech and industrial espionage by Russia, according to intelligence officials.  “There is a broad culture of mistrust that is going to be very hard to change,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.” “That’s a huge obstacle to moving forward on counterterrorism. It’s the same sets of people who have to cooperate.” Hill said that “for real counterterrorism cooperation, as you have with the Brits or the Europeans, you have to be able to share operational information.”

 

Kerry aims to calm tensions in first Moscow visit 
May 5, 2013, Agence France Presse
By Jo Biddle
Analysts cautioned little concrete progress is likely to emerge, although there were expectations Kerry would meet Tuesday with Putin, in a rare break with diplomatic protocol by Moscow. "Obviously one of the main points of the trip is to try to take the edge off all of the rhetoric, and try to find some way of figuring out if there are some concrete areas where we can go forward," [Dr. Fiona] Hill…director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution…said. "If there's just a glimmer that they are in the mood, at least for now, to try to put things on a more cordial level, that in itself would be an achievement."

U.S. Needs To Help Muslims, Others Assimilate To American Life 
April 30, 2013, Investor’s Business Daily
By Fareed Zakaria 
Jonathan Laurence of Boston College found that before 1990, European countries largely ignored their Muslim populations and let the embassies of countries such as Morocco, Algeria and Saudi Arabia cater to them by building mosques and training imams. "This wasn't multiculturalism so much as indifference," Laurence wrote recently. Those countries had little interest in helping migrants assimilate; in fact, their efforts were to do the opposite.

French Plan to Cut Military Causes Concern 
April 30, 2013, Medill News Service
By David Kashi
The U.S. has always spearheaded NATO actions from the conflict in Kosovo to Afghanistan and is encouraging NATO to take more responsibility. “We are definitely seeing retrenchment cuts in number of personnel that could be deployed abroad and we are seeing them [France] buying fewer fighter aircraft and so forth,” said Clara O’Donnell, a non-resident fellow at the Center on the U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution. “This means we will have less capability…but the news could have been much worse.” O’Donnell said U.S. concerns may be “overblown,” and that defense cuts could have been much worse. She pointed to France taking the lead in recent action in Mali.

Can Europe Teach U.S. Something About Engaging Islam?
April 28, 2013, Fareed Zakaria GPS
By Fareed Zakaria
Jonathan Laurence of Boston College, who's done extensive research of Muslim communities in Europe, found that before 1990 European countries were largely indifferent towards their Muslim populations - letting foreign embassies, like Saudi Arabia, set up the mosques and meeting centers for these groups. They realized that this produced a radicalized and unassimilated migrant community.

Last Days of Boris Berezovsky
April 25, 2013, London Review of Books
By Peter Pomerantsev
A few couldn’t cope with the polyphony and went on to become full-blown dissidents with arrests and jail terms to show for it. A new book by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy attempts to draw a psychological portrait of Putin and finds at least six personas in him, from the ‘history man’ to the ‘free marketeer’ (I would add several more to their list). The condition has made for a generation of leaders who excel at simulation and mind-games but are incapable of fashioning any meaningful politics because they themselves grew up without them.

Boston Tragedy Offers US, Russia Chance To Mend Ties
April 22, 2013, Associated Press
"Putin has been making the point for 14 years that Chechnya affects all of us," said Fiona Hill, formerly the White House's national intelligence officer for Russia under Obama and President George W. Bush.
But, she said, Russia seldom showed interest in threats specific to the United States. "That's always been the frustration of our counterterrorism officials — that the Russians have always wanted us to focus on their issue."

Attentats de Boston : les zones d’ombre russes
April 22, 2013, Liberation
By Lorraine Millot
Lors de son séjour, Tamerlan a certainement été «suivi de près» par les services russes, qui ont aussi «infiltré les groupes extrémistes» au Caucase, «comme tous les services de renseignement le font
d’ailleurs pour tous les groupes extrémistes», observe Fiona Hill, experte de la Russie à la Brookings Institution.

Bombers' Path To Boston May Have Begun Online
April 21, 2013, Agence France Presse
By Chantal Valery
Fiona Hill, a Caucasus specialist at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the conflict in Chechnya is used as a recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda. "Videos from Chechnya are all over the Internet. They're constantly packaged as part of the Al-Qaeda network recruitment," she said. Dzhokhar used Twitter and VKontakte -- the Russian equivalent of Facebook -- where his profile identifies "Islam" as his world view, lists information about Chechnya and Islam, and relates jokes about the unfair treatment of Muslims in the Caucasus.

Boston Bombing Could Have U.S.-Russia Implications
April 19, 2013, USA Today
By Aamer Madhani
Fiona Hill, a Russia analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that Putin may angle to "reset the reset" and argue that Obama needs to be more concerned about the Chechen separatists, some of whom have made their way to fighting with Taliban in Afghanistan and the Syrian opposition. …
"Where the U.S. wanted to talk about Afghanistan, he wanted to talk about Chechnya and have the U.S. turn a blind eye to the human-rights abuses there," Hill said.

Were motives of Boston bombing suspects embedded in Chechen heritage – or not?
April 19, 2013, Christian Science Monitor
By Howard LaFranchi
However the young men’s roots in a violent region can’t be dismissed, some experts say. “Chechnya has a very brutal history. You can just imagine two young Chechen boys growing up [in that violence] and then being dropped in the United States,” says Fiona Hill, an expert in Russia and its regional conflicts at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Noting how that could be “incredibly disorienting,” she adds, “And here they are in their 20s, a classic time for people to search for identity.”

What You Need to Know About Chechnya
April 19, 2013, National Journal
By Matt Vasilogambros, Cory Bennett and Niraj Chokshi
The attack by Chechen militants was widely criticized by the international community and turned the tide of support against the Chechens’ cause. Up until the siege and the second Chechen war, sympathy was on their side, said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. This wasn’t the first time the Chechen militants used this tactic. In a similar attack in the late 1990s, Chechen militants took a maternity hospital to get Moscow to negotiate. Unlike the siege in Beslan, Moscow agreed to negotiate with the Chechens, preventing mass casualties.

Magnitsky Fallout May Harm Missile Progress as U.S. Talks To Putin
April 12, 2013, Reuters
By Gabriela Baczynska
A gauge of whether Putin wants to improve ties will be whether he limits Moscow's response to naming Americans barred from Russia in retaliation, or if he goes further. "If it stops there, then that is a tit-for-tat and it's OK," Steven Pifer, an expert on Russia at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "But if Moscow wants to use it for something else, then it's going to make it harder to focus on work in areas where...

Events in Rada Reduce Kyiv's Chances to Sign Agreement With EU, Says Pifer
April 5, 2013, Interfax-Ukraine
The events that took place on April 4 taint the image of the Verkhovna Rada and Ukraine as a whole, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and now senior fellow of the Brookings Institution Steven Pifer said in an interview with the Voice of America. "The fact that the parliament is not working brings discredit to it. Unfortunately, the image of the Verkhovna Rada in Europe and the United States is not very good: fighting, MPs who vote for a few ones, and now a split. The Rada does not give the impression of the state body which is trying to solve serious problems in the country," he said.

Turkey Has Become More Visible Due To Activities of 'Non-State' Actors
April 4, 2013, GlobalPost
For Dr. Omer Taspinar from the Brookings Institution, economic success, institutionalization of social and economic services, secularism and democracy, pursuit of EU membership and Muslim identity combined are the elements of Turkey's soft power.

Book Review: ‘Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin’
March 31, 2013, Financial Times
By Neil Buckley
For Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy... this is not just another Putin biography. It is a psychological portrait, a handbook providing sometimes speculative but well-informed answers to the question that has trailed the ex-KGB colonel from St Petersburg ever since he stepped out of the shadows and on to the international stage when he became Russia’s prime minister in 1999: “Who is Mr Putin?”

Obama’s Reset With Netanyahu Faces Test in Future Diplomacy
March 23, 2013, BusinessWeek
By Margaret Talev and Julianna Goldman
Netanyahu’s phone call with his Turkish counterpart was facilitated by Obama, and the U.S. president was on the line as the Israeli apologized to Turkey for the deaths in 2010 of nine Turks taking part in an aid flotilla to Gaza that was intercepted by Israeli security forces. The incident damaged relations between the two nations. Obama “pulled it off -- this is a black-and-white measure of his success,” said Kemal Kirisci, head of the Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution, a policy center in Washington.

Desperate For Bailout, Cyprus Plays Risky Geopolitical Game
March 20, 2013, Reuters
By Peter Apps and Henning Gloystein
Earlier this week, one London-based fund described the Cyprus bailout as the euro zone's "Franz Ferdinand moment", comparing it to the assassination of an Austrian archduke in Sarajevo that sparked world war in 1914. "That might be an overstatement," said Fiona Hill, a former senior official on the U.S. National Intelligence Council and now head of the Europe Programme at the Brookings Institution. "But it's a very serious situation. You went to bed on Friday night thinking that the Eurozone would survive and woke up on Saturday (after the bailout) wondering how it can."

U.S. Cancels Part of Missile Defense That Russia Opposed
March 16, 2013, The New York Times
By David M. Herszenhorn and Michael R. Gordon
“There is no threat to Russian missiles now,” said Steven Pifer, an arms control expert who has managed Russia policy from top positions at the State Department and the National Security Council. “If you listen to what the Russians have been saying for the last two years, this has been the biggest obstacle to things like cooperation with NATO.” “Potentially this is very big,” said Mr. Pifer, now of the Brookings Institution. “And it’s going to be very interesting seeing how the Russians react once they digest it.”

Two years on, fate of Syria in Russian and Turkish hands
March 15, 2013, The National
By Alan Philips
Fiona Hill, author of a new biography, Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, believes that the Russian leader's plan has been to give Mr Assad all the time he needs to crush the opposition, just as Mr Putin was able to overcome the Chechen separatists. "Putin is the kind of person who thinks any sacrifice is worth it," she writes. "But Erdogan is a retail politician. He cannot afford to see people dying at home or even abroad. Particularly people for whom there is a degree of kinship. "Erdogan is desperately trying to figure out some form of solution in Syria ... Putin has all the patience to see events play out. What worries him is not the bloodshed but the collapse of Syria, and the knock-on effects of that further afield."

Putin’s Ph.D.: Can a Plagiarism Probe Upend Russian Politics?
February 28, 2013, TIME
By Simon Shuster
State TV networks did not cover the story, even though Russian bloggers were going berserk and a respected independent weekly, Kommersant Vlast, published a cover story, which extensively quoted Clifford Gaddy, one of the Brookings researchers. It also quoted the head of Putin’s alma mater, Vladimir Litvinenko, who said he had “no doubts” Putin wrote the work himself. Since the scandal broke, Putin has repeatedly declined to comment, as did his spokesman when I reached him last week. “The approach has been to simply ignore it,” Gaddy says by phone from Washington. “It’s the elephant in the room. Everybody knows about it, but nobody wants to bring it up.”

El éxito de la antipolítica
February 26, 2013, La Gaceta
By Jose Carlos Rodriguez
Beppe Grillo no es ni el único líder anti sistema ni el único cómico. Silvio Berlusconi tiene algo de ambas cosas. El analista de Brookings Carlo Bastasin señala que “Berlusconi representa ambas realidades: la política y la antipolítica. Por lo que cuando falla como político promueve los sentimientos antipolíticos que él mismo recoge. Él está en una posición de 'siempre gana', incluso cuando pierde”.

The Continent without a Military
February 25, 2013, The National Interest
By Doug Bandow
Clara M. O’Donnell, a European scholar with the Brookings Institution, explained that “what we’re seeing is basically cuts in capability and little thought on what to replace them with.” ... So far, figures O’Donnell, “smart defense” initiatives have saved less than 1 percent of the spending cuts imposed since 2008

In Russia, Dmitry Medvedev is targeted by campaign of insults
February 23, 2013, The Washington Post
By Will Englund 
Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, both at the Brookings Institution, have just published a book that analyzes Putin’s presidency, and they pointed out at a recent forum that Medvedev, who is 13 years younger than Putin, would have been a law student during the years of the great pro-democracy demonstrations before the Soviet collapse and probably took part in some. Putin, at that time, was a KGB officer in isolated Dresden, East Germany.

The dread of the other: The leading role played by anti-Americanism in today’s Russia 
February 16, 2013, The Economist
Russia’s obsession with America is countered with a broad indifference on the American side. The “reset” policy, which has helped bring about some American wishes, including a transport corridor to Afghanistan and co-operation on Iran, has now been exhausted. “There are no big deals to be had with Putin,” Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, argued recently in the New York Times. Mr Pushkov retorts that America has not understood how important Russia is for its security.

North Korean Actions Raise Stakes for US Missile Defense 
February 14, 2013, Voice of America
By Mike Richman
“These interceptors in Alaska and California are believed to have some capability against a rudimentary intercontinental ballistic missile warhead of the kind that you would expect North Korea to have initially," said Steven Pifer, head of the Arms Control Initiative at the Brookings Institution. "But how good they would actually be, we don’t know. But there is some capability to protect America already deployed.”

Les auteurs d'un livre sur Poutine publié aux USA tentent de détruire les stéréotypes 
February 14, 2013, RIA Novosti
"Avec le prisme de la réflexion occidentale et en voulant coller une étiquette sur tout, certains chercheurs et médias occidentaux qualifient Poutine d'autocrate et de néo-soviétique, disent que toutes ses décisions peuvent être expliquées par son passé d'agent secret, etc. C'est une vision très réductrice. Nous voulions offrir une compréhension plus complexe de sa personnalité en expliquant ce qu'il pense et surtout pourquoi", a déclaré Clifford Gaddy dans une interview accordée à RIA Novosti.

North Korea Nuclear Test Should Prompt New Arms Reductions, Expert Says 
February 12, 2013, Huffington Post
By David Wood
But others said this is precisely the moment to talk nuclear arms reductions. Steven Pifer, a former ambassador and senior arms control official, said that while rhetoric and sanctions would have limited effect on North Korea, a new U.S. arms reductions initiative would provide diplomatic cover for others -- specifically China -- to join new international pressure on Pyongyang. … But he noted that, "if we cut our nuclear arsenal in half," the U.S. would still have roughly 300 times as many weapons as North Korea.

Options Open for Obama to Slash Nukes 
February 12, 2013, RIA Novosti
By Carl Schreck
But securing the needed number of votes could prove difficult for Obama given Republican lawmakers’ considerable resistance to his push for the New START reductions, which the US Senate ultimately approved in a 71-26 vote. “I think the administration was surprised at how tough it was to get New START ratified,” Steven Pifer, director of the arms control initiative at the Brookings Institution, told RIA Novosti on Monday.

State of the Union: Barack Obama to call for cull of America's nuclear weapons arsenal 
February 11, 2013, The Daily Telegraph
By Peter Foster
Although Mr Obama is not expected to give precise numbers in his speech, reports yesterday claimed that the number of warheads could be cut from 1,700 to as low as 1,000, if a mutual agreement can be secured with Russia. ... "These numbers ring true, and the administration has signaled before that it wants to move forward on this issue," Steven Pifer, a former State Department official and director of the Arms Control Initiative at the Brookings Institution, told The Daily Telegraph.

Russia Expects Olympics to Retool Its Image 
February 9, 2013, The Washington Post
By Kathy Lally
Putin has made Sochi his personal monument, just as Peter the Great did with the city of St. Petersburg, Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution, said in a Washington Post video interview last week. “This is Putin himself on the line,” she said.

Uncivil Liberties
February 7, 2013, Kyiv Post
Western leaders are clear in their criticism. At a recent roundtable at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer said that in order to improve relations with the West, “Ukraine must foremost improve its democratic ratings because the U.S. government won’t close its eyes to human rights abuses and rollback in democratic practices…” Pifer was upbeat though, stating Ukraine can make a quick turnaround “and once again become of interest to the West.”

U.S. troops in Mali unlikely, experts say 
February 6, 2013, Medill News Service
By Gideon Resnick
Justin Vaisse, senior fellow and director of research at Brookings’ Center on the United States and Europe, said it is unlikely that radical Islamism will overwhelm Mali in the coming months because it does not have deep enough roots in the country and an Islamist group has little chance to win in the upcoming presidential election in July.

Владимир Путин в шести лицах 
February 6, 2013, Voice of America
By Natasha Mozgovaya
Политики нередко меняют обличья, но Владимир Путин перещеголял всех, утверждают сотрудники вашингтонского Института Брукингса Клиффорд Гэдди и Фиона Хилл в новой книге «Путин: оперативник в Кремле» (Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin). Третий президентский срок Путина озадачил – не только Госдепартамент, но и вашингтонских экспертов по России – заставив их задуматься над вопросом: как повлияет эта новая «рокировка» на американо-российские отношения?

Clinton Leaves Without Big Breakthroughs 
February 1, 2013, Financial Times
By Geoff Dyer and Richard McGregor
Mrs. Clinton also demonstrated she could be a loyal team player in an administration with a tendency to micromanage foreign policy from the White House. “This has been a very White House-centric foreign policy,” said Robert Kagan, an author and foreign policy commentator. “You have to actually give cabinet officers some room to work.”

As Mali Exposes Europe’s Defense Frailties, Leaders Gather in Munich 
January 31, 2013, Stars and Stripes
By Steven Beardsley
Most middle-size European countries slashed defense spending by 10 percent to 15 percent between 2009 and 2011, according to a recent Brookings Institution analysis that cites a European Parliament study. “Here what we’re seeing is basically cuts in capability and little thought on what to replace them with,” Clara M. O’Donnell, author of the analysis, said.

McCain Warns Of ‘Spillover’ In Syrian Conflict 
January 30, 2013, The Washington Times
By Ashish Kumar Sen
“Syria is unquestionably a place where humanitarian issues and [U.S.] strategic interests converge,” Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said while advocating a greater U.S. role at a debate at the McCain Institute.

Could Scottish, Catalan Independence Votes Reshape Europe?
January 29, 2013, Reuters
By Peter Apps
Fiona Hill, a former official at the US National Intelligence Council and now head of the Europe programme at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, says London and Madrid don't seem to realise how important this is seen to be beyond their borders. "We are talking about two of the oldest states in Europe," Hill said. "I had a senior Balkan official ask me if it was the end of the multi-ethnic state."

Hagel Supports Nuclear Arms Cuts, Then Elimination
January 29, 2013, Associated Press
By Robert Burns
"Sen. Hagel certainly would bring to office a more ambitious view on nuclear reductions than his predecessors," said Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "While he would likely take a less dramatic position in office, it might not be a bad thing to have a secretary of defense question what nuclear deterrence requires today."

Interview: Richard Kauzlarich
January 26, 2013, Contact.az
By Alakbar Raufoglu
"The rioting in Ismayilli -- as the rioting in Guba last year -- is an indication of popular concern about continuing human rights abuses and corruption in Azerbaijan… It is similar to incidents in China where local abuses and corruption have led to similar riots”, Amb. Kauzlarich… said.

Need for a pragmatic arms-control treaty
January 26, 2013, GulfNews
By David E. Hoffman
For a road map of the possibilities, see The Opportunity: Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Arms, by Steven Pifer and Michael E. O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. The book is a sober, fact-filled assessment of the choices that Obama now faces. “Why pursue nuclear arms control when the Cold War is more than 20 years in the past?” they ask.

Obama veut rester dans l’histoire
January 21, 2013, Le Parisien
By Alix Bouilhaguet
Là aussi, il sera jugé sur ses actes. Sur le plan international, nul doute qu’il rêverait d’être le président de la normalisation avec l’Iran. « S’il a une chance de laisser une marque sur un dossier, c’est celui-là », analyse Justin Vaïsse, de la Brookings Institution.

The French Way of War
January 19, 2013, The New York Times
By Steven Erlanger
In the interview, and later to me, [Robert] Kagan praised the French for their willingness to use force in the pursuit of legitimate goals, even if they may not always have sufficient means to accomplish them. “Nobody asks France to be at the forefront of military interventions, but the willingness of the French to take the initiative is positive,” he said. “I have a new philosophy: If the French are ready to go, we should go.”

The Price of Deterrence
January 9, 2013, Financial Times
By James Blitz
The Pentagon is clearly enthusiastic about a British renewal of Trident, built by Lockheed Martin of the US, because it shares the costs of the missile system with the UK. But Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador and director of the Brookings Arms Control Initiative, questions the logic of the UK continuing to plough a large part of its budget into nuclear weapons when so much of its conventional spending is being pared back in budget cuts. … “The British debate is being followed here. If the UK Trident programme sucks up so much money that the British military is denuded of expeditionary capabilities that are far more likely to be used than nuclear weapons, the US military will not be happy about that,” Mr Pifer says.

L'affaire Magnitski accroît les dissensions entre Moscou et Washington 
December 29, 2012, Le Monde
By Sylvain Cypel
L'affaire Magnitski constitue-t-elle une escalade supplémentaire? Fiona Hill, ex-haut responsable du renseignement américain pour la zone Russie-Eurasie et directrice du Centre Etats-Unis-Europe de l'institution Brookings, ne le pense pas. Pour l'auteure d'un ouvrage sur le président russe à paraître le 2 janvier 2013 (Mr Putin, Operative in the Kremlin, Brookings Press), la tension actuelle est essentiellement "conjoncturelle". Elle résulte d'abord des enjeux électoraux récents dans les deux pays. "Aux Etats-Unis, la loi a été promue au Congrès pour soutenir la candidature républicaine de Mitt Romney à la présidence. Barack Obama ne l'a signée qu'avec réticence."

Russian Ban on U.S. Adoptions Reflects Strained Relations 
December 28, 2012, Bloomberg
By Nicole Gaouette & Flavia Krause-Jackson
There’s little chance that the crisis in Syria will end in anything but chaos if the U.S. and Russia -- both of which worry about the rise of Islamic extremism in the country -- can’t find a way to cooperate on the issue, said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington policy group. “We can’t really avoid the Russians,” Hill said in a telephone interview. “In the global sweep of things, we have a lot of common concerns, but we approach each issue from very different perspectives.”

Contre Obama, Moscou prend les enfants en otages
December 27, 2012, Liberation
By Lorraine Millot
«Les Américains n’aiment pas les rencontres qui n’ont pas de résultats tangibles, rappelle Fiona Hill, experte à la Brookings Institution. Et Obama peut aussi faire valoir que Poutine n’est pas venu au dernier sommet du G8 [en mai dernier à Camp David, ndlr], en expliquant qu’il devait former son gouvernement. Obama peut dire aujourd’hui qu’il doit d’abord former son gouvernement…» Le président américain a besoin de Poutine, pour limiter les dégâts en Syrie ou en Iran, mais ne veut pas paraître lui faire trop de charme, au moment où il le sent plutôt affaibli, au Proche-Orient comme sur le plan intérieur.

Glass half empty on progress in euro crisis 
December 19, 2012, MarketWatch
By Darrell Delamaide
In fact, the “alert” last week from the Brookings Institution announcing its first “Survey of Eurozone Progress” in creating a more stable currency union spins it positively. The survey, Brookings says, “evaluates the strides European leaders have taken toward that goal, ultimately concluding that the euro zone is moving toward viable long-term structures, with the most progress achieved in central banking.”

Russian Politics: A New Ideology for Political Ends 
December 15, 2012, The Economist
Mr Putin must now cast about for a definition of Russianness that fits his political needs. Judging from his speech, this may be a mishmash of patriotism, the cult of the mother, sport, the church, and the revitalisation of a “provincial intelligentsia”. This experimentation with ideology fits Mr Putin’s identity as a “case officer” says Clifford Gaddy of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank; a man who “finds out what people want” and “cleverly tries to manipulate them”.

American Intelligence Report Predicts China will be World’s Leading Economic Power by 2030 
December 14, 2012, Voice of America 
Robert Kagan is with the Brookings Institution in Washington: "What the world is looking for from the United States - and it’s not the world - individual states look for protection, they look - in some cases - for the ability to organize. I mean if you take the Syria issue which is before us right now, what people are waiting for is for the United States to step up and start pulling everyone together. And what's been missing has been the United States playing that role."

L’inconcludente politica (europea) fa tribolare gli operosi banchieri centrali 
December 13, 2012, Il Foglio
By Marco Valerio Lo Prete
Non appena i mercati si placano, insomma, il processo di integrazione arranca. E, alla vigilia del vertice di oggi e domani dei capi di governo dell’Ue, la politica torna a mostrarsi esitante di fronte alle sfide della crisi. “Per fortuna c’è il presidente della Bce, Mario Draghi”, è in estrema sintesi la conclusione di uno studio della Brookings Institution pubblicato ieri e curato da quattro economisti (Justin Vaïsse, Douglas J. Elliott, Domenico Lombardi e Thomas Wright). Secondo il think tank americano, l’Ue merita un voto medio di 45 punti su cento per i progressi compiuti nell’affrontare la crisi: soltanto 37 su 100 però per i progressi dell’“unione politica” e invece 67 su 100 per l’operato della Banca centrale.

Ukraine flirts with Russian-led Customs Union 
December 11, 2012, The Kyiv Post
By Katya Gorchinskaya
Some Western analysts are amazed that Ukraine would favor the Customs Union over a free-trade pact with the European Union. “The Customs Union will kill EU free trade: Do you want a Customs Union with a $2 trillion a year economy or do you want to go to the largest economy in the world, (representing) some $15 trillion to $16 trillion a year?” asked former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer at the Kyiv Post Tiger Conference.

Nobel Prize win spurs debate on EU’s role as security provider 
December 11, 2012, Europolitics
By Brian Beary
The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU (see separate article) did not go unnoticed in Washington, serving as a springboard for several debates on the EU and US’ role in promoting peace and security in the world. “We will need to be more capable of adding to soft power bits of hard power,” said EU Ambassador to the US Joao Vale de Almeida, on 7 December, sharing a platform at the Brookings Institution with renowned US author and foreign policy expert Robert Kagan. Kagan, a senior fellow at Brookings, argued that Europe’s main contribution should be to remain “an oasis of peace, democracy and stability” rather than trying to emulate the US by dispatching troops all over the world. “What you are doing is important enough,” Kagan said.

World leaders face big challenges in 2013 
December 10, 2012, Agence France Presse
By Nicolas Revise
Eurozone GDP is forecast to contract by 0.3 percent next year, but Justin Vaisse, director of research on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, said he believed that the worst of the euro crisis is behind us. "The Americans and the markets have concluded that the euro will not explode, otherwise it would have fallen and there would have been a flight of capital," he told AFP.

Под занавес «холодной войны»: похороны «пионеров» и «першингов»
December 7, 2012, Voice of America
By Алекс Григорьев
Еще один участник переговорного процесса – Стивен Пайфер (Steven Pifer), ныне старший научный сотрудник Института Брукингса – заметил, что в финальной части этих переговоров он впервые обнаружил, что советские дипломаты перестали слепо следовать инструкциям, а стали проявлять творческий подход для решения возникающих проблем.

Best Books of 2012 
December 4, 2012, Bloomberg
By Simon Kennedy
Olli Rehn, European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner: On economics, my favorite is Carlo Bastasin’s “Saving Europe: How National Politics Nearly Destroyed the Euro.” It’s based on a very sound understanding of the economics and politics of the euro, and is well-researched.

Obama Seeks Renewal of Nuclear Arms Control Deal With Russia 
December 3, 2012, Los Angeles Times
By Christi Parsons and Paul Richter
"I assume the president has a more ambitious arms control agenda for his second term," said Steven Pifer, a veteran State Department and National Security Council staffer who is now director of the Arms Control Initiative at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. "He needs to set out his agenda sooner rather than later," Pifer said. "If he wants another treaty as part of his legacy, it has to be done in time for a ratification debate in 2015, not in the 2016 election year."

Saakashvili Talks Up EU Integration Path 
November 29, 2012, Kyiv Post
Steven Pifer, the American ambassador in Kyiv from 1997 to 2000, sounded the alarm about Ukraine returning to a “gray zone” geopolitically because of democratic regression under President Viktor Yanukovych. Ukraine, Pifer said, has gone from being a darling of American foreign policy in the 1990s… to one in which all 100 U.S. senators in September unanimously passed a resolution that mentions the possibility of visa bans and financial sanctions against those responsible for the imprisonment of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and other incidents the West regards as abuses of human rights.

As Others See Us: The View from Nagorno-Karabakh 
November 26, 2012, The Herald
By David Leask 
Fiona Hill from the Brookings Institute in Washington DC has long watched ethnic tensions in the Caucasus. She explained: “At one point under the Bush administration a ‘Scottish solution’ to Nagorno-Karabakh was being touted about – although not in Alex Salmond’s earshot. What they meant by that was maximum autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh but inside Azerbaijan with Scotland being set up as a standard. Scotland, like Nagorno-Karabakh, was seen as an ancient country of fiercely independent people with a long history of antagonism, but able to find a modern 21st century solution. That option has now disappeared for those who were advocating it for NK.” 

El pivote asiático de Obama
November 25, 2012, El País
By Lluis Bassets
Justin Vaïsse, de la Brookings Institution de Washington, explica así la nueva política internacional de Barack Obama: “El pivote, concebido no solo en el estrecho sentido geográfico como un giro desde Oriente Medio hacia Asia, sino en un sentido más amplio, como un redespliegue de la política exterior estadounidense desde las cuestiones de seguridad y terrorismo hacia las económicas y globales; desde las viejas naciones hacia el mundo emergente, o incluso, desde el unilateralismo hacia la cooperación, no es ni más ni menos que un cambio de actitud hacia el mundo, una reformulación y una actualización del liderazgo de Estados Unidos” (Barack Obama y su política extranjera, 2008-2012).

West Not Yet Ready to Slap Sanctions on Yanukovych 
November 22, 2012, The Kyiv Post
By Taras Kuzio
Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer, now at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., wrote: “Part of Mr. Yanukovych’s obstinacy may result from an inflated sense of Ukraine’s geopolitical weight.” This month, a BBC HardTalk presenter quoted Pifer’s observation to Yanukovych foreign policy adviser Leonid Kozhara. Instead of answering the question, Kozhara dismissed the former ambassador as a “supporter of the [2004] Orange Revolution” that favored Yushchenko and went against Yanukovych.

Gaza Truce Could Pave Way for New US Peace Push 
November 21, 2012, Agence France Presse
By Jo Biddle and Tangi Quemener
Meanwhile, Egypt, which has a vital peace treaty with Israel, is basking in praise and has burnished its credentials for any future talks. "If Egypt emerges strengthened because the ceasefire holds... that could reverse the existing conditions and at that point (Obama) could decide to invest himself" in a new Middle East peace bid, Justin Vaisse, a director of research at the Brookings Institution told AFP.

Making of Magnitsky List a Murky Affair
November 21, 2012, RIA Novosti
By Carl Schreck
In any case, the State Department will likely be the key player in determining which Russian officials to include in the Magnitsky list, former State Department officials told RIA Novosti. But US diplomats on the ground in Russia don’t have the resources to thoroughly vet every single allegation of rights abuses committed by Russian officials, noted Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador to Ukraine under President Bill Clinton. “It’s not like the embassy in Moscow has an army of private detectives to go out and track this stuff down,” Pifer said.

As Others See Us: The View From The United States 
November 12, 2012, The Herald
By David Leask 
Fiona Hill is director of the Centre on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institute –one of America’s most prestigious think tanks. She has been flagging up the rise of the SNP for years. “When I first raised Scottish independence in Washington DC, people just laughed,” she explains. “I think they were haunted by the spectre of William Wallace aka Mel Gibson going around in a kilt yelling ‘Freedom’. Whenever I raised the prospect of a referendum there would be an audible giggle. You could tell people were just not taking independence seriously and were looking at anybody who raised it as being, in their view, a member of the lunatic fringe. That has totally shifted.”

Price of war: future generations shoulder Bush legacy 
November 10, 2012, Sydney Morning Herald
By Paul McGeough
The historian Robert Kagan dismisses such arguments, and more detailed analysis of the causes of the financial crisis, as "rather loose analysis" – what he describes as "impressions that the US has lost its way, that it has abandoned the virtues that made it successful in the past and that it lacks the will to address the problems it faces". In The World America Made, he concedes a perception of decline is understandable because of the dismal economic circumstances of the US and the rise of other economies – China, India, Brazil and Turkey among them. "Some of the pessimism is also due to the belief that the US has lost favour, and therefore influence, in much of the world because of its various responses to the September 11 attacks," Kagan says.

EU/US : With Election Over, Eyes Turn To Fiscal Cliff Threat 
November 9, 2012, Europolitics
By Brian Beary
With the New York Stock Exchange losing more than 300 points the day after the election in anticipation of a crisis and the continuing bad news from Greece, there is heightened awareness in Washington of the global implications of this crisis. Robert Kagan, senior fellow at Brookings Centre on the US and Europe, said "we have to show the world that we are capable of getting our house in order". Going over the fiscal cliff would likely cause a 4% of GDP contraction in the US economy, a scenario that International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde has warned would jeopardise global economic recovery.

Europe Gets a Low Profile in US Presidential Duel 
November 6, 2012, EurActiv
By Daniela Vicenti
“Whoever wins the elections will increase its calls for Europeans to do more to uphold international security and continue refocusing America’s attention towards the Pacific,” said Clara Marina O’ Donnell... Both Obama and Romney support closer European defence co-operation. Such a consensus is a significant change from previous administrations, which feared EU defence efforts would undermine NATO, but it is also accompanied by heavy scepticism, said O’Donnell.

A Tale of Two Mitts 
November 5, 2012, Foreign Policy
By Joe Cirincione
On that front, Obama is also likely to seek a new round of negotiations with Moscow on a cooperative approach to missile defense and on a treaty to spell out deeper reductions in each country's nuclear arsenal. The missile talks could take months; the new treaty talks, two or three years. Brookings scholars Steve Pifer and Michael O'Hanlon believe the new treaty should "limit each country to no more than 2,000-2,500 total nuclear warheads," down from the 8,000-10,000 that each side now possesses.

Hollande privilégie une victoire d'Obama
November 5, 2012, Le Figaro
By Alain Barluet
«Obama réélu, il aura moins de contraintes, mais il ne prendra sans doute pas de grandes initiatives structurelles», estime Justin Vaïsse, directeur de recherche à la Brookings Institution de Washington. … Une poursuite du «pivot» qui aura des incidences nettes pour l'Europe et la France. «Pour Obama, l'essentiel est de consacrer les atouts de l'Amérique à ce qu'il juge important et ne pas se laisser happer par les crises, au Moyen-Orient, ou de nouvelles guerres…», souligne Justin Vaïsse.

USA 2012: Ankara hopes new President will defeat Assad 
November 5, 2012, ANSAmed
According to analyst Omer Taspinar, one of the biggest fears regarding the Syrian rebels, a growing number of which have linked to Al Qaeda, is a repeat of Afghanistan. There the US initially supported Islamist insurgents in overthrowing the pro-Soviet government, only to pave the way much later for the Taliban.

Hillary Clinton: Rock-Star Diplomat or Future Head of State? 
November 2, 2012, Agence France Presse
"Clinton has been a loyal, very effective secretary of state, who has used her star power in a useful way for Obama, and has left her mark on minor issues such as the Internet or integrating development policies better into foreign policy," Justin Vaisse, from the Brookings Institution, told AFP. "But she has always been dominated, because that's Obama's natural tendency, by a White House which wants to decide on absolutely everything. "That doesn't take anything away from Clinton. She is truly remarkable, full of energy, intelligent, possessing subtlety and finesse. But the political situation has been such that she has largely been kept on a leash."

Europe still favours Obama despite disappointments
October 31, 2012, Agence France Presse
By Jean-Luc Bardet
"Regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, the eurozone crisis will be a source of major US concern," Clara Marina O'Donnell of … The Brookings Institution said in a recent article. Obama and his officials have identified the debt crisis as "their biggest frustation with Europe. For them, EU institutions have shown themselves incapable of addressing the crisis," O'Donnell wrote.

US pivot to Asia puts onus on Europe to boost capability 
October 28, 2012, Europolitics
By Brian Beary
According to transatlantic defence expert Clara O’Donnell, non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, “there is a bipartisan consensus in Washington on the pivot”. Indeed, Obama’s Republican opponent in the presidential election, Mitt Romney, has promised to implement the policy even more forcefully than Obama by pledging to reverse Obama’s proposed cuts in overall military spending.

Time for U.S. to prod Ukraine
October 26, 2012, CNN.com
By Anna Borschevskaya
As Brookings Institution scholar Steven Pifer has noted, the West should not be afraid to call Yanukovych on the Russia bluff. Yanukovych’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin is complicated, and infused with mistrust. Putin has, for his part, humiliated Yanukovych. During one recent visit to Moscow, Putin reportedly made Yanukovych wait for four hours.

Final Presidential Debate: Why Obama Needs A Clear Win In Round 3 
October 22, 2012, International Business Times
By Laura Matthews
Romney's challenge tonight is to provide millions of Americans the details of his foreign policy without alienating many of them, while Obama will need to address long-standing criticism that he hasn’t delivered on his foreign policy promises. “Any exchange through which one candidate can be seen as losing credibility can carry weight,” said Clara O’Donnell, non-resident fellow at Brookings Institution. “How they convey their issues can also have an effect.”

In Foreign Policy, Both Obama and Romney Face Fiscal Realities 
October 22, 2012, NBC News
By Tom Curry
Former State Department official Steven Pifer who is now director of the Arms Control Initiative at Brookings Institution, the Washington think tank, argued that cost is one reason the next president ought to support a treaty with the Russians to further shrink both countries’ nuclear arsenals. “In the next several years the U.S. has to make some very expensive decisions about how to modernize the legs of the U.S. strategic triad (bombers, submarine and land-based missiles),” Pifer said. “For example, replacing the Trident submarine will cost, according to the Navy, $6 to $7 billion a piece.” An arms reduction treaty with the Russians would mean “you could save a big chunk of money,” said Pifer.

Obama, Romney au coude à coude s'affrontent sur la politique étrangère
October 22, 2012, Agence France Presse
Lundi, "Barack Obama va jouer la partition qui lui est donnée spontanément: c'est le commandant en chef des armées, il a ordonné le raid sur Ben Laden, les frappes de drones contre (l'imam yéménite Anwar) Al-Aulaqi et des milliers d'autres" suspects d'appartenance à la nébuleuse extrémiste, prédit Justin Vaïsse, du centre de réflexion Brookings.

US Shrugs Off Russian Rights Criticism
October 22, 2012, RIA Novosti
By Carl Schreck
But Steven Pifer, a former senior State Department official and White House adviser on the former Soviet Union, said the report is unlikely to earn much attention in Washington. “Most American officials concede that there are problems here,” Pifer said. “But the idea that the problems here on democracy, for example, equate with the problems that you see in Russia over the last 10 years, I don’t think people are going to take that as a serious suggestion.”

Mitt Romney, dans le sillage de Reagan
October 22, 2012, La Tribune
Mais selon les experts, il ne devrait pas y avoir de rupture majeure dans la politqiue étrangère des Etats-Unis s'il était élu. "Le monde de Romney, c'est le monde de Bush qui n'a pas beaucoup changé", estime Justin Vaïsse, auteur de "Barack Obama et sa politique étrangère", selon qui Mitt Romney "coche toutes les cases du néoconservatisme". Le républicain s'est entouré de quelques vétérans de l'aile néoconservatrice du parti et de conseillers plus modérés. Mais il fait aussi souvent référence à la politique de "paix grâce à la force" de l'ancien président Ronald Reagan.

Israel and Iran: War now? Or war later?
October 9, 2012, Macleans
By Michael Petrou
The drawbacks of a unilateral attack from an Israeli perspective are serious. Most importantly, it likely wouldn’t be as effective as a joint strike. Israeli has fewer planes, and with no aircraft carriers, they would have to cross foreign airspace before reaching Iran. “They could probably do that once,” says Steven Pifer, director of the Arms Control Initiative at the Brookings Institution. The United States, with aircraft carriers that can be deployed in the Persian Gulf and military bases throughout the region, has the option of launching multiple sorties over many days, hitting deeply buried targets again and again. The U.S. could “use bombs to dig way down to the underground facilities in a way the Israelis couldn’t,” says Pifer.

Mitt Romney's Aggressive Foreign Policy Push: Big Mistake?
October 9, 2012, The Week
Republicans usually get mileage out of calling Democrats weak, says Justin Vaisse at the Brookings Institution, but that's not the "best electoral strategy" for Romney. It calls attention to Obama's tough reputation — remember "his decisive use of drones" and the raid that killed Osama bin Laden? And while Romney's hawkish bluster might impress neoconservatives, it's just as likely to scare the growing number of voters "who are tired of foreign interventions."

Quand Romney fait du Bush dans le texte
October 9, 2012, Europe1
By Anne-Julie Contenay
Justin Vaïsse, spécialiste de la politique étrangère américaine, analyse pour le think-tank Brookings cette ligne politique "qui correspond en tous points à celle du néoconservatisme, l’école de pensée associée à l’administration Bush et à la guerre en Irak de 2003". Les cinq "piliers" de cette doctrine, "internationalisme, suprématie, unilatéralisme, militarisme et démocratie" sont "tous présents sous une forme ou un autre dans le discours de Romney de lundi", affirme Justin Vaïsse, citations à l’appui. "Nos amis et nos alliés à travers le monde ne veulent pas moins de leadership américain. Ils en veulent plus", a ainsi martelé le candidat républicain.

Attack Operations For Iran Weighed 
October 1, 2012, Aviation Weekly
By David Fulghum
Probably the only nation to profit from an attack on Iran would be Russia, where declining oil prices are slowing the economy. “The price of oil goes up if there is an attack on Iran,” says Steven Pifer, director of the Brookings Institute arms control initiative. And while Russia's sale of its long-range SA-20 (S-300) surface-to-air missile to Iran remains a “dead issue,” Moscow has “not seen a precautionary tale” in the fact that its advanced-capability, man-portable SA-18s and SA-24s have migrated from military customers into the black market and into the hands of militants in Somalia, South Lebanon and Gaza, says Pifer. He predicts such sales will continue.

Next Cold War? Gas Drilling Boom Rattles Russia
September 30, 2012, Associated Press
By Kevin Begos
Like falling dominoes, the drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is shaking up world energy markets from Washington to Moscow to Beijing. Some predict what was once unthinkable: that the U.S. won't need to import natural gas in the near future, and that Russia could be the big loser.
"This is where everything is being turned on its head," said Fiona Hill, an expert on Russia at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. "Their days of dominating the European gas markets are gone."

Did Yanukovych ‘s guys come back empty-handed from US? 
September 27, 2012,The Kyiv Post
By Olena Tregub
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer, currently director of the Brookings Arms Control Initiative, pointed out: "The Ukrainian delegation described a country that is open and eager for foreign business. But reports from foreign businessmen about problems such as growing corruption and complex tax and regulatory rules, plus the country's low ranking in ratings like the World Bank's 'Ease of Doing Business' survey, suggest that Ukraine still has much to do to build a business climate that truly welcomes foreign investment.”

EU Antitrust Review of BAE-EADS Deal May Face Legal Limit 
September 27, 2012, Bloomberg 
By Aoife White
A bigger regulatory obstacle to the deal may be the U.S., which is “sensitive about who is the owner” of defense- equipment suppliers, said [Clara] O’Donnell. Any requirement for BAE to sell off U.S. businesses would be a challenge because those units are a significant source of its earnings, she said.

Dick Lugar Burnishes Legacy As Richard Mourdock Struggles
September 26, 2012, Politico
By Scott Wong
Steven Pifer, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton who served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000, is among many lamenting the departure of a senator who had almost unrivaled credibility in world affairs. During Ukraine's election crisis in 2004, President George W. Bush asked Lugar to be his point man on the ground to pass messages to outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, he recalled. "When he goes away, I don't know who picks up that mantle," Pifer said in an interview. "Sen. Lugar was that person who would basically say, 'Let's put aside politics if that treaty is good for American interests.'"

Cumbersome Gazprom Losing Its Clout
September 23, 2012, The Washington Post
By Will Englund and Kathy Lally
Gazprom was set up in the Soviet era to export gas to Europe. After the collapse of communism in 1991, Russia broke up its oil monopoly — oil prices were very low at the time — but held on to Gazprom, its chief earner, and its chief spender. When Putin took the presidency in 2000, he told the oligarchs he would protect their businesses as long as they stayed out of politics. Clifford Gaddy of the Brookings Institution calls this “Putin’s protection racket.” 

Is the United States an Empire in Decline?
September 20, 2012, BBC News
By Mark Urban
Those who argue against the "declinist" proposition, such as historian Robert Kagan, believe the current situation mirrors some earlier periods of national introspection. In the 1920s or 1970s, for example, a combination of economic hardship and costly foreign wars, produced isolationism or faltering national confidence. "If it's a neurotic superpower you're looking for, then America's your one," Dr Kagan told me. Dr Kagan's confident assertions that the current mood is cyclical and does not portend a downward slide for America have been quoted by both candidates for the presidency.

USAID Mission in Russia to Close Following Moscow Decision
September 18, 2012, Reuters
By Arshad Mohammed
Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who is now at the Brookings Institution think tank, said he believed the decision reflected some reluctance by the Russian government to see foreign support for pro-democracy efforts in the country."They see AID's efforts in Russia as being a prime funder of the NGOs that are concerned about their elections and concerned about the regression of democracy in Russia," Pifer said. He said the Russian government may also be "trying to make it more difficult" for the outside world to support pro-democracy NGOs in Russia.

Сам себе форум: Евросоюз и Украина не услышали друг друга в Ялте
September 17, 2012, Kommersant Ukraine
By Viktor Sidorenko
По завершении дискуссии Ренат Кузьмин покинул форум, оставив его участников обмениваться впечатлениями, которые оказались негативными. […] "Не представляю, зачем его сюда направили. Я не нашел ни одного человека, которого он убедил",— добавил бывший посол США в Украине Стивен Пайфер.

BAE-EADS Merger Would Advance Europe’s Military Goals
September 16, 2012, Reuters
By Adrian Croft
The British government has said it is working with BAE and EADS to ensure the merger serves the public interest, but senior British lawmakers say Prime Minister David Cameron backs the deal. "In the broadest terms, this merger does enact what many European governments... have been saying for a long time - that in order for the European defense industry to remain competitive in the long term it needs to consolidate," said Clara Marina O'Donnell, a defense expert...

Les attaques au Moyen-Orient s'invitent dans la campagne présidentielle américaine
September 14, 2012, Les Echos
By Virginie Robert
Si la Maison Blanche a réagi avec sang-froid et promis que « justice serait faite », cette situation explosive a été l'occasion d'un nouveau faux pas pour Mitt Romney. « Il est intervenu trop tôt en reprenant une ligne d'attaque coutumière qui est qu'Obama présente en permanence ses excuses au monde entire [NDLR : en faisant référence à un communiqué de l'ambassade du Caire qui prenait ses distance avec la fameuse vidéo] et il n'a pas eu de chance parce qu'il y a eu ensuite l'attaque tragique de Benghazi », observe Justin Vaisse, chercheur à la Brookings Institution.

Seeking Kremlin Engagement, NATO Weighs Next Nuclear Posture Steps
September 13, 2012, National Journal
By Elaine M. Grossman
NATO nations have decided, though, that they will not publicize their proposed list ahead of sharing it with the Kremlin, said Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institution. Rather than attempt to score political points, the intent is to discuss the list with Russian leaders in a quiet diplomatic effort to explore which, if any, specific initiatives might be feasible. The Atlantic partners have decided they do not want to “put the Russians in a corner,” but rather would pursue in good faith the potential for a new cooperative regime, Pifer said in a Tuesday interview.

Political Scientist Laurence Earns Berlin Prize
September 6, 2012, The Boston College Chronicle
…Jonathan Laurence is among this fall’s recipients of the prestigious Berlin Prize, awarded by The American Academy in Berlin, a private, nonprofit, non-partisan center for advanced research in a range of academic and cultural fields. Laurence… will use the fellowship to support a research project titled "Turkey and Morocco in Germany: European Muslims or Citizens Abroad?"

The Middle East: Goodbye to All That
September 5, 2012, Bloomberg BusinessWeek
By Jeffrey Goldberg
This effort to de-emphasize the region represents a significant departure in U.S. strategy, according to Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution. “After the entire collapse of international order and security 70 years ago, the way we established order and security was to take responsibility for three regions—Asia, Europe, and the Middle East,” Kagan says. “That is what the definition of a superpower is. We consciously adopted a global role.”

Romney Talks Tough on Russia in Acceptance Speech
August 31, 2012, RIA Novosti
By Carl Schreck
A failure by the next U.S. president to negotiate with Russia over the missile defense issue could not only alienate the Kremlin, but U.S. allies in Europe as well, said Steven Pifer, an arms control expert and a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. “Allies are supportive of the American approach to missile defense in Europe in part, because they see that there is a desire on the part of Washington to engage with Russia cooperatively on missile defense,” said Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Obama, gendarme du monde malgré lui
August 31, 2012, Le Monde
By Corine Lesnes
Et l'administration a évolué. Après le tout-coopératif du début du mandat, avec priorité au G20, elle s'est aperçue que le reste du monde a encore envie du gendarme américain (et elle est revenue au G8). "Obama et Clinton se sont rendu compte que le langage de l'humilité ne rapporte pas de dividendes. Ils ont ajusté leur représentation du monde aux impératifs du leadership", estime l'historien et spécialiste des Etats-Unis Justin Vaïsse, qui publie La Politique étrangère de Barack Obama (Odile Jacob).

Former Ukrainian PM Yuliya Tymoshenko Loses Court Appeal, Stays In Jail
August 29, 2012, International Business Times
By Maya Shwayder
The EU, US, and other major powers already condemned the Ukrainian government when Tymoshenko was convicted, and the whole trial process hurt President Yanukovych's image in the West, according to Steven Pifer, senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institute. When Tymoshenko was convicted in 2011, European Union stated that the trial "did not respect the international standards as regards fair, transparent and independent legal process."

Defeat, Introspection, Reinvention, Nomination
August 29, 2012, The New York Times
By Michael Barbaro
With Robert Kagan, the historian and foreign policy expert, he reverse-engineered America’s relationship with Iran, searching for opportunities to avert the current standoff over its nuclear program through diplomacy, alliances and economics. “It was quite an impressive, extemporaneous discussion about how you go about dealing with problems before they get out of hand,” Mr. Kagan recalled.

Obama bien positionné malgré la reprise molle
August 29, 2012, Les Echos
By Karl de Meyer
Selon Justin Vaïsse, directeur de recherche à l'institut Brookings, « vous avez en 2012 une campagne comparable dans sa structure à celle de 2004, quand George Bush cherchait à se faire réélire. De même que le président sortant avait réussi, très tôt, à donner une image très négative de son rival, John Kerry, de même Barack Obama est parvenu assez tôt à peindre Mitt Romney comme un privilégié en dehors des réalités de la vie quotidienne, comme un prédateur qui a accumulé son patrimoine de manière douteuse ».

Saving Europe: How National Politics Nearly Destroyed the Euro
September/October 2012, Foreign Affairs
By Andrew Moravcsik
The euro hangs in limbo, and no one can be sure exactly how the current crisis will end. So one might be tempted to ignore a 400-page book written in midstream, most of which concerns the period -- long ago, it seems -- when Silvio Berlusconi still headed Italy, Nicolas Sarkozy still led France, and Greece still seemed salvageable. Yet [Carlo] Bastasin’s book is worth reading for its detailed political narrative of the crisis to date, drawn largely from journalistic sources and focusing on the interaction among decision-makers in Europe’s capitals.

As Greece Seeks More Help, Ireland and Portugal Press Ahead
August 25, 2012, The Washington Post
By Howard Schneider
Greece remains far from the point where citizens and politicians can expect a return from the sacrifices they are making. "When you impose deflation on an economy that cannot benefit because it is not that open to world markets, you just create more deflation," said Carlo Bastasin, an Italian economist and analyst at the Brookings Institution.

La diplomatie française se cherche une nouvelle ligne
August 25, 2012, AFP
By Cecile Feuillatre
L'attitude de Paris convient cependant à Washington, souligne de son côté Justin Vaïsse, du centre de réflexion américain Brookings Institution. "Jouer les va-t-en-guerre maintenant serait mauvais pour (Barack) Obama. François Hollande ne veut rien faire qui puisse gêner le président américain dans sa quête de réélection", souligne le chercheur.

The FP 50: The 50 Most Powerful Republicans on Foreign Policy
August 24, 2012, Foreign Policy
…Robert Kagan is the rare public intellectual simultaneously in vogue with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. A loud opponent of the "American decline" refrain, he seems to sit perpetually in the Washington spotlight, producing a stream of headline-grabbing essays and books. Now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, he was a leading supporter of the 2003 Iraq war and many say he is one of Romney's closest foreign-policy advisors.

Lederhosen on Fire
August 13, 2012, Foreign Policy
By Joshua Keating
Putin has faced plagiarism charges himself. Brookings Institution economist Clifford Gaddy alleged in 2006 that the Russian president had ripped off large portions of his 1997 dissertation, "Strategic Planning of the Reproduction of the Resource Base," from an American textbook. Gaddy thinks it's quite possible that Putin -- then deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, simply paid someone to write the paper for him, a common practice in Russian universities at the time.

Turkey: Syria Crisis Causes Russian Relations to Suffer
July 19, 2012, EurasiaNet
By Yigal Schliefer
“There was always the hope in Moscow that they could somehow woo Turkey and exploit the rift between Turkey and the United States and the EU. I think Moscow was pretty shocked when Turkey came on board in Libya,” says Fiona Hill, an expert on Russia at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

As Squeeze Tightens on Iran, Fuel Prices—for Now—Reflect Calm
July 10, 2012, National Geographic News
By Marianne Lavelle
As of the end of May, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran has produced about 6,200 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 5 percent, and 146 kilograms enriched up to 20 percent. If Iran chose to further process that uranium to weapons grade (about 90 percent), it would be enough for four nuclear bombs, said Steven Pifer, director of the Arms Control Initiative at the Brookings Institution, during a June 29 forum at the think tank's Washington, D.C., headquarters.

Egypt’s President Mursi Reinstates Parliament, Defies Military
July 9, 2012, Bloomberg News
By Ahmed A. Namatalla and Salma El Wardany
“We need to make clear to the new government and all the various powers in Egypt, including the military, that we have certain clear standards for what kind of democracy Egypt needs to be, including the respect for minorities,” Robert Kagan, senior fellow of the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said by phone. “But in general, it’s a good thing to be reaching out to the president of Egypt.”

Is the US Caught in the Slow Lane? 
July 4, 2012, BBC News
By Mark Mardell
Robert Kagan, author of The World America Made, says that the world would be a different - a worse place - without a strong America. But he feels the worries about decline have been overdone.
"I think at any time when you have a deep economic recession, which the US has been in, people tend to get pessimistic. The US has repeatedly gone through periods of declinism, concern that other countries were passing it, whether it was Japan, the Soviet Union, and now China.

Hegemony and After
July/August 2012, Foreign Affairs
By Robert O. Keohane
[Robert] Kagan's gracefully written essay notes that the United States has played an essential role in creating the international system of the last 60 years, one in which large-scale warfare has been relatively rare, the global economy has grown at unprecedented rates, and the number of democracies has quadrupled. 

NATO Condemns Syria Over Downed Turkish Plane
June 26, 2012, Reuters
By Justyna Pawlak and Sebastian Moffett
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces are trying to suppress an uprising against his rule that broke out 16 months ago. Even defensive measures by NATO allies would risk sucking them into the conflict. "There is very little appetite from the alliance to undertake what we call a discretionary war," said Clara Marina O'Donnell, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. 

Turkey Turns to NATO After Syria Downs Jet
June 25, 2012, Reuters
By Jon Hemming
"Ankara itself has been averse to consider military action against Syria so far. So it is likely that the invocation of Article 4 is designed to put more diplomatic pressure on Assad," said Clara Marina O'Donnell, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

West Cuts Nuclear Warheads as it Negotiates With Iran 
June 18, 2012, The Washington Post
By Olga Khazan
Steven Pifer, director of the Arms Control Initiative at the Brookings Institution, told NPR that the treaty helped pave the way for international support for U.S. efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program and gives President Obama “moral authority” on nuclear nonproliferation.

 

Whatever Euro's Fate, Europe's Reputation Savaged 
June 16, 2012, Reuters
By Peter Apps
"From almost every conversation I've had in the last year - with Chinese, with Indians, with just about anybody - the message is always the same," says Fiona Hill, a former senior officer for the US National Intelligence Council and now head of the Europe program at Washington think tank the Brookings Institute. "Europe can no longer be trusted. It seems to be moving from being a source of stability to a driver of instability."

Greece Could Exit Euro Zone in Weeks: Experts 
June 14, 2012, MarketWatch
By Donald D. Orol
However, Daniel Speckhard, a fellow with the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, said that a significant majority of Greeks are for staying in the euro zone and that returning to the Drachma would a huge psychological blow. Speckhard said that many Greeks like the Syriza party because they are the party of change from the main traditional political parties in Greece who they believe have gotten the country into its current fiscal problems over the past 40 years.

Pifer: US to Impose Sanctions against Ukraine Should Backslide on Democracy Continue
June 7, 2012, Kyiv Post
Should the backslide on democracy continue in Ukraine, the US will apply sanctions against the state, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer said during a meeting of a media club in Kyiv on Wednesday, June 6. The former ambassador also said that both Republicans and Democrats in the US share the same position as regards Ukraine.

Necessity, Not Inclination, Nudges Europeans Closer Fiscally and Politically 
June 7, 2012, The New York Times
By Steven Erlanger
Though Mr. Sarkozy often gave in to the more powerful Germany, he resisted too much Brussels influence, holding to the traditional French idea of a Gaullist Europe, directed and controlled by nation-states and not by the unelected European Commission or the European Parliament. “So can the most structurally sovereigntist country in the euro zone, France, agree on the abandonment of sovereignty that Merkel is right to insist on?” asked Justin Vaïsse, a French scholar at the Brookings Institution. “Common debt liability in some form needs to be accompanied by greater political and economic integration; that’s just logical,” he said.

Congress Advances Bill to Pressure Russia on Human Rights
June 7, 2012, The Washington Post
By Kathy Lally
“I fear we’ll end up in an endless round of recriminations,” said Fiona Hill, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. “What happened to Sergei Magnitsky is appalling, but the problem is all of the instruments we have are difficult to apply.”

 

 

Putin’s Propaganda Man
May 31, 2012, New York Review of Books
By Amy Knight
But then, of course, Medinsky’s mentor, Vladimir Putin, also lifted chunks of his doctoral thesis directly from other sources. According to Clifford Gaddy at the Brookings Institute, several pages of Putin’s dissertation, “The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations,” which he completed at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute in 1997, were copied directly from the Russian translation of a 1978 business textbook written by two American professors.

Concerns of Racism Ahead of Euro 2012
May 30, 2012, The New York Times
By Jeré Longman
“When Ukraine got this (hosting role for Euro 2012), people were saying it would be a showcase, to show its democracy, that its economy was growing, that it was part of Europe,” said Steven Pifer, a former United States ambassador to Ukraine who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Now that it has arrived, the price gouging, corruption, the perception that Ukraine is going back on democracy and the decision by some European leaders to stay away is going to put a rain cloud over their parade.”

Syria: Diplomatic deadlock, deaths go on 
May 28, 2012, CNN
By Ivan Watson
"The biggest problem is the regime in Syria is not that weak," argued Omer Taspinar, a Washington-based analyst with the Brookings Institution. "They still have a critical mass supporting them: the Sunni merchants, who see the world is not doing anything and that Bashar al-Assad can get away with murder." 

Major Powers Seek Iran Concessions at Baghdad Talks
May 23, 2012, Reuters
By Justyna Pawlak and Patrick Markey
Clara O'Donnell, at Washington's Brookings Institution, said: "The likelihood of an Israeli military strike will remain lower while the talks are ongoing. But they are likely to keep talking about it, to keep up the pressure."

Analysis: Looming End of Afghan Mission Leaves NATO with Identity Crisis
May 22, 2012, Reuters
By David Brunnstrom and Adrian Croft
Clara O'Donnell, visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution, said the fact that countries traditionally active in NATO operations, such as Poland and the Netherlands, chose not to take part in the Libya air strikes showed a dwindling desire to show solidarity with other NATO members, reflecting the unpopularity of foreign expeditions in many countries.

Leaders Stress Growth and Keeping Greece in Eurozone 
May 21, 2012, EuroPolitics
By Brian Beary
However, Senior Fellow on Foreign Policy at Brookings Justin Vaisse asserted that “there is a very superficial consensus” among the G8 leaders in the growth versus fiscal consolidation debate. Vaisse argued that given Obama’s pro-growth orientation, Merkel risked being isolated if she continued stressing debt reduction.

 

Going to Extremes: Europe's Voters Strike Back
May 20, 2012, The Sydney Morning Herald
By Martin Daly
Jonathan Laurence, associate professor of political science at Boston College and author of The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims, believes the fact that one-fifth of the French electorate voted for Front National shows "serious fault lines" in terms of satisfaction with government, particularly as the front's members "do not hesitate to play fast and loose with some pretty vile politics".

 

Summits No Real Break From the Campaign 
May 18, 2012, National Journal
By George E. Condon Jr.
And Romney has made things worse with public comments about Russia that were widely viewed -- particularly in Moscow -- as woefully outdated. "Romney's positions on Iran and Russia (are) positions with which Europeans feel quite uncomfortable," said Clara Marina O'Donnell, from Brookings' Center on the United States and Europe. "This really brings a question mark in Europe about where exactly Romney will go."

Obama accueille Hollande
May 18, 2012, Le Parisien
By Alix Bouilhaguet
Enfin, sur le plan de la personnalité, François Hollande, « le président normal », semble plus compatible avec Barack Obama que ne l’était Nicolas Sarkozy. « Hollande est plus réservé, plus posé, plus pondéré. Un peu à l’image du président américain, qui ne change pas d’avis et qui n’est pas un impulsif », analyse Justin Vaïsse, de la Brookings, un club de réflexion. Le président américain, dont la devise est « no drama with Obama » (pas de drame avec Obama), pourrait ainsi trouver un alter ego à son goût.

Ce qui les sépare: le dossier afghan
May 18, 2012, Le Parisien
By Alix Bouilhaguet
« Les Français peuvent faire un pas en acceptant le principe qu’une force de formation reste plus longtemps pour assurer la transition », décrypte Justin Vaïsse. Reste une question à plus long terme : Barack Obama s’est engagé à laisser environ 15000 hommes — troupes combattantes et formateurs — après 2014 pour accompagner le pays pendant dix ans.

Euro Crisis and Growth the Focus at G8 Summit
May 18, 2012, The Irish Times
By Lara Marlowe
Attention will focus on Mr. Hollande, who will meet Mr. Obama in the White House earlier in the day.“This will be Hollande’s first chance to interact with leaders who gave him the cold shoulder during his campaign,” said Justin Vaisse, an expert on the US and Europe at Brookings. “François Hollande met with hostility when he promised to renegotiate the fiscal treaty,” Mr. Vaisse noted. “Since then, that has become the consensus. There will be a package of growth measures to balance the fiscal compact treaty.[German chancellor Angela] Merkel runs the risk of being isolated [at the G-8 summit]. The US is clearly on the side of growth.”

Obama Otherwise Engaged in Run-up to G8, NATO Summits
May 18, 2012, Business Recorder
By Peer Meinart
"For the first time in the history of NATO, Washington refused last spring to take on a leading role," says Clara O'Donnell, an expert in trans-Atlantic security issues. The Pentagon calls this taking a back seat in military operations. And O'Donnell warns that it could well happen again, given the current need for savings, whether or not Obama stays in the White House.

Chicago Summit Seeks to Deliver on Promises to Renew NATO
May 18, 2012, Xinhua
By Yi Aijun and Lin Yu
Steven Pifer, a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution think tank, agreed on the alliance's indispensability to the security of the transatlantic community. However, "both the United States and Europe think NATO is going to remain relevant for the security of the transatlantic region," said Pifer. "Although my guess is that after Afghanistan enthusiasm both in Europe and the United States for that kind of operation in the future is going to be pretty limited, I think within NATO countries there's a sense that NATO is a useful tool, there is no organization in the world that is as good as NATO at organizing and conducting multinational military operations," he told Xinhua.

UN Observers Face Daunting Challenges in Syria 
May 17, 2012, Voice of America
By Margaret Besheer 
Richard Kauzlarich was U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina in the late 1990s. He says one of the problems that plagued the Bosnian mission, known as UNPROFOR, was the parties’ unwillingness to stop fighting. “For whatever reasons, they saw war as the only solution to the political problem and UNPROFOR was given the impossible mission of trying to make peace in an environment where the people on the ground were not interested in peace," he said.

Austerity to Strain Transatlantic Ties at NATO Chicago Summit
May 16, 2012, Reuters
By Adrian Croft and David Brunnstrom
"There is definitely going to be an effort to present things in the best light possible, but the fact remains that as soon as we are talking about more ambitious forms of defence cooperation, which require large budgetary investments, it's really hard to progress and it's going to remain so for the foreseeable future," said Clara O'Donnell, a visiting scholar at Brookings.

Le camouflet de Poutine à Barack Obama 
May 15, 2012, Le Figaro
By Laure Mandeville
À la Brookings Institution, Fiona Hill, directrice du centre sur les États-Unis et l'Europe, dit elle aussi «ne pas être surprise». «Pour Poutine, le G8 n'est pas vraiment une priorité et la relation avec l'Amérique non plus. Il est beaucoup plus confortable pour lui de faire sa rentrée de président au G20, où il est le leader informel des nouveaux pays émergents», explique-t-elle. «Cette surprise correspond à son style, mettre tout le monde sur la défensive et maintenir l'ambiguïté sur ses intentions», ajoute Fiona Hill.

Obama Hosts NATO, Focus on Afghanistan and Alliance Future Global Role
May 15, 2012, Voice of America
By Dan Robinson
Steven Pifer, at the Center on the United States and Europe at The Brookings Institution in Washington, said, "The question with smart defense is how can NATO together spend money so that NATO as an entity has more capability than if countries make independent decisions."

Economic Turmoil in Europe Could Be Key That Turns U.S. Elections
May 15, 2012, Public Radio International
"More (nations) could join (the recession), especially if François Hollande and Angela Merkel don't find a way to stimulate growth in the next few weeks," Justin Vaisse said. "A stronger recession in Europe would contaminate the U.S. economy by virtue of the very strong investment and trade links between the two sides of the Atlantic."

France's Hollande in Diplomatic Test With Obama 
May 15, 2012, Reuters
By John Irish
Merkel, whose country has the third-largest troop contingent in Afghanistan, said on May 10 that NATO allies had joined the war at the same time and should leave together. "In the year running up to the election the last thing they (the Germans) want is to be maintaining an unpopular presence in Afghanistan when even France is withdrawing," said Clara O'Donnell at the Brookings Institution.

Sunni-Shia Strife: The Sword and the Word
May 12, 2012, The Economist
European Shia-Sunni acrimony is part of a many-sided contest over the future of the continent's tens of millions of Muslims, says Jonathan Laurence, a scholar at Boston College. The religious authorities in migrant-sending countries like Turkey and Morocco struggle to keep their people loyal to their own varieties of Sunni practice: they see Shia Islam and hardline Sunni groups like the Salafists as equally dangerous and insidious temptations for their sons and daughters in Europe.

Romney’s Adversarial View of Russia Stirs Debate
May 11, 2012, The New York Times
By Richard A. Oppel Jr.
A number of arms control specialists said they were startled by some of Mr. Romney’s assertions, like fretting about intercontinental ballistic missiles mounted on bombers. “It would be really fun to watch a Russian bomber with an SS-25 strung to its stomach try to take off,” said Steve Pifer, a former American ambassador to Ukraine and now director of the Arms Control Initiative at the Brookings Institution. “Some of the arguments just left people scratching their heads.”

Putin's No-Show at US Meeting Sets a Sour Tone
May 11, 2012, The Associated Press
By Anne Gearan
Putin has a variety of troubles at home and isn't likely to pick a fight with the United States despite sharply negative rhetoric about Washington during his election campaign. But he also isn't likely to welcome friendly ties for their own sake, said Steven Pifer, a Russia and arms control expert at the Brookings Institution. "I think you'll see a more transactional relationship," Pifer said. Putin will be prepared to cooperate with the U.S. where he sees fit, "but it will be, `If I do this for you, what do I get?'" Pifer said.

Putin Not Attending Camp David G8, Will Send Medvedev 
May 10, 2012, Reuters
By Alister Bull
"The excuse could be legitimate," said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "But on the other hand, maybe neither Obama, nor Putin, wanted to have their first big meeting, with Putin back as the president, at the (White House)," she said. A White House bilateral could have had repercussions on the U.S. election campaign trail, where Obama's likely Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, has already criticized the Democrat for not being tough enough in his dealings with Russia.

Not Normalizing Trade With Russia Could Hurt U.S.
May 9, 2012, National Journal Daily
By Kelsey Snell
As a WTO member, Russia can turn its irritation with the sanctions into a retributive policy when it gains the power to deny tariff rates and preferences to U.S. businesses, according to Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Once [Russia] joins the WTO, this is going to be a congressional sanction on U.S. companies," Pifer said. "You may be unhappy with Russian behavior on other issues, but I can't see anything that continued coverage by Jackson-Vanik is achieving for us."

In Putin's Third Term, US-Russian 'Reset' Revisited 
May 9, 2012, Voice of America
By Jonas Bernstein
Pavel Baev, a research professor at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, Norway, said a mounting showdown between the government and Russian opposition could exacerbate tensions with the United States and other Western countries. "This sort of development objectively puts Putin on the course of a kind of self-isolation [and] greater tension with the West, because, for the West, opposition forces in Russia [are] something very sympathetic," he said. "For Putin, it is a mortal enemy with which he can fight, with which he will fight, tooth and nail. Putin will have to use every instrument at his disposal, including presenting the whole thing as a plot by the West and the United States in particular."

Book Review: The World America Made
May/June, 2012, Foreign Affairs
By Walter Russell Mead
As usual, Kagan’s writing bristles with insights and ideas. His latest book aims to counter the view of many liberal internationalists that because the United States seeks a liberal order it must eschew traditional great-power diplomacy and power projection. Kagan believes in the value of a liberal, democratic world order and fears that anarchy and chaos will result if this order breaks down.

Change in Paris May Better Fit U.S. Economic Positions
May 7, 2012, The New York Times
By Annie Lowrey
Mr. Hollande seems “naturally more palatable to the administration,” said Justin Vaïsse, the director of research for the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. The administration seems to reason that “Europe probably has a better chance of avoiding a breakup or another renewed sovereign debt crisis by focusing on growth, rather than just sticking to austerity,” he said.

Putin Again Takes Reins of an Agitated Russia 
May 6, 2012, USA Today
By Marc Bennetts
"Mr. Putin faces serious economic and political questions at home," said Steven Pifer, senior fellow and Russia expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank. "He may need a different set of political skills than have been necessary in the past."

Hollande Signals Return of France as Complicated Ally for West
May 6, 2012, Bloomberg
By Helene Fouquet
At the same time, he has fashioned a persona that may be familiar to the U.S. leader. “No drama, no surprise: the Obama recipe,” Justin Vaisse, an analyst at Washington-based Brookings Institution wrote on April 13.

The Ins and Outs of Russia’s Next Government
May 4, 2012, Reuters
By Douglas Busvine
"Elevations and falls from grace have become enmeshed in the hidden but acute rivalry between the two rulers, (and) clashes of interests between clans and ambitious newcomers," analyst Pavel Baev wrote in a commentary for the Jamestown Foundation.

One Man Rule Bad for Russia - Medvedev 
April 26, 2012, RIA Novosti
By Marc Bennetts
“Medvedev will be remembered as a softer face of Russian foreign policy,” said Steven Pifer, senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank, in comments to RIA Novosti. “[But] Washington has always assumed that Putin as prime minister was closely involved in major foreign policy decisions,” he added.

The Rubio Doctrine
April 25, 2012, Foreign Policy
By Joshua Keating
Rubio's foreign-policy views have evidently been recently shaped by a reading of Robert Kagan's The World America Made, a much-discussed refutation of the now-popular notion of American decline. He cited the author and Brookings scholar, who was sitting in the front row, repeatedly throughout the speech. (As a Romney advisor who has penned bedside reading for President Barack Obama, Kagan could plausibly claim to be the most prominently cited writer in Washington right now.) Rubio repeatedly echoed Kagan's arguments for the necessity of U.S. involvement in solving international crises.

French Jews’ Fears Rising 
April 24, 2012, The Jewish Week
By Stewart Ain
Justin Vaisse, director of research at the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institute, pointed out that it is a “longstanding Socialist position to support a two-state solution [Palestinian and Israeli] dating back to the end of the ‘70s and early ‘80s – long before most other observers were in favor of it. (Hollande) does not have a distinctive take on it that would distinguish him from the Socialist mainstream.”

Beyond Freedom Fries: The Roots of American Francophobia
April 23, 2012, The Atlantic
By Max Fisher
Historian Justin Vaïsse thinks that the absence of a strong, unified French-American community means that there is little stigma against expressing Francophobia -- compared to anti-Japanese or anti-German attitudes, for example -- which over time has allowed Francophobia to flourish more freely than have other anti-national attitudes.

You Can Stop Being Scared Now
April 22, 2012, The Boston Globe
By Thanassis Cambanis,
Not everyone agrees. Robert Kagan, the most influential proponent of robust American power, argues that America is safe today precisely because it throws its military might around. President Obama said he relied for his most recent state of the union address on Kagan’s newest book, The World America Made.

When a Minority Population Rebels
April 20, 2012, The Washington Times
By Joshua Sinai
As stated in its title, Jonathan Laurence's "The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims: The State's Role in Minority Integration" sets out to present a "positive" spin on these issues. The book's merit is as a reference volume on the policies that governments across Western Europe have adopted in their attempts to better integrate Muslim communities into their societies and the types of organizations, ranging from mainstream to extremist, established by the Muslim communities to express themselves politically on these issues.

Le match Sarkozy-Hollande vu d'Amérique 
April 19, 2012, Les Echos
By Pierre de Gasquet
“En cas de victoire, François Hollande pourrait négocier un protocole additionnel sur la croissance européenne qui aurait toutes les chances d'obtenir le soutien des autres partenaires européens et de l'administration Obama, soucieuse de ne pas voir la reprise américaine menacée par une récession en Europe,” résume Justin Vaïsse, chercheur à la Brookings Institution.

Do Americans Love War?
April 17, 2012, Salon
By Jefferson Morley
As a living embodiment of Washington’s bipartisan foreign-policy consensus, Robert Kagan has few peers. The author of the best-selling book “The World America Made,” Kagan has pulled off the neat trick of impressing the only two men on the planet who have a realistic chance of serving as president of the United States any time soon.

Turks, Armenians Aim For Dialogue in Washington 
April 13, 2012, Today’s Zaman
By Ali H. Aslan
Ömer Taşpınar, a member of HasNa executive board and an academic at the National War College in Washington delivered a speech at the event, saying that while Armenians suffered a trauma due to the 1915 incidents, Turks suffered a trauma due to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and he called on both Turks and Armenians to avoid acts which will recall their traumas.

Can the 'Toulouse Effect' Save Sarkozy From Defeat in France? 
April 12, 2012, MSNBC.com
By Becky Bratu
Three opinion polls showed the incumbent's narrow lead over challenger Francois Hollande is steady or shrinking for the April 22 first round, and Sarkozy is still expected to lose the subsequent May 6 runoff. "He’s been trailing Hollande in the second round pretty consistently," Justin Vaïsse, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told msnbc.com. "It’s hard to see where the reservoir of votes would come from to make him win."

[…]

Polls show the electorate is growing weary of the rhetoric as well. A recent national survey found 32 percent of respondents don't plan on hitting the polls, a figure that Jonathan Laurence, nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, says is atypical. The turnout in the 2007 elections was about 80 percent.

Freedom in Post-Democratic Europe
April 9, 2012, Commentary
By Seth Mandel
The democracy deficit–in this case forcing the single-currency suicide pact on disapproving commoners–has led to increasing actual deficits. Those financial debts, in turn, have a corrosive effect on freedom abroad. For example, as Justin Vaïsse wrote in February, European governments promised “money, markets access, mobility” to emerging Arab states, especially Tunisia and Libya, during the Arab Spring. But the debt crisis at home resulted in modest, and disappointing, results–just as those countries needed it the most.

Playing Missile Defense
April 5, 2012, National Journal
By Yochi J. Dreazen
That has left Russia feeling sure that it, not Iran, is the true target. “They don’t worry about what our missile defenses can do now. They worry about what they can do down the road,” says Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institution, who spent decades on arms-control issues at the State Department. “The Russians basically say, ‘Iran doesn’t have ICBMs, so this must really be about us.’ ”

The Big Bang
April 5, 2012, The New York Times
By Jonathan Freedland
The authors are big hitters in the geopolitics genre. Robert Kagan coined what passes for a catchphrase in the international relations field when he declared a decade ago that ''Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.'' At the time, Kagan, a veteran of Ronald Reagan's State Department, was one of the leading advocates of military action against Iraq.

Oil Prices Fueling Russia's Disruption of U.S. Foreign Policy
April 3, 2012, U.S. News and World Report
By John T. Bennett
"Putin still aspires for Russia to be a superpower," says Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. "There are only two ways for Russia to achieve that: nuclear weapons, and oil and natural gas sales."

Source Says White House Never Floated Cut to Only 300 Warheads
April 3, 2012, U.S. News and World Report
By John T. Bennett
The White House never asked for options about shrinking the U.S. nuclear arsenal to just 300 deployed warheads, a former senior official says. "The Pentagon was never asked to look at options for going to 300," says Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, citing conversations with Defense Department officials.

Power and Weakness... and Perspective
April 2, 2012, Foreign Policy
By Daniel Drezner
It's hard to believe, but ten years ago Robert Kagan published "Power and Weakness" in the pages of Policy Review. Coming on the heels of the invasion of Afghanistan and the start of the Iraq debate, Kagan's essay seemed to crystallize the state of the transatlantic relationship back in the day. To celebrate it's 10th anniversary, Policy Review has come out with a special issue devoted to the essay, asking a variety of smart people to weigh in.

Russia and the US: Friend, Foe or It’s Complicated?
March 30, 2012, ABC News
By Dana Hughes
“Russia bashing plays well to a certain part of the American electorate,” Steven Pifer, the director of the arms control initiative at the Brookings Institute, told ABC News. “I find it hard to believe that the Romney foreign policy team really does see Russia as foe number one."

A World of Uncertainty at Brussels Forum
March 29, 2012, The Philadelphia Inquirer
By Trudy Rubin
In the same vein, the Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan noted: "China is about to have a bigger military budget than Europe. Brazil and India are increasing their military capacity. Europe needs to be part of this game." A decade ago Kagan famously coined the saying "Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus." After the Cold War, "Europe thought it could rule the world by economic power," he explained.

German Effort to Save Euro Zone Comes at a Cost
March 28, 2012, The Washington Post
By Howard Schnieder
"It has not been cheap to get the consent of Germany," said Carlo Bastasin, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. He said the price included the ouster of Greek and Italian leaders who had not taken strong enough action to tackle their nations' debts and harsh austerity measures, such as deep cuts in public spending, in several countries. "The brinksmanship was a precise strategy - and it worked pretty well in terms of results," he said.

Emerging Markets Flex Collective Muscle At BRICS Summit
March 28, 2012, International Business Times
By Martin Baccardax
The BRICS "have benefited enormously from an international order that has an open economic system that allows them to trade with the United States and with other powers and they don't have to spend a lot of money on their defense," argued Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington.

Tibet, India, China, and the Yearning for Freedom
March 28, 2012, Forbes
By Kapil Komireddi
“If America’s future competitor in the world is likely to be China,” Robert Kagan recently wrote in a celebrated essay, “then a richer and more powerful India will be an asset, not a liability, to the United States.”

Barack Obama Caught Hinting at Concessions to Dmitry Medvedev
March 26, 2012, The Telegraph
By Jon Swaine 
Steven Pifer, the director of the Brookings Arms Control Initiative, said that a re-elected Obama administration might offer to share information on the project with Moscow or even effectively allow Russian officials to inspect the system. "Essentially you say 'here are our plans, here are the number of things we have, and we will keep you updated'," said Mr Pifer. "They could also permit official observations of testings. However Mr. Obama's opponents would say these put the US on a slippery slope."

Please Don’t Go
March 24, 2012, The Economist
To those who believe that a multipolar world could be at least as peaceful as the one dominated by America, Robert Kagan says history proves otherwise. Rules rarely outlast the powers that created them. Nations go to war when they are “in doubt about which is stronger,” he writes. The world is more stable when one nation dominates, especially when it is a nation like America.

NATO, Russia Look Headed for Conflict
March 24, 2012, Deutsche Welle
By Roman Goncharenko
And that, says Steven Pifer, a defense expert at the Brookings Institute in Washington, creates a political dilemma for US President Barack Obama. "Even if the Obama administration would like to do that, there is no chance that the American Senate would ratify that," Pifer told DW. "Unfortunately missile defense has become very, very political."

Sifting Through What We Know About the French Shootings Suspect
March 21, 2012, NPR
By Corey Flintoff
Jonathan Laurence, a professor of political science at Boston College, says that the profile of the case — with its Jewish and North Africa victims — at first suggested that the killer might be from the extreme right-wing. Some were drawing parallels to the Norwegian shooter involved in the attacks that killed dozens of people last summer in Norway.

Russia Warms to Syrian Ceasefire Plan, Says Red Cross
March 20, 2012, The National
By Dan Peleschuk
Moscow's posture towards Damascus is "much more fluid" than it might appear, said the Russian foreign policy expert, Pavel Baev. When looking at which side deserves more support, Russia picks whoever is on top, Mr Baev said. For now, "there is no point" in helping the opposition "because they're the forces of chaos, and in the Russian perception, revolution and chaos are pretty much synonymous".

Second Mates
March 16, 2012, National Journal
By Charles Kupchan
Those of us who write about foreign policy—or any topic, for that matter—yearn for the day when the president of the United States lauds our work. That is exactly what happened in January to Robert Kagan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adviser to the Romney campaign. Just before delivering the State of the Union address, President Obama told a collection of news anchors that his thinking had been influenced by Kagan’s recent cover essay in The New Republic, “Not Fade Away: The Myth of American Decline.” It is not often that a president running for reelection praises his chief rival’s counselor.

Book Review: ‘The World America Made’ by Robert Kagan
March 9, 2012, The Washington Post
By James Mann
So what should we make of the fact that President Obama has recently been touting parts of Robert Kagan's new book, “The World America Made”? The president let it be known before his State of the Union address that he had been reading an essay adapted from the book, published by the New Republic under the title “The Myth of American Decline.”

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears
March 9, 2012, The Boston Globe
By Editorial Board
Although Putin remains popular for bringing order and prosperity to Russia after the chaos of the post-Soviet era, the urban middle class he helped create has grown disillusioned with corruption and authoritarianism. Some 4 million Russians - about 3 percent of the population - have left Russia to work elsewhere over the last 10 years. Now millions who have chosen to stay are more defiant than before. The big question now is how Putin will handle them. “They are not going to stick everyone in the gulag again,’’ says Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution.

Sarkozy’s ‘Southern Strategy’: French President Says ‘Too Many Foreigners’ in France
March 7, 2012, Yahoo!News
By Laura Rozen
Sarkozy is trying to knock off the current third-place challenger, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, daughter of age-old right-winger Jean-Marie Le Pen, before the first round of voting on April 22nd. "The biggest threat for Sarkozy is to go down in polls so much ... that Le Pen goes to a second round," Justin Vaïsse, a French expert at the Brookings Institution, told Yahoo News Wednesday.

Our Views: If Not Adored, Still Powerful
March 5, 2012, The Advocate
For a quick history lesson, Robert Kagan of The Brookings Institution wrote recently about the myth of American decline. His arguments are particularly relevant in an election year, when there is going to be much loose talk about America’s waning influence in the world. Kagan quoted many other doomsayers of the past who proved to be wrong, such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who in 1952 talked about our own relative decline. That was relative to the Soviet Union, which no longer exists.

America and the Middle East: An Explosive Mix
March 5, 2012, The Financial Times
By Geoff Dyer and Richard McGregor
Alternatively, some observers point out that, purely in terms of electoral politics, a US-led attack would yield big benefits. “If you ask anyone inside both of the campaigns, if Obama were to use force against Iran, then the election is over,” says Robert Kagan, the foreign policy scholar who has advised a number of Republican candidates. “This is what people think. He would win the election overwhelmingly.”

Vladimir Putin: The Man, the State, the Destiny
March 4, 2012, RIA Novosti
By Marc Bennets
“Putin is not generally well-disposed to the US. He is always touchy and distrustful on relations,” said Fiona Hill, director of the Centre on the United States and Europe at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. “Forging a relationship with Putin will be difficult for [US President Barack] Obama, as well as for whoever else might come next in the US presidency."

Russia’s Elections: Putin Makes U.S. Enemy #1
March 2, 2012, The Washington Post
By Allen McDuffee
With Vladimir Putin expected to win the Russian presidential elections set for Sunday, Brookings scholar Fiona Hill says the United States should be concerned that the U.S.-Russian relations reset under current president Dmitry Medvedev is at risk. “The rhetoric of [Putin’s] campaign has been very nasty,” says Hill. “Anti-Americanism is always an old tool in the toolkit for Russian politics,” she said, adding, “Now, during this campaign, Putin has put U.S. right back up top as enemy number one.”

Putin Power Play Casts Cloud Over Obama's 'Reset' With Russia
March 2, 2012, FoxNews.com
By Judson Berger
Another six, possibly 12, years of Putin as the United States' negotiating partner could make that relationship frostier still. Fiona Hill, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at The Brookings Institution, said Putin's anti-U.S. posture on the campaign trail is "not going to bode well for U.S. relations." A second Putin presidency is likely to be far more "defensive" than the first, she said, because he faces serious opposition at home. This means "he's more likely to play to the crowd, more likely to push harder-line policies," Hill said.

Putin ‘Moving Into His Berlusconi Phase,’ Russia Scholar Says
March 2, 2012, Yahoo! News
By Laura Rozen
As polls universally predict victory for Vladimir Putin in Russian presidential elections Sunday, a prominent Washington Russia scholar likened the once and likely future Russian president to Italy's disgraced former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was ousted from power last year during the European financial crisis. "Putin is now moving into his 'Berlusconi phase,'" Fiona Hill, a Russia scholar at the Brookings Institution, said in an analysis prepared by the think tank and sent to journalists in advance of Sunday's polls.

The Politics of Meat and Muslims in Election-Year France
March 2, 2012, The Christian Science Monitor
By Scott Baldauf
Jonathan Laurence, a political scientist at Boston College and author of the book “The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims,” says that France is not alone in its concerns over its growing Muslim minorities.“The big picture is that in the last 20 years how much things have changed, and how governments have realized that people are here to stay,” says Professor Laurence, in a recent conversation with Monitor editors. But now, as the European economy is shrinking or staying flat, European politicians have “realized there is election gold in undoing the little they got done” in changing their laws to accommodate Muslim minorities.

 

July/August 2012, By Robert O. Keohane gracefully written essay notes that the United States has played an essential role in creating the international system of the last 60 years, one in which large-scale warfare has been relatively rare, the global economy has grown at unprecedented rates, and the number of democracies has quadrupled.  June 26, 2012, By Justyna Pawlak and Sebastian Moffett Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces are trying to suppress an uprising against his rule that broke out 16 months ago. Even defensive measures by NATO allies would risk sucking them into the conflict. "There is very little appetite from the alliance to undertake what we call a discretionary war," said , a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.  June 25, 2012, By Jon Hemming "Ankara itself has been averse to consider military action against Syria so far. So it is likely that the invocation of Article 4 is designed to put more diplomatic pressure on Assad," said , a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. June 18, 2012, By Olga Khazan , director of the Arms Control Initiative at the Brookings Institution, told NPR that the treaty helped pave the way for international support for U.S. efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program and gives President Obama “moral authority” on nuclear nonproliferation. May 20, 2012, By Martin Daly , associate professor of political science at Boston College and author of The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims, believes the fact that one-fifth of the French electorate voted for Front National shows "serious fault lines" in terms of satisfaction with government, particularly as the front's members "do not hesitate to play fast and loose with some pretty vile politics".