ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan— For at least a handful of Chinese soldiers, the television footage of Abbottabad around the Osama bin Laden raid was familiar. In December 2006, the city was the site of an extensive set of joint Sino-Pakistani counterterrorism exercises. The “large-scale intelligence gathering,” “ambushes,” and “search and destroy missions” unfortunately failed to get anywhere [...]

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BRUSSELS — This week, while protests raged in Athens, the government of Prime Minister George Papandreou survived a critical confidence vote in the Greek parliament. The government can now try to impose further austerity measures. European Union finance ministers have also agreed to seek a new round of assistance for Greece, and have put off, [...]

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BRUSSELS — EU Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn rightly stressed in late May, “There is a certain aid fatigue in all of northern Europe [and] a certain reform fatigue in southern Europe.” Nearly a month later, nothing has changed. Yet both the United States and China have upped the ante by signaling [...]

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Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Turkey laid to rest any lingering doubts about the vibrancy of the country’s electoral democracy. But one-party rule does not necessarily equate to weakening democracy and can often be a welcome formula for consensus-building, economic success, and political stability.

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ANKARA—The outcome of Sunday’s elections in Turkey was a foregone conclusion months ago. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) had been widely expected to win, and to continue governing Turkey for a third term. Confident of this outcome, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an announ­ced that the first AKP government had been his apprenticeship, that the [...]

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By Joseph Wood WASHINGTON — Soon-to-be-former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will leave the Pentagon with tremendous credibility.  He led the surge and drawdown in Iraq and the surge in Afghanistan, and he made difficult choices to truncate or cancel expensive weapons programs.  He is a strong advocate for American military strength and presence, [...]

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by Andrew A. Michta WARSAW — U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ speech last Friday, in which he warned that NATO is heading for irrelevance unless Europe reinvigorates its defense spending, ought to generate more than the usual finger-pointing and exasperation across the Atlantic.  Though driven by the immediate, and justifiable, concern over Europe’s continued [...]

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WASHINGTON — Germany’s decision last week to phase out nuclear power has sharpened the differences between Europe and the United States on energy policy. Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman, a senior voice on energy policy in the U.S. Congress, led the chorus decrying that removing nuclear power from the energy mix would undermine global efforts to [...]

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Major decisions on the endgame in Afghanistan are coming soon in Washington. Public support for the war has been waning as Americans struggle with a weak economic recovery, explains Glenn Nye.

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WASHINGTON — The official visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the United States this week and the decision by U.S. President Barack Obama to award her the Presidential Medal of Freedom have raised some eyebrows in Washington.  Why roll out the red carpet and present this honor to someone who has been a reluctant [...]

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