Today’s leaked NATO report on ‘the state of the Taliban’ has generated the predictable responses: excessive attempts by the media to hype it up, and excessive attempts by NATO and the Pakistani government to play it down. What is its true significance? It’s a good scoop, but there is little or nothing in it which really counts as ‘news’ to anyone who has been fo...

Think-tank brought together eight senior security officials at Nato and the European Commission to use the methodology in order to judge the nations’ resilience

President Nicolas Sarkozy met the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, in Paris yesterday and said that France would join in asking Nato to hand over all combat missions in Afghanistan to Afghan troops in 2013 – a year earlier than planned.

Turkey, a member of NATO issued a statement today that they will not allow their fellow NATO allies to use Turkish soil or facilities to attack Iran. The statement came from Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, according to RIA Novosti. Davutoglu ended by saying that the borders between Iran and Turkey have been borders of peace and will remain that way. This is the second time the Islamist r...

An independent report published by Middle Eastern human rights groups says there is evidence that war crimes and human rights violations were committed by all the participants – Nato, rebel forces and those loyal to Colonel Gaddafi – in last year's Libyan uprising.

In 2010 the Dutch deployed a submarine to the Horn Of Africa after a request from NATO. And while most newspapers focused on the lack of Dutch surface vessels around the Horn of Africa, after HNLMS Zuiderkruis left for retirement (the next surface vessel to go is HNLMS Van Amstel),  there is a Dutch vessel in the area: HNLMS Dolfijn, join operation Ocean Shield. In 2010 the Dutch sub was 4 mo...

Allegations indicate that Russia is trying to pre-empt calls for intervention against Syria, amid fears that Arab League mission will fail

Every so often, when I hear people tell me that the Cold War is a long-lost issue and that we need to "move on", to use that cant expression, I remember that there are, unbelievably, people out there who still think that the Soviet Union and its empire was a benevolent force and no worse than that of the NATO alliance that successfully helped to bring it down, and who therefore regard people who h...

Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin expressed 'doubts' about the European Union's future and warned of the bloc's economic weakness. His comments came yesterday (13 December) in a wide-ranging discussion on the future of Russia and the EU. More »

David Cameron has held a reception at Downing Street for 120 service personnel who served in the recent Nato campaign in Libya.