Thomas Miller is the previous Ambassador to Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Special Coordinator for Cyprus. He is also the current President/CEO of International Executive Service Corps, a non-profit that furnishes expertise to the developing world to train in best business practices. You can read more about his impressive career here.

The Greek Elections and the Future of Greece

Author: Ambassador Thomas Miller

As of now it looks virtually certain that Greeks will return to the polls on either June 10 or 17—just a few weeks after the last inconclusive election. On May 6, Greeks resoundingly turned out the two parties that had alternated power for nearly the last four decades when 70% of them voted for parties that rejected the austerity plan these two mainstream parties had signed with the European Union, IMF, and the European Central Bank (ECB).

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Reflections on the Coup, Part 2

Anthony Scavone is a recent graduate of Boston University where he studied International Relations focusing specifically on International Development and Sub-Saharan Africa. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali from October until they were evacuated in mid-April. You can read more about his personal experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer in his personal blog, Anthony in Africa. This is the first post in a two-post series about the motivations and impact of the recent military coup in Mali.

To boil down all the implications of recent events in Mali into a single post would not give justice to the true breadth of what has happened. Instead I will split this into two separate pieces: part one will focus on what this coup means for Mali and Malians. The second will focus more on what this means for me, the Peace Corps, and the international community at large.

Part 1: Mali and Malians

It’s become relatively common knowledge that the main grievance that drove the military to overthrow Amadou Toumani Toure (Better known as ATT) was the belief that ATT was strangling the military effort to maintain security in the vast northern regions of the country. Lack of food and supplies, while facing a Tuareg rebellion recently augmented by the fall of Gaddafi and the return of arms and trained Malian Tuaregs from Libya, drove mid-ranking military leaders to try to take matters into their own hands.

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by Laurie Dundon

Senior Fellow, Partnership for Secure America

Policy-makers have been looking for some good leverage to affect the situation in Syria for months. Americans, and those around the world, are watching in horror at the violence. The moral imperative to do something is clear: each day the atrocities continue; each day the disproportionate use of force affects innocent civilians; and the situation is going from bad to worse. However, decisions about what course of action to take are complex. Experts point to the complications of a campaign against Syria’s sophisticated air defenses, the practical challenges of training and equipping the Free Syria Army (FSA), the limitations of implementing safe-zones without significant ground force protection, and the risk of getting drawn into a messy proxy-war with very real effects throughout the region and direct effects for Americans. On top of that, the majority of Americans are weighted with  “intervention exhaustion” and extremely hesitant to get involved in another military conflict in the Middle East.

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By Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) This article first appeared in The Hill.

Despite the partisanship that currently afflicts our nation’s politics, there is at least one issue that both Republicans and Democrats can agree on – the need to prevent terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear bomb-making materials. Solidifying the historic legacy of American leadership in countering nuclear terrorism, more than fifty heads of state will gather today for the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit. The summit will bring together world leaders to strengthen global defenses against nuclear terrorism, one of the gravest threats to our security. The international nature of this gathering is critical; without a global effort to strengthen global defenses against nuclear terrorism, we could easily fall short.

In the United States, enhancing global nuclear security has been an area of bipartisan cooperation for more than two decades. In 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union caused command and control of the vast Soviet nuclear stockpile to unravel, and there was no accounting system to track nuclear weapons or materials. Fences surrounding installations that housed the Soviet nuclear arsenal were riddled with gaping holes, and there was no system to detect individuals who might steal weapons-grade uranium or plutonium. Scientists with the knowledge to create weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were suddenly jobless, and countless individuals – including guards at nuclear facilities – were struggling under hard economic times, giving them an incentive to steal nuclear material and sell it to the highest bidder. The challenge to keep Soviet weapons, materials, and expertise off the black market was overwhelming.

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With this week’s announcement by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, prospects of a more united Congress grew a shade darker. Snowe’s plan to retire at the end of this year brings the casualty count this Congress for Senators widely seen as moderates to three – Snowe, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. And the situation looks just as, if not more, worrisome in the House.

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Graeme Bannerman, a scholar at the Middle East Institute, served as staff director on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He is also a member of PSA’s Board of Directors. This article originally appeared in Politico and can be found here.

Alliance with Egypt is Key for U.S.

As a result of foreign policy miscalculations, the United States may lose its historical leadership in the Middle East. While the unfolding tragedy in Syria, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the war on terrorists absorb U.S. attention and resources, the unnecessary decline of U.S.-Egyptian relations could do the most damage to our national interests. Just as Britain’s domination of the region ended on the banks of the Suez Canal in 1956, Washington now appears determined to end our 30 years of regional dominance in a confrontation with the Egyptian people.

U.S. pre-eminence in the region since the 1970s was built on the strategic cooperation between Washington and Cairo. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter strove to create this relationship, for they realized that the preceding 20 years of predominant Soviet influence in the region was due to the Egyptian-Soviet partnership.

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Don’t look now, but foreign policy is back on this year’s election agenda.

While Election 2012 is still very much about the economy, foreign policy issues are increasingly making a comeback.  And as the conversation focuses more on Iran, foreign policy is emerging not because of a lack of news about the economy, but rather because of the increasing connection between the two topics.

The tensions between the U.S. and Iran illustrate the linkage.  In response to the European oil boycott, Iran recently announced that it was cutting off exports to Britain and France, which, in part, drove oil benchmarks to a nine-month high of nearly $123 a barrel.  This, in turn, “could prove worrisome for U.S. drivers since many U.S. refineries use imported oil to produce gas”.  Gas prices are already rising across the country – currently the national average is above $3.50 a gallon – and many worry that gas prices could rise beyond $4 a gallon by the summer.  There are even concerns that gas could spike to $5 a gallon if tensions surge.

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This article, co-authored by PSA Advisory Board member and former Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering and William Luers, former U.S. Ambassador and President of the United Nations Foundation from 1999 to 2009, originally appeared in the New York Times.

Envisioning a Deal With Iran

IF you deal in camels, make the doors high,” an Afghan proverb cautions. As the dangers mount in the confrontation between the United States and Iran, both sides will have to raise the doors high for diplomacy to work, and to avoid conflict.

A diplomatic strategy must begin with the United States’ setting its priorities and then defining a practical path to achieve them. To achieve its top priorities, it will have to learn what Iran needs. Since the United States will not get total surrender from Iran, it must decide what it can put on the table to assure that both sides can reach a deal that will be durable.

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This article was written by two Fall 2011 Fellows in PSA’s Congressional Fellowship Program.  All CFP articles are produced by bipartisan groups of Democrat and Republican Fellows who were challenged to develop opinion pieces that reach consensus on critical national security and foreign affairs issues.

KORUS Free Trade Agreement: An Agent of Stability

Almost sixty years ago at the end of the Korean War, the relationship between the United States and South Korea took on a new meaning.  The relationship was built on a cooperative framework between allied forces in order to promote stability on the peninsula through a strengthened commitment to the mutual goals of protecting democratic values, peace and economic security.

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