NATO’s twenty-eight member counties wrap up their annual summit today in Chicago. The parting sound bites no doubt will tout this year’s summit for being especially productive—even with a few breaks to throw a football around and to watch a soccer game. And the final communiqué will almost certainly point to progress on critical issues such as Afghanistan, missile defense, and alliance modernization. Read more »

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed the presidential election in Egypt; the NATO summit in Chicago; and the P5+1′s talks with Iran in Baghdad.

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The highlights:

• Egypt holds its presidential elections on May 23-24. Read more »

The New York Times ran a fascinating article yesterday on soaring student college debt. To make a long story short—and at 4,500+ words it was a long story—students are taking on a lot more debt to get themselves through college and finding it harder to pay back what they borrowed. That trend is worrying. Because if the system for financing American higher education breaks down, one of the country’s primary mechanisms for Read more »

Ask Americans to name World War II battles in the Pacific and you will likely to hear places such as Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. You aren’t likely to hear anyone mention Attu. But it was the only land battle fought on U.S. soil during World War II. And in proportional terms, it also was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Pacific theater. Read more »

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed next week’s talks in Vienna between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran; the Group of Eight (G8) summit at Camp David; François Hollande’s inauguration as president of France; and the Cannes Film Festival.

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The highlights: Read more »

The Pew Global Attitudes Project is out with a new poll on what Egyptians think about politics a few weeks ahead of their historical presidential elections. Some of the results are interesting:

• Egyptians like the idea of democracy. Two-thirds say it is preferable to other forms of government, and six-in-ten Egyptians say democracy is the form of government best suited to solving their problems. Read more »

On Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visited a Syrian refugee camp in southeastern Turkey and declared that the Assad regime’s days are numbered. Over the last few months, Turkey has taken a leadership role confronting the crisis in next door Syria.

As a new CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force report on Turkey released today notes, Turkey’s position on Syria is Read more »

Streaks are made to be broken. After seventeen years on the outside looking in, a Socialist Party candidate has finally returned to the French presidency. François Hollande defeated Nicolas Sarkozy by four percentage points, 52 percent to 48 percent. Hollande’s victory marked the first time in more than four decades that an incumbent French president lost his reelection bid. The man who vanquished the incumbent back in 1981 was François Mitterand, the last Read more »

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed the second and final round of France’s presidential elections; Vladimir Putin’s return as president of Russia; a possible North Korean nuclear test; and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Bangladesh and India.

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The highlights: Read more »

Wednesday marks one year since Navy Seal Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden. He won’t be missed here in the United States. And according to the latest poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, he won’t be missed much in Muslim-majority countries either.

Pew asked Muslims in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Turkey whether they had a “favorable” or “unfavorable” view of al-Qaeda. Read more »