BOLOGNA, Italy—It is easy to be deceived by Italy. The country that gave us the term “la dolce vita” knows how to live well. In this northern city, an intersection of Italy’s most remarkable achievements in industry, education, architecture and gastronomy, one could miss the undercurrents of crisis flowing across the nation’s landscape. Like other countries in Europe, particularly those in the south, along the Mediterranean coast, Italy is living through a major economic contraction. On the surface, the drama is less visible than in places like Spain and Greece. Upon closer examination, however, one discovers that the Italian recession [...]
Collective defense is a coordinated response to a common security problem by two or more countries. The core of collective defense is political: a commitment by different nations to come to each other’s aid if attacked. Existing collective security arrangements for the U.S. and its allies were designed for one kind of threat. Now they must deal with others, including new threats, if they are to remain relevant to national security. In particular, the U.S. and its allies agree that it would be useful to extend collective defense arrangements against potential cyberattacks, but implementation has proven difficult because of the [...]
French President Francois Hollande’s three-day visit to Tokyo, where he met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, resulted in major agreements on nuclear cooperation and joint development of military hardware. The summit, which also covered a range of other topics, reflected the noticeable improvement in recent years of the two countries’ already solid bilateral ties. Despite often being rivals for foreign contracts, Japan and France remain closely bound through cooperation on advanced technologies. Indeed, the agreement to increase nuclear cooperation was not a total surprise considering that a French-Japanese consortium just won a lucrative $22 billion joint bid to develop [...]
