Imperialism for a cash-strapped era: Storms below the surface (Part II)
24.01.2012
M.K.Bhadrakumar (India), political scientist, columnist for The Asia Times Online, and The Hindu and Deccan Herald
The “color revolution” will continue to be the preferred route for the United States in effecting regime change in Central Asia. But the limits to the United States’s capacity to intervene also cannot but be noted. As a perceptive observer recently noted, the US is a “renter rather than a bona-fide landlord...
Imperialism for a cash-strapped era: Storms below the surface (Part I)
18.01.2012
M.K.Bhadrakumar (India), political scientist, columnist for The Asia Times Online, and The Hindu and Deccan Herald
The United States’ defence strategy unveiled by President Barack Obama in Washington on January 5 has been occasioned by the need to slash the spending of the Pentagon by nearly half a trillion dollars over the next decade. There is undeniably some merit in the viewpoint that this is a strategy that has been driven by...
Peter Iskenderov PhD, Senior Research Associate Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Science
The year 2011 will be remembered as a period of unprecedented uncertainty in the history of modern Europe. On the one hand, contrary to widespread apocalyptic expectations, the EU did not crumble and the amplitude of the oscillations in the value of the relatively young European currency did stay within tolerable limits. On...
Syria and the New Model of International Transformations
28.12.2011
Dr. Alexander Mezyaev, International Law Department, Governance Academy (Kazan`)
Early this month, as Russia was in the process of assuming chairmanship in the UN Security Council, Moscow's envoy said Syria was not on the UN SC December agenda. Still, the theme of Syria has become the subject of permanent heated debates during unofficial consultations and surfaced in the discussions of the situations...
Clashes in Kazakhstan: inspired by the Arab Spring?
19.12.2011
Alexander Shustov, political analyst and Central Asia expert
In the past few months Kazakhstan, once the quietest country in Central Asia, has turned into a hotbed of extremism. On December 16th when Kazakhstan marked its Independence Day, violent clashes took place in the western town of Zhanaozen in Mangistau district.State-run media and opposition supporters offer an absolutely...
Great Britain, Greece and Austria set the trends in the EU (II)
17.12.2011
Peter Iskenderov, PhD, Senior Research Associate Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Science
Back in summer of 2008, amid difficulties with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty on reforming the EU many officials in the EU government began to speak at their informal meetings about the future of Europe “at different speeds” and “concentric circles” of Europe. These concepts implied that formally...
Great Britain, Greece, and Austria Set the Trends in the EU (I)
16.12.2011
Peter Iskenderov PhD, Senior Research Associate Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Science
The resolutions of the December 8-9 EU summit which had evoked heightened expectations eventually left a mixed impression. The official agenda of the forum appeared all-embracing, with the leaders of the 27 countries of the united Europe touching upon every issue from the Balkan politics and Iran's nuclear problem to the...
President of Côte d'Ivoire to Stand Trial in the International Criminal Court
06.12.2011
Dr. Alexander Mezyaev, International Law Department, Governance Academy (Kazan`)
President of Côte d'Ivoire Laurent Gbagbo who had been displaced as a result of the French intervention appeared before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Hague on December 5. With several other country leaders already facing ICC charges, the fresh case could fit into a steady trend apart from a significant...
Andrei Volodin,political scientist, PhD(History), professor
A Nato air strike on a Pakistani border coordination center on 26th November, which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, has caused extensive coverage in the media and critical feedback from all over the globe. IN a phone talk with his Pakistani counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that violating other countries`...
Leonid Ivashov, President of the Geopolitics Problems Academy, Professor with the Moscow University of Linguistics
US Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland announced on November 22 that the US stops supplying to Russia the data on conventional arms in Europe. Furthermore, Russian inspectors would not be admitted to US military bases in Europe. What could be the reasoning behind the radical US step which, it must be noted, fits...
The Kremlin Signals the Need for a Sensible Approach to the European Missile Defense and Warns that Moscow's Patience Has Its Limits
23.11.2011
Victor Kazimirov is a Moscow-based military-political commentator
On November 23, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev addressed the citizens of Russia – and also, from a broader perspective, a number of the world's countries – in connection with the alarming situation which has arisen as a result of the US and NATO efforts to build a broad missile defense system in Europe. The...
Common European Missile Defense: Cooperation or Confrontation? (Part II)
23.11.2011
Dr. Vladimir KOZIN is the Russian Federation State Councellor, 2nd Class, and a member of the Interdepartmental Experts' Working Group at the Russian Federation Presidential Staff on cooperation with NATO on the BMD (Ph.D, Senior Researcher)
The functional feature of the contemporary BMD infrastructure of the US and its key NATO allies is that their missile defense assets are never used per se or alone or separately from their strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. The BMD capabilities and nuclear arms always operate together. The exceptional case is...
Common European Missile Defense: Cooperation or Confrontation? (Part I)
22.11.2011
Dr. Vladimir KOZIN is the Russian Federation State Councellor, 2nd Class, and a member of the Interdepartmental Experts' Working Group at the Russian Federation Presidential Staff on cooperation with NATO on the BMD (Ph.D, Senior Researcher)
The positions which Washington and the NATO headquarters in Brussels adopted at the consultations on a joint Russia-USA/NATO European ballistic missile defense (BMD) system have recently drawn a new round of criticisms from the Russian military-political leadership. Such stances on the current state of the consultations was...
Peter Iskenderov PhD, Senior Research Associate Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Science
The statement about a possible division of Kosovo made by the chairman of the Kosovo Assembly Jakup Krasniqi ahead of the resumption of talks between Belgrade and Pristine may give a new direction to the burning discussion on Kosovo issue.If earlier Kosovo’s Albanian leaders vigorously opposed the very possibility of the...
Natalia Meden, research officer of Institute for Economics of the Russian Academy of Science
On September 8, Russian president D. Medvedev, German chancellor A. Merkel, prime ministers of France and the Netherlands Francois Fillon and Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Erwin Sellering, EU Energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger, and CEOs of Nord Stream consortium partners inaugurated the Nord...
On November 6, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega was re-elected winning 64 % of votes. The key points of his election program are laconic and comprehensible for Nicaraguan people: socialism, Christianity, free market. Ortega’s opponents have failed to come up with a more convincing alternative. His closest rival - an...
