Eurasia

Anceps fortuna belli (The fate of war is uncertain) – Cicero (106-43BCE) A Facebook friend asked me to write something on the Ukraine crisis for his page in Q & A form. Q: Briefly, what is the recent historical background to this conflict? A: The 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine …

My old boss Herman Kahn, with whom I worked at the Hudson Institute in the 1970s, had a set speech that he would give at public meetings. He said that back in high school in Los Angeles, his teachers would say what most liberals were saying in the 1940s and …

Turkey will limit the passage of Russian warships through its straits linking the Mediterranean and Black Sea as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues into its sixth day, in a move that will likely have a larger impact on the Syrian front than the war in Ukraine. The position became …

Formulating its policy on the Ukraine crisis, Israel must take into account its coordination with Russia in Syria, its special relations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, its super important alliance with the United States and its large Russian-Ukraine-born population. At a Feb. 27 meeting of Israel’s foreign affairs and security …

After the start of Russia’s military campaign against Ukraine and the resulting unprecedented sanctions against Moscow, the latter is focusing its attention on the leading states in the Islamic world and the greater Middle East to negate the impact of Western isolation. The operation against Ukraine began when Pakistani Prime …

The Ukraine crisis has generated a level of attention on energy security that has been sorely lacking over the past decade. European dependence on Russian gas and global dependence on Russian oil is limiting Western action against Russia. However, with Germany halting the certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline; …

The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces has spurred Europe’s worst security crisis in decades. But while most analysis is rightly focused on the immediate situation, it is equally important to forecast the war’s multiple possible trajectories and outcomes. Anticipating the uncertainties that this war will bring is a critical …

NATO airspace will not be used to transfer fighter planes to the Ukrainian military, alliance leaders said Tuesday after a meeting in Poland, where top U.S. commanders were on hand for high-level security talks. Ukraine has requested additional military hardware from the West to help stave off Russia’s full-scale invasion, …

Roughly 80% of the more than 170,000 troops Russia had surrounding Ukraine for months before invading are now inside the country, though the Ukrainian resistance and supply issues have slowed their advance, a senior U.S. defense official said Tuesday. Russian forces advancing toward Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv “has made no …

The United States and its allies announced their crucial decision to prohibit the access of particular Russian financial institutions from the SWIFT international payment system last February 26. This marks the latest and arguably, harshest sanction to date on Moscow as it continues its invasion of Ukraine. The procedure is …