Russian President Vladimir Putin’s message to the United States, NATO, and Kyiv at his annual press conference could arguably be summed up like this: Happy Holidays — and after that, we’ll see. The choreographed, nearly four-hour event on December 23 came with attention riveted on Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine’s …

India grappled with serious security and domestic challenges this year. Military tensions with China showed no signs of easing, a deadly second wave of the coronavirus pandemic devastated India and the biggest farmers protest in decades challenged Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authority. The Asian giants, India and China, ended their …

Many people assume that the 44-day war in 2020 ended with a new ceasefire line that both Azerbaijan and Armenia were committed to observing, Grant Mikhaelyan says. But in reality, Baku has continued a low intensity conflict that has allowed it to take control of land along that line; and …

Russia proposed a new security treaty between Washington and Moscow on December 17th. The Kremlin contends it will de-escalate tensions surrounding Ukraine, if the U.S. agrees to the terms of the “Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Security Guarantees”. An examination of the draft …

America’s Self-Defeating Economic Retreat Anew consensus has emerged in American politics: that the United States has recklessly pursued international economic openness at the expense of workers and the result has been economic inequality, social pain, and political strife. Both Democrats and Republicans are now advocating “a trade policy for the …

Beijing Isn’t Just Building Roads—It’s Making Friends When U.S. policymakers consider China’s influence in Africa, they often think of big-ticket infrastructure development programs such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Over the past two decades, Beijing has spent billions building dams, highways, railways, and ports in countries from Egypt …

Can Culture Drive Geopolitics? Around 1949, fresh out of college at Northwestern University, my mother moved to New York to take a job at NBC. She arrived at the dawn of U.S. television. NBC had entered the business just about a decade earlier. Rather than being assigned to a sitcom …

NATO’s Weakness Invites Russian Aggression “Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.” -Artistotle In September, we ran a story about the think tank, RAND, and their war game after an action that essentially proved NATO, like a pearl of wisdom in Congress, is …

North Macedonia is facing calls to address the threat from right-wing groups and far-right extremism when its national counter-terrorism strategy comes up for renewal next year. The current strategy, which covers the period 2018-2022, focuses primarily on religious extremism and Islamic radicalisation. The European Commission, the executive arm of the …

Iranian support for Arab militias has long threatened Iran’s detractors, unable to develop an effective counterstrategy. Now, the tide may be turning. A string of events suggests that the usefulness of at least some of the militias in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Palestine is waning as their popularity diminishes and …