With the explosion of the Ukraine crisis in spring 2014, Russia made a determined effort to upgrade its strategic partnership with China and achieved instant success. Large-scale economic contracts were signed in a matter of a few months, and the military parades in Moscow and Beijing in respectively May and September 2015, in which the… Read more »
Category: Regions and Powers
Myanmar’s Ethnic Minorities Marginalized More
For the first time in over half a century, Myanmar has a government with a popular mandate, led by the National League for Democracy (NLD). Although the Myanmar armed forces still have extensive political powers under the 2008 constitution, and may seriously curtail the independent action of the new government, the inauguration of President Htin… Read more »
The Politics of Fun in Egypt
Yes, this little piece will relate to Asef Bayat’s gem of an article ‘Islamism and the politics of fun.’ But first a comment on the current goings-on in Egypt. The last time I visited the country, in early February, the news about the murder of Giulio Regeni broke. The Italian PhD student was tortured for… Read more »
India’s Nuclear Behavior
India’s Nuclear Policy has been the subject of debate for many decades now. A non-signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, the country has pursued an atomic bomb amid regional tensions and precarious relations with its neighbors. India has also used its nuclear weapon to bolster its national identity tied to the concept of ‘security’. Despite… Read more »
Ceasefire as a Fig Leaf for Carnage and Confusion
Just a couple of weeks ago, Aleppo was seen as a crucial battlefield in the Syrian civil war and was compared with Sarajevo as a tragedy of intolerable proportions not only by hard-hitting journalists but also by such responsible politicians as Michael Fallon, UK Defence Secretary. Yet presently, this devastated city is portrayed as the… Read more »
New Developments in Drone Proliferation: How Africa was Deployed to Rescue Drones
Debates on global drone proliferation tend to assume that adoption and adaptation of drones follow a universal logic and that the drone industry is a singular thing, geographically concentrated in the Global North. In this blog post I argue that these assumptions make it difficult to critically assess the growth in drone use across Africa…. Read more »
The Iranian Nuclear Issue
I have been tracking the Iranian nuclear issue for about ten years. Important in its own right, this issue also has significant implications for the international agenda on nuclear weapons disarmament. Let it be noted at the outset that the expression in question – “Iranian Nuclear Issue” – is a freighted one; it suggests the problem… Read more »
Unfriended: How Russia’s Syria Quagmire is Costing it Middle Eastern Allies
At a time when most Russians were taking a long break from politics until after the Orthodox Christmas on January 7, there has been no respite in Russia’s air operations in Syria, nor in the quarrel with Turkey. Rather than focus on the bread-and-butter issues of making ends meet, Russian policymakers seem to be instead… Read more »
Russian Strategy Seeks to Defy Economic Decline with Military Bravado
President Vladimir Putin concluded 2015 with the approval of a revised National Security Strategy, which defines the strengthening of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a threat and commits to countering it by securing the unity of Russian society and by building up the country’s defense capabilities. In the course of the past year,… Read more »
A Drama in Several Acts
Nearly five years since Tunisia’s revolution began to spread, the hopes and expectations of democracy have been replaced by despair and fear of what will follow. This has been an important and proud autumn for Tunisia and the Tunisian people. Ever since the Chair of the Nobel Committee, Kaci Kullmann Five, announced in October that… Read more »