III. Canada
 
Stephen Harper: the rise and fall of Canada's defence budget
 
Since coming to power in 2006, Canada’s Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made support for the military the centrepiece of his campaign to garner support from voters disillusioned with the Liberal party’s policies towards veterans…

Canada took over the rotating chairmanship of the Arctic Council in 2013 for the first time since its inauguration in 1998. The Council, however, could hardly be described as the same forum that it was in the ’90s. The organisation has begun to focus more on security for transportation routes and resource exploration since its 2011…

 
Media outlets and government circles both cringe and squirm when the subject of Westerners leaving the West to go fight in Syria and Iraq with the Islamic State arises. While acquiring data and calculating accurate numbers wildly diverges from source to source, there is no doubt that ANY number simply makes countries like the United States…

Russian President Vladimir Putin has just declared his readiness to mend his ties to the West as long as Moscow is not treated as a “vassal.”  Why now?  Likely because the Obama era of “strategic patience” is nearing its end.  The presidential primaries will be soon upon us.
 
Like his predecessors…

Arctic current publications often overlook France-Russia relations in the Arctic, though cooperation between the two countries in Northern latitudes is more than five hundred year-old. In 1586, the French explorer Jean Sauvage arrived in Arkhangelsk, where he stayed two month in order to establish trade relations with the Russians. When he came back…

In a surprising turn of events, Russia announced plans on April 13 to go ahead with the delivery of S-400 long-range surface-to-air missile systems to China and S-300 missile systems to Iran. The two announcements were made on the same day but for very different reasons. On the surface, this is seemingly Russia’s attempt yet again to irritate…

Kim Jong-un is scheduled to visit Moscow this May as one of the Kremlin's numerous guests of honor for the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. This will be his first visit abroad since he succeeded his father Kim Jong-il as the ruler of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in December 2011.
 
Kim…

The largest Oil experts' platform in the entire world OilFinity      www.oilfinity.com
 
The above mentioned famous British entity published recently the exclusive vision of 6 oil & gas industry experts regarding the affect of working markets due the dramatic fall in crude oil prices.
 
 
1. In what way…

The dangers of choosing politics over peopleIn the wake of February’s UN Resolution #2202 (alternately called the Minsk Agreements), there have been numerous threats from both the East and the West of what will come to pass if its contents are not fully and rapidly implemented. While nuclear saber rattling and theoretically indefinite sanctions…

This eastward drive has been in the making for quite a while. In the second half of the 2000s, Moscow began taking steps to develop the long-neglected Russian Far East, expand economic cooperation with East Asia, and diversify away from economically stagnant Europe.
 
At the time, Moscow’s pursuit of closer ties with Asia seemed…

            It is perhaps a misnomer to discuss future ‘blowback:’ there have been groups actively pursuing technological attacks on American targets simultaneously alongside the development of the U.S. drone fleet. Keep in mind blowback comes in forms other than just anger over actual…

 
Undeniably, Secretary John Kerry has labored long and hard on the U.S.-Iran deal, and there are some positives as Leslie Gelb  has asserted.  As for the complaints of the Republicans, is important to remember, there is no agreement yet.  In spite of our President´s optimistic comments and desperate attempts to forge a…