We have heard many recollections about Ariel Sharon, the late Israeli P.M., some critical, some laudatory. With Putin having surprised us with his laudatory comments about Nelson Mandela, we were not surprised to see what he said about Sharon. After all, when the two met in the Kremlin in November 2003, Sharon referred to Putin as "a true…

“Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.”
Guy de Maupassant
 
In our highly unstable world there are but a few places which can be deemed close to being tranquil. In the preceding post Casing Point outlined that the Arctic is amongst such areas. Still, it is not utterly…

Recent strategic agreements between Paris and Moscow will expand bi-lateral business in the defense, aerospace and energy sectors.  Meanwhile, the state visit of French president Francois Hollande to Brazil December 11-12, which this blogger attended, achieved a similar objective and strengthened a program of educational, scientific and cultural…

Author: Artyom Malgin, PhD in Political Science, Vice-Rector of MGIMO University. Judging by the latest developments in Ukraine, foreign policy towards Europe has become a major element of Russian-Ukrainian relations, at the same time affecting Kiev's international priorities and, according to some observers, its domestic politics. And the role of…

This week we saw several articles demonstrating serious concern about inevitable cuts in fundings of Central Asian studies in U.S. Let us try to consider it as a positive thing. How this cuts could affect scientists and, what is most important, Central Asian countries?
 
 
The first and most obvious result of research funding cuts is…

An Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) is airspace which extends beyond national borders. It has no basis in international law, but is not illegal as long as it does not violate existing rules of international law. Its purpose is usually to identify aircrafts approaching the territorial airspace. Even though it is only in the territorial airspace…

The following work’s theme shall be nationalism in Russia.
 
Since the creation of the Romanov’s empire in the 17th century by Peter the Great, until Vladimir Putin, Russia has been a global nation. This ex-superpower keeps having an impact on the international scene.
 
The Medias regularly deal with this country: military…

Regardless of whether you consider Edward Snowden a patriot or a scoundrel the chances that he will be granted asylum in Brazil have become extremely remote thanks to Snowden’s trusted adviser Glenn Greenwald. The ex-Guardian journalist was involved in floating an e-diplomacy hoax that was interpreted in the media as an official request for…

Corruption is commonly perceived as a threat to social welfare, but it is not always true. In many situations, as I am going to show, corrupted behavior of individuals can allow for more efficient resource allocations than the law-abiding strategy. To see this, I model typical interactions between public officials and citizens in the game form, where…

On 1 December 2013 a law on the export liberalization of liquefied natural gas (LNG) came into legal force in Russia. The law allows some categories of companies other than Russia's state gas giant Gazprom and its subsidiary companies to have LNG export rights. This is - without exaggeration - a historic decision for the Russian gas industry, the road…

Energy and persistence conquer all things.
Benjamin Franklin


South Stream is a gas pipeline to transport Russian natural gas through the Black Sea to Bulgaria and further to Greece, Italy and Austria. The project is seen as rival to the planned Nabucco pipeline. Construction started in December 2012, with a first commercial deliveries in late…

On December 6, a day after the death of Nelson Mandela, Solly Maipaila, the Deputy General of the South African Communist Party [SACP], revealed what analysts like Jiri Valenta have known for years.  Mandela was not only a member of this communist party but on its Central Committeee.  He was also chaiman of the African National Congress…