The OPEC refusal to decrease oil production and a subsequent price fall to a 4-year low make the future of Russian economy tenuous. Since July 2014, the Russian ruble depreciated to the U.S. dollar by 45%, and the economic growth stalled. Falling oil prices together with western sanctions induce Russian experts to seek alternative sources to fill…

In a recent meeting between President Asraf Ghani and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Afghanistan and Pakistan have reached over an understanding on the security cooperation, capacity building and mutual trade. This unexpected development exclusively includes the training of Afghan National Army by Pakistan Army.   In so many manners, this out…

 
Common complaints within Intelligence Studies about the examination of foreign intelligence communities, especially those not residing in the west, run the gamut from being too historically driven to being completely ahistorical and thus nothing more than a simple organizational review of facts and details to being too often inevitably…

Latvia as the European country with the largest Russian minority of 28 % has become the focus of international attention. Since the Baltic country is a NATO and EU member, a Russian military intervention could lead to a multilateral conflict with unforeseen consequences.  This would require the clear support of the Latvia’s Russian minority…

Following the 2014 separatist conflict in Ukraine, observers have worried about the potential for a similar conflict in Moldova that would interrupt the country’s EU association. Indeed, Moldova’s national minorities largely oppose the country’s process of approximation and integration with the European Union. National minorities are…

Dr. Glen Segell
(Fellow – The Ezri Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies,University of Haifa, Israel)

The Southern flank of Europe is the Mediterranean Sea. It is a small sea and many countries rely on the freedom of both sea and air traffic for their economy. On the one hand there was optimism that the Arab Spring would bring greater…

Irresponsibility of the global elite has always been a matter of deep concern and suspicion. One can say that throughout history, that were largely irresponsible. Many crises occurred because of that.
 
There are a number of theories that present the evaluation of the elites’ actions. V.Pareto, G.Moska, R.Mihels have been developing the…

This article was originally published in The Diplomat
 
Moscow has long declared its own Asian pivot, yet despite deteriorating Western relations Russia has yet to prove it is at home in the Asia Pacific.
As the rule of Russian czars spread to the East from Moscow into the sparsely populated Siberian wilderness, Russia became less European and…

The 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall was hailed with cheerful celebrations in the German capital. Many world leaders sent the usual messages of satisfaction and hope, including Pope Francis's perhaps sloganistic intimation that “We need bridges, not walls!”. Nevertheless after a quarter-century the political balance of the…

Vladimir Putin would do well to understand how American democracy works – because it does.  It also corrects itself when it veers off course.   Thus, he should take seriously the sea change that happened during our mid-term elections.  The American people spoke! With their votes they sent a message to President Obama. But…

In what is being branded as an effort to provide palliative assistance to reduce hunger and boost democracy building living standards Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank and Ban Ki Moon, secretary general of the United Nations, have launched a plan that expands the strategically significant “Horn of Africa” to encompass 18 percent of…

   My late colleague, General Bill Odom, would have been surprised.  This mid-term election, the Republicans were not only right ( on national security affairs and the economy), for once, they were not stupid.  They did not display their traditional pursuance of outdated, extremist, views on gay rights, abortion and the war on…