Undoubtedly, the plummeting of oil price is one of the most observed and debated topics of this year's end, both for its economic and political implications. These kind of events are hardly ever random, or driven by market forces alone. In this article I will examine the reasons behind this issue, as well as the behavior of the countries involved…

My ability to remember might be one of my weakest, and it’s been an eventful couple of months since I left Moscow. Yet my memories of RIAC are as vivid as ever; it’s certainly left a mark. 
 
Sure, I was dead set on making the most of it. But RIAC surprised me with the ease with which they approached me and my work &mdash…

Santa and his reindeer came from the North Pole and played Scrooge for futebol, the nation's most popular spectator sport. Poor attendance, lackluster play and massive debts find even the most famous clubs tightening their belts.
 
Players are griping because teams delay paychecks. Managers balk at signing for less money. Third party…

1. More cohesion in NATO?


According to the balance-of-threat assumption the lack of unambiguous threat decreases cohesion of military alliances, whereas the free-rider problem increases in inverse proportion. Even if one doesn't consider the geostrategical mischief of NATO eastward expansion there is nevertheless another problem. It seems…

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As we go into the period of holidays to celebrate Christmas and New Year, how many people live in fear, sadness and hopelessness?  I read about Ukraine and the human suffering caused by the coup, the incited civil war supported by “Friends” of the new regime running Ukraine. And I wondered. What all these leaders will be thinking of…

What standards should businesses observe in their own countries, or abroad? Businesses now have resources and influence that rival or surpass those of governments and certainly of ordinary people.[1] The choices businesses make can profoundly influence the lives of every person on the planet. Businesses, governments, and people now recognize that…

Author: Rostislav Ishchenko, President, Centre of Systems Analysis and ForecastingThe theory of Maidan and Ukrainian reality The theory of permanent revolutionwas developed by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Each of them had his own views on the subject but they all agreed on one point: a permanent revolution is…

 
On December 18 President Vladimir Putin gave his traditional end-of-year holiday speech. Think of it as a Russian version of the American State-of-the-Union address always given by our President. In it Putin expressed dismay and concern at the manner in which Russia’s “Western partners” were behaving, even going so far as to…

Last year 9 million people contracted tuberculosis and 1.5 million died from the disease. That's bad news for the public health infrastructures of the BRICS, who account for nearly half the TB cases worldwide.
At the same time, however, non government actors with global political agendas, including philanthropies, the pharmaceutical industry and…

The Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) invited experts for a discussion “Opportunities and Challenges Within the Space of Eurasian Economic Integration” on December 4, 2014.
The coming 2015 will confirm an existence of a new geopolitical player[1] on post-Soviet continent. The 3+1…

The Ukrainian crisis gave to Moscow a unique opportunity to annex Crimea, the independence of which had never been fully accepted by Russia after 1991. The regime change occurred in Kiev in February 2014, after Viktor Yanukovich’s running away during the night of February 21-22, brought to power a ruling elite backed by the Euro-Atlantic…