If we agree that diamonds, malachite and tantalite are a curse for D.R. Congo, then oil must be the penultimate stained Holy Grail of the entire world. It aids Middle Eastern dictators in their bids to be the last man on their thrones, causes thirsty states to indulge in most sinful actions, pushes profit-driven corporations…

        Everybody wonders why I decided to live and work in Moscow. The first question I receive from new friends and colleagues here is always, Why Russia? Why leaving Japan behind? Why not enjoying lake and chocolate in Switzerland? Some think that I am very much fond of snow and cold weather. I am not. The others guess that…

Dear Reader!
 
Sometimes a diseased mind cannot distinguish one from another, and here you will not find a conversation in its common sense, but something extremely odd. Both Dr. Fox and Sir Popper are here, enchained into one text.
 

The topic is war & peace, but main point is that everything is biased, and the way a person…

Watching another glorious sunrise emerge above the pandamus trees as I sip coffee on my balcony, it is difficult to accept that former colleagues in the national security field think of this island of Guam merely as “the tip of the spear” of U.S. military power targeting East Asia. In effect, the 175,000 inhabitants of the island, their 3…

 
        From 1945 to date, the southern Kuril Islands (particularly Iturp, Kunashir, Shikotan, and Habamai) have been a very frontier of Russo-Japanese battle of prestige. Over the last sixty-eight years, uncountable proposals to resolve the dispute have emerged from both sides; nevertheless, they all were…

It was on 30 August 2011, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) issued a landmark decision on a case of former comfort women claiming compensation from the Japanese government. In view of obtaining compensations for former comfort women, the Court ordered the South Korean Government “to take steps for dispute settlement…

Two-and-a-half-years into the Syrian conflict, the balance of power in the embattled state continues to evolve between the government of Bashar al-Assad and the opposition groups, composed of secularists, islamists, and Al Qaeda-trained jihadists. Since the beginning of the Damascus spring in March 2011, more than 100,000 Syrians fell victim to brutal…

Russian president Putin has just astonished the world by proposing that Assad´s chemical weapons be put under international control. Is this a cynical attempt to deflate the president´s eleventh hour appeal to the nation for a military strike? Has Assad signed on to this proposal? Is this another delaying tactic? Is it a phoenix that rose…

Welcome to Global Education Magazine! A digital magazine inspired in the universal values of the Declaration of Emerging Human Rights that aims to contribute to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by United Nations (MDGs), which is supported by the Regional Offices of Latin America and the Caribbean of UNESCO and UNHCR. An initiative launched by…

Coming to the G-20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russian President Putin seemed to be  saying he would consider blessing a U.S. military strike against Syria if the U.N. proved Assad did the dirty WMD deed.  We won´t hold our breath.   Massacres are an Assad family tradition and Mr. Putin can  pin the blame on the rebels only…

ABSTRACT
 
This paper applies the model by Jackson and Wolinsky [1996] to analyze co-authorship connections among Russian international relations scholars. By using data on almost a thousand researchers, I check whether the co-author network is over-connected with respect to utilitarian efficiency, as the model claims. My findings clearly…

In light of the recent developments in Syria and the apparently imminent US military intervention, the blog will take a short break from its relatively academic style and its thematic focus in order to brainstorm and share some thoughts on the broader picture of what is happening in the geopolitical arena of the region.        …