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.        …

Dear Reader!
I would like to present to you a continuation of the previous post (in fact, an e-mail correspondence between the two minds) concerning the idea of 'polarity' and the use of other scientific terms in social science.
 
From: Dr.Fox@political_scientist.com
To: Popper@rational_critic.org
Topic: your commentary
 
…

This simply was destiny. In our research trips to Europe my wife, Leni, and I sought only to address the issues of anti-Semitism and the holocaust as it affected our own families. We toured synagogues, death camps and memorials in numerous countries attesting to the slaughter of six million Jews. But in 2009, the unexpected happened. We visited the…

        The Soviet Union did not lose the Cold War; it was the United States who lost the Soviet Union. After the Soviet disintegration, it was America who felt a huge hole of nostalgia in her heart while the U.S. remained an important global power to new Russia. Historically, the U.S. has built its unprecedented prosperity through…

The book, written by James Sherr, the associate fellow of the Russian and Eurasian Programme at Chatham House (Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs, London), an expert with extensive advisory experience on the Soviet and Russian military, security and foreign policy, was launched in June, 2013. Those who are interested in Russian foreign policy and…

Dear Reader!
 
I have no intention to disappoint you or annoy you in case you were honestly looking for something about bipolarity in international relations, so this post will be dedicated, in some measure, to the well-known concept of ‘bipolarity’- and problems that lie beneath.
 
Here you will find a blog post (within a…

It is important that the first post of this blog addresses the theoretical foundation of its subject, namely the environment in which unrecognised states are assumed to operate and the structural restraints this may place upon them. The study of unrecognised states is, by extension, a study of small states, thus it is appropriate to operate within the…

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust

Dear Reader,
 
Welcome to this rather strange (or even abnormal) creation that tries to view such vast themes as international relations, (world) politics, etc. with ‘new eyes’. An attentive Reader might have noticed a…

The Japanese public has lost their trust in nuclear power as a safe source of energy. The public is also concerned about the possibility of another earthquake/tsunami or other unexpected but possible causes of a similar malfunctioning in the nuclear power reactors. Many people are asking whether accepting the risk of having a nuclear fall-out from a…

In a conference call that I attended Friday discussing second quarter performance Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega noted that agricultural production increased 3.9% . That’s good for Russia and the rest of the BRICS because Brazil’s food exports help feed them. Among the alliance Brazil is the only nation that can feed itself.
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