The surrealism of the Ukrainian conflict continued last week, with the 28 members of the NATO alliance meeting in a cozy golf resort in Wales, United Kingdom, to discuss all of the supposedly egregious and disconcerting Russian maneuvers against Ukraine and demanding that Russia stop inviting further sanctions and pressure against itself, as British Prime Minister David Cameron emphasized at the summit. All of this is well and good, of course, part of the pomp and circumstance of international organizations...
- Опубликовано:
- 09.09.2014 18:04:00
Less than two weeks ago President Obama, sitting for an interview with The Economist magazine, basically went ‘old school’ on President Putin, dismissing his Presidency, his country, and the future of both. While his words were certainly blatant and blunt, what might be even more revealing is the subtle subtext hidden inside his cavalier attitude: apparently even Presidents are not above being petulant.
There can be little debate about President Obama’s intent to insult and offend...
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- 22.08.2014 20:17:00
... direct security threat to Russian borders in a way in which it does not to the West, and prohibition, which can be worse for addicts, has undeniably minimised drug trafficking. Opium production in 1906/7, for example, reached an estimated forty one thousand metric tonnes -- almost five times more than a century later -- at a time when the world population remained below two billion.[8] Iran, through which the largest amount of Afghan heroin is trafficked, adopts a similar stance to the Russian Federation....
- Опубликовано:
- 22.08.2014 12:07:00
To be sure, the current conflict between the US and Russia over Ukraine is a mismatch, given the disparity in power between the two sides. Russia is not, and cannot even pretend to be, a contender for world domination. Unlike the Soviet Union, it is not driven by some universal ideology, does not lead a bloc of states ruled by the same ideology, and has few formal allies (all of which are small). Yet the US-Russia conflict matters to the rest of the world. It obviously matters most to Ukraine, part...
- Опубликовано:
- 19.08.2014 15:24:00
2014 is starting to look and sound and feel an awful lot like 1964. If you find yourself sitting at home wondering how 50 years could go by with so much historical change and global shifting and yet still end up basically back at the starting point of a quasi-Cold War between the United States and Russia, then please allow me to offer one slightly unique explanation as to how this has all come to pass: it’s my fault.
Well, alright, it’s not exactly my personal fault, for I am a member...
- Опубликовано:
- 15.08.2014 18:09:00
Kazushige Kobayashi is a doctoral student in International Relations at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Switzerland, and a research fellow with the Europe-Asia Programme at the Balkan Security Agenda in Serbia. He holds Bachelor of Economics from Tohoku University in Japan, Master in International Affairs from the Geneva Graduate Institute, and has also studied at University of California at Davis and Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
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- Опубликовано:
- 07.08.2014 18:12:00
... felt all over the world, including the BRICS emerging markets economies. These governments felt that their large amounts of foreign reserves could help mitigate the effects of the crisis. Their foreign reserves helped up to a point. Yet, even after the usage of these foreign reserves to stimulate their ailing economies, emerging markets were still at a disadvantage[2]. Output slowed, and with it, so did economic growth. Even countries such as India suffered, who’s central bank held no mortgage-backed ...
- Опубликовано:
- 29.07.2014 13:25:00
... was watching the news broadcasts on the 18th morning at 1.30am. My 82 year old mother woke-up at this time after hearing the TV. She became extremely distraught after watching the news. We had a discussion and she said “Eugene – they, the USA and ISRAEL, did this to distract the World from the Bombing and Invasion of GAZA, Palestine by the Regime of Israel. She said, you were abroad and just returned last night, you did not see that our Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia, announced again ...
- Опубликовано:
- 24.07.2014 11:19:00
... declared war or placed troops, the blowback potential long-term is being dangerously ignored.
It is not just the United States that has played fast and loose, however, with Yemeni affairs. The Yemen government has always made connections and leveled accusations of Iranian involvement and support to the Houthis, what with the common Shia heritage. These accusations are not completely baseless. Iran has a long history of generating support for whatever groups it can find across the Middle East, especially ...
- Опубликовано:
- 23.07.2014 18:13:00
Kazushige Kobayashi is a doctoral student in International Relations at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Switzerland, and a research fellow with the Europe-Asia Programme at the Balkan Security Agenda in Serbia. He holds Bachelor of Economics from Tohoku University in Japan, Master in International Affairs from the Geneva Graduate Institute, and has also studied at University of California at Davis and Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
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- Опубликовано:
- 21.07.2014 12:15:00
So many American politicians upset with the Israelis for the attacks on Gaza. .....Using weapons largely obtained through the United States... .....hmmmmm.....does that mean America is responsible for the Gaza deaths?
President Putin is on the phone. He would like an answer to that question.
- Опубликовано:
- 20.07.2014 23:13:00
... West feel it was essential to launch new action? The Pentagon announced that Russian troops were ‘building up along the border.’ Of course, for those of us who have followed this conflict for the past half year, we have had heard this accusation at least half a dozen times. Sometimes there has been evidence to partially support the claim. Sometimes the claim has seemed utterly baseless. But what has been universally consistent across all of the accusations of Russian troop build-up along ...
- Опубликовано:
- 17.07.2014 18:57:00
With the souring of relations between the United States and Russia, Russia has expressed its desire to become less dependent on the US dollar. This is an understandable concern, given the political tension between the two countries, coupled with the threat of tougher US Sanctions on the Russian economy[1]. Simply put, the Russian government knows that it is at a disadvantage. The United States is Russia’s 5th largest trading partner, with 11$ Billion in trade volume, while Russia is United...
- Опубликовано:
- 17.07.2014 12:21:00
Currency Wars follows the actions of governments and central banks to manipulate their currencies and currency denominated securities to their advantage and to the disadvantages of foreign markets. At the present day the focus will be on China and the United States, as China has expressed concerns about the safety and reliability of the US dollar. America has dominated the global financial system ever since July of 1944. During this period, the financial leaders of the western world met in Bretton...
- Опубликовано:
- 14.07.2014 22:55:00
... numbers, compared to the actual amount of oil in any reservoir, and in fact there are rules for reporting the proven reserves that require a huge probability of being there, which makes these estimates very pessimistic in most cases. Let's now move to the USA situation. Before 1940, the US was not only a major oil producer, but also a major oil exporter. This changed dramatically after the war, and especially during the economic boom of the 50s and 60s, where cars became more and more powerful, more numerous,...
- Опубликовано:
- 09.07.2014 15:04:00
Judging by any host of news organizations and commentary shows on television you would think Iraq has already fallen completely into the hands of a radical Islamist terrorist group called ISIS. While it is true the military and strategic gains achieved by the group so far this year have been impressive and unexpected by leaders in the West, this lack of expectation may be accounted for more by the absence of diligence on the part of Western analysts covering the Middle East than by any miraculous...
- Опубликовано:
- 01.07.2014 20:06:00
Before the FIFA World Cup was given “sports diplomacy” status by pundits, academics and some among its own leadership, the ice hockey rivalry between the Soviet Union, the United States and Canada that developed during the 1960 Winter Olympic Games at Squaw Valley, California proved that competitive athletics could capture the hearts and minds of adversaries who were threatening each other with nuclear war. Thanks to hockey, sports became a vehicle for the nuclear superpowers to project...
- Опубликовано:
- 27.06.2014 03:07:00
The interplay between Ukraine and Russia when it comes to gas geopolitics goes far beyond economic negotiations and development. It lies at the heart of what has been fairly inaccurate or uninformed media reporting in the West. This aspect of the conflict has been so poorly documented in the West, while being exhaustively reported in Russia, that it is time to provide some English language background to this underappreciated aspect still powering the conflict in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia...
- Опубликовано:
- 19.06.2014 17:56:00
Not that anyone would notice, but there is a disturbing and quite frankly depressing reality taking place in eastern Ukraine. While it is true the conflict that rages has been largely downplayed now and shoved off the media spotlight in the West, whatever coverage does emerge tends to be giving a relative free pass to Ukrainian police forces, special operation forces, and the military as they seek to reinstitute control over their national territory. At first glance this does not sound particularly...
- Опубликовано:
- 16.06.2014 01:08:00
By the end of 2013 the numerous miscalculations of the Yanukovych regime had deepened the systemic crisis in Ukraine, the crux of which was the tension between the people's hopes of independence and the inefficiency of the country's post-Soviet political and social system. The 2013-2014 revolution in Kiev paved the way for systemic reforms, but at the same time exposed the weaknesses of Ukrainian statehood. Russia's leadership perceived this overthrow as the failure of Yanukovych's policies and resorted...
- Опубликовано:
- 11.06.2014 14:52:00
