Sign in for registered users
ISIL or al-Qaeda 2.0? On June 10, 2014, Iraq was shattered by yet another political earthquake, raising the possibility of another Afghanistan located right in the heart of the Middle East. Within just a very small number of days, the terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and Levant ...
... collapse of the Soviet Union and the "Arab Spring" all caught analysts by surprise. There are also cases, however, when the opposite is true and political Cassandras unanimously caution about something, but decision-makers simply dismiss them. Iraq is just one such case. In the autumn of 2002, when it became clear that the George W. Bush administration was pushing for military action against then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, there was an effective consensus among Russian Orientalists. Save ...
On June 2, RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov and Deputy Program Director Timur Makhmutov received Iraqi Ambassador to Russia Ismieal Shafiq Muhsin . The sides underlined both the positive shifts in the bilateral dialogue, among them the trip of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to Baghdad early this year and the 70-year anniversary of the diplomatic ...
Relations within the Iran-United States-Saudi Arabia triangle The civil war in Iraq is raging on – local Sunnis have risen up against the Shiite authorities. The causes of the uprising lie in the Sunni elite’s resentment of its position in the country and in the role played by external forces. It is not the case that ...
... positions of his friends, and alienate all neutrals while he was gradually winning the war, and at a time when UN chemical inspectors were in Damascus? The sceptic observer cannot help but remember the false intelligence on which the 2003 US invasion of Iraq was founded; Saddam Hussein did not in fact possess weapons of mass destruction. The parallel is inescapable. In May, Carla Del Ponte, leading member of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, asserted that there ...
... national working for an American PMSC in Afghanistan as anything other than a mercenary. This example is neither fictitious, nor rare. As of July 2013, 83% of the private military and security contractors working for the US Department of Defense in Iraq, and 10% in Afghanistan, are third-country nationals, i.e. neither US citizens, nor local nationals. The fact that a corporate business entity – equally profit-seeking – intermediates between the individual pecuniary motives of its employees ...
On June 17, 2013 RIAC staff members Anton Tsvetov and Aleksandr Eliseev took part in the panel discussion " Iraqi Kurdistan: the new political and economic status and the strategy of Massoud Barzani " . The event was organized by the Carnegie Moscow Center . The Representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Russia and the CIS countries Xosawi ...
... Department of Defense, for example, had issued between 1994 and 2002 contracts worth $300 billion to US-based private companies (1); in 2009 alone, the annual figure was more than $100 billion, which accounted for 23% of the total defense budget. (2) Iraq, the focal point of PMSCs’ operations for over a decade now, saw the greatest influx of private security contractors: from 15,000-20,000 in 2003, to around 200,000 personnel in 2009. (3) The ‘mercenary’ stigma and the problem of ...
Doing Business in Iraq Today Notwithstanding close ties with the US, Iraqi authorities have voiced interest in promoting trade and economic links with Russia. Regular high-level contacts may help Russian companies strengthen their positions in Iraq. The paper below discusses ...
Lessons of the Iraq War The 2003-2012 war in Iraq has been the first 21st Century large-scale U.S.-led military operation against a state with a comparatively advanced defense infrastructure and economy. Although in the long run Washington has failed to attain its ...
| U.S. wants to establish partnership relations with Russia on condition that it meets the U.S. requirements |
|
| U.S. wants to deter Russia’s military and political activity |
|
| U.S. wants to dissolve Russia |
|
| U.S. wants to establish alliance relations with Russia under the US conditions to rival China |
|
