A groundswell of popular articles and academic monographs are appearing that discuss nuclear guided missile warfare, modernizing delivery platforms, warheads and sophisticated guidance systems. On the power curve one sees a major realignment of diplomatic relationships among major powers that seek to control threats but provide opportunities for new situations to develop. Refugees and fundamentalist agitators have become pawns in the game.
The trend is reinforced by news and expert analysis about...
... recent divisions between the EU and Russia over the future of Ukraine demonstrate the urgent need to pursue a new European cooperative project: One that conceives of Europe in its broadest sense geographically and politically, from Norway in the north to Turkey in the south and from Portugal in the west to Russia in the east. A project that has as its goal not the creation of a single institution, but the creation of a Greater European zone of overlapping and deepening security, economic, political and ...
Grouping of “Middle Powers”
Late September 2013 on the sidelines of 68th session of the UN General Assembly the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia held a meeting during which they reached an understanding to form a new informal negotiating network of “middle powers” – MIKTA. The five states considered that under the current architecture of global governance ...
... devoted to establishing a positive agenda for the Russian-Turkish relations took place in Istanbul. This meeting was the second joint event in the framework of cooperation between the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), Global Relations Forum (Turkey) and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Russian side was represented by Pyotr Stegny, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation and RIAC member; Irina Svistounova, Senior Research ...
Pugwash became part of the Cold War realpolitik before the advent of soft power, public diplomacy, the internet and social media. Henry Kissinger was still at Harvard. Robert MacNamara was managing the biggest failure in the history of the Ford Motor Company, the ill-fated Edsel automobile; the highly publicized wunderkind who computerized the Pentagon and the Vietnam War wasn’t made president of Ford until two months before the Kennedy transition team chose him to be U.S. Secretary of Defense...
While praised as a triumph of contemporary diplomacy the United Nations regime to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological) seems to have enabled every nation that wants a WMD capability to obtain the technology to become a threat, or in the case of terrorists and other non-state actors, to employ proxy governments who engage in WMD commerce to use it as a bargaining chip for other objectives. In spite of four Nobel Peace Prizes (Bunche, Arafat, Rabin, Peres)...
... for the huge issues that will be incurred by the union. On the other hand, if Moscow's Central Asian populace will flock to the EU instead and free up some of the traffic problems and high apartmental prices, I may reconsider my stance.
Is Turkey On The Table?
Still, participation of Central Asian states in the EU may not be as radical as Turkey’s, which Umland sees bearing fruits after original attempts all the way back to the 1960s. He does anticipate that such membership will ...
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. Dangerous Double Standards Bashar al-Assad has reportedly used chemical weapons to attack, essentially, his own people. The first, logically obvious question is why would Assad essentially...
On August 28, RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov held consultations with Guven Sak, Managing Director of Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV), on the information and analytical support of Russian-Turkish cooperation in economy, science, technology and education.
The parties agreed on expanding the RIAC-TEPAV interaction in the above areas including economic development of the ...
Interview with Dr. Mustafa Acar, Rector and professor of Aksaray University
Interview
Since Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AK) party took office in late 2002 Turkey became more prosperous and politically mobilized. Turkey is not a full-fledged democracy yet but its government does change through the ballot box and it is definitely more democratic than it was a decade ago. Moreover, the country has come to ...
