No one supports a Chinese challenge to American power in the region, not even Russia
Political pundits routinely identify the Asia-Pacific region as a potential flashpoint for a future war between the great powers. Yes, China is rising, Japan is rearming, and the United States has announced a "pivot" to Asia. But the real risk of a great power war in the Asia-Pacific is very low. When conflict scenarios are analyzed one by one, it becomes clear that no country in the region has an interest...
... North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the main threats to security include the proliferation of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, the spread of terrorism, the threat of cyber-attacks and fundamental environmental problems.
NATO seeks to strengthen international security through cooperation. Greater efforts will be spent in this regard in terms of arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, with an emphasis on an open door policy in relations between all the European nations and significantly ...
The snowballing development of space-based weapons and looming militarization of space, although hardly imminent, pose a relatively new problem for Asia-Pacific, where there is real development potential that could, someday, make a surprise breakthrough.
There are several reasons to pay close attention to China’s space program and especially its military component. First, China is the region's biggest country, and boasts one of the world’s most secretive programs in this area, that is...
On March 10, 2015 Anton Mazur, head of the Russian Delegation to the Vienna Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control, announced that Russia was “suspending its participation” in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). This decision was hardly a sensation, rather a logical conclusion of the whole story of the Treaty, whose provisions had remained ink on paper since being adapted at the OSCE Istanbul summit back in 1999.
The ratification of the Istanbul agreement...
On March 11, 2015, RIAC Program Manager Natalia Evtikhevich was in Stockholm to take part in a seminar “
The OSCE’s Role in Consolidating European Security
” held within the
Helsinki+40
project by the
OSCE Parliamentary Assembly
, the Swedish Parliament and the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (
UI
). The event was attended by Cochairman of “Helsinki+40” project Joao Soares, OSCE PA Secretary General Spencer Oliver, UI Director Mats Karllson and SIPRI Chairman...
The northern countries are looking for someone to have a fight with
The northern countries are looking for someone to have a fight with
For several post-war decades, including the Cold War years, the northern European region remained relatively stable and peaceful. The political leaders of countries in Northern Europe took some important initiatives at the beginning of the 1990s, aimed at ensuring that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia did not have a destabilising...
The struggle for offshore resources has intensified in East Asia, and Japan-China tensions seem of particular concern. Due to its alliance treaty with Japan, the United States is also involved in the conflict. The Japanese Ministry of Defense has, for the first time ever, qualified the situation around the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands as “neither peace nor war, but some ‘grey zone’”
[1]
. The situation is unfolding against a backdrop of a quantitative and qualitative improvement...
Shuttle diplomacy exercised by European leaders gives us a phantom of a chance that we must not overlook
The first impression from the Munich conference is that relations between Russia and the West are beginning to resemble a game of chicken. It is as if two airplanes are rushing towards each other head-on, and both crews refuse to deviate from their planned route. The only way for one side to win is for his opponent to lose. It is a virtually impossible task to make concessions or for both opponents...
MUNICH, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- Military operations can not eradicate terrorism and countries all around the world should cooperate to fight the war against terrorism though a multi-pronged strategy, an expert said on Saturday.
Andrey V. Kortunov, director general of Russian International Affairs Council, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview that, "terrorism is a complex phenomenon, and it can not be fought be military forces only."
The interview was conducted on the sidelines of the 51st Munich...
A working lunch was held on February 7, 2015 during the Munich Security Conference, during which top government leaders, diplomats, and experts discussed a set of measures for building the new security architecture in the Euro-Atlantic region. The lunch was organized by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), the European Leadership Network, and the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).
The RIAC was represented at the lunch by its President Igor Ivanov, its General Director Andrei Kortunov,...