... stability
The Middle East is a region that has traditionally fallen under the influence of external forces. The desire of the United States to take a less active role in the Middle Eastern affairs, which was marked by the withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011 under the Obama administration, coincided with the increasing involvement of Russia and China in the processes taking place in the region.
The emerging crisis of statehood in the Middle East, the threat of terrorism and the general state ...
Iraq is important for Russia not only as an economic and trade partner, but also as a factor in influencing regional policy
Moscow’s interest in the Middle East and the growing Russian presence in the region go beyond Russian involvement in the Syrian ...
... behind its neutral stance on the issue. Few days ago, Russian oil major Rosneft announced that it will invest in gas pipelines in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan, expanding its commitment to the region, to help it become a major exporter of gas to Turkey and ... ... help the region expand its oil pipeline infrastructure through which crude is exported via Turkey to global markets. For the USA, it is not satisfied with the Turkish rapprochement with Moscow, and might use the Kurdish card to pressure on Ankara, further ...
...
Can there be a military “solution” to the global war on terrorism? Will the Islamic State movement really be destroyed in Iraq and Syria? Or will it simply drift like a nomad to other regions, into the Russian Caucasus, North Africa, Egypt and the ... ... addition to opposing Russian talks with the Taliban, U.S. officials
have accused
Russia of providing arms to the Taliban, an accusation that has been officially denied by Moscow.
Will it be possible to achieve a more concerted approach, involving both Washington ...
... setting up a stipend program for the soldiers and their families (thus compelling them to subsist on nothing for five long weeks). The US then fired all Baath Party members down to Level 4 without any agreed reconciliation process. This gave tens of thousands of influential Iraqis – often Western-educated – an incentive to oppose the new Iraq rather than support it. In the ensuing struggle over leadership, a virtual civil war erupted between Sunnis and Shiites, with Kurds in the mix as well – not to mention al-Qaeda,...
... on such crucial issues as ending expensive wars. Donald Trump won the Republican vote by opposing both George Bush’s war in Iraq and Barack Obama’s war in Libya. However, his decision to strike on a Syrian military base in response to an alleged chemical ... ... foreign policy from the United States and start looking for other regional allies, more pragmatic and more committed. Both Jerusalem and Riyadh reached out to Moscow despite its antagonistic policy in the Middle East.
President Trump is not a politician ...
... serious problems today: terror group Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant), the war in Syria and Iraq, the migrant crisis, slow growth. But these are issues civilised nations are capable of solving one way or another.
The system ... ... important point to consider is that Turkey is gradually moving toward Islamism. Is that the greater threat to Russia than Nato?
Accusations are routinely traded between Russia and the US about violations in airspace and water. For now, this is just a mutual ...
... alliance against their mutual enemy: Maliki’s anti-Sunni government. Using Anbar as a base within Iraq, ISIS was able to advance and take large amounts of Iraqi territory, much of which it still holds today. Thus, it was Maliki’s absolute refusal to compromise with and accommodate Iraqis Sunnis and others that created the current crisis with ISIS. The sad truth is that if Maliki had treated the Sunnis and Kurds more fairly, the Iraqi government—Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds united against terrorism as they were back in 2007—would ...
The attacks will almost inevitably lead to an escalation of war in Iraq and Syria, as well as to changes in the balance of forces in the Middle East as a whole.
Although it will take time to truly evaluate the consequences of the November 13 massacre in Paris for the French, European and world politics, some conclusions ...
... many of the parts in which they are operating). It’s not like all of Catholic Europe will be sending holy warriors in a crusade to fight Orthodox Russia’s attempts to annex the ethnic Russian, Orthodox Christian sections of Ukraine.
Which brings ... ...
As far as who learns from history, for now, the U.S. has a president in office now who campaigned on the fact that invading Iraq in 2003 was a colossal mistake, who, keeping this in mind, intervened only lightly in Libya and went out of his way to avoid ...
