Media outlets and government circles both cringe and squirm when the subject of Westerners leaving the West to go fight in Syria and Iraq with the Islamic State arises. While acquiring data and calculating accurate numbers wildly diverges from source to source, there is no doubt that ANY number simply makes countries like the United States uncomfortable and perplexed: in short, how could anyone want to leave the land of the free, the tolerant, the open, the just and go fight for a group that represents...
... diplomacy. He contends that: With the constructivist and liberal narratives of interpreting the current crisis in relations between Russia and the West obviously prevailing in scientific, expert and political circles, the advocates of the realistic view today ... ... of cultures and languages can be defined as a single entity, with similar interpretations of geopolitics, let alone effective international relations.
However, U.S. foreign diplomacy appears lost at sea, undirected by bi-partisan purpose and expertise,...
... there will be some overlap, but that is not the point. At least it will guard against overly politicizing the issues, which is harming our countries and the world.
Another important point: I believe that it is vital to separate the
discourse
about Russia's political agenda with the problems of international relations. Such discourse is needed. Likewise a consultation on the changes that have taken place in U.S. domestic politics is needed. A tasty appetizer was served recently by
Mikhail Gorbachev
, who called for perestroika in the United ...
... was unarmed but was operated by agents elsewhere and was attempting to relay images back to a home base. Israelis did not disclose whether or not that enemy objective was successful but they were certain that the drone was not American, Chinese, or Russian: IDF claimed it to be an Iranian drone assembled in Lebanon and flown by Hezbollah. I have loosely called this in the past the world’s first ‘Islamic Crescent drone’ and emphasized how much it signaled the transnational nature ...
The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) is proud to present its new book entitled “The Ukrainian Crisis through the Prism of International Relations”.
The publication includes articles written by the President of the Russian International Affairs Council and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (1998–2004) Igor Ivanov that first appeared in late 2014 and early 2015.Much of the material in the collection is the result of collaborative ...
There is no stronger example of the schizophrenic nature of American foreign policy toward Russia than comparing statements written in the formal National Security Strategy (NSS) of President Obama with actual testimony given by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. In 2010 the NSS asserted that the U.S. would endeavor to ‘build ...
America seems reluctant in accepting the fairly benign fact that countries do not like to be dictated to and thus misses opportunities for creating new dialogues. This is especially prominent in explaining the poor relationship at the moment with Russia. There seems to be an element of purposeful animosity in the way Russia is viewed, analyzed, and engaged, especially at the so-called expert level and most prominently within the now Republican-controlled United States Congress. Perhaps one of ...
There are numerous think tanks, both in the United States and Russia, which are deeply concerned about the state of Russian-American relations. Places like the Moscow Carnegie Centre or the Brookings Institution in Washington DC are regular go-to places for the media when seeking expert opinion and analysis. However,...
... cars. But on top of all of these domestic reasons, there is one other significant foreign policy angle that makes this a uniquely American Faustian bargain: the oil price slide has clearly put greater teeth into the American sanctions imposed against Russia, as it has hurt the Russian ruble significantly. Sanctions alone for the first half of 2014 basically had no real impact on the Russian economy and the real lives of Russian citizens. It was only this Autumn as world markets saw the Saudi decision ...
On December 18 President Vladimir Putin gave his traditional end-of-year holiday speech. Think of it as a Russian version of the American State-of-the-Union address always given by our President. In it Putin expressed dismay and concern at the manner in which Russia’s “Western partners” were behaving, even going so far as to declare Western ...
