Reports from Russian announced that Vladimir Putin won over 76% of the votes in his reelection bid March 18, with turnout over 67%. The view from Siberia was a little different. OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, sent nearly 600 short-term, long-term, and other election observers to Russia. In its next-day report, […]
The proposed UN peacekeeping mission to Ukraine needs a combination of Western sticks and carrots. Diplomacy is not enough.
The biggest Russian-Belarusian military exercise this year, started on September 14, 2017. Yet, this event has been analyzed by security pundits for months.
Moscow has tried to undermine the coherence, unity, and indivisibility of NATO. In fact, Russian actions were aimed at holding NATO-Russia relations hostage in a post-truth world.
In 1939, an article entitled “Mourir pour Dantzig?” (“Why Die for Danzig?”) argued that France should avoid war with Germany if the latter seized Poland. Today, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, as well as Russia’s belligerent foreign policy, leads us to ask similar questions.
Nestled among gorgeous mountains, blessed with exotic cuisine, and loved for its arts and outgoing people, Georgia has many suitors. Long courted by her northern Russian neighbor, she has in recent years been beset by foreign admirers, bearing gifts of “democracy” and “growth” that (they promise) will ensure she lives happily ever after. With parliamentary […]
Are you ready for this? Brace yourself and hold on to your seats because the winner of the most competitive, unpredictable, and exciting election in the history of Kazakhstan (sarcasm intended) is….Nursultan Nazarbayev. Really?! Same guy that has been in power since the late ’80s? Yup! This reads like an article from the Onion, but […]
Kazakhstan is gearing up for the snap presidential election that will take place on Sunday, April 3, 2011. No one doubts that the incumbent president Nursultan Nazarbayev will win, which will extend his presidency for another five years and give him a chance to consolidate his rule by grooming a successor (or so he hopes). Earlier […]
Below are links to three articles that relate to previous postings here at Global Engagement: 1. My previous post on U.S. students seeking to study full-time in the U.K. has been followed up with an article in the Washington Post, “U.S. students crossing pond for college.” The population of U.S. undergraduates at United Kingdom schools […]
Earlier this month I served as a member of the US delegation to the election observation mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (overseeing presidential, parliamentary and cantonal elections held on October 3). The observation was implemented by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODHIR) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) […]
Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech to the Atlantic Council to mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The speech focused on the administration’s new agenda for freedom and democracy promotion, seeking a renewed US-European partnership to combat global terrorism, human rights violations, climate change and the spread […]
A court in Kazakhstan sentenced a prominent human rights activist to four years imprisonment for manslaughter yesterday in a case that many observers believe was politically motivated. The charges against Yevgeny Zhovtis stem from a car accident in July where Zhovtis hit and killed a man while driving his car. However the initial forensic exam […]