By Anna Pivovarchuk As Western media focuses on the Crimean crisis, Russia intensifies its assault on civil society. When Nikolai Gogol wrote about the winged troika in his 19th century masterpiece on provincial corruption, The Dead Souls, little did he know that he was creating a perennial image that would come to represent Russia for centuries […]
Ever since Moscow decided to up the ante and invade the Crimean peninsula, shale gas reentered journalist lingo. Many have chipped in the debate, including Speaker of the House John Boehner who has argued that American gas is the sole remedy for Russia’s dominance of the European energy market. His diagnosis was that since natural […]
If the 20th century was about an ideological fight between market-economy versus Communism, the 21st could very much be about liberal democracy versus imperialism. This could be the very lesson of Russia’s invasion of Crimea. Power politics is – even though it has never disappeared – now a reality that the EU and the U.S. […]
As the Ukrainian crisis escalates, President Barack Obama has been busy making the diplomatic rounds trying to build support against the unilateral attempts by Crimea to break away from the new government in Ukraine. President Obama said the United States is examining a series of economic and diplomatic steps to “isolate Russia,” and he called […]
There is always a danger in economies that are heavily dependent on one commodity to become states where conflict and power vacuums arise due to the concentration of power in one industry, and that industry having control of a large part of a national economy. External pressures for countries that are oil producers are the […]
This past weekend, Russian marines in unmarked uniforms (or possibly, but less likely, private contractors paid by Russia) seized the airports of Crimea, allowing Russian planes to fly troops into that autonomous region of Ukraine while large-scale Russian military maneuvers to the north distracted the Ukrainian army. The quick and somewhat stealthy action permitted […]
As events unfold quickly in Ukraine, Russia’s increasingly close ally China is hedging its bets on an uncertain outcome. China has been quick to condemn U.S. and European involvement in Ukraine’s affairs, but has withheld judgment either for or against its ally Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propagandists have made […]
In the first few months after Snowden’s leaks first exploded onto headlines, the public, and the media, struggled to fathom how private individuals figured into this story, and how close the U.S. had come to that “Orwellian state” Edward Snowden warned us of. If Google Trends are any indication, the story reached a peak in […]
Editor’s Note: Ian Bremmer is President of Eurasia Group, the world’s leading global political risk research and consulting firm. Dr. Bremmer is also Global Research Professor at the New York University (NYU) and author, most recently, of Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World. by Ian Bremmer As Russia conducts direct […]
As Egyptian military leaders scramble to consolidate power ahead of a presidential election in April, it is seeking help from a former ally. After meetings last week in Moscow, it was reported that Russia will supply Egypt with $3 billion in arms and military aircraft. From Egypt’s standpoint, the deal will help make up for […]
In the past several months, the world has been gripped by the graphic political drama unfolding in Ukraine, but events have often unfolded so fast that it has been difficult to put them in context. And although the violence has stopped, the future of Ukraine is more uncertain than ever before. Here we’ll break down […]
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that more crude oil is being sent by sea and inland waterways as a supplement to railways and pipelines. Since 2010, the amount of oil shipped on barges from the Midwest down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico has increased 13 times. Much of this […]
After less than half an hour of joint session talks on Saturday, February 15, the second round of the Geneva II conference on Syria has abruptly ended. In a press conference shortly after, joint United Nations-Arab League negotiator, Lakhdar Brahimi apologized to the Syrian people for the almost complete failure of the negotiations, “I am […]
As the 2014 winter games kick off, this is what you should be reading.
A hum of activity pulls two cities together. In one, the shuffle of feet and the rush of cars compose the soundtrack to a morning rush hour. In the other we hear the excited bustling of a town nearing the end of long preparations for a shining, global sporting event. From afar, the buzz that […]