Well, what are we going to do with those cyber baddies
April 15, 2013 5 min. read

U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers chairs the House of Representatives’ panel on intelligence, which this week overwhelmingly approved a new cyber security bill designed to enhance data sharing between the government and private industry to protect computer networks and intellectual property from cyber attacks. Yet the day before it passed, Rogers had a more novel idea […]

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Obama Visit to Israel Key Link in Redesign of U.S. Foreign Policy
April 9, 2013 5 min. read

By Sarwar Kashmeri It would be a mistake to view President Obama’s visit to Israel as just a fence-mending exercise. It is in fact part of a planned redesign of U.S. foreign policy that will change the face of American leadership around the world. The redesign began with the appointment of John Kerry as Secretary […]

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Brave New Bailout
April 8, 2013 6 min. read

Writing in 1931, Aldous Huxley used Cyprus as the setting for a social experiment gone wrong in his dystopian novel “Brave New World.” The failed experiment sent a warning to future generations regarding the perils of excessive social tampering. Fast-forward nearly a century and Cyprus is yet again the setting, but this time for a […]

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Instability Worries — and Policy Discussion — Move to Central Asia
April 1, 2013 5 min. read

Depending on whom you listen to, Central Asia could be 1) the next mass target of Islamic insurgents; 2) on the verge of a client-state battle between Moscow and Beijing; or 3) fated to authoritarian leaders for the next generation. Nestled between Russia and China, and bordering Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, a glance at the […]

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For Russia, it’s a Permanent Naval Port in Cyprus, Stupid!
March 22, 2013 6 min. read

  The eurozone crisis is back on the international agenda with a very serious crisis unfolding in Cyprus right now. Some Wall Street investors might argue just in time to pull the rising U.S. stock market indices — the Dow Jones hit an all-time high recently — down for a better entry point in order […]

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The Northern Sea Route: An Iceland-China Link
March 19, 2013 4 min. read

Coming on the heels of a UCLA study reporting that new trans-Arctic routes could be open to shipping by mid-century, Huigen Yang, the Director Polar Research Institute of China, met with Iceland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Össur Skarphéðinsson, on March 15 to discuss northern shipping. Both countries stand to benefit if the Northern Sea Route is developed: China, […]

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What their reaction to the Cyprus bank tax says about Russia’s government – and the opposition
March 19, 2013 3 min. read

They said it couldn’t be done. But at last, the Kremlin and some of its fiercest liberal critics have found themselves on the same team. The fact that the issue in question is their opposition to the proposed Cypriot bank levies says as much about the regime as the opposition. Try to guess who said […]

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Stalin who?
March 5, 2013 3 min. read
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Today is 60 years since the death of Joseph Stalin. How do we know this? Well, it’s on the front page of the BBC, there’s an article in the Telegraph, Reuters, the Atlantic and pretty much everywhere else. Except Russia itself, that is, where the event hardly attracted any attention whatsoever. It was not on […]

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China’s Challenges in Central Asia
March 1, 2013 4 min. read

Just when things are hotting up again with its neighbors in the East and South China Seas, Beijing faces new challenges from its western neighbors in Central Asia.  A report released on February 27 entitled “China’s Central Asia Problem” issued by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based non-governmental organization tasked with reducing deadly conflict, […]

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Is Russia Becoming a Theocracy?
February 3, 2013 4 min. read

This weekend the Russian Orthodox Church held its Bishops Council at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. In his speech to the assembly, president Putin said that, of course, Russia is not a theocracy but: “We are a secular state of course, and cannot allow state life and church life to merge” he continued, “but at the same […]

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Arctic Frontiers: Russian Voices
February 1, 2013 8 min. read

At the Arctic Frontiers conference, attendees had the opportunity to listen to numerous government and NGO representatives from Russia speak in their own language. If my memory serves me correctly, the Russians were the only ones who spoke in their own language, as the people from the Nordic countries and Asia all spoke in English. […]

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Is Liberty Losing Her Voice?
January 30, 2013 3 min. read
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The history of Radio Liberty is the stuff of Cold War legend: dissidents huddled around a contraband radio in some dimly lit room in a cold and dreary gulag, hoping desperately to hear that the world recognized their suffering and that the promise of liberty was still within reach. Funded by the U.S. over decades, […]

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