For a few dedicated academics, the Cold War isn’t dead. While recent archival research tends to uphold existing interpretations of the superpower confrontation, scholars have made a few exciting finds.
The last time that Turkey sought to mediate between Iran and the international community over Tehran’s nuclear energy program, it ended in a diplomatic fiasco. Now, two years later, Turkey is trying again. Will the results prove any different?
Now that Vladimir Putin has dispensed with the formalities of reclaiming presidential authority, Kremlinologists can focus on the more substantive question of how Russia’s paramount leader intends to define his third term. In particular, many are wondering how he will proceed with his pet project -- the creation of a Eurasian Union.
A leading Russian political scientist asserts that the Kremlin’s influence in Central Asia is exaggerated and Moscow’s regional impact is likely to “become less and less,” despite President-elect Vladimir Putin’s desire to expand Russia’s role in Eurasia.
Not too long ago, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was held in the highest regard by President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s administration, in large part because Astana chaired the group in 2010. Now, the OSCE is an object of Kazakhstan’s contempt.
The volume of narcotics flowing out of Afghanistan to Central Asia and Russia appears to have decreased slightly over the past year. But the stockpile of opiates that traffickers already have on hand is sufficient to supply users in Central Asia and Russia for 15 years, according to a leading drug-control expert in Kyrgyzstan.
Russia has reportedly blocked a U.S. plan designed to help stem the flow of drugs from Afghanistan through Central Asia in a sign of Moscow's continued wariness about Washington's intentions in a region often thought of as "Russia's backyard."
There were full-page newspaper ads in New York City, films in Paris, and commemorations and marches from Argentina to Latvia. Twenty years after a massacre of ethnic Azeri residents in the Nagorno-Karabakh village of Khojaly, Azerbaijan is pressing a campaign to have the 1992 slaughter recognized as an act of genocide.
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party appears to be recalibrating its Iran policy and increasingly distancing itself from the more vocal support it previously gave the Iranian regime. As the two powers tussle over Syria, Iraq and other issues, analysts warn that their rivalry for leadership in the Middle East is only likely to sharpen.
The Central Asian states -- Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan -- are important to Russia as buffers from the Islamic world and Asia and as energy and economic partners. Kazakhstan is already integrated with Russia and is part of the customs union with Belarus.
