By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Russia had recovered from its domestic crisis, and so had its global ambitions. While Moscow’s principal interests still lie mostly toward the West, the Middle East is back on Moscow’s radar screen and Russia’s withdrawal from the region has been reversed.
The goal of nuclear superiority is unattainable. Instead, the United States can enhance its security by giving nuclear-armed adversaries strong incentives for restraint in a crisis.
Over the next year, Egypt will hold three important elections, none of which stand any chance of redistributing power in the country. Egypt needs long-term democratic reforms, and the United States can play an effective role in promoting those reforms.
While China may experience a painful financial contraction as it increases private consumption, even a dramatic slowdown of Chinese growth will not prevent China’s share of global GDP from rising.
While Russian leaders support the idea of a world free of nuclear weapons in theory, the Russian security community is still committed to the principle of nuclear deterrence.
Greece’s economic imbalances are neither unprecedented nor — with help — unmanageable. Given the business, banking, and political interests in a positive outcome, Greece will either rescue itself, or be rescued.
The fundamental driving force of the insurgency is not economic or tribal but political, and long-term stability in Afghanistan depends on creating an open, transparent process to renegotiate the political structure of the nation in a way that includes the insurgency without betraying the Afghan people.
President Obama’s decision to meet with the Dalai Lama quietly is a recognition of the fact that almost every global issue requires cooperation between China and the United States, and some restraint must be shown on issues that China considers “core interests.”
Recent arguments against a withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Germany are based on anachronistic perceptions regarding NATO’s nuclear weapons capacity, but bring up important points concerning broader implications for nuclear disarmament.
While China is likely to enjoy solid growth again this year, its policy solutions to achieve short-term economic objectives have made long-term rebalancing even more difficult.
On February 11, Iran will mark the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution with a resilient opposition movement, its population divided, and the threat of international sanctions.
Armenia and Turkey have a chance to move forward from their troubled past by ratifying the historic protocols signed in October 2009. While the governments in both Yerevan and Ankara face strong opposition to the protocols, a failure to ratify the agreement could have disastrous consequences for the entire region.
The conference in London failed to suggest viable solutions to the real problems facing Afghanistan, including President Karzai’s lack of credibility, the prevalence of local corruption, and the fragmentation of power into the hands of armed local militias.
While growing Islamic extremism in Yemen is alarming, in the longer term it is the country’s domestic challenges that threaten to bring Yemen to its knees, with potentially destabilizing consequences for the region.
Russia's system of government administration is inefficient, unable to cope with both a transition of political power and the economic crisis at the same time. To ensure its own survival, the Russian regime must modernize itself.
U.S. rhetoric has become more closely aligned with European positions on the Arab-Israeli peace process and democracy and human rights promotion in the Middle East, but there has not been a significant increase in transatlantic cooperation on these issues.
At the international conference on Afghanistan in London, the international community should address the only issue that really matters for peace in Afghanistan: how to make the Taliban part of a lasting solution.
President Obama’s self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay has passed. It may take years to fully close the facility because the real problem is not only Guantanamo, but the entire U.S. detention policy.
Russian policy makers need to open space for public debate and engage in substantive discussions on critical global issues, and Western governments and institutions need to open the door to independent Russian voices.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's proposed European security treaty has its flaws, but it is a first step toward an important conversation that must take place if a viable and undivided Euro-Atlantic security space is to be created.