Recent meetings between U.S. officials and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is playing right into Russia’s hands.
While Azerbaijan will not become a Western-style liberal democracy anytime soon, recent trends point to a society that is changing—and a government that may now recognize the need to change along with it.
Russia and China’s strategic military cooperation is becoming ever closer. President Putin has announced that Russia is helping China build an early warning system to spot intercontinental ballistic missile launches.
Russia has returned to the Middle East as a major power player. Yet its toolkit is modest, providing an opening for the United States to correct its recent policy changes.
The reemergence of Russia as a major power broker in the Middle East is striking because for a quarter century after the Cold War, Russia had been absent from the region. But Russia’s absence, and not its return, is the anomaly.
The Kremlin is riding high in the Middle East, where Russia’s military intervention in Syria has changed the course of the country’s civil war. The Kremlin’s actions in the Middle East have deep historical roots, but potential Russian influence should not be over-exaggerated.
Putin’s main goal was to rattle the United States and Europe, which have taken Russia’s decades-long absence from Africa for granted.
Decades after the Soviet Union wooed the leaders of Africa’s newly independent nations with weapons, scholarships, and anti-colonial rhetoric, Moscow is trying to stage a comeback on the continent. Can the Kremlin leverage its lean resources to wily effect on Africa?
President Trump has repeatedly been at odds with Russia and Ukraine experts spread across the U.S. government. Some are now harsh critics and key figures in the impeachment inquiry.
Younger generations of Central Asian citizens are demanding more from their governments, but their leaders continue to cling to a rapidly eroding status quo.