Executive Summary: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit did not unveil any particular strategy—let alone a winning one—to deal with Russia’s war against Ukraine, postponing any draft strategy until next year and stopping short of recognizing that Ukraine is the immediate arena of a... MORE

Executive Summary: NATO’s Washington Summit Declaration looks noncommittal and conditions-hedged regarding Ukraine’s eventual membership in the alliance. Member states believe that Ukraine’s accession would involve the alliance in a war with Russia so long as Moscow wages war against Ukraine. The alliance’s decision to designate... MORE

Executive Summary: In the last two weeks, Azerbaijan’s ties to China and Iran have warmed significantly, with Baku and Beijing declaring a strategic partnership and Baku and Tehran announcing the reopening of an Azerbaijani embassy in Iran.  In the South Caucasus, these accords will affect... MORE

Executive Summary: Belarus officially joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the July summit in Astana, becoming the first European country to join. Minsk hopes to use SCO membership to synchronize the development of the north-south and east-west transit corridors, amplify its increasingly vocal anti-sanctions... MORE

Executive Summary: The recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Washington yielded many practical decisions on building Western military capabilities and sustaining offensive operations in Ukraine through bilateral security agreements and increased aid from “frontline” states. Moscow hopes to exploit NATO divisions, but Russian... MORE

Executive Summary: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) sees the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an important part of a wider strategy to construct a new international order. Beijing projects soft power through promoting norms, discursive constructs, and policy preferences in the SCO which member states... MORE

Executive Summary: The United States announced an indefinite postponement of joint military exercises with Georgia that were originally scheduled for the end of July due to Tbilisi’s adoption of the Russian-style “foreign agents” law. Georgia is heavily reliant on Western, specifically US and EU, funding... MORE

Executive Summary: The Caspian Sea region looks to become an international energy hub as the European Union seeks alternatives to its energy dependence on Russia through the export of natural gas from littoral Caspian Sea states. Moscow is concerned about the prospect of the Caspian... MORE

Executive Summary:  Kazakhstan is looking to bolster trade relations beyond Eurasian Russia to the European Union and the United States partly due to Moscow’s war against Ukraine and sanctions imposed against Russia, limiting economic opportunities. The rich natural resource deposits in Kazakhstan will likely attract... MORE

Executive Summary:  In June, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss, among other issues, Türkiye’s prospective membership in the loose-economic grouping of BRICS, which Putin “fully supports.” The impetus for BRICS expansion has grown significantly amid Russia’s full-scale invasion... MORE