At the recently completed Fourth Plenum of the 18th Party Congress, Chinese leaders directed efforts to reform existing international institutions and laws and promote alternative values, political principles and legal arguments that better accord with China’s needs. These directions reflect a broader, whole-of-government effort to... MORE

The Fourth Plenum of the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) focused on transforming the country’s legal system and passed the Decision Concerning Some Major Questions in Comprehensively Moving Forward and Governing the Country According to the Law. The Decision calls for the... MORE

As Russia’s economic stagnation reverberates in the North Caucasus, the regional elites have begun to scramble for local resources. An uncharacteristically open discussion erupted in Dagestan’s republican parliament in Makhachkala on October 30, when a well-known politician in the republic, Eduard Khidirov, stated that between... MORE

In late September 2014, Erlan Karin, the newly appointed director of the Astana-based Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, presented a report on Central Asians fighting for the Islamic State (IS—formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) called “Our People in... MORE

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Mustafa Cemilev, the longtime leader of the Crimean Tatar national movement who now serves as the presidential plenipotentiary representative for Crimean Tatar affairs, have been discussing the possibility of creating a Crimean Tatar Battalion within the Ukrainian army. This battalion... MORE

President Vladimir Putin’s order to revise Russia’s 2010 Military Doctrine by the end of this year prompted speculation in the Russian media and raised varying opinions about the revision process’s possible motives and its timing. It appears, according to defense specialists close to the process,... MORE

Tatarstan remains the only republic in the Russian Federation whose governor has the official title of president. The Kremlin has insisted that there be only one president in the country—the president of the Russian Federation—and all of the autonomous republics have ultimately bowed to Moscow’s... MORE

Since the Russian government instituted a new holiday in 2005, ostensibly to promote patriotism and celebrate the 1612 liberation of Moscow from Polish forces, nationalists have commandeered this “Unity Day” holiday, which takes place every November 4, to hold a “Russian March” that promotes ethnic-Russian... MORE

After the recent death of another leader of Dagestan’s Aukhov jamaat, the press service of the Dagestani Liberation Front posted a video recording of the address of the emir of the Northern Sector, Islam Abu Ibragim (a. k. a. Islam Ibragimov). The leader of Dagestan’s... MORE

Just prior to his mid-October 2014 visit to the United States, Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius revealed that his talks with the US government would devote special attention to energy issues, including trying to invite US companies to take part in a new shale gas... MORE