“Money loves quiet,” Kyrgyzstan’s President Almaz Atambayev once stated, stressing the need for a better investment climate amid occasional instability plaguing the aspiring democracy, which boasts Central Asia’s first parliamentary system of government (www.members.vb.kg, February 18, 2011).Atambayev, who gained a six-year term in 2011 in... MORE

Perhaps the greatest recent news involving Belarus—news, which all Belarusian regardless of political stripes considered to be great—is Victoria Azarenka’s second tennis victory at the Australian Open on January 26. Her other achievements include winning the Bronze medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London,... MORE

Located at the geographic center of Europe, Lithuania is ideally situated to become a regional transportation hub. Two strategic transportation lines cross Lithuania: the North-South highway and railway line connecting Scandinavia with Central Europe, and the East-West Transport Corridor between enormous eastern markets and the... MORE

The kabuki-style dance of trade partners Mongolia and China began again in earnest when on January 15 the third meeting of the Mongolia-China Cooperation Commission on Mineral Resources and Energy met in Ulaanbaatar. Mongolia’s Minister of Mining Davaajav Gankhuyag led the Mongolian side and Deputy... MORE

  Referring to the evolving political crisis in Venezuela, a Shanghai Academy of Social Science scholar, Zhang Jiazhe, recently remarked, if Hugo Chavez dies, “the diplomatic effect on China won’t be large because China-U.S. competition is in Asia not Latin America. Economically, China-Venezuela relations are... MORE

On December 21, 2012, Georgian Prime-Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili dropped a bombshell, stating that ongoing construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway, connecting Azerbaijan to northeastern Turkey via Georgia, raised many questions about its economic efficiency and profitability for Georgia, regardless of the project’s geopolitical importance (www.geopalitratv.ge,... MORE

Discussions about Russia’s future at the World Economic Forum (WEF) are traditionally prompted by the interests of potential investors rather than ambitions of its leaders. And this year, investor attention toward Russia was awakened by the demonstrated infirmity of its political order. President Vladimir Putin... MORE

While Western financial blogs in 2012 decried the rise of Mongolian resource nationalism as well as continuing corruption in Mongolia’s mining sector, Australia, cautiously yet successfully, has maneuvered through the same environment to significantly increase its investment and political footprint. Mongolia’s superhot mining boom cooled... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. According to the data released in December 2012 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kazakhstan’s stock of cumulative foreign investment abroad was around $20 billion at the end of 2011. The top five destinations for Kazakhstan’s Outward Foreign... MORE

Last Thursday, facing a deteriorating ethnic situation in his own krai, Stavropol Governor Valery Zerenkov said that it was time to end “the policy of minimizing” such developments or ignoring them altogether. The authorities must start to report “objectively” about them, and “on the basis... MORE