Russia’s Muslims are slowly realizing that they have a voice in the country’s foreign policy in the Middle East. President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly launched a military campaign in Syria in the fall of 2015, apparently giving little consideration to Russia’s Muslim population. Indeed, Moscow threw... MORE

The New Year brought new challenges and opportunities to Russian policy in East Asia. On January 3, 2016, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe signaled Japan’s continuing interest in a summit with Russia to normalize bilateral relations (TASS, January 4), even though both sides had given... MORE

During the past three decades, China has experienced a tremendous transformation in its strategic outlook. It has evolved from a terracentric state with its military, political, economic, and cultural roots firmly planted on the Eurasian continent to one of the world’s premier maritime states. The... MORE

Taiwan’s presidential election is slowly but surely approaching its end, entering the last week before voters cast their ballots on January 16, 2016. Taiwanese elections are rarely uneventful, and this time they promise quite a shake-up of the domestic political environment. The leading opposition party,... MORE

Barring an upset of momentous proportions, Taiwan’s opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is expected to defeat the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party, during presidential elections scheduled for January 16. The latest polls by the popular Taiwanese TV station TVBS show the DPP candidate and... MORE

Taiwan’s Elections Editor’s Note: Ahead of Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections on January 16, we have devoted a number of this issues’ articles to the question of what cross-Strait relations will look like and how Taiwan’s ability to defend itself—a key strategic issue for the... MORE

Russia and Belarus have some of the closest relations in the post-Soviet space. Both are members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). And together, the two countries make up the Union State.... MORE

An unexpected result of Russia’s aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East has been Tatarstan’s opposition to the decision to cut ties with Turkey. After a Turkish F-16 downed a Russian warplane that allegedly crossed from Syria into Turkey’s airspace last November, President Vladimir Putin... MORE

At the end of 2015, an unnamed Kremlin official announced that Moscow was now sharing intelligence about the Islamic State with the Afghan Taliban, even though the Taliban remains on the Russian list of terrorist organizations. Predictably the Taliban denied the assertion (Russianews.net, December 26,... MORE