Latest Articles about Foreign Policy
Special Issue on 2015 Defense White Paper on Military Strategy
As Editors, we have the distinct pleasure of introducing a special issue of China Brief, focused on the Chinese government’s 2015 Defense White Paper (DWP) and its theme of military strategy. This year’s report, the latest roughly biannual installment since 1995, contains the broad guidelines... MORE
The “Holistic Security Concept”: The Securitization of Policy and Increasing Risk of Militarized Crisis
Reflecting critical developments under the Xi administration, the recent “Military Strategy” white paper signals a turn toward a potentially more coercive phase of China’s rise (State Council, May 26). Driven by the determination to overcome a formidable array of domestic and international obstacles to national... MORE
White Paper Expounds Civil-Military Relations in Xi Era
As the world observed the 26th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the focus has remained on how this cataclysmic event has rolled back reforms and exacerbated the trend of major clans in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) monopolizing the nation’s economic and political resources.... MORE
Myth and Reality in Russia’s Asian Policy
According to Russian analysts and leaders like Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Russia has turned to Asia because of Western sanctions and is making steady progress there in achieving its objectives (RT, June 11). However, such talk is entirely unfounded. If anything, Russian relations with Japan... MORE
Popularity of Islamic Sate Soars in Russia and Post-Soviet Space
With more and more former members of the Caucasus Emirate pledging allegiance to the “caliphate” of the Islamic State, the situation in the North Caucasus may destabilize further. What is happening is not the disbanding of one rebel organization and its replacement with a more... MORE
The Turkish Election and Responses in the South Caucasus
The general election in Turkey on June 7 has radically changed the country’s political landscape. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has lost its absolute majority, winning only 258 of the 276 seats it needed, and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has now... MORE
The 2015 Chinese Defense White Paper on Strategy in Perspective: Maritime Missions Require a Change in the PLA Mindset
Nearly 20 years ago in November 1995, the Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China issued the first defense-related white paper on “Arms Control and Disarmament.” In 1998, the first “defense white paper” was issued, called simply “China’s National Defense.”... MORE
Elections and Politics in and Around Belarus
The chairwoman of the Central Electoral Commission of Belarus, Lidia Ermoshina, has proposed to conduct the upcoming presidential elections on October 11—that is, more than one month earlier than the previously set date of November 15. The official explanation of this shift has to do... MORE
Bringing Belarus Back in From the Cold (Part Four)
To read Part One, please click here.To read Part Two, please click here.To read Part Three, please click here. To help lessen Belarus’s economic dependence on Russia, and reach out to mainstream Belarusian society, the European Union has a range of non-political instruments available. The... MORE
Shapsugs Increasingly Important Players in Circassian Struggle With Moscow
Most analysts concerned with the Circassian issue in the North Caucasus have focused on the three republics where subgroups of that nation are the titular nationalities—Adygea, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria—or on the enormous diasporas in Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere. But another player has emerged in the... MORE