Nearing the Twilight of Somali Antipiracy? The global antipiracy mission off Somalia, a hallmark for collective 21st-century international security, is gradually moving toward a close. There have been no successful Somali pirate attacks since 2012 and, barring a sudden spike in violence, navies may start... MORE

Global outreach is the inevitable course for China’s forces to deal with various threats and to fulfill multiple tasks in the process of realizing the “Chinese Dream” and a strong military. China’s armed forces accelerated their global interactions in 2013. Chinese forces have appeared in... MORE

One of the key factors for the Obama administration to pursue in its “Rebalance to Asia” policy is to deal with current and potential security challenges posed by North Korean nuclear and missile threats. Another factor is Chinese expansion of air and naval activities, both... MORE

Despite the limited applicability of a zero-sum game approach and the vital necessity for Belarus to maintain good relationships with both East and West, Belarus’s government continually stands accused of treacherous geopolitical maneuvering. Such accusations are particularly common for Russian media. Thus, Regnum, a news... MORE

The Shi’a Houthi rebels’ advance on Yemen’s capital Sana’a from late 2014 was a slow burning conflict that led to the resignation of President Abdu Rabbu Mansur Hadi on January 22, which prompted chaos in Sana’a and has since spread to much of the rest... MORE

The Ukraine crisis has brought Russia and China much closer together (see EDM, April 3). But Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s trip to Southeast Asia—Thailand and then Vietnam—in early April 2015, suggests that Moscow is simultaneously hedging against China, as Beijing is visibly trying to... MORE

On April 22–24, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid his first ever official visit to Georgia. The visit was filled with pageantry and emotional declarations, as President Lukashenka met with Georgian President Giorgi Margevlashvili, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, and the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church,... MORE

Russian imperialists have insisted that more than any other place within the former Soviet space, Belarus is artificial. They reach this conclusion on the basis that Belarus is culturally related to Russia on many measures, had only a brief experience with national independence before 1991,... MORE

Abkhazia, a former autonomous region of Georgia, was recognized as an “independent state” by Russia following the five-day Russian-Georgian war in August 2008. A couple weeks ago (April 10), the “prime minister” of Abkhazia, Artur Mikvabia, officially presented the self-proclaimed republic’s newest deputy prime minister,... MORE

Addressing Russia’s populace and, implicitly, Ukraine in his annual phone-in dialogue (see Part One in EDM, April 23), Russian President Vladimir Putin torpedoed the Minsk Two agreement beyond repair: “I say outright and unequivocally: there are no Russian forces in Ukraine” (Kremlin.ru, April 17). Quite... MORE