Even for a country that is notable for its myriad contradictions, the gap between China’s hard and soft power has never been more pronounced. The year 2014 has witnessed the kind of global hard-power projection that is unprecedented in recent Chinese history. The two-year-old Xi... MORE

During the last three years, the Houthi movement has accomplished a remarkable transformation, evolving from an obscure family-led Zaydi Shi’a guerrilla movement in Sa’ada governorate, one of Yemen’s most remote and underdeveloped, to become the country’s dominant military and political force. During the last six... MORE

On November 27, the Kenyan government reopened four mosques in Mombasa, which it had shut down the previous week over fears that they were involved in the radicalization and recruitment of local youth for Somalia’s Islamist militant group, al-Shabaab. The reopened mosques were handed over... MORE

Ongoing tensions between Azerbaijan and Iran have filled the press in both countries for the past five years. However, these bilateral frictions have begun to deescalate since Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s visit to Iran on April 16, 2014. And last month (November 12–13), newly inaugurated... MORE

Lacking mainstream political partners in Europe’s East, the Kremlin has recently picked the small, far-left Party of Socialists to advance Russia’s objectives in Moldova. The main objective is to undermine the pro-Western leadership team in Moldova, the European Union’s closest partner in the region. The... MORE

On December 4, President Vladimir Putin addressed a joint session of Russia’s houses of parliament in the Kremlin. This annual address is the Russian equivalent of the State of the Union speech delivered annually by the President of the United States, and it is mandated... MORE

Moldova’s small Party of Socialists, pro-Kremlin and pro-Eurasia, has suddenly become Moldova’s single largest party after the legislative elections on November 30. Surpassing the Communist Party, Igor Dodon’s Socialists are now the leading leftist party, the primary recipient of Russian/”Russian-speaking” votes (but not confined to... MORE

“We are beginning the new year without any problems whatsoever, even small ones, in our relations as we have settled them all,” President Alyaksandr Lukashenka observed as recently as November 18, while receiving Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (Svaboda, November 28). Yet, barely nine days... MORE

Georgian authorities are trying to devise new tactics and a new style of relations with Moscow after the November 24 signing of the Russian-Abkhazian agreement On Alliance and Strategic Partnership (Kavkavsky Uzel, November 24; see EDM, October 29, November 24). However, with Western leaders currently... MORE

Since this summer, rumors have swirled that Moscow plans to create a Bessarabian People’s Republic on the territory of Ukraine’s Odesa Oblast. Some analysts have suggested that this would allow Moscow to build a bridge to the Transnistria region in Moldova and cut off Ukraine... MORE