On November 12, the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) elected Kazakhstan for the first time to the UN Human Rights Council, for the 2013–2015 term, with 183 of 193 member states voting affirmatively. Various international human rights groups openly lobbied against... MORE

Although its voice is often ignored in the escalating spat over the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, Taiwan reacted with uncharacteristic bombast to the Japanese government’s purchase of three islets in the disputed island chain in September. The response reached unprecedented levels... MORE

The Islamic Republic of Iran sits in the crosshairs of the United States, Israel, and the Gulf Arab monarchies led by Saudi Arabia. The array of geopolitical threats that face Iran is daunting; Iran is surrounded by states that are threatened by the revolutionary Islamist... MORE

Adding to a recent series of worrying Russian actions that have exposed serious faults in the Transnistrian conflict resolution process (see EDM, October 25), Moscow has now declared its intention to build a “Eurasian economic region” in Transnistria (Ng.ru, November 2). This project is meant... MORE

At the beginning of November, Chechen authorities made several statements that were underreported by the media but which illuminated important aspects of Moscow’s policies in the North Caucasus. Moreover, those statements allow an assessment of how much autonomy Moscow is willing to grant to Chechnya... MORE

It has become clear that China intends to wage a prolonged war of psychological attrition against Japan with regard to the disputed Senkaku Islands, a crisis with profound international repercussions. Russia’s position in this struggle, therefore, provides a revealing picture of its foreign policy goals... MORE

On November 1, Georgia’s new prime minister, the leader of the “Georgian Dream” coalition, Bidzina Ivanishvili, announced the creation of the position of the Prime Minister’s Special Representative for Relations with Russia. He appointed Zurab Abashidze, Georgia’s ambassador to Russia in 2000–2004, to the post... MORE

Since the Mongolian parliamentary elections of June 28, 2012, won by the pro-Western Democratic Party, there has been a re-emphasis on strengthening Mongolian-Russian political and military relations as part of the new government’s efforts to counter-balance China’s monopoly over Mongolia’s economy. On November 3, 2012,... MORE

One of the closest associates of Georgia’s Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, State Minister for Reintegration Paata Zakareishvili, has unveiled the government’s idea to unblock the railway link that connected Russia with the South Caucasus republics in Soviet times.In an interview with the Moscow paper Kommersant... MORE

On November 7, the Circassian activist group Justice for the North Caucasus issued an emergency statement on the situation in Syria. The group called on the international community to send “relief to hundreds of men, women, children and elderly who have been under siege for... MORE