Azerbaijan recently achieved a major public diplomacy success in late January by organizing the first Russian-Azerbaijan Humanitarian Forum in Baku, which assembled more than 100 representatives of the Russian intelligentsia. Rectors of universities, heads of news agencies, high profile journalists and writers, composers and artists,... MORE

Armenia and Turkey have moved to the brink of reversing a universally welcomed thaw in their relations, with differing interpretations of a landmark fence-mending agreement signed in October 2009. Yerevan is threatening to annul the two “protocols” over Ankara’s continuing linkage between their implementation and... MORE

Since Turkey and Armenia finally signed the groundbreaking protocols for the normalization of their relations in October 2009, their progress has been far less impressive. The Turkish and Armenian governments’ inability or unwillingness to counter domestic opposition stalled the parliamentary ratification process. Recently, both parties... MORE

In June 2008, negotiations between the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) in Taiwan—which manages ongoing cross-Strait negotiations—and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), resumed after 15 years of suspension. The resumption of negotiations was spearheaded by the first visit... MORE

China’s growing role as a regional and global leader has brought with it increasingly complex and far-reaching political, economic and security interests, as well as new traditional and non-traditional security challenges for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). As a result, in 2004 President and... MORE

From its preliminary stages down to the January 17 first round, Ukraine’s presidential election has occasioned a full and continuous display of Russia’s strategic policy objectives toward the country.Irrespective of the presidential run-off’s outcome on February 8, Moscow has already achieved—largely by default—three basic objectives... MORE

Viktor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko will face each other in round two of the fifth Ukrainian presidential elections on February 7. In foreign and security policies there are seven key differences between both candidates.1. The Black Sea Fleet based in Sevastopol. Yanukovych’s election program proclaims... MORE

The outcome of the first round of elections in Ukraine is fairly clear, despite the usual procrastination with confirming the results, but it could have more impact on Russia’s stalled political modernization than the misanthropic political elite in Moscow expects. Taking a lesson from their... MORE