According to the decree on May 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that, from May 15 on, the visa regime for citizens of Georgia visiting Russia (which was introduced back in 2001 under the rule of President Eduard Shevardnadze) has been canceled (BBC News Russian,... MORE

Repeated reports alleging the growing desire of the West to push Ukraine into peace talks with Russia provide an opportunity to consider how such talks would actually play out (Nezavisimaya gazeta, November 24, 2022; Mk.ru, April 25). The main question here is: What is the... MORE

Since Moldova became independent in 1991, Russia has repeatedly employed two major levers inside the country to try to prevent it from turning to the West, as the current Moldovan government has consistently signaled it wants to do. These are the breakaway and Slavic-dominated Republic... MORE

Israel is usually mentioned as a “third party” in the political literature of Iranian leaders and officials, especially when talking about Tel Aviv’s influence on relations between Tehran and Baku. Even so, Azerbaijan remains adamant that Israel is not using its territory for military and... MORE

From May 1 to 4, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov, respectively, held four-day peace talks facilitated by United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Washington (Mfa.gov.az, May 4). Reportedly, Blinken only attended the introductory and closing sessions... MORE

Amidst the drama surrounding Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s early April stopover in Southern California, where she met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the subsequent People’s Liberation Army (PLA) maneuvers around Taiwan that followed, it can be easy to forget why the Taiwanese President was... MORE

Introduction Early assessments of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) April exercises in the waters and airspace around Taiwan have focused on the diplomatic and political ramifications of yet another episode of saber-rattling by Beijing, but the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) own after-action assessments suggest... MORE

Introduction Thus far in 2023, People’s Republic of China (PRC) President Xi Jinping has consolidated his power base after securing his third term as General Secretary at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) last October. Despite the fact that the COVID-19... MORE

Introduction It has been suggested that China intends to unify Taiwan through a military operation within the next five years. However, based on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) actions during the 1945-1949 civil war, military means may not be the most effective way for the... MORE

Many of the reverberations from Russia’s aggression against Ukraine continue to be felt across Central Asia. One such under-examined, but crucial vibration is that of the future course of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Formerly, it was more or less taken for granted that the... MORE