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

For two decades after the establishment of their Union State in 1999, Belarus and Russia benefited from the most integrated relationship across the post-Soviet space. Yet, many elements of further integration as laid out by the Union State treaty remained largely dormant until 2021 (see... MORE

On May 3, speaking at an international conference in Shusha on “The Formation of the Geopolitics of Greater Eurasia: From the Past to the Present and Future,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced that “having become a military ally of Turkey, Azerbaijan has indirectly become, to... MORE

At a recent event organized by the Belarusian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (BSRL), the topic—“Can the West Exert Influence on Lukashenka?”—was debated between two analysts. Ryhor Astapenia, one of the debaters, earlier, had issued his critical account of Western policies vis-à-vis Belarus, in... MORE

On April 26, 2023, Italian Minister of Defense Guido Crosetto visited Uzbekistan. He first met with the Minister of Defense, General Bakhodir Kurbanov, and the President’s Special Representative for Foreign Policy Affairs, Abdulaziz Kamilov, before concluding his series of meetings with President Shavkat Mirziyoyev (Difesa.it,... MORE