*To read Part One, please click here. Any status of neutrality is subject to legal and political interpretations, within or outside the country in question, at any given time; all the more so when Moldova’s neutrality is uncodified by treaty and unrecognized internationally in any... MORE

Military experts loyal to the Kremlin are increasingly recognizing that Russia does not have the resources to implement President Vladimir Putin’s ambitious geopolitical plans. However, Moscow leadership is seemingly no longer capable of listening to rational arguments. In one instance, toward the end of July... MORE

As Russian aggression against Ukraine approaches the half-year mark and combat operations appear to be at a standstill, a new calculus has been developed in the Kremlin: A long war suits Moscow’s interests and can eventually be won. This self-serving proposition follows the failure of... MORE

Last fall, China suffered extensive power outages due to a combination of surging electricity demand and tight supply. A confluence of factors contributed to the energy supply shortage, but nearly all traced back to China’s struggle to manage its overdependence on coal for power generation:... MORE

Introduction Despite the resentment among many top cadres against the personality cult that has been relentlessly built up around President and commander-in-chief Xi Jinping, the Machiavellian infighter is expected to remain on top when seats for the Politburo and other top-level leadership bodies are unveiled... MORE

In April, I asserted that the lessons learned from Russia’s war in Ukraine might influence China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to “accelerate the timetable for a smaller scale conflict” in the Taiwan Strait, short of a full-scale amphibious invasion (China Brief, April 8). On August... MORE

On May 24, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated that Türkiye would start a new cross-border operation in Syria once preparations were complete. He defined the main objective of the new operation as establishing a 30 kilometer-deep “safe zone” on the southern borders of Türkiye. A... MORE

Turkish military operations against Kurdish Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan, or PKK) militants inside northern Iraq have evolved since the 1990s from large, ponderous, marginally effective incursions into a combination of semi-permanent screening operations with more precise strikes and raids. The shift, facilitated in large... MORE

Protesters loyal to Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr invaded the heavily fortified area in central Baghdad, known as the Green Zone, twice in one week in late July. They occupied the parliament building for days and blocked al-Sadr’s Iranian-backed rivals’ formation of a new government... MORE

Abu Sayyaf’s Local and Global Prospects Look Increasingly Grim in the Philippines In one of the most recent counter-insurgency successes against Abu Sayyaf, the Philippines army announced that 100 former fighters have renounced the group, pledged loyalty to the government, and returned to their homes... MORE