A shooting skirmish or a deadly collision between Russian and Western warships or aircraft in the Black Sea would almost certainly cause a serious crisis, evolving into a military confrontation, a regional armed conflict and, perhaps eventually, a global war. Such a doomsday scenario appeared... MORE

On June 15, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan paid an official visit to Karabakh to meet with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, thus becoming the first foreign leader to visit the region following last year’s 44-day war. The meeting agenda included a trip to the... MORE

Turkish unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are becoming popular strategic assets and affordable military modernization solutions on the international arms market. Following Azerbaijan’s dramatic achievements in the Second Karabakh War (September 27–November 9, 2020), whose forces employed advanced Turkish military technologies, including combat drones, Ankara has... MORE

Neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan came close to seeing the outbreak of renewed border clashes on June 4. This danger of fresh violence emerged little more than a month after the so-called “three-day war” between the two countries, from April 28 to April 30—the most significant... MORE

Introduction The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been responsible for conducting military diplomacy since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. In the 1950s, military cooperation was limited almost entirely to other communist nations and insurgent movements in Southeast Asia. In... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. The quasi-annual charade surrounding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Membership Action Plans (NATO MAP) for Ukraine and Georgia took a different form at the Alliance’s June 14 summit in Brussels. The Joseph Biden administration has retreated from the... MORE

The heads of state and government of the North Atlantic Organization’s (NATO) 30 member countries held a summit at the Alliance’s Brussels headquarters on June 14. NATO summits usually take two days. This year’s vast agenda—reflected in an unusually long communiqué—clearly would have needed the... MORE

The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (UASOF), the newest branch of the country’s Armed Forces, continue their development. Recently, UASOF operators conducted Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear (CBRN) defense training in the Chernobyl exclusion zone (the abandoned city of Pripyat). As part of the exercise, the operators... MORE

The problems plaguing Russia’s shipbuilding sector, both military and civilian, run so deep and widespread that even Moscow’s decision to award a contract to Turkey to build a giant floating dry dock in the Russian High North (The Barents Observer, June 15) will do relatively... MORE

On June 12, Azerbaijan and Armenia, through the mediation of the US State Department and the Georgian government, made an exchange: Baku released 15 Armenian captives, and Yerevan handed over to Azerbaijan maps of minefields in one of the formerly occupied regions around Karabakh. The... MORE