After the worst anti-China violence for 15 years took place in Vietnam this month, it took China’s propaganda authorities nearly two days to work out how the story should be handled publicly. However, this was not a simple information blackout. The 48-hour gap between the... MORE

If there was any doubt, last week’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore made it clear that China is unhappy with the behavior of the United States in Asia. Following speeches by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that criticized Chinese actions,... MORE

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) hosted its third annual International Security Conference in Moscow on May 23–24. This year’s agenda was more diverse than the previous two conferences, which focused on ballistic missile defense in Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) enlargement... MORE

Chechens confirm their brand worldwide every year. Unfortunately, it is not a brand of high fashion, or new direction in art or science. Chechens are regularly depicted as the bad guys prepared to fight anywhere in the world. The theme of the Russian mafia in... MORE

On the morning of May 24, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) reportedly carried out a special operation jointly with police near construction sites in the village of Sagopshi in Ingushetia’s Malgobek district. According to eyewitnesses, however, the special operation looked more like the indiscriminate shooting... MORE

For most of the last half-millennium, the lands between Moscow and Berlin have thought of themselves and been thought about by others almost exclusively in terms of an east-west axis, as a battleground between the Russian state and European countries. But before that, they were... MORE

Russia’s official position on the current conflict in eastern Ukraine has been seen as especially hypocritical, given its own treatment of secessionist efforts of Chechnya. While Moscow supports and promotes ethnic-Russian separatism in Ukraine, in the North Caucasus it brutally suppressed persistent attempts of the... MORE

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has placed increasingly high expectations and demands on the domestic defense industry. Putin intermittently reminds the heads of the various defense companies that the modernization plans to 2020 are unprecedented, spending 23 trillion rubles ($670 billion) in the process. However, following... MORE

Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March was an overture to the broader “Novorossiya” project, announced by President Vladimir Putin on April 17. This covers eight Ukrainian provinces that Russia aims to carve out of Ukraine, whether through “federalization” or some form of Russian... MORE

Viewed from Moldova, the Kremlin’s assault on Ukraine (like the earlier one on Georgia) aims to prevent the country permanently from joining Europe and the West writ large. To defeat those aspirations, Russia acts to destabilize Ukraine’s Western-oriented government and to break up the country’s... MORE