China will soon be one-step closer to its long-standing quest to operate an aircraft carrier. Various reports confirmed that the aircraft carrier Varyag, which China purchased from Ukraine and has been under refurbishment at the port of Dalian, may be set for sea trials this... MORE

Executive SummaryIn response to the uprisings spreading throughout the Arab world, Iran has reacted in such a way to maximize its power and potential influence in the region. Until April, Tehran had largely framed the current events in terms of the renewal of the 1979... MORE

Each recent decade has witnessed its own tectonic shifts that recast the world. Commentators called them revolutions. In the late 1980’s it was the “Velvet Revolution,” which began in Eastern Europe, included the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and ended with the multiple civil wars... MORE

The National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAK) announced today (April 22) that among the militants killed yesterday (April 21) in a shootout with security forces near the village of Serzhen-Yurt in Chechnya’s Shali district was a Saudi national known by the nom de guerre Moganned who, according... MORE

Russia’s intelligence services reported on the night of April 18 that they had identified the body of Israpil Validzhanov, who was better known as Emir Hassan, the head of Dagestan’s Sharia Jamaat armed resistance movement, among four militants killed near the village of Tashkapur in... MORE

The United States and Western Europe’s residual military powers have undertaken in Libya another war of choice. Russia ushered them into it by not vetoing the UN Security Council’s resolution that authorized the intervention. The conflict quickly turned into a stalemate, which Russia is now... MORE

Executive SummaryThe Islamic Republic of Iran holds a strategic position in the middle of the Arab world in light of the popular uprisings occurring throughout the region.  It is not surprising that Iran has been accused of meddling in its neighbors' affairs given the stances... MORE

Aslan Kazakov’s description of Soviet tactics in the North Caucasus at the dawn of the Soviet era is strongly reminiscent of the modern reality in the region. “[In the 1920’s] officers of the local OGPU (Soviet secret police) department, jointly with detachments of state security... MORE

A critical test for the reform of the Russian armed forces is whether and to what extent a new generation of professional non-commissioned officers (NCOs) can be formed. Marshal Zhukov once stated, “I and the NCOs run the Army.” Yet, the NCO cadre has effectively... MORE

Executive Summary:After nearly two months of fighting in Libya, what began as a revolution against Mu’ammar Qaddafi’s repressive regime has turned into an internal and international struggle for control over Libya’s oil and gas reserves. Of the country’s four major oil basins, the most productive... MORE