Executive Summary:The Southern Mobility Movement (SMM) of south Yemen, an umbrella organization for many secessionist oriented groups in the south, is using the increasing weakness of the Salih government and eroding state authority to its advantage. The absence of central state authority, already weak in... MORE

The development of the popular uprising in eastern Libya transformed the Arab Revolution from a “spectator sport” for the rest of the world and created real problems for Russian national interests. Russian experts on the Middle East were quick to warn of the dangers of... MORE

China released its latest national defense White Paper on March 31. The document, entitled China’s National Defense in 2010, is the seventh that the Chinese government has released since 1998 when it began publishing the biannual defense White Papers [1]. Like all of China’s defense... MORE

The third anniversary of Taiwan’s landmark 2008 presidential election, which brought the Kuomintang (KMT) back to power, is approaching. Since Ma Ying-Jeou’s inauguration in 2008, Taiwan has made significant progress in improving relations with China and in expanding cross-Strait economic interpenetration. A review of the... MORE

Japan has been dealt a number of blows over the past few years which have put the country’s high-tech production capacity at risk. Most recently the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan in March has directly affected production efforts through rolling blackouts and... MORE

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