Τρίτη 4 Αυγούστου 2015

Chasing the dragon: Russia's courtship of China

Russian leaders talk of a pivot to Asia and a strategic partnership with China partly to frighten the West. But behind the warm rhetoric, many Russians worry about China dominating their bilateral relationship, and China worries that Russia’s confrontation with the West will get out of hand. What China wants from Russia is an open road to Europe; but that is not part of Russia’s plan. 
Chasing the dragon: Russia's courtship of China

The Russian authorities like to claim that they have a lot in common with China: both emerging economic powers, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, but above all both non-Western and perhaps even anti-Western powers. A recent report by the influential and well-connected Russian International Affairs Council argues that “the bond between Moscow and Beijing…
will serve as basis for creating a ‘non-American’ world”. As Russia’s relationship with the West has deteriorated as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, Russian officials have talked more about a Russian ‘pivot to Asia’.

The Geopolitics of the Syrian Civil War

Αποτέλεσμα εικόνας για The Geopolitics of the Syrian Civil War
International diplomats will gather Jan. 22 in the Swiss town of Montreux to hammer out a settlement designed to end Syria's three-year civil war. The conference, however, will be far removed from the reality on the Syrian battleground. Only days before the conference was scheduled to begin, a controversy threatened to engulf the proceedings after the United Nations invited Iran to participate, and Syrian rebel representatives successfully pushed for the offer to be rescinded. The inability to agree upon even who would be attending the negotiations is an inauspicious sign for a diplomatic effort that was never likely to prove very fruitful.