The public sphere’s new enemies
All around the world, it seems, the walls are closing in on the space that people need to assemble, associate, express themselves freely, and register dissent, notes Chris Stone, president… Read more »
Category: Eurasia
The authoritarian hijacking of soft power
A renewed struggle between democracy and authoritarianism has emerged, argues Christopher Walker, executive director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. The decade-long democratic… Read more »
Who’s next on Putin’s enemies list?
Say you are the president of a country plunged into economic crisis, failing policies and rampant corruption. What do you do to maintain public support without addressing these problems? asks… Read more »
Armenian opposition activist jailed
Armenia’s authorities should release a political activist who was arrested during a public gathering on January 1, 2016, and placed in pretrial detention, pending an impartial investigation into the charges… Read more »
Twilight of the Putin Era?
While the Kremlin’s new national security strategy is not devoid of foreign policy goals, it is actually heavily focused on Russia itself, notes Olga Oliker. In this context, it’s notable… Read more »
Two options for how Putin’s regime may end
What happens these days in Russia is explicable and in a great degree even predictable – but that to understand, one must forget about traditional norms and logic as they… Read more »
Friends, Foes, and Future Partnerships in a Turbulent World
To achieve its strategic goals, the United States relies heavily on its allies and coalition partners—the “outer defenses” of America’s security system, notes RAND analyst Hans Binnendijk. It needs partners… Read more »
Liberal democracies ill-equipped to deal with autocrats’ ‘hybrid warfare’
The latest version of Russia’s National Security Strategy is the most specifically anti-Western one to date, Leonid Bershidsky writes for Bloomberg: NATO and the European Union are accused of being… Read more »
Restless Russia: Kremlin Bracing for Spring of Discontent?
Predicting a coming Russian revolution has been a favorite hobby of Russia watchers for years now. But since President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the doomsaying has… Read more »
China uses SCO to challenge liberal world order
The Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO) poses a challenge to the liberal world order, albeit a subtle one, The Economist argues: China itself is building all sorts of institutions: the SCO,… Read more »