The Return of Global Russia
The Kremlin is relying on a highly adaptable toolkit to chip away at the liberal international order and to capitalize on the West’s inability to come up with a unified… Read more »
Category: Analysis
How the West got China wrong
Last weekend China stepped from autocracy into dictatorship. That was when Xi Jinping, already the world’s most powerful man, let it be known that he will change China’s constitution so… Read more »
Putin’s ‘strategy of chaos’ drives disinformation ops
Russia has firmly established itself as a democratic society following the path of freedom and independence, Russian President Vladimir Putin said – without a trace of irony – in his… Read more »
Is Vietnam going the way of China?
Activist Pham Doan Trang (above) said she was held for questioning by security officials for several hours on Saturday over her most recent book Politics for the Masses, which is outlawed… Read more »
Xi sets China on ‘collision course with history’ or new model for authoritarianism?
China’s relentless rise and its more recent embrace of repressive tactics that recall the Mao era — a process accelerated by President Xi Jinping’s bid to stay in power indefinitely — have… Read more »
Is the West facilitating Russia’s kleptocracy?
In 2013, a whistleblower informed Denmark’s largest bank that members of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s family, and a group of accused money launderers, were using the bank’s branch in Estonia… Read more »
Iran heading toward ‘explosion’ as serial abuser addresses UN human rights council
He was a prosecutor of Iran’s Islamic revolution and acquired a notorious reputation for the arbitrary executions of thousands of opponents. A few decades later he oversaw the judiciary’s… Read more »
‘Leader of unfree world’ – China’s Xi is ‘courting political catastrophe’
In ending presidential term limits, China’s president Xi Jinping – the leader of the unfree world – is ‘thinking global and acting local’, The South China Morning Post’s Nectar Gan… Read more »
The next Arab Spring ‘simply a matter of time’?
Autocratic allies in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, have reportedly been told that the U.S. will not “lecture” them on democracy and human rights. U.S. attempts to explicitly… Read more »
Information Access Fund aims to counter disinformation
The U.S. State Department will receive $40 million in new funding to counter disinformation from foreign countries, the agency said Monday. A new Information Access Fund will support public… Read more »