Advocates of engaging Vladimir Putin’s Russia should avoid fueling unrealistic expectations of a breakthrough and instead seek incremental progress on specific topics based on a set of guiding principles, says… Read more »
Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved his current geo-political “prominence because he anticipated the global populist revolt and helped give it ideological shape,” argues analyst Franklin Foer. “With his apocalyptic… Read more »
Tzvetan Todorov, a Bulgarian-French literary theorist and historian of ideas whose concerns in dozens of books ranged from fantasy in fiction to the moral consequences of colonialism, fanaticism and the… Read more »
After more than two years of economic contraction, Russia seems to have achieved some semblance of stability, notes Anders Åslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. Though… Read more »
Think of two significant trend lines in the world today, writes Brookings analyst Robert Kagan. One is the increasing ambition and activism of the two great revisionist powers, Russia and… Read more »
A few hours before Vladimir Putin gave his 2014 new year’s speech, a shadowy group calling itself Shaltai Boltai — the Russian for Humpty Dumpty, the nursery rhyme character —… Read more »
Perhaps because they are often poorly run, hotlines do not seem to be making local governments any more popular. These form the most despised tier of authority in China: many… Read more »
The U.S. ambassador to Moscow says the United States is monitoring the condition of Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., a Kremlin critic who is in hospital with symptoms similar to those he… Read more »
The murder in Yangon of Ko Ni (left), one of Myanmar’s most prominent Muslim voices and a legal adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi, is ominous for the country’s democratic transition, The Financial Times… Read more »
Long-standing pillars of the Arab order—authoritarian bargains and hydrocarbon rents—are collapsing as political institutions struggle with the rising demands of growing populations, says a new report from the Carnegie Endowment…. Read more »