Carnegie Moscow Center
The appointment of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan can be viewed in two ways: as a victory for Pakistan (which clearly supports Mansour) or as the strengthening of radical tendencies within the Taliban.
Chaos in the Arab world has offered the Kremlin a convenient opportunity to shape public opinion at home on such issues as the legitimacy of the regime, its confrontation with the West, and the situation in Ukraine.
Following an initially cool reception, many former USSR republics have been lured by the sheer size of China’s investment in the One Belt One Road project, eager to capitalize on the wider initiative in line with their own domestic interests.
The MH-17 catastrophe has been a major factor in the current state of relations between Russia and the West for more than a year already. Paradoxically, the establishment of an international tribunal is unlikely to sour relations further, even though Moscow fears that protracted legal proceedings might stand in the way of a future détente with the West
Russia is a superpower in decline, and the challenge it poses to the United States is very different from that posed by the Soviet Union.
A theory of “hybrid war” based on the events in Crimea and eastern Ukraine ignores both the chronology and cause-and-effect links between events on the ground.
Among all the possible candidates for membership in the SCO, India and Pakistan seem the most ready for it. If they join the SCO in the near future, this will benefit not only these states, but also the organization itself.
Vladimir Putin will likely see the BRICS summit as proof that the West’s attempts to isolate Russia have failed. However, Russia’s growing fascination with the BRICS and the SCO coincides with diminishing Chinese interest in both projects.
Putin’s announcement that Moscow plans to add more than 40 intercontinental ballistic missiles to its nuclear arsenal is troubling mainly because of its political and psychological impact on NATO allies. But it is no cause for alarm.
Rather than thinking about some grand architecture for the future, all sides of the current Russian-Western conflict should step away from the brink.