Carnegie Moscow Center
Regionalization may indeed be the future or at least the new stage of globalization. Competition among the super-regions, in this scenario, will become the essence of global geoeconomics and geopolitics.
South Asia is more vulnerable to a possible nuclear conflict than any other region. It is necessary to take a number of urgent steps to stabilize relations between India and Pakistan and prevent a nuclear threat.
It would be a stretch to think that ASEM can foster any kind of benign diplomatic triangle between the EU, Russia, and Asian powers. However, ASEM may survive as an interesting mix of debating club, retreat and venue for bilateral meetings.
Facing Western sanctions, some Russian pundits are rushing to find an easy way out through increased cooperation with Asia. However, nothing can replace the West for Russia.
Moscow’s most recent, failed attempt to cooperate with China on the Altai gas pipeline shows that its political ambitions are not compatible with elementary arithmetic.
Rather than “replacing” Europe with China in its foreign policy universe, Russia would be wise to develop its relations with Beijing closer to the level of the very thick ties which link it to its Western neighbors.
Moscow’s military-technical cooperation with both New Delhi and Beijing means that Russia cannot stand apart from Indian-Chinese disagreements.
Indian and U.S. leaders recently discussed military-technological cooperation. Time will tell whether the countries will be ready to transform their cooperation by translating words into actions.
Although the relationship between India and the United States should be viewed indifferently by Russia, Moscow needs to pay attention in order to learn from and not repeat mistakes made by New Delhi and Washington.
Pakistan has been in turmoil for more than 40 days: protests headed by Imran Khan and Tahir-ul-Qadri have taken the country by storm. Yet the protest movement seems to be running out of steam. The weakening of the protest movement has much to do with Prime Minister Sharif’s decision not to crack down on the protests.