Analysis

Mikhail Gorbachev—the last leader of the Soviet Union, architect of perestroika and glasnost, and Nobel Peace Prize winner—passed away recently. At a time when Russia is backsliding into “neo-totalitarianism,” Gorbachev’s legacy seems to be fading into oblivion. As the...

In response to the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine, the European Union is moving to wean itself off Russian natural gas. While the move makes sound geopolitical sense, cutting off Russian gas supplies has already caused economic pain. Before the...

Russia’s leadership has invented many stories about its invasion of Ukraine. To justify its invasion, Moscow argued that Ukraine is a failed and corrupt state in need of “denazification.” In addition, Russia has maintained that it was using “high-precision”...

The ongoing conflict in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has cost approximately six million lives since 1996, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in world history. Ethnic and geopolitical competition among DRC, Rwanda,...

In mid-May 2022, eighteen-year-old Payton Gendron approached a grocery store in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Buffalo, NY. He opened fire with a Bushmaster XM-15 semi-automatic rifle, killing ten people. The attack was one of the deadliest racist massacres...

Imagine you’ve just been confirmed to be the US ambassador to a small country in Africa. However, before departing to take up your assignment, you learn that the administration doesn’t yet have an official policy for that country. Troubling,...

In June this year, Xi Jinping replied to a letter from attendees of a political training workshop at a party cadre school in Tanzania. The swift reply from Xi demonstrates the importance the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attaches to...

As soon as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plane took off from Taipei on August 3, the Chinese military initiated a days-long military response to punish Taiwan for crossing a perceived “red line.” The People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command...

Last May, Americans up and down the East Coast waited in long lines for gas. The panic wasn’t caused by a foreign war or sanctions—it was triggered by a Russian ransomware attack. The Russia-based criminal group DarkSide had infected...

Those watching Russian television to follow the war in Ukraine live in an alternative reality. Commentators on state-owned Russian television news stations have spread the falsehood that Ukraine is staging fake attacks on their own cities to make it look...