A nation must think before it acts.
Blogs
Not all Song and Dance: Georgia as a New Economic Center?
Introduction On 28 November 2018, Salome Zurabishvili was elected to the Presidency of Georgia. She won by an approximate majority of 60% and became the first elected female president in the Caucasus’s history and the first president to govern under Georgia’s...
Read more »
Yes, Hanoi Ended Pretty Badly. But Trump and Kim Are Not Done.
Among the range of possible outcomes discussed before the summit, ending with nothing at all was something few, if any, had bet on. It seemed much more likely that Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un would agree to measures that...
Read more »
Are the Russians Coming?: Russia’s Military Buildup Near Ukraine
Long before the Kerch Strait incident in October 2018, Russia had already begun to strengthen the forces in its Southern Military District, which spans from near Volgograd to Russia’s border with Georgia and Azerbaijan. Naturally, that has caused concern...
Read more »
Of Course North Korea Wants Sanctions Relief, But What Kind?
In only a few days, President Trump and Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, will meet in Hanoi. Both need to bring home concrete results. North Korea is under the strictest sanctions regime it has ever faced, and, with some...
Read more »The State of Russia’s IPO Market
2018 marked the worst year for Russian initial public offerings on record. How did Russia get here and what is the market’s outlook? One way to measure economic development in emerging markets involves analyzing stock market activity alongside the...
Read more »
Armenia and the Velvet Revolution: The Merits and Flaws of a Protest-based Civil Society
The 2018 Velvet Revolution in Armenia that swept Serzh Sargsyan from power and brought Nikol Pashinyan to power as Prime Minister was surprising. Sargsyan had brutally repressed previous protests in 2008—in which ten people died—and had managed to successfully...
Read more »
Royal Drama in Thailand
Recent news reports from Thailand revealed that Royal Princess Ubolratana—a sister of King Vajiralongkorn—had accepted the nomination of a political party to be its candidate for Prime Minister in upcoming elections. A few hours later, the candidacy was terminated...
Read more »Do Svidaniya, Chernobyl: Russian economic statecraft in Turkey and Belarus
Nuclear energy technology is increasingly relied upon by Russian President Vladimir Putin as his instrument of choice in economic statecraft. Aside from pursuing advanced nuclear technologies such as the MBIR sodium-cooled fast reactor (the world’s most powerful research reactor),...
Read more »
Democracy is “a priority we cannot afford to ignore”—at home or abroad
Today, the storied bipartisan research and advocacy organization Freedom House releases its annual global survey of political rights and civil liberties, Freedom in the World, and the news is not good. For the 13th year in a row, more...
Read more »
Japan’s New(ish) Aircraft Carriers: Reviving Japanese Naval Aviation
With remarkably little fuss, the Japanese Diet approved the latest iteration of Japan’s National Defense Program Guidelines in December 2018. The new guidelines pave the way for the conversion of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s two largest warships, the...
Read more »