E-Notes

In the early 1990s, St. Petersburg’s First Deputy Mayor Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was a powerful figure in Mayor Sobchak’s liberal administration, often regarded as acting mayor. Without his help my American-owned company would probably have disbanded. Because of his...

The capture of Abdullah Ocalan by Turkish commandos last February ignited a national celebration in Turkey.  After all, Ocalan, the supremo of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), was held responsible for the deaths of some 30,000 people, half...

Almost 150 years ago in California, and about 100 years ago in Alaska, the discovery of gold lured thousands to seek fortunes that seemed all but certain. Ultimately, of course, the only certainty was hardship. Very few of the...

The Greater Middle East — defined as the Arab world, Israel, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and the Caucasus — is the site of the world’s largest supply of fossil fuels and a place where several ambitious powers actively seek...

On September 13, 1999, Israel and the Palestinian Authority held a ceremonial opening of the final status talks ordained six years earlier by Oslo I. In fact, this was the third ceremonial opening of such talks: once in 1995,...

The war in Kosovo ended a few months ago, but the practice of “ethnic cleansing” is flourishing, this time perpetrated by ethnic Albanians who are proving even more adept at it than the Serbs. Whereas Serbian brutality and the...

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has apparently been set adrift. Ever since last February, when Turkey captured the terrorist organization’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, the group has struggled— and largely failed— to maintain any sense of its former military or...

Why have China’s rulers launched a crackdown on Falun Gong? Why did party chiefs declare the group a serious threat to the Communist Party and the most grave danger to the regime since the Tiananmen movement of 1989? Why...

Ehud Barak’s victory over Benjamin Netanyahu in the May 17 Israeli election has been interpreted widely to mean the triumph of a secular, Oslo-supporting majority over a religious and nationalist opposition. But this fails to explain either the large...

When Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui told a German interviewer this month that relations between the Republic of China on Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China were a form of state-to-state relations, a diplomatic firestorm predictably erupted over his...