Articles

U.S. Central Asia policy has room to improve, but the Trump administration is steering things on the right track.

This week, the city of Prague will commemorate the fifth anniversary of the slaying of Russia’s freedom-promoting opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, by renaming for him the square where Russia’s embassy is located.

The most important takeaway from the killing of Qassem Suleimani doesn’t just have to do with Iran.

What if you held a national election and no one turned out? That’s the situation currently confronting Iranian officials, who are grappling with the aftermath of a truly disastrous outcome in last week’s parliamentary elections.

Iran’s clerical army could decide that an internal transition is the best answer, and move to remove (or at least subordinate) the country’s current clerical elite. Such a step, after all, would allow the IRGC to preserve its current, extensive grip on national power while simultaneously working to alleviate economic pressure from the U.S. and reintegrate into the international community.

What does Riyadh really think about China? It was one of the questions on my mind last week, when I led a research delegation to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This month, the Trump administration released its strategy for Central Asia.

Yet while shale production has dramatically cut reliance on Middle East and other imported oil, trumpeting our “energy independence” is premature.

Venezuela’s tale is hardly a unique one. In recent decades, socialist nations across the world have scrapped their doctrinaire visions and incorporated elements of free enterprise to rescue their ailing economies.

On Jan. 28, British officials announced that, after extensive internal deliberations, the government had decided to move forward with a limited partnership with China’s Huawei corporation to build 5G telecom networks in the country.

It's your move, Mahmoud Abbas. That's the basic message behind the Trump administration's long-awaited "deal of the century," which was unveiled publicly on Tuesday at a joint press conference between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Signs are mounting that in Tehran, which faces rising pressures at home and abroad, the country’s powerful hardline conservatives are circling the wagons, raising the odds of still more Iranian global provocations. The question is whether Washington — which continues to tighten the economic screws on Tehran — is ready for what might come next.

For years, Iran’s ruling ayatollahs have grappled with a profoundly vexing problem: how best to maintain the loyalty of the country’s growing (and increasingly unruly) population. The question isn’t strictly a political one. It is also made significantly more complicated by the age of the Islamic Republic’s population, which cuts against the regime in key ways.

The latest proposals laid out by the president are simply too little, too late.

Recently, while participating in a wargame, I was asked by a military officer whether today’s Space Force has the equivalent of an Air Corps Tactical School, the military institution which originally matured the modern theory of airpower.

The Islamic Republic is too weak to wage a conventional war on the U.S. — but that doesn’t mean it poses no threat.

His Wednesday speech acknowledged difficulties Russian researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs face, particularly in the realm of finance.

One of the main tools of Russian influence across Central Asia remains poorly understood.

Moscow’s efforts to keep data on home soil are of interest to other authoritarian states — and even some liberal democracies.