Publications
10.04.2013. The Map of the World: Geopolitics Stages a ComebackGeopolitics as a theory has been almost an outcast for nearly half a century. In Soviet Union it was blacklisted as bourgeois, while in the West it was dismissed as politically incorrect and remained a hobby of provincial university professors, who had no chances of entering the official establishment. In new Russia, the liberal group of political scientists preferred to follow in the footsteps of Western political correctness, while the anti-liberal part – the Eurasians –...
03.04.2013. Foreign Policy 2012: Russia Has Been Lucky Until Now
//Chapter in the Annual Report of the French-Russian Analytical Center Observo
26.03.2013. A ruthless fight for Europe?
EU leaders purposely crushed the Cypriot banking system so as to frighten other debtors Just to get this straight, I don’t have any secret information on the real reason for the Eurogroup’s sudden ultimatum to Cyprus on taxing deposits, that is, to expropriate them partially in exchange for European loans, without which the banking system would collapse. The banking system, in fact, together with the leisure industry, forms Cyprus’ economy. That said, I have my own...
25.03.2013. Russia right to refuse Cyprus bail out but should back strong EU
When the eurogroup of finance ministers first issued its ultimatum to Cyprus demanding a levy on deposits – requiring their de facto partial confiscation – many Russians were indignant. Even Russia’s leaders called the Eurogroup demand absurd, non-professional, unfair and dangerous. The latest rescue plan agreed on Sunday by the eurogroup, which also involves the partial confiscation of deposits, changes nothing. Russian are angry – and have every right to...
18.03.2013. Xi in Russia
MOSCOW – The atmospherics surrounding Xi Jinping’s coming trip to Russia – his first visit to a foreign country as China’s new president – remind me of a slogan from my early childhood in the late 1950’s: “Russia-China, Friendship Forever.” The irony is that, even in that slogan’s heyday, Sino-Russian relations were deteriorating fast, culminating in spasms of combat along the Amur River in Siberia less than a decade later. Is that...
04.03.2013. Fatal Thaws
MOSCOW – During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and, in a milder way, the United States imposed external limits on the activities of states and societies, causing longstanding conflicts among smaller countries to be “frozen.” Following the Soviet Union’s collapse in the 1990’s, those conflicts began to “unfreeze.” With interethnic tensions already on the rise, Yugoslavia was the first country to dissolve into conflict. Soon after, war...
21.02.2013. So many nyets: Why the chasm between US, Russia is so hard to bridge
Many in the West see a perplexing obstructionism in Russia's stands on everything from Syria to adoption. But Russia is working from a fundamentally different understanding of the post-cold war world. MOSCOW By Fred Weir, Correspondent For many in the West, Russia remains the brain-twisting, multi-layered enigma of Winston Churchill's overworked...
24.01.2013. West's Decline Will Play a Mean Trick on Russia
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a thaw in many issues that had been frozen during the Cold War. The two countries dictated terms to states and societies, the Soviet Union generally taking a more heavy-handed approach, while the U.S. typically acted with more finesse. One example is when U.S. and Soviet leaders sealed a nuclear nonproliferation agreement that accepted their own nuclear arsenals but denied other states the same right. There was also a...
23.01.2013. A Third “Unfreezing”
The collapse of communism in the 1990s was followed by what is commonly referred to as the “unfreezing” of numerous conflicts that had been “frozen” by structural confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, which at that time represented the East and the West. The external limits for activities of states and societies were dictated by the Soviet Union (strictly) and by the United States (somewhat milder), and sometimes by both of them, for...
27.12.2012. Keeping the Powder Dry
Why Russia Should Build Up Its Military Might Even in a Favorable Foreign Environment Sergei Karaganov is Honorary Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and Dean of the School of World Economics and World Politics at the National Research University–Higher School of Economics. Resume With the global situation and Russia’s development vector as they are, the policy of military build-up is inevitable. The question is how and at what...