Russia

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has crafted an ambitious agenda; two key planks of which are fighting Russia’s endemic problem with corruption and moving the national economy away from its reliance on extraction-based industries (primarily oil and natural gas production) towards more value-added pursuits-Medvedev’s current pet project is the construction of a Russian “Silicon Valley” outside of Moscow.  It all sounds like a well-reasoned plan for the future, yet it’s worth noting that his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, made many of the same pledges, but his eight years in office ended without any notable successes either in tackling corruption or in esta

Think for a minute about the Wakhan Corridor.  You say you’ve never heard of the Wakhan Corridor?  Don’t feel bad, not many people have since it is one of the most remote places on Earth.  Look at a map of Afghanistan; see that long, skinny piece jutting out from the northeast corner reaching over to China, the thing that sort of resembles a giant splinter sticking in the flank of the country?  That is the Wakhan Corridor, a mere ten miles wide in some areas, it is a place that owes its existence to the geopolitical machinations of the 19^th century; created by the British

Last Tuesday, Intelligence Squared sponsored a debate on whether or not President Barack Obama’s foreign policy signaled America’s decline as the driving force in global affairs: Dan Senor and Mort Zuckerman argued yes; Wesley Clark and Bernard-Henri Levy argued no.

Saturday's poetry event co-sponsored by PEN and the Poetry Society, the oldest poetry organization in America, showcased five poets from four continents reading selections of their poetry to a small crowd in the intimate Grand Gallery of the National Arts Club near Grammercy Park in Manhattan. Of little to note other than the poetry itself, I have included some poems from each author in the order that they presented their works during the course of the night. Have a read and click on their names under the "panelist's bio" section to read more from each of these amazing authors. 

Now, I’m not talking about the seeming inability of print and broadcast news outlets to successfully adapt to newfangled inventions like the Internets and Electronic Mail, but rather their slavish dedication to a peculiar worldview where the Cold War never ended.

Terror returned to Moscow last Monday morning when a pair of female suicide bombers blew themselves up in the city’s subway system (the second busiest in the world) during the morning rush, killing 40 people and wounding 90 others.  The cable news channels in the United States began coverage of the attacks soon after they occurred and almost immediately began pointing to “Chechen separatists” as the likely culprits - which would have been a fine assumption to make, say ten years ago.Suicide bombings have been occurring with disturbing frequency lately in Russia’s Ca

As 2009 fades into history the urge for anyone with access to a media outlet is to compile some sort of year-end list. I am not going to put together a list of top stories or year end awards, but in the column below I am going to highlight seven stories that I think deserved more attention than they received, either because they challenged the conventional wisdom in international affairs, help to explain where our world is or where it may be heading, or, in the case of the science story at the end, because it is just too bizarre not to note. So without further ado, here is my humble year-end collection:


The US Navy, Climate Change Believers

Hi everyone,

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be joining the talented team of bloggers that Shaun Randol has assembled here at The Mantle. Although I’ll mainly comment on things happening in South Asia, I also intend to make use of the freedom provided by the “-ish” in the title to discuss other issues, generally related somehow to something in South Asia (no, I can’t be more specific – that’s how great the “-ish” is).

It’s winter in Europe, time for snow, St. Nicholas, and the annual Russia-Ukraine dispute over natural gas supplies. On Wednesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned his counterparts in Ukraine not to try to modify a 10-year gas supply contract between the two countries.