2012-09-22 by Richard Weitz At the 2012 Moscow Nonproliferation Conference, organized by the Center for Energy and Security Studies (CENESS),Nikolai Spassky, Deputy Director-General of the State Corporation on Atomic Energy ‘Rosatom’, enlightened us attendees as to the civil nuclear energy plans of the Russian Federation. Although Spassy was perhaps too…
2012-09-04 By Richard Weitz The United States should make a greater effort to help Japan and Russia reduce their territorial tensions. Whatever its causes, the dispute prevents these two countries from aligning together to advance their common security and economic interests, which are also shared by the United States. When Boris…
2012-09-02 By Richard Weitz Japan and Russia are on a collision course and can be resolved only if both sides have the wil to do so. History has a long reach in the Pacific and managing history is a constant of any Pacific strategy. Japanese and Russian historians can cite competing…
2012-08-30 By Richard Weitz Relations between Russia and Japan have remained strained throughout the post-Soviet period. Despite the end of the Cold War, Moscow and Tokyo have been unable to resolve their territorial dispute over what the Russians call the Southern Kurils and the Japanese label their Northern Territories. The 1875…
2012-07-14 By Richard Weitz Iraq’s oil industry is indispensable to the country’s economic growth. The oil sector provides more than 90 percent of the government’s revenue and 80 percent of Iraq’s foreign exchange earnings. Iraqi officials have tendered bids and recently awarded ten contracts to international oil companies. These investments…
07/6/12: by Richard Weitz A team of Russian defense analysts at the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) in Moscow have produced the most comprehensive and comprehensible study of the Chinese defense industry in any language. In Shooting Star: China’s Military Machine in the 21st Century, Mikhail…
6/27/12: By Dr. Stephen Blank Evidently the Administration thinks it can persuade Russia to resolve Syria’s civil war by simply abandoning its ally, Bashear Assad, and thereby facilitate a Yemeni type solution there where Assad simply leaves Syria.[i] Moscow too has sent envoys around the world telling everyone that it…
by Richard Weitz Russia and China conducted their first official bilateral naval exercise (variously referred to as “Maritime Cooperation 2012” and “Sea Interaction 2012”) from April 22-27 in the Yellow Sea near Qingdao, China. The exercise was a genuinely mixed operation, in which both countries made major contributions to the…
