Central Asia has long been one of the key fronts in America’s ideological battle and information war against Russia. A year ago, the American geopolitical intelligence platform Stratfor published its forecast for US policy in Central Asia, which focuses much attention on Russia. Analysts from this agency, which is dubbed the “Shadow CIA”, indicated in…
We are cruising on a pristine, 380 km-long four-lane superhighway from Almaty to Khorgos – finished in 2016 for $1.25 billion, 85% of the cost covered by a World Bank loan. And then, suddenly, riding parallel to us, there’s the real superstar of New Silk Road connectivity. Meet Yuxinou, the container cargo train plying back…
Crossing Tajikistan from west to northeast – Dushanbe to the Tajik-Kyrgyz border – and then Kyrgyzstan from south to north all the way to Bishkek via Osh, is one of the most extraordinary road trips on earth. Not only this is prime Ancient Silk Road territory but now is being propelled as a significant stretch…
The dichotomy between the regime policy and public opinion is nowhere near as sharp as in the world of diplomacy. And nowhere in the contemporary situation is this maxim so sharply visible as in the dalliance of the West Asian oligarchies with Israel. The romance began at least a decade ago — perhaps, more —…
As far back as 1997, during his speech at Johns Hopkins University, the then U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott defined a number of principles that later on became widely known as the Talbott Doctrine. Without going into too much detail, the basic premise of it was as follows: “We have no business being…
Donald Trump’s recent statement that he will not engage in talks with the Taliban and the US will be “hitting our Enemy harder than at any time in the last ten years!” and the subsequent terrorist attacks in Afghanistan are just the tip of the iceberg of the difficult and complex situation in which the…
