Maidan in Almaty? Oh yeah. But it’s complicated. So is that much fear and loathing all about gas? Not really. Kazakhstan was rocked into chaos virtually overnight, in principle, because of the doubling of prices for liquefied gas, which reached the (Russian) equivalent of 20 rubles per liter (compare it to an average of 30…
Afghanistan was at the heart of the 17th Extraordinary Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers representing 57 nations at the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). It was up to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to deliver the keynote address to the session, held on 19 December at the Parliament House in Islamabad. And he…
On November 28, the 15th Summit of the Leaders of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) Member-States was held in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, with the participation of the heads of state and governments of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan, the countries that are members of the organization. The ECO summit…
Under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, claiming the role of a new regional superpower, Turkey has been increasingly active in recent decades pursuing an independent foreign policy with an attempt to position itself as the key state of the so-called “Afrasia,” that is, as a link between Africa, Asia, and Europe. Recently the Turkish…
The Heartland plus population plus production plus sea power: that’s the end of the “Columbian Age”. In 1904, the British geographer, Halford Mackinder, read a paper named “The Geographical Pivot of History” at the Royal Geographical Society. In the paper he advanced a hypothesis on the influence of geographic reality on world power relationships. This…
Those who criticize Poland’s expression of state sovereignty in defending its borders from terrorist-connected migrant/refugee threats should in the interests of consistency also criticize Russia’s near-identical policy when it comes to preemptively defending itself from the same threats posed by Afghan ones. The True Roots Of The Latest Migrant Crisis The Eastern European Migrant Crisis…
