The three-day state visit on July 25-27 by Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu, accompanied by a military delegation, to Pyongyang is the first-ever such high-level visit from Moscow in the post-Soviet era. Shoigu’s meeting with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday altogether elevates what would have passed as a friendly gesture by…
As the BRICS approach the most important summit in their history on August 22-24 in Johannesburg, South Africa, some fundamentals need to be observed. The top three BRICS cooperation platforms are politics and security, finance and the economy, and culture. So the notion that a new BRICS gold-backed reserve currency will be announced at the…
Even though this corridor is less efficient than transiting through Kazakhstan, it more than makes up for that by mitigating the strategic consequences of Astana’s potential “defection” to the West, which can’t be ruled out after recent events. Governor of Russia’s Astrakhan Region Igor Babushkin announced the creation in early July of a “Southern Transport…
On July 20, CIA Director William Burns said that the infamous American intelligence service is “making progress on rebuilding spy networks inside China” after supposedly “losing assets in the country over a decade ago”. Burns made the controversial comments during last week’s Aspen Security Forum, where he touched upon several important topics, including Russia and…
The geopolitical chessboard is in perpetual shift – and never more than in our current incandescent juncture. A fascinating consensus in discussions among Chinese scholars – including those part of the Asian and American diasporas – is that not only Germany/EU lost Russia, perhaps irretrievably, but China gained Russia, with an economy highly complementary to…
The United States has settled on a multi-pronged strategy to thwart China’s development and preserve America’s premier position in the global order. The economic part of the plan is called “decoupling”, which refers to the selective blocking of China’s access to critical technology (particularly advanced semiconductors). The strategy has garnered nearly-universal support among America’s foreign…
