Suchergebnisse

Since the US defined Russia and China as its strategic rivals, the question of whether Moscow and Beijing will form an alliance has gained new relevance. Although Sino-Russian cooperation has continued to flourish in a number of areas, the obstacles to the creation of a fully-fledged alliance remain evident.

This article compares the two policy narratives that have recently become prominent among Chinese political and expert circles regarding the Sino-Russian relationship: "no limits" and "endogenous drives". While the two policy discourses convey a certain degree of internal tension, they converge on portraying Sino-Russian relations as operating on a level distinct, and higher than that of the "axis of convenience" or the "revisionist challenger to liberal order" conceptualizations of the relationship that are prevalent in Western discourse.

Conflicts over national identity in both Russia and the US have helped to fuel the deterioration in relations between the two countries. Understanding the nature of these conflicts improves our understanding of how each side views the other and highlights the nature of the obstacles standing in the way of improved relations.

The article analyzes Russia's role and interests in the South Caucasus. It discusses Armenian-Russian relations in the framework of Armenia's so-called multi-vector foreign policy and presents the main aspects of cooperation. This is followed by a discussion of the Second Artsakh War, its transformative impact on the strategic security environment in the South Caucasus, and Russia's new role in the region. The article concludes by presenting some of Russia's approaches to Armenia and Armenia-Azerbaijan relations and suggesting ways of bringing a durable peace to the region.

By applying transactionalism - conceptualized as a series of iterative quid pro quo arrangements - to relations between Azerbaijan and Russia in the context of the Second Karabakh War, this article shows how the contingent interactions that characterize the Azerbaijani-Russian relationship produce unexpected outcomes. The war in Karabakh in the fall of 2020 is seen as a product of such transactional exchange: Russia tacitly supported Azerbaijan's right to regain territories it lost in the early 1990s in exchange for Baku's approval of Russia's deployment of its peacekeeping (PK) mission to Karabakh. Russia's military presence in what is internationally recognized as Azerbaijan's sovereign territory provides the Kremlin with a toolbox of policy leverage, including the status issue, keeping Armenian troops in or out, continued arms sales to Armenia, and the PK mission's mandate. These tools allow the Kremlin to maintain a constant sense of insecurity in both Armenia and Azerbaijan and to promote Russia's ambition to dominate the region.

From May 2021 to 2023, Russia will hold the chairmanship of the Arctic Council for the second time in the forum's history. As chair, it will lead the collective efforts of the foremost regional deliberative body, comprised of the eight Arctic nations, six permanent participants representing Arctic Indigenous Peoples, six working groups, and thirty-nine observer states, intergovernmental organizations, and non-governmental organizations. This represents a critical opportunity for the host country to orchestrate focused attention on the importance of the Arctic through its particular lens.

The contentious Nord Stream 2 pipeline has revived the fundamental differences of opinion that divided the allies during the Cold War and created new inter-European tensions. A closer look at the crises in the Western alliance occasioned by the Druzhba oil pipeline in the 1960s and the Yamal-Urengoi gas pipeline in the 1980s reveals the continuity of disagreements between Europe and the US, as well as showing similar patterns of weaponizing Western technology and sanctions. If history is any guide, lessons from the past might provide an indication of how to resolve the ongoing crisis over Nord Stream 2.