Category Regional

Asia Pacific, Book Reviews, North America, Security & Conflict

Cold Rivals: The New Era of US-China Strategic Competition edited by Evan S. Medeiros

November 8, 2023

Evan S. Medeiros offers a useful collection of essays that examine US-China relations from the 1970s towards our more recent, turbulent days. The defining characterization of US-China relations throughout the book is one of “strategic competition” among rivals. This is…

Asia Pacific, Security & Conflict

Unveiling Purpose and Agency in Kashmiri Women’s Participation in Militancy

October 31, 2023

The Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan traces its origins back to the partition of British India in 1947, marking the beginning of a longstanding dispute that continues to ignite violence and unrest in the region.¹ However, a pivotal turning…

Africa, Energy & Environment

Water Security & The Maghreb

October 18, 2023

North African states and communities are no strangers to careful water management and its relevance to effective governance in challenging times. Old underground water channels, ingenious methods of water storage and collection, to today’s dams and hydropower projects, are time-spanning…

Asia Pacific, Policy & Politics

The Contradictions of the Party-State: China’s Experience with the COVID-19 Pandemic

October 9, 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic has reignited the debate regarding the relative merits of democratic, illiberal, and authoritarian rule; specifically, which system has more effectively responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, and more broadly, which political system has better addressed the expectations (and…

Europe, North America, Policy & Politics

How U.S. History Can Save North Macedonia and Defeat Putinism in the Balkans

October 2, 2023

Given the spectacular killing of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the less-than-spectacular Ukrainian counter-offensive, it’s looking a lot tougher to defeat Russian President Vladimir Putin. Fortunately, the United States has a rare opportunity to defeat Putinism in the Balkans. To score this…

Europe, Security & Conflict

Post-Soviet no more – the transformative impact of war on Russia’s neighbors

September 18, 2023

This is a shortened, significantly revised article based on the authors’ chapter “Shifting balances – the war and Russia’s neighbours,” published in the report “Russia’s War Against Ukraine and the West: The First Year”, edited by Maria Engqvist and Emil…

Asia Pacific, Europe, Security & Conflict

A World Historical Perspective on the War in Ukraine and the China-Taiwan Standoff

September 10, 2023

As the world faces a protracted war in Ukraine with no clear end in sight and a tense standoff in the Taiwan Strait with potential for catastrophic escalation, the time is ripe for a world historical perspective on these conflicts,…

Asia Pacific, Civil Society, Regional, Security & Conflict, Topical

The Palestinianization of the Rohingya Crisis: No Money, No Love

September 4, 2023

Evidently, for quite a long time, the protracted Palestinian refugee crisis has not only condemned millions of Palestinians to a life of indescribable suffering but also kept the Middle East destabilized and much more volatile than any other region across…

Asia Pacific, Economics, Governance & Law, North America, Policy & Politics

How China’s Political System Discourages Innovation and Encourages IP Theft

July 31, 2023

U.S. observers have long complained that Chinese firms steal intellectual property (IP) from American companies, universities, and research institutions.¹ Most of these complaints stress that the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) directs this theft. Other analysts focus…

Asia Pacific, Economics, Energy & Environment, Europe

Unveiling Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) Challenges: The Potential Dispute Between China and EU

July 24, 2023

In December 2022, the European Union (EU) approved a green tax on carbon-intensive commodities called the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). It aims at reducing carbon leakage, a phenomenon in which manufacturers move carbon-intensive production to countries with laxer climate…

Europe, Policy & Politics, Security & Conflict

Hamster on a Treadmill: Western Diplomacy and the Kosovo Status Dispute

July 10, 2023

Since 1878 the Balkan region has come under successive great power security caps, each of which has turned out to be less permanent than advertised. The war in Ukraine underscores the fact that stability in the area, and in Europe…

Governance & Law, North America, Policy & Politics

Unmoored from the UN: The Struggle to Ratify UNCLOS in the United States

June 26, 2023

On July 9, 1982, after three series of multilateral conferences spanning decades of rigorous negotiations, President Ronald Reagan formally announced that the United States would not sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), on the…