Turkey is rediscovering its Ottoman past, says the British professor living in Ankara. He picks five books for compelling insights into Turkish history. — Read on fivebooks.com/best-books/turkish-history-norman-stone/
United Nations and World Conflicts: Archival Footage from 1950
National Security Podcast: Great power competition with Ali Wyne – Policy Forum
In this episode of the National Security Podcast, Katherine Mansted speaks to Ali Wyne about why great powers compete, how China, Russia, and the United States are shaping the global system, and whether their behaviour is making the post-COVID-19 world more dangerous. Is competition between great powers destined to be fraught with the risk of [...]
How the geometry of ancient habitats may have influenced human brain evolution | Ars Technica
There's a pivotal scene in the 2012 film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey when Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins, and a company of dwarves are chased by orcs through a classic New Zealand landscape. For Northwestern University neuroscientist and engineer Malcolm MacIver, the scene is an excellent example of the kind of patchy landscape—dotted with trees, bushes, [...]
Armenian-Azerbaijani Border Clashes: The Russian Dimension and Beyond – Jamestown
Following the outbreak of deadly Armenian-Azerbaijani border clashes on July 12 (see EDM, July 14, 16, 20 [1][2]), Russia’s state energy giant Gazprom reported that its local natural gas pipelines in Armenia were damaged, due to the shelling (TASS, RBC, July 14). Furthermore, the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) announced a meeting, at the [...]
“Suez in Perspective” – British Propaganda Film on the Invasion of Egypt in 1956
A Field Guide to U.S.-India Trade Tensions | Council on Foreign Relations
Trade between the United States and India has grown steadily ever since India’s economy began to take off in the mid-1990s and its information technology sector shot to prominence in the early 2000s. From 1999 to 2018, trade in goods and services between the two countries surged from $16 billion to $142 billion. India is [...]
The Renewed Dependency on Mercenary Fighters – DER SPIEGEL
Increasingly, governments that are involved in military conflicts are turning not to their own countrymen, but are instead relying on foreigners who they pay as mercenaries. Countries like Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Iran are ignoring other countries' borders and sovereignty, sending hired guns into foreign countries because they don't like the regime [...]
Putin’s Constitutional Tsarism | by Anastasia Edel | The New York Review of Books
... if history offers any lessons, this attempt at greatness will last no longer than the false covenants and official statues every autocracy erects, for they fail in their fundamental goal: improving the lives of the people. The legacy of Stalin and Lenin is not a socialist empire but the graves of millions, murdered and [...]
New survey of European public opinion signals trouble for transatlantic alliance – Responsible Statecraft
Amid the ongoing global crisis caused by COVID-19, a new report from the European Council on Foreign Relations has troubling implications for the much-vaunted transatlantic alliance. The report, released June 29, shows that the present crisis has brought European trust in the United States to an all-time low. This data caps off several years of [...]
