Political Geography

KazEnergy: Caspian region ranks second in terms of untapped hydrocarbon reserves

June 19, 2013

Source: menafn Caspian region ranks the second in the world by in terms of untapped oil and gas reserves, General Director of the KazEnergy Association Aset Magauov said at the 3rd International Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition entitled “The development of the Caspian shelf,” which takes place in Atyrau on Wednesday. “The development of [...]

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Philippines sends marines to disputed shoal

June 19, 2013

Source: asahi/AP The Philippines has deployed a fresh batch of marines and supplies to a shoal in the disputed South China Sea, where a Chinese warship and surveillance vessels appeared last month and triggered a new standoff in the strategic waters, the Philippine defense secretary said on June 19. The new contingent of Filipino marines replaced [...]

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Former head of Mossad starts secret talks with Iran

June 19, 2013

Source: vestnikkavkaza “Israel is facing new opportunities thanks to those changes that the Middle East is experiencing. This process has not finished yet, it’s continuing and it’s hard to predict its results. However, there is no Saddam Hussein now, no Gaddafi, no Salah in Yemen, and even Bashir says he won’t run for the presidency in [...]

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Peter Dale Scott:Hawks, doves and pipeline politics in Syria

June 19, 2013

Source: AT Like President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, United States President Barack Obama’s Syrian policy is being tugged strenuously in Washington by hawks and by doves. On June 13, Obama handed two limited but ominous victories to the hawks: a finding of fact that the troops of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad “have used chemical weapons [...]

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The U.S. deploys more troops in Yemen

June 18, 2013

Source: Yemen Post Military officials confirmed on Tuesday media reports stating that more U.S. troops have landed in Yemen,, as part of Washington-Sana’a military efforts against al-Qaeda in the region. An estimated 1,700 troops arrived in Yemen on Monday: 1500 soldiers were immediately deployed to Anad strategic airbase in the southern province of Lahj, just [...]

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Strategic Resources: Why Siberia Could Be Russia’s Secret Economic Weapon

June 18, 2013

Source: CNBC Once infamous as a place of exile and no-return during the Tsarist and then Stalinist eras, Siberia is being touted as a beacon of light by the Russian government as it looks east, rather than west, for growth potential. Mineral and metal-rich Siberia is already home to oil, diamonds, gas and coal producers and [...]

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Lithuanian State Security Department (SSD):Russian intelligence agencies are fighting a fierce battle against Lithuania

June 17, 2013

Source: lithuania tribune The Lithuanian State Security Department (SSD) states in its report that Russian intelligence agencies are fighting a fierce battle against Lithuania. It is certainly not always that stupidity, naivety or ignorance explain the processes that take place in Lithuania. Sometimes, it feels like somebody’s firm hand is guiding Lithuania towards self-destruction; that somebody [...]

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ANALYSIS: The internationalization of the Syrian civil war

June 17, 2013

Source: Israel Hayom America sending light arms • Russia sending S-300 and MiGs • Iran sending 4,000 elite troops • Chechen Islamists fighting Assad have anti-aircraft missiles • Jordan, Egypt cut off diplomatic relations with Damascus • Israel, U.S. plan for WMD strike. World powers and regional actors are increasingly converging on Syria, a development [...]

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China and Central Asia: A Significant New Energy Nexus

June 17, 2013

Source: European Financial Review By Fakhmiddin Fazilov & Xiangming Chen China now accounts for almost 20 percent of the world’s energy consumption and its demand is still growing at high speed. In order to keep up with the expanding industry China turns to Central Asia with ambitious gas line projects and considers countries such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and [...]

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Pakistan Army to preempt India’s ‘Cold Start Doctrine’

June 16, 2013

Source: Tribune According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the war games were meant to operationalise new strategies against the evolving threat. At the culmination of four years of war gaming and exercises, the Pakistan military has now adopted a ‘new concept of war fighting’ aimed at preempting India’s ‘Cold Start Doctrine,’ security officials said [...]

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Zbig: Obama Syria plan is ‘chaos, baffling, a mess, tragedy’

June 14, 2013

Source: Washington Examiner The president’s abrupt decision to arm Syrian rebels is a huge mistake, one driven by emotion and propaganda not they kind of strategic White House plan that has marked past successful interventions in civil wars, according to former Carter-era national security chief Zbigniew Brzezinski. In a broad attack on President Obama’s vague [...]

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The war on Africa: U.S. imperialism and the world economic crisis

June 14, 2013

Source: Pambazuka Mineral resources and the quest for strategic advantage guide western foreign policy on the continent Capitalism has failed to provide adequate housing, jobs, medical, educational and other services to many people in the West. As well, China’s global influence is rising. These are some of the reasons behind the US quest for mineral [...]

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Marines, Army form quick-strike forces for Africa

June 13, 2013

Source: USA Today The Marine Corps and Army have developed quick-reaction forces to respond to attacks such as the one in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. The Marines will base 500 troops at Moron Air Force Base in Spain, about 35 miles southeast of Seville, said Capt. Eric Flanagan, a [...]

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U.S. Military Proposal to Arm Rebels Includes No-Fly Zone in Syria

June 13, 2013

Source: WSJ A U.S. military proposal for arming Syrian rebels also calls for a limited no-fly zone inside Syria that would be enforced from Jordanian territory to protect Syrian refugees and rebels who would train there, according to U.S. officials. Asked by the White House to develop options for Syria, military planners have said that [...]

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Path to Persia:US to arm Syrian rebels

June 13, 2013

Editor’s Note: Give me a break! And now an overt operation to supply weapons to FSA, while covert operations have been operating behind the scenes for months to smuggle weapons to foreign fighters|terrorists. Related articles are a snippet of weapons operations funneled to Syria US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels [...]

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India’s anti-China manoeuvring

June 13, 2013

Source: PakObserver During his recent visit to New Delhi, and after meeting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang said that the two emerging Asian economies were going to enhance cooperation. No doubt, Beijing wants cordial relationship with New Delhi. But India which apparently emphasizes mutual cooperation with China, showing lethargic approach in the solution of border dispute, [...]

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Sentiment Builds in China to Press Claim for Okinawa

June 13, 2013

Source: NYT A group of Chinese scholars, analysts and military officials convened on a recent morning in a spartan schoolroom to draw attention to China’s simmering territorial dispute with Japan. Participants spoke in urgent tones. Reporters took notes. A spirit of solidarity reigned. But the deliberations were not about the barren rocks in the East [...]

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Nagorno Karabakh – “new Afghanistan” of the region

June 13, 2013

Source: APA Due to the international organizations’ indifferent attitude, new “drugs factory” has emerged in the region that is able to compete with Afghanistan Baku. Vugar Masimoglu – APA-Analitik. “Poppy is the only winner of long-lasting war in Afghanistan. This flower is the true field commander that is seizing new territories every day,” said Afghan journalist [...]

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Why Azerbaijan should matter to America

June 12, 2013

Source: News.AZ There is a point where three great powers — Russia, Turkey and Persia — meet: the Caucasus. At the moment they converge in a country called Azerbaijan. That fact makes Azerbaijan a battleground for these three great powers, which have competed with each other along various borders for centuries. Until 1991 Azerbaijan was [...]

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Why Tunisia Could Host the U.S. Military’s African Headquarters

June 12, 2013

Source: Tunisia Live The post-revolutionary Tunisian government may soon find itself inclined to host a major piece of the United States’ international military architecture. The debate over whether Tunisia should accommodate the United States Africa Command, also known as AFRICOM, started when the U.S. declared its intentions to create the command in 2006. At the time, the [...]

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The four great games

June 12, 2013

Source: The News The Americans have a great facility for giving compact names to complex issues to enable easy interpretation of their policies by the American public. Af-Pak is one such name – indicating the intertwining of Afghanistan and Pakistan as the main theatre of the war on terror. The term implies that US policies [...]

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Permanent Military Footprint:Pentagon’s ‘Bridging Force’ for Afghanistan

June 10, 2013

Editor’s Note: A permanent Pentagon Bridging Force will conduct military operations to secure opium/heroin production and distribution to fund covert operations not funded by the American taxpayers , secure rare earth element mining facilities for military weapons systems (compete against Russia/Chinese interests in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region), divert all future oil and LNG pipeline routes away from [...]

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U.S. Hegemony : America Secretly Approves $1.3 Billion Worth of Military Aid to Egypt

June 10, 2013

Source: Trumpet In a May 9 memo publicized last week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wrote that the American government will continue to provide its annual $1.3 billion military aid package to the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt. The aid package has been in place since 1979 under former President Anwar Sadat. Back [...]

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China details Indian Ocean strategy and interests

June 8, 2013

Source: Hindu Blue book’ laments Beijing has trailed behind New Delhi and Washington in securing its interests China has, for the first time, attempted to spell out its strategy — and plans — to secure its interests in the Indian Ocean in its first “blue book” on the region, released here on Saturday. The blue [...]

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The NATO Afghanistan War and US-Russian Relations: Drugs, Oil, and War

June 8, 2013

Source: Voltaire I delivered the following remarks at an anti-NATO conference held in Moscow on May 15, 2012. I was the only North American speaker at an all-day conference, having been invited in connection with the appearance into Russian of my book Drugs, Oil, and War. [1] As a former diplomat worried about peace I was happy [...]

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Color Revolutions: US ‘helping spark political unrest’

June 7, 2013

Source: Gulf Daily News So many devastating changes in the Middle East’s so-called ‘Arab Spring’ aftermath are being blamed on misguided US policies in many countries. This in-depth report reveals how Washington institutions allegedly groom destructive elements when attempting to destabilise nations. Their tentacles are now even touching Turkey’s fully-fledged democracy – one that has [...]

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Intelligence report: on Russia’s position to NATO anti-missile defence and possible incidents during Zapad 2013

June 7, 2013

Source: Lithuania Tribune Russia still wants to avoid elements of NATO’s anti-aircraft and anti-missile defence in close vicinity and proposes to the Alliance to divide Europe into responsibility areas, the Second Investigation Department under Lithuania’s Ministry of National Defence, in charge of military intelligence, said in a 2012 report on threats to national security on [...]

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Nicaragua Enlists China To Build An Alternative To The Panama Canal

June 7, 2013

Source: PopSci After a century as an only child, the Panama Canal is about to get a sister. Nicaragua announced recently that it is awarding China a contract to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, a move that could have huge implications for everything from military power to international trade. The new Nicaraguan canal will connect [...]

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Reviving the Maghreb Union

June 6, 2013

Source: Majalla In the wake of the Tunisian revolution Maghreb integration and cooperation is once again on the table. “We will work to restore unity with our brothers in Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Mauritania,” declared Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki during a tour of the North African countries in February 2012. Mohammed VI of Morocco spoke [...]

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