Can Europe survive without Russian gas? The formal US response to Russia’s demands for security guarantee was delivered to the foreign ministry in Moscow on Wednesday. Moscow’s worst fears came true: Washington simply ducked without addressing the main Russian concerns — NATO’s expansion, rollback of NATO deployments to pre-1997 level, etc. —and instead offered to …
Blinken delays US response to Russia
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warns of imminent Russian assault on Ukraine, scrambling to get allies to rally. (File photo) A special press briefing in unseemly hurry by the US state department to warn an imminent Russian assault on Ukraine; a surprise call by state secretary Blinken to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov to …
Takeaways for Russia, India from Merkel’s US visit
German Chancellor Angela Merkel to visit White House on July 15, will be the first European leader to do so during Biden presidency A caveat must be added to the famous line by Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, NATO’s first Secretary General and Winston Churchill’s chief military assistant during the Second World War, that the purpose …
Continue reading “Takeaways for Russia, India from Merkel’s US visit”
Biden-Putin summit is on
On March 17, on the eve of the first scheduled meeting in Alaska of senior Chinese and American diplomats since President took office, the United States sanctioned twenty-four Chinese officials for undermining Hong Kong’s democratic freedoms, including a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo, Wang Chen. In diplomatic terms, the timing of the action was pointed …
Germany draws another line in the sand for the US
Russia’s pipe-layer crane ship Fortuna, capable of laying about 1km of undersea pipe a day (File photo) Exactly a week after the announcement on December 30 regarding European Union’s long-sought comprehensive investment agreement with China, the Danish Energy Agency received an innocuous revised schedule from Nord Stream 2 AG for the construction of the gas pipeline …
Continue reading “Germany draws another line in the sand for the US”
Medium and small states in the time of multipolarity
Three developments this week underscore that the growing multipolarity in the world order is inexorably loosening up established alliances that provided underpinnings previously for the United States to preserve its global hegemony through the past century. Given the magnitude of the domestic crisis in the US, it is not going to be able to reverse …
Continue reading “Medium and small states in the time of multipolarity”
Belarus, Navalny cast shadows on Russia’s ties with EU
Belarusian opposition protestors marching toward the presidential palace, Minsk, September 6, 2020 The Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu disclosed on September 6 on the state television that there has been a thirty percent increase in aerial surveillance on the country’s borders by NATO jets in August as compared to last year. Unlike in the past when surveillance …
Continue reading “Belarus, Navalny cast shadows on Russia’s ties with EU”
Europe’s gas alliance with Russia is a match made in heaven
Amidst the excitement over the killing of the ISIS chief Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, a development of much impact on international security passed by when Denmark made the innocuous announcement on October 30 that it would permit the proposed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to pass through its exclusive economic zone. Copenhagen modestly explained that it …
Continue reading “Europe’s gas alliance with Russia is a match made in heaven”