Europe's top trade official has signaled his intention to create a new retaliatory trade tool, amid ongoing complaints from European businesses that they are being excluded from Chinese public contracts. READ MORE

End of ‘balkanization’? READ MORE

If the prognostications of many foreign policy pundits are to be believed, the NATO summit in Lisbon, set to open a week from today, could be a watershed moment for the Atlantic alliance, something which will set the West on a path of monumental geopolitical realignment. READ MORE

The Obama administration is preparing the ground for tougher sanctions on Iran by pushing to revive last year's ill-fated fuel swap deal. The renewed proposal to swap Iran's low enriched uranium for research reactor fuel is not a serious attempt at engagement, as the Unites States knows it will likely fail. Instead, it is intended to depict the United States as a reasonable negotiating partner, and Iran as a duplicitous state bent on obtaining the bomb at all costs. This could increase support for harsher international sanctions that are more strictly implemented. READ MORE

Despite a near reversal by Russia on its opposition to the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, Turkmenistan has decided not to cut them in on the project. READ MORE

Russian geopolitics of the 21st century will be different from the days of empire and conflict of the nineteenth and twentieth. The increased accessibility of the Arctic, with its energy and mineral resources, new fisheries, shortened sea routes and shipping along the rivers between the Arctic coast and the Eurasian heartland, is both enabling and propelling Russia to become a major maritime state. READ MORE

On October 30, Poland announced its intention to privatize the state-owned majority stake in the country’s second-largest oil industry concern, Lotos Group. The Polish government is inviting interested parties to pre-tender talks on the Lotos Group. READ MORE

The Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov and the Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who met the day before in the Caspian city of Turkmenbashi, expressed their intention "to develop cooperation in the sphere of supplies of Turkmen natural gas to world markets through alternative routes, the final joint communiqué, issued by the local media on Saturday, says. READ MORE

Britain and France last week announced that they would begin a new era of defense cooperation intended to conserve their military power at a time of shrinking military budgets. The plan involves sharing nuclear weapons research and other expensive weapons development programs, pooling aircraft carriers in times of crisis and jointly training rapid-reaction brigades that can fight side by side under a single commander. READ MORE

During the visit to Tbilisi on 30 September – 1 October, NATO Secretary General A.F.Rasmussen said that the door of the Alliance remains open to Georgia and that the decision made during the Bucharest NATO Summit in 2008 is still in force. However, this statement could hardly be considered as an introduction to fast Georgia‘s integration into Alliance. It could first of all be based on several examples reflecting the dialogue between Georgia and NATO (or, to be more exact, the state of relations close to stagnation) during the recent years. READ MORE