In recent weeks, pundits, diplomats and assorted foreign policy wonks have started raising the alarm on U.S.-Russia relations, with the Obama administration's much-trumpeted "reset" seeming to be increasingly under threat. A recent travel ban by the U.S. State Department on certain Russian officials believed to be involved in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky elicited an angry response from Moscow threatening cooperation in areas ranging from Afghanistan to North Korea. Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has started grousing about U.S. missile defense plans again. And all of this comes against a backdrop of increasing criticism from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his factional supporters in the Russian government about U.S. policy in Libya and Syria. Predictably, this has resulted in a stream of op-eds in the Western press raising the specter of a "new Cold War." READ MORE

Turkey joined NATO at the beginning of the Cold War for U.S. protection in case of Soviet attack. At that time Turkey was clearly on the frontline, but today all that lies in the past and Turkey is pursuing its own assertive and independent foreign and security policy. Ankara’s new-found confidence naturally has consequences vis-à-vis NATO, for this growing assertiveness is testing the alliance’s cohesion, as is illustrated by a number of lingering issues and high-profile disputes. READ MORE

Qubay Ortiqov is a farmer from Karakalpakstan, a remote region in the Central Asian state of Uzbekistan. READ MORE

On August 15, Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev promised he will end the contract with Washington on the US Transit Center in Bishkek in 2014, when the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) plans to withdraw from Afghanistan. “The contract for the Transit Center will expire in 2014. Our position is the following: we will notify in six months the US side of the termination of the contract in full compliance with assumed obligations and from 2014 there will be the first major civilian international transport junction,” the prime minister said . READ MORE

The “Eastern Partnership” Summit to be held in September 29th-30th in Warsaw should significantly revive this project due to the increase of financing and specification of programs. In particular, they express hopes for successful finalization of talks on the agreement on Association of Ukraine and the EU. In practice this should mean the announcement about finalization of talks on the Association of Ukraine and the EU, as well as sounding new offers for the projects’ participating states: Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. These offers should cover significant increase in project financing or concentration of funds for specific programs. An important issue within the frameworks of “Eastern Partnership” should be the relaxation of visa regime of the EU with the member-states of the project. READ MORE

Potentiality of the area is huge; it will be one of the top 20 of the world's reserves: Atomic Minerals Directorate. READ MORE

The United States has failed to get South Asia right. READ MORE

In September, the U.N. General Assembly will vote on whether to recognize Palestine as an independent and sovereign state with full rights in the United Nations. In many ways, this would appear to be a reasonable and logical step. Whatever the Palestinians once were, they are clearly a nation in the simplest and most important sense — namely, they think of themselves as a nation. Nations are created by historical circumstances, and those circumstances have given rise to a Palestinian nation. Under the principle of the United Nations and the theory of the right to national self-determination, which is the moral foundation of the modern theory of nationalism, a nation has a right to a state, and that state has a place in the family of nations. In this sense, the U.N. vote will be unexceptional. READ MORE

With the end of the Gadhafi regime seemingly in sight, it is an opportune time to step back and revisit one of the themes we discussed at the beginning of the crisis: What comes after the Gadhafi regime? READ MORE

The proposed placement of U.S. missile defense base in Europe has been a thorn in the reset of relations. From the Russia point of view, there has been a distinct lack of progress in achieving agreement on missile defense plans, between Russia on one hand and United States and NATO on the other. The last round of negotiations in Brussels raised questions about the prospects for achieving a mutually acceptable agreement on this pressing topic. READ MORE