The early 1990s saw the climactic rupture of the Soviet Union, and with it a near total extirpation of Russian status on the world stage. That the federation has since managed to claw its way back from this decade in the backwaters of international affairs can be attributed to the ideas and vision espoused by the late Yevgeny Primakov, Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 1998.
Geographically incomparable – insomuch that one occupies 30,528 square kilometers and the other constitutes the second largest country in the world by total area – yet politically and culturally analogous to the extent that both contain significant French-speaking minorities, the federal parliamentary constitutional monarchies of Belgium and Canada present ideal cases for comparison.
Barter, commonly associated with ancient times and micro-level transactions, summons to the mind images of rustic trade routes spanning across Asia, as merchants from the East and traders from the West journey to exchange exotic spices for commodities and metals. What many fail to realize, however, is that barter is far from a phenomenon isolated to the history books
Many analysts have said it is faulty to compare Rouhani and Gorbachev. That’s true, but not quite for the reasons they list. As General Secretary of the Communist Party, Gorbachev was the head of state. His Iranian counterpart, therefore, is the Supreme Leader. Like Gorbachev, Khamenei’s primary concern is the survival of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Speculations on the European sovereign debt crisis abound. Whether Germany shall remain the main creditor for a collapsing European Union is in large part a political rather than an economic decision. Angela Merkel faces a strong domestic pressure and her March 27th electoral loss of the Baden-Württemberg constituency, traditionally an electoral stronghold of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, sent a clear message....