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Germany becomes Russia’s closest partner in Europe and whole world

The ninth meeting of the Russian-German Forum, Petersburg Dialogue, which was set up eight years ago under the initiative of then-president Vladimir Putin and then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, took place in Munich on July 14-16.Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev and Germany’s Angela Merkel held a meeting within the scope of the forum to discuss issues of cooperation between the two countries.Germany has become Russia’s major partner in Europe during the recent years. To which extent are the Russian-German relations strong? Pravda.Ru interviewed one of the leading German experts on Russia, an expert with the German Council for Foreign Politics, Alexander Rar.“How would you estimate the relations betwe...

Interview by the Evrasian Youth Movement Tell us about yourself, your Weltanschauung. Can you describe yourself as an adherent of conservative-revolutionary or the new right movement? I consider myself a solidarist. My Weltanschauung is that of the New-Solidarist Alternative (N-SA). All the people in the world have a right to their own sovereign development, their own destiny, territory, local identity and future. In this sense, I am Flemish (Dutch part of Belgium) and assume my position as part of the Flemish people. The concept conservative-revolutionary is complicated and tends to suggest a contradiction. I prefer to keep it to national-revolutionary. 1. National – because a people ne...

'Eurasia and Europe should Cooperate against America' interview with Alexandr Dugin

According to Russian strategist Alexandr Dugin, geopolitics as a philosophy of location is one of the most fundamental instruments that the postmodern age has developed against the historicism of modernity.Dugin has attempted to make the global status of Russia meaningful among generations, in the framework of geopolitics that he defines as mankind's mutual dealing with location.Russia had taken the stage as an empire due to its historical and cultural accumulation and its geostrategic position on the world stage. In his opinion, the only way to maintain the claim of the Russian Empire, that stands between civilizations, as an Asian and a European force, is to reinvigorate Eurasian geopoliti...

Syrian President Bashar al Assad arrived in Moscow on Wednesday for a two-day visit during which he will meet with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Al Assad’s invitation to Moscow was announced shortly after Russia began its military offensive against Georgia. The timing was no coincidence, and Damascus fully intends to ride Russia’s wave of resurgence into regional prominence. Russia and Syria had a close defense relationship during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union maintained a naval presence in the Mediterranean Sea off the Syrian coast and facilities at Syrian ports. In those days, Syria used its relationship with Russia to protect itself from the threat of Israel. But that patronag...

In international conflicts economic levers are sometimes more effective than military moves. Blockading supplies of strategic raw materials, freezing money transfers, and strikes at the businesses of the national Diaspora may deal as much damage as tank attacks and air strikes. Since coming to power Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has repeatedly complained about Russian economic pressure, and has done much to separate the economies of the two countries. Today, economic relations between Russia and Georgia have been reduced to the minimum. In conditions of tough confrontation, not to mention armed conflict, this situation is in many respects favorable to Georgia because it reduces t...

Russia and OPEC deepen ties

Oil and conflict have a symbiotic relationship. Last month's armed confrontation between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia highlighted Georgia's vulnerability as a Caspian energy corridor, where the West's prize possession, the $3.6 billion, million-barrel-per-day, 1,092-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, transits. Since the military clash ended, the geostrategic maneuvering between Russia and the United States for Caspian energy reserves has only intensified, and Russia has taken the dispute to a new level by cozying up to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and proposing "extensive cooperation."After the fighting ended, Washington subsequently dispatched Vice...

Russia, Ahmadinejad and Iran Reconsidered

At Friday prayers July 17 at Tehran University, the influential cleric and former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani gave his first sermon since Iran’s disputed presidential election and the subsequent demonstrations. The crowd listening to Rafsanjani inside the mosque was filled with Ahmadinejad supporters who chanted, among other things, “Death to America” and “Death to China.” Outside the university common grounds, anti-Ahmadinejad elements — many of whom were blocked by Basij militiamen and police from entering the mosque — persistently chanted “Death to Russia.”Death to America is an old staple in Iran. Death to China had to do with the demonstrations in Xinjiang and the dea...

Russia and China : an approaching conflict ?

Published on ATENEY http://www.ateney.ru/eng/eng025.htm#c by Dr K. R. BoltonAcademy of Social and Political Research The seeming rapport in recent years between Russia and China is one of the foundations of the post-Cold War world. Yet Russo-China friendship is an aberration of history. This article examines whether the Sino-Russian accord is based on secure and enduring foundations, or whether it is a very temporary alliance of convenience that will erupt sooner rather than later into conflict and expanding conflagration throughout Asia. ChinaТs past inclination to resort to invasion backgrounds the current suspicion between the two newfound УfriendsФ amidst ChinaТs growing in...

By Robert Steuckers Throughout its history, Russia has been estranged from European dynamics. Its nationalism and national ideology are marked by a double game of attraction and revulsion towards Europe in particular and the West in general. The famous Italian Slavist Aldo Ferrari points out that from the 10th to the 13th centuries, the Russia of Kiev was well-integrated into the medieval economic system. The Tartar invasion tore Russia away from the West. Later, when the Principality of Moscow reorganized itself and rolled back the residues of the Tartar Empire, Russia came to see itself as a new Orthodox Byzantium, different from the Catholic and Protestant West. The victory of Mo...

by Rick Rozoff Developments related to military and security matters in Europe and Asia have been numerous this month and condensed into less than a week of meetings, statements and initiatives on issues ranging from missile shield deployments to the unparalleled escalation of the world’s largest war and from a new security system for Europe to a new Russian military doctrine. A full generation after the end of the Cold War and almost that long since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the past week’s events are evocative of another decade and another century. Twenty or more years ago war in Afghanistan and controversial missile placements in Europe were current news in a bipolar world. ...

Pas De Trois?

If Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ever complains (which, given his public image, doesn't seem to happen often), this is hardly about the lack of media attention. On the contrary, as I argued before, the Western media's obsession with Putin's persona borders on insanity, and every summer we're invited to decipher a secret meaning of Putin's naked torso vacation pictures or his caressing a tiger cub. This summer is different though. Forest fires ravaging the European part of Russia are keeping Putin at work and fully dressed ("in a light blue shirt and dark blue jeans", as a recent article in the LA Times informs us with the gravity of a grounded fashion magazine). But the lack o...

As the dust settles on the conflict in South Ossetia - and as it vanishes progressively from the headlines in the Western press - one thing has become overwhelmingly clear. It is that Georgia will now never join NATO and that the balance of power in the world has therefore shifted radically as a result of this little six-day war. During the conflict, many people in the Russian media (and in the country at large) seemed obsessed with the negative coverage of Russia’s position in the Western media. It is certainly true that the media all over Western Europe and North America gave heavy prominence to the Georgian position and was very anti-Russian in tone. It is also true that this negative ...