Observations on Center-2011

The Center-2011 exercise is officially concluding today. What follows are some observations culled from the Russian newspapers, not necessarily all connected. I’ll try to put together an assessment of the exercise in a few days, once more reports from the field come in. 1. There was an interesting article in Moskovskii Komsomolets that addressed the question [...]

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Center-2011 begins today

The most important event of the Russian military’s annual training calendar begins today. Major fall exercises have a long history in the Russian military, but in recent years they have begun to attract more and more publicity. In large part, this is because top military commanders have sought to publicize them to a greater extent [...]

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US-Russian Cooperation in the Caspian: An Opportunity Worth Pursuing

For the United States, the strategic importance of the Caspian region has increased dramatically in recent years. The Caspian littoral states have come to provide an important set of opportunities for the U.S. in a strategically significant region. Now, however, they face a range of significant security threats in the region, which have resulted from [...]

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Turkmenistan’s isolationist strategy eases, to a point

While I hang out in Russia, here’s another Oxford Analytica brief. This one was written right after a quick trip to Ashgabat, back in early December 2010. — SUBJECT: The shift from an isolationist foreign policy towards selective engagement. SIGNIFICANCE: Since President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov took office four years ago, Turkmenistan has started to shift away [...]

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Armed Forces of Central Asia and the Regional Threat Situation

In the most recent issue of NVO, Aleksandr Khramchikhin has a very useful description of the forces located in Russia’s Central Operational Strategic Command. This is in the context of an article examining the total array of forces located in or near Central Asia, including Kazakh, Uzbek, Pakistani, and Chinese forces in the region. I [...]

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The Revolution of the Wilted Tulips

Almost exactly five years after the Tulip Revolution saw the overthrow of Askar Akaev in Kyrgyzstan and his replacement by Kurmanbek Bakiyev, in the last two days an almost identical set of protests seems to have toppled the Bakiyev government. I say seems to, because rather than fleeing for the border after protesters stormed various [...]

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