China Launches First Leg of New Silk Road Project

China officially launched a behemoth $79.8 billion infrastructure project in its northwestern province of Gansu. The project, while beginning in Gansu, a region of China that shares no land borders with any Central Asian nation, is merely the starting point for a series of large infrastructure development projects which will encompass much of Central Asia.…

Russia: Prominent dissident Nemtsov is killed

Longtime dissident and former deputy prime minister of Russia Boris Nemtsov was shot four times in the back and killed in an attack that has left Russian civil society in an uproar. In the weeks before his death, Nemtsov constantly raised suspicions that he would be targeted by the Putin regime for assassination. Nemtsov was one of…

Power and Change in the New Great Game: An Interview with Alexander Cooley

Dr. Alexander Cooley is Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, as well as Deputy Director for Social Sciences Programming at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. Professor Cooley has researched and written extensively on the impact of external actors on the Former Soviet Union, and is the author of Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great…