The EU’s Eastern Partnership Ukraine policy fails to recognize the fact of a conflict situation in Ukraine. This failure exacerbates the deleterious results of the EU’s failure to define its goals there, as well as with respect to the Eastern … Continue reading →
Oral presentation of the paper, “How the EU’s Learning Deficits Created Eastern Partnership Failure: A Complex-Systems Explanation of Political Failure,” to the Conference Security in the European Union and its Neighbourhood: Challenges and Policy Responses, University of Dundee, 15-16 June … Continue reading →
Russia began Turkish Stream construction this month without even a sales contract in place for Turkey to accept the gas. The European Union is unsympathetic to Turkish Stream, which is Russia’s last-minute replacement for the cancelled South Stream project that … Continue reading →
Russia is gambling big with its Turkish Stream problem. Gazprom is preparing to begin work on the Turkish Stream pipeline without there being an Russian-Turkish intergovernmental agreement in place. The Japanese firm Saipem, which Russia has been paying for months … Continue reading →
Who buys Kazakhstan oil production today? Question: How might the falling oil prices affect Kazakhstan’s ability to develop and deliver oil to other countries, especially Europe? Answer: The Italian company ENI been major player in the Kazakhstan’s energy sector for … Continue reading →
Caspian Sea gas is not so plentiful in Turkmenistan, where the main deposits are in the country’s southeast. Yet with the completion of the East-West Pipeline (EWP), that gas is starting to become politically available for export westward through the … Continue reading →
Russia continues to play hardball with natural gas for the European Union, trying to get Brussels to sacrifice Ukraine in return for the promise of better relations with Moscow. This geo-economic and power-political jousting is conditioned by the fact that EU sanctions against Russia will begin to expire in three phases between March and July unless there is an EU consensus to keep them in place.
Continue reading →Interview on John Batchelor Show, WABC-AM 770 (New York City), 23 December 2014. … Continue reading →
Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed unhappiness with the decision to approve the purchase of the Canadian company Nexen by the Chinese “para-statal” company CNOOC, and suggested that it may be a one-off. This is unlikely, yet it still remains necessary … Continue reading →
Economic Papers 2. Washington, D.C.: George Washington University, Elliott School, Central Asia Program, September 2012. Kazakhstan’s policy of ‘resource nationalism’ scored another win in early 2012 when the North Caspian Operating Company (NCOC), which is managing the development of the … Continue reading →