Truth Commissions: Histories of Laughter and Forgetting

History kills. Literally. In a bizarre event reported by RFE/RL, Lenin has recently taken revenge on an irreverent desecrator of a Belarussian memorial to the dear leader in an act showing how history continues to keep a firm grip on its victims.The anonymous 21-year-old is said to have climbed on top of the larger-than-life, seven-meter [...]

Russian Foreign Policy toward the Balkans: A Situation Assessment

russian-foreign-policy-toward-the-balkans
Here is the final version of my part of the project on Russia. I hope to be able to publish here the team’s final report, which includes an analysis of competing hypotheses on Russian Reorganization of the Civilian Nuclear Energy Sector, a cost benefit analysis of Russia – Ukraine energy security relations, and a social [...]

Possible Sources of Future Intelligence Failure

Russ Travers’ article written in the eve of 9/11 does sound sinister in retrospect in that he points to shortcomings in the intelligence community, which did, sure enough, manifest themselves in a major calamity. This, at least, was my impression after reading his article the first time. However, on a second read, I began to [...]