Europe
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Monthly Archives: October 2019
Russia Proposes Changes to International Internet Laws
The current laws of cybersecurity are contained in a document known as the Convention on Cybercrime, also called the Budapest Convention. A couple of the main points in the Convention are that cybercrime can be an international concern, as opposed to being a concern on a country-by-country basis. This means that the United States may have to step in to help enforce cyber laws that may be legal in the United States, but illegal elsewhere, and that other countries can monitor each other’s’ internet activity under the guise of trying to find people who may be breaking foreign laws while residing in the United States. This, however, also allows the United States to have greater control of the Internet on its own shores, as anyone breaking copyright law internationally to proliferate materials could still be caught and reprimanded. The Convention can lead to many complex issues, but can also allow countries to maintain Internet freedom in the way they see fit. With the Internet becoming a global issue, there must be global standards for it, and the Budapest Convention allows global standards for the issue to exist (Anderson).
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Monthly Archives: October 2019
Russia’s Military Presence in the Arctic
“With more than half of all Arctic coastline along its northern shores, Russia has long sought economic and military dominance in part of the world where as much as $35 trillion worth of untapped oil and natural gas could be lurking.” (Dillow)
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Monthly Archives: September 2019
Russia’s Reckless Development of Nuclear Weapons
A nuclear explosion rocked an offshore platform in the White Sea on August 8, killing five nuclear scientists and two Defense Ministry employees. The following weekend, the Kremlin only provided small details and contradictory information, an approach which added to the suspicion surrounding the incident. Finally, on August 12, Vyacheslav Solovyov, scientific director of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center revealed that these scientists were working on “small-sized energy sources using radioactive fissile materials” at the Nyonoksa military range (Smith). Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear agency, later divulged that the nuclear system included “isotope power sources within a liquid propulsion system” (Smith).
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Monthly Archives: September 2019
Domestic Social Issues and Terrorism in the UK
The tides of terrorism are reaching a number of nations with increasing severity, including the islands of the UK. With heightened tensions due to a number of terrorist attacks within the last few years and divisive rhetoric from both lawmakers and the general public, a sense of vulnerability is emerging.
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Monthly Archives: August 2019
Ukrainian Orthodox Church Freed from Russian Oversight
What began as the straightforward territorial claim and annexation of Crimea in 2014 has now become a protracted, multidimensional conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. While the two countries continue to exchange economic, political, and physical blows, Ukraine has moved its fight for permanent independence into the sphere of religion.
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Monthly Archives: August 2019
FaceApp’s Russian Connection: Is it Actually Dangerous?
FaceApp recently came back into vogue after going viral for the first time in 2017. FaceApp uses AI to alter a person’s face with various filters (Giancaspro). This time around, however, many people began to realize that FaceApp was collecting metadata on all of the pictures they were uploading to the app for image processing. One of the main concerns of the app was that there was evidence that the app did all image processing server-side, giving FaceApp access to copies of pictures uploaded to it. These concerns were further exacerbated when consumers found out that FaceApp was created by a Russian company owned by a previous executive of Yandex. The CEO of the FaceApp company assured the media that FaceApp does send data to Russia, and evidence suggests that this is true (Carman).
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Monthly Archives: June 2019
Serbia-Kosovo Relations: An Ethnic Dilemma
Peace Prospects for Kosovo and Serbia: A Historical Context.
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Avoiding a second Falkland Islands conflict
Last month, Argentina and Great Britain commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Falkland Islands Conflict in which Argentina attempted to take possession of the island about 250 miles off its coast in the Atlantic Ocean. Argentina’s claims for the the Falklands, or the Islas Malvinas as the Argentines call them, go back into the 19th century despite British control of the islands since 1833 (with the exception of the short time Argentina “re-occupied” them before Britain forcibly removed Argentina’s forces from the islands weeks later). Although the Falkland Conflict reestablished British control of the islands, Argentina has continued to fight for them in other ways, such as including the territorial claim for the Malvinas in its reformed constitution in 1994.
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Recent Trends in Radicalization
The attack in France this past week at the hands of the terrorist Mohammed Merah is reawakening Europe to the realities of radicalization. This event should not be viewed as the beginning of a complex new terror campaign domestically but should be seen as an infrequent reality of war with terror groups. The majority of attempted domestic attacks have been unsuccessful for a number of reasons, and most people who are successfully recruited end up going to conflict areas in order to train and act out their new sense of ideology rather than stay in their country. A quick overview of some aspects of the radicalization process will reveal that there is no trend towards coordinated attacks or rampant radicalization in the West.
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Buying Time
Recently the European Union has been building up to the implementation of “crippling” new sanctions against the government of Iran. These new sanctions were finally revealed on January 23 and their primary focus is on limiting Iran’s oil export capability. Despite the strong rhetoric, these sanctions will not truly be effective in the short-term as they bar only new oil contracts with Iran while honoring current contracts until 1 July. Why are we seeing this apparent weakening of the economic hammer against Iran? Why not simply crush Iran into submission and force them into immediate negotiations? The basic answer is that the West is not capable of dealing effectively with Iran right now and needs more time to prepare.
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Monthly Archives: July 2019
Conflict in Ireland Part 2: The IRA
Ireland soon found itself in a civil war, fighting for independence from England. This civil war lasted in two main phases from 1912 to 1923. The first phase, the Irish War of Independence, lasted from 1919 to 1921 and the second phase, the Irish Civil War, lasted from 1922-1923.4 Ultimately Ireland was defeated but Britain agreed to split Ireland into two; Northern Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom and under British control, and Ireland (the southern portion of the island) became a free state. At the beginning of the civil war the Irish Volunteers renamed themselves the Irish Republican Army and served as the militant branch of the rebel government. In 1921 the government signed a treaty with England known as the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which temporarily established peace and an Irish Free state. After the signing of the treaty the IRA experienced its first of many secessions, the IRA split into two different groups: Pro-Treaty IRA and Anti-Treaty IRA.4 Following the Irish Civil War and the establishment of Ireland as its own republic, many members of the Anti-Treaty IRA were killed or captured and the remaining went underground and the IRA was once again a single organization.4
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Monthly Archives: July 2019
Russia and Belarus Relations: Where Are We Now?
With talks currently in place between the two countries in preparation for further integration, it is important to understand how both Russia and Belarus got to this point in their somewhat strained relationship. Looking at the two countries from a westerner’s perspective, one might think that the two countries have always been allied forces with a one-track mind, but when you dig a little deeper you may find that appearances aren’t always true to what is really going on underneath.
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Monthly Archives: July 2019
Hanging by a Thread: US-Turkey Relations
Until recently, the relationship between the United States and Turkey has been stable. Lately however, Turkey has been taking actions contrary to those that would uphold strong relations with the US. This recent unnerving trend has increased tensions between the two countries and tightened Turkish ties to Russia.
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Monthly Archives: July 2019
'We are Ivan Golunov' - Russia Media Defends Its Own Against Wrongful Imprisonment
Russian investigative journalist Ivan Golunov was on his way to meet a source for his latest article on June 6 when he was detained by the police. They took him into custody after finding mephedrone, an illegal designer drug, in his backpack. When Golunov appeared in court two days later, his charges had increased from drug possession to drug trafficking, potentially a 10- to 20-year sentence, after the court accused him of having a drug lab in his apartment (Hodge, Nathan). Some, however, weren’t buying it. None of Golunov’s friends had ever as much as seen him drink alcohol, let alone get high, and people familiar with his apartment confirmed that the pictures authorities had shared of the drug lab couldn’t be anywhere near it (Kovalev, Alexey).
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Monthly Archives: July 2019
Russia's Cyber Campaigns
Russia has a long history of cyber warfare. InvestigateRussia.org lists several of the important cyberattacks fueled by Russia during the 21st century. The Committee to Investigate Russia is a non-profit organization that worked during the Robert Mueller investigation as an aggregation of news pertaining to Russia’s affiliation with the US, and while no longer active still exists as culmination of information having to do with post-Soviet Russia.
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Monthly Archives: July 2019
Kremlin Retaliates Against Georgia Protests
Thousands of protesters took to the streets after Russian lawmaker Sergei Gavrilov, deputy of the Russian State Duma, sat in the Georgian parliamentary speaker’s seat and addressed the audience in Russian. Gavrilov was there as president of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (IAO), “a body set up by the Greek parliament in 1993 to foster relationships between Christian Orthodox lawmakers” (Antidze). Protests cut IAO meetings short.
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Monthly Archives: July 2019
Conflict in Ireland Part 1: History of Ireland
Tensions and violence in Ireland have existed for as long as it’s been populated. Ireland has been inhabited since 6,000 BC and has been the home of the Celts since 500 BC. In 300 AD, Ireland was introduced to Christianity and soon after the Catholic Church sent missionaries to organize an Irish Church; circa 600 AD, Catholicism became the country’s national religion.1
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Monthly Archives: June 2019
Democracy Still Elusive in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan held elections on June 9. For the first time in the former Soviet country’s history, the ballot did not include Nursultan Nazarbayev, who reigned as president since Kazakhstan’s 1991 creation. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev won the election with 70.9% of the vote. Amirzhan Kossanov, the main opposition candidate, came in a distant second at 16.2%, and Daniya Yespayeva, Kazakhstan’s first female presidential candidate, came in third at 5.05% (Vesterbye).
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