“If I was told back in 2012 … that I would add Russia’s president to our database of documented war criminals on the basis of an international arrest warrant … I would have thought it was crazy,” Ukrainian journalist and former political prisoner Stanislav Aseyev recently reflected. Last Friday’s arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his alleged accomplice, Maria Lvova-Belova, are ushering in an era-defining historical…

The U.S. and the Soviet Union were still waging the Cold War, immersed in concerns about arms control and nuclear proliferation, when President Ronald Reagan, on March 8, 1983, warned against “the aggressive impulses of an evil empire” in “the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.” Four decades later, those words ring truer than ever. The “evil empire” of the Soviet Union…

Who would you believe about Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s intentions: a distinguished American political scientist or an equally distinguished Russian sociologist? The American political scientist is John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. The Russian sociologist is Grigory Yudin of the Higher School of Economics and the Moscow School for the Social and Economic Sciences. Mearsheimer is known for having argued consistently that NATO enlargement…

Between Russia’s war in Ukraine and the strategic competition with China — and both heating up — Central Asia is now a region more important than ever for U.S. national and international security interests. While we are paying a lot of attention to China in the Indo-Pacific basin, we are almost totally neglecting its Eurasian dimension. Meanwhile, Beijing is taking advantage of a Russia weakened…

Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium sometimes seems to be closely correlated with Washington’s ability to confuse the debate. Ten days ago it emerged that Tehran’s centrifuges were enriching to a level as high as 84 percent, very close to the 90 percent level generally accepted as needed for an atomic bomb. But last Sunday, CIA Director William Burns told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that…

A distinguished Singaporean diplomat recently asked a good question: “Why hasn’t 85 percent of the world imposed sanctions on Russia after its illegal invasion of Ukraine?” His answer is revealing, less about the reality in Russia and Ukraine, and more about perceptions in what he calls the Global South: “The honest answer is that in their heart of hearts, many leaders of these countries do…