ISSN 2618-9844 (Online version)
ISSN 1810-6374 (Print version)
Bakhtiar Amin - Kurdish Iraqi politician who was the Human Rights Minister in the Iraqi Interim Government from June 2004 to May 2005.
The Kurds after their setbacks in the aftermath of their independence referendum of 25th of September in 2017 in Iraq are facing another tragedy, but this time in Afrin in the western part of Kurdistan called Rojava.
The source of the challenge is whether Russia is (or soon will be) too strong or too weak. In fact, Russia is both. The tendency of leadership in both countries to waver inconsistently between the two images, rather than deal candidly and carefully with the way the two are conjoined, gives to narrow, near-term irritants a heightened resonance.
Anyone who has at least some idea about the theory of international relations should remember the oft-quoted formula put forward by the father of British geopolitics, Halford Mackinder: “Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.”
Experts had many expectations ahead of the Russian-Japanese summit held in Moscow in late January. Many believed that the meeting between the two leaders would lead to a breakthrough expressed in the signing of a peace treaty and introduction of full clarity in the matter of the Japanese claims to four Kuril islands.
The United States has launched the procedure of withdrawal from the Treaty on the Elimination of the Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty). Russia, in turn, also suspended its participation in the INF.
Relations between the US and Russia are at their worst since the end of the Cold War, China and the US have tense relations, India and China are trying to stabilize relations after a period of acrimony. The major powers appear today to be like the unhappy families in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: ‘Each unhappy family (major power in this case) is unhappy in its own way.’
Freedom of movement and freedom to choose a place of residence can be ranked among the category of freedoms which, as part of the Global Commons, have been restricted to varying degrees at the level of communities, states, and international associations.