BY PHILIP AUERSWALD In the past century of dramatic political and technological change, the centrality of oil in foreign policy has been a constant. Political leaders and governments of all types have been compelled to ensure the reliability of oil supplies for military use, to reduce the potential vulnerability of their economies to fluctuations in [...]
BY MARK N. KATZ Saparmurat Niyazov ruled Turkmenistan from its December 1991 independence that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union until his death in December 2006. Although Turkmenistan has enormous natural gas reserves, Niyazov—who styled himself “Turkmenbashi” (leader of the Turkmen)—kept most of his citizens impoverished, uneducated and in fear of his security [...]
BY REUBEN E. BRIGETY, II It isn’t every day that I find myself in northern Kenya visiting a camp with 150,000 Somali refugees, or hearing an American soldier talk about the strategic importance of vaccinating sheep in Djibouti as part of the Global War on Terror. But neither is it every day that, as a [...]