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Showing posts from January 2, 2015

HOW PEACE FARED IN 2014

The past year has been a difficult one for world peace. This has been true not only because of the severity and escalation of civil and regional wars in different parts of the world, but also because of how certain of those conflicts have influenced international tensions and driven renewed polarization among leading world powers. The principal concern for the year has had to do with a major deterioration in relations between the West and Russia. Riding on his bolstered popularity at home, which was powered by the economic improvements with which his government has been credited, Russian President Vladimir Putin chose 2014 to be a year of self-assertion on the world scene. Putin has been at the pinnacle of power in Russia, as either president or prime minister, throughout the first decade and a half of the new millennium. After years of leading—together with his partner in power, current Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev—a movement toward closer ties with the West but a separate p