Russia

Tehran Times (05/03) quotes Flynt Leverett on UN sanctions and Iran's energy contracts.
Foreign Policy (05/02) features Steve Coll and Peter Bergen discussing Bin Laden.
Russia Profile (04/30) cites Anatol Lieven on the future of US-Russia relations.

Today, the American Strategy Program is proud to host Senior Research Fellow Parag Khanna's latest book, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order. His talk is entitled, "The Global Great Game" and runs from 12:15 to 1:45. For more information about the event, click here.

In the meantime, Salon.com featured Parag in their Big Think section. Check it out:

Later today, the U.S. Navy is going to shoot down an old U.S. spy satellite. But why? Three rationales are floating out there and New America's Jeffrey Lewis tells the Today Show's Jim Miklaszewski that while safety and secrets may be the domestic rationale, China and Russia see this as a pure test of our anti-satellite capability.

On Sunday, the parliament of Kosovo declared the two-million-person republic independent from Serbia. As the repercussions begin to emerge, the various minority regions of the former Soviet Union are being watched closely. New America Senior Research Fellow Anatol Lieven comments in this piece from Azeri news service, Trend.

THOUGH the international community does not accept Kosovo’s independence to be a precedent for other conflicts in the region based on ethnic separatism, Anatol Lieven, a prominent British analyst, disagrees with such statements.

"Kosovo and Nagorno-Karabakh are different conflicts, but at the same time they are both separatist conflicts in autonomous areas in other states, inevitably, what happens in one will have a certain effect on what happens in the other", Anatol Lieven, British policy analyst and chairman of International Relations and Terrorism Studies at King's College London, told Trend's correspondent in London.

Lieven believes that the Kosovo example can be applied to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "Why not? It is easy to say that things are specific, but it depends who is doing the talking. Everybody tries to make up different rules, different cases. But in fact, of course, it does set a precedent", said the British analyst.

Kosovo's independence will have repercussions for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he says.