On November 5th 2009, a cocaine-loaded Boeing 727 aircraft arriving from Venezuela was discovered torched and emptied on a makeshift airstrip in the Malian desert (Gao region). The Sahel-Saharan area is clearly a contact zone between very distant worlds.

Since Mohammed VI came into power, Morocco’s African policy has undergone notable change in comparison to his predecessor’s period.

Our interest in this topic stems both from our annual visits to Mauritania which started fifteen years ago, and the tiny amount of research noticed on trafficking in this country.

While largely interrupted by the colonial period premise, trade relations between the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa have enjoyed a new boom with the independence era. However, until the end of the 1990s, the African policy of the three Maghreb countries significantly impacted their economic projection.

For the last 50 years the governance of the US-Japan alliance has often been characterized by secret diplomacy and discretionary choices. In the post-war period Japan's strategic choices have given overall priority to sustaining a strong security alliance with the United States.

The failure of Prime Minister Hatoyama to transfer the dangerous U.S. military base of Futenma out of Okinawa hastened his resignation, announced on June 2nd.

This paper takes a careful look at China's perceptions of the role of nuclear weapons in its national security policy and defense posture.

Relations between Russia and Saudi Arabia have never been as friendly as they were in 2009. After years of tension over Saudi support for Islamist fundamentalism in the post-Soviet space and Russia's proximity to Iran and Iraq, Moscow and Riyadh have progressively moved closer to each other.