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. 

The growing use of the internet by citizens (blogs, social networks, on-line donations, etc...) certainly impacts the way politics are done in the United States. However, the internet may not be as democratizing a political tool as it seems. The author, François Vergniolle de Chantal, is a lecturer at the University of Burgundy and the co-editor-in-chief of the review Politique Américaine.

Telecom industry has taken a significant place within of the economy of most African countries. In this aspect, it is an undeniable source of economic growth and development. It impacts on the financial sphere at three levels. 

European subsidies for wind energy are too high and unspecific. They risk frustrating their own objective.

An increasing number of projects in the health sector in Africa draw on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

Japan often pictures itself as an environmental leader. While many examples of Japan’s actions against climate change are in line with global climate change norms, others can be in opposition to them.

International relations in Europe are now entering a period of flux as the legacy of the cold war wanes and the "outsider" countries, notably Russia and Turkey, are rethinking their mutual relations as well as their place in the world.

European countries, lead by France, are expected to take a decision soon on the development and acquisition of MALE drones.

Their choices will be crucial not only for the preservation of European operational sovereignty in military terms but also to guarantee the future of the European aerospace industry.

Why do we have to drill through a mile of water and then three miles of rock to get oil? Surely there are better options in the world’s geologic resource base than deep, acidic, high pressure deposits that threaten the waters and coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Guinea, Campos Basin, Barents Sea and the Caspian. Most of this is oil that got deposited even before continental drift started.

It is now necessary to ask ourselves what place Europe holds in Russian foreign policy, given the recent developments in the latter. Indeed, Europe is by far Russia's most important partner. Nevertheless, Russia is developing a discourse of emerging state, in order to highlight the rapid loss of influence of Europeans in global affairs.

For several years the French-Turkish bilateral relationship is experiencing a phase of crisis and readjustments.

This article explains the central role of the Tibetan issue in complicating Sino-Indian relations. 

Pundits argue that the BP accident in the US Gulf is a final nail in the coffin of President Obama’s energy and environment legislation. They conclude that American energy and environment policy will be left in disarray with little hope for key decisions before the crucial Cancun climate change talks.

In Denmark last Tuesday, President Medvedev said he had a smiling face for the world. Not surprising. The deal he is reported to have done with President Yanukovitch should bring smiles to many Russian faces - mostly in the Kremlin. However, it is unlikely that the President’s namesake in Gazprom, Alexandre Medvedev is smiling because his company’s interests have once again been subordinated to Russia’s foreign policy agenda.

Russia's foreign policy toward the Greater Middle East is not an aggressive, anti-Western one, but a defensive policy aimed more at protecting Russian economic interests, working with virtually any government that opposes Sunni radicalism, and preventing Moscow from becoming a target of Muslim anger as occurred during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1979-1989) and Chechnya (since 1994).

Despite the resumption of high-level diplomatic contact between Washington and Pyongyang in late 2009, realization of a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula remains a very remote prospect, with the DPRK insisting that a peace agreement between the U.S. and North Korea and hence the cessation of "hostile DPRK-U.S. relations" are necessary before any consideration of denuclearization.

The third Ifri Annual Energy Conference held at the Plaza Hotel, Brussels in February 2010 posed the question: “How do we begin effectively to close the gap between climate change policies and current practices - or put another way between climate change rhetoric and market reality”.

Jacques Delors’ Notre Europe has rendered a considerable service to European energy policy thinkers, but his proposed European Energy Treaty is the wrong answer.

In recent decades, China's transformation from a regional energy supplier to one of the world's largest net energy importers, in particular with regards to oil and gas, has led to an increasing sense of energy insecurity in Chinese policy circles. Guaranteeing adequate supplies of energy to fuel economic growth is a central element in Beijing's efforts to maintain legitimacy in the face of economic reform and transformation. To combat energy insecurity a number of initiatives are being undertaken to diversify energy inputs, suppliers, and the means of their transport.

The barbed wire at the Prut River, on the Republic of Moldova’s (Moldova) border with Romania and, thus, with Europe will be removed by March 2010. This way, the last soviet “wall” will be torn. Maybe this symbolic action will open the door to the European Union (EU).

This brief analysis of the current external economic relations of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) leads to a number of conclusions.

Climate change, the risks it implies, the time horizons it imposes and the extent of possible consequences it threaten are exposing how the media deals with public issues.

The European summit last week has resulted in a compromise short-term agreement for aid to Greece.

News that Conoco will sell off a significant portion of its Russian holdings is couched in terms of various corporate strategies that make all this perfectly normal. Conoco is said to need cash and will anyway have a 10% share remaining in Lukoil that will provide them some degree of influence in corporate decisions.

Even though Russia's economy has returned to growth-on the back of higher oil prices-the financial crisis of 2008-09 will continue to reverberate across Russian politics and foreign policy. Domestically, the crisis has called into question the "social bargain" of the Putin years. It has also complicated President Dmitry Medvedev's push for economic liberalization and modernization.

The German environment minister Norbert Röttgen (CDU) revived the German debate about the future of nuclear power in February when he argued for a limited lifetime extension of Germany’s nuclear plants.

8 % of worldwide gas reserves are located on the African continent. Its relative economic weakness and the almost total absence of gas networks leads to a very reduced interior consumption (almost nonexistent outside Algeria and Egypt) which permits an important export capacity of the continent’s gas. Linking Sub-Saharan-Africa and the European Union (EU) with a gas pipeline thus is a reasonable project in economic terms.

Sub-Saharan African hopes of democratization raised by the end of the cold war and the decline in the number of single party states are giving way to disillusionment. Today, even countries such as Senegal and South Africa, reputed for their democratic nature, are threatening to veer towards authoritarianism.

The European gas market has an unusually large number of moving parts just now. Demand forecasts are buffeted by announcements of great expectations in de-carbonizing the energy mix, differing expectations on the longer term economic growth path and a range of assessments on how soon Europe will recover from the economic recession.

The Lisbon Treaty was meant to mark the dawning of a new era for the EU. But as this issue of Politique étrangère demonstrates, the present outcome, which is only in part the result of the Treaty, is far from satisfactory.

The present paper aims to describe the vitality and complexity of bilateral trade along the Sino-Myanmar border. 

An Interim Agreement on Trade and Trade related aspects (ITA), signed between the European Community and Serbia in April 2008, entered into force on February 1, 2010. This ITA, as a part of the Stabilization and Association Agreement, “establishes a bilateral free trade area over a period lasting a maximum of six years starting from the entry into force of this Agreement in accordance with the provisions of this Agreement and in conformity with those of the GATT 1994 and the WTO”.

On 3rd of March, the European Commission will publish its final proposal for the new EU 2020 strategy, which will replace the Lisbon Agenda. A few days ahead, we may ask: were lessons drawn from past mistakes? Does the current commission draft look different?

The recent appointment of João Vale de Almeida to be the head of the EU’s delegation in Washington D.C. sparked waves of controversy among the Member States. Why has this manoeuvre of Catherine Ashton become so polemical? What does it tell us about the institutional posturing of the new European External Action Service (EEAS)?