Category Archives: Current affairs
The August 2008 War Ten Years Later
History is full of short wars that are quickly forgotten. The five-day war between Georgia and Russia war a decade ago this week felt significant at the time but faded from the headlines quickly as a severe financial crisis unfolded. … Continue reading
CORRECTIONS: Near Abroad
The following is a working correction list for Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus. Oxford University Press have this list and the next print run of the book will incorporate these corrections (some … Continue reading
Near Abroad Book Launch in Washington DC
A big thanks to the Center on Global Interests and George Washington’s IERES for facilitating the launch of Near Abroad. Click here for a video of the Near Abroad Book Discussion with Gerard Toal, 7 March 2017
Near Abroad
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, it invaded Georgia. Both states are part of Russia’s “near abroad”—former Soviet republics that are now independent states neighboring Russia. While the Russia-Georgia war of 2008 faded from the headlines, the geopolitical contest that created it … Continue reading
Fears and Fantasies about the “Flesh of the Nation”
Yesterday Adis Maksic defended his Ph D dissertation “Mobilizing for Ethnic Violence? Ethno-National Political Parties and the Dynamics of Ethno-Politicization.” Adis is a Sarajevo native who was fortunately able to come to the United States with his family after his family suffered a … Continue reading
Airspace in De Facto States: Remarks on Ukraine Crisis at the New School, 3 October 2014
Given the recent helicopter shoot down in Nagorno Karabakh, and the ongoing fighting over Donetsk airport, I’m posting below some remarks I made at the New School conference last month on the Ukrainian crisis. Point 2 addresses airspace. On Overlapping … Continue reading
Social Survey Research in De Facto States After Crimea
I’m very happy to announce that I’ve a new home office, as a year long house extension project has come to an end. I will seek to renew my writing for this site, though I’m conscious that time spent writing here and … Continue reading
The Crimea Precedent & the Post-Soviet De Facto States
The well-known Political Science blog The Monkey Cage, now owned by the Washington Post (now owned by Jeff Bezos; we all work for Amazon now) posted earlier today a concise 3 graph summary of what our De Facto State Research Survey reveals … Continue reading
Bosnia by the Black Sea? Could Crimea be another BiH?
I have an op ed on this topic on the Open Democracy Russia website under the title “Could Crimea Be Another Bosnia?” http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/gerard-toal/could-crimea-be-another-bosnia-republika-srpska-krajina For Bosnia specialists, below is the source I used for the opening quote. Specialists will know I … Continue reading
The Birth of a Nation: Radovan Karadžić and the Ethnopoliticization of Bosnia in 1990
By the time he strode to the podium in Skenderija Hall, Sarajevo, on 12 July 1990 to speak, the journey of Dr Radovan Karadžić from obscure psychiatrist to politician, wartime leader, and later accused war criminal had begun. Karadžić had been working for months … Continue reading
Critical Geopolitics 