ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Fifteen years ago, when an unknown Russian bureaucratic functionary named Vladimir Putin rose to power, Stratfor began charting the resurgence of Russia . The former KGB officer neutralized a Chechen insurgency, reined in Russia's powerful oligarchs and transformed the country's natural resource firms into state champions. Putin's Russia then took advantage of the United States' distractions to re-create a zone of influence throughout the former Soviet periphery while crafting a strategic relationship with Germany across the North European Plain. It was just a matter of time before the United States would feel the need to respond to Russia's redefinition of its borderlands with Europe. Table of Contents Introduction Former Soviet Union Europe Middle East and North Africa East Asia South Asia Latin America Sub-Saharan Africa The Cold War deja vu that settled over Eurasia in the past quarter was by no means the beginning -- nor the end --...

A man in Bali casts his ballot April 9 during Indonesia's legislative elections.(PUTU SAYOGA/Getty Images) Summary Indonesia's next president, once he is elected in July, will have to corral a fractious legislature as his predecessor did. The country faces mounting economic and social pressures, and the persistence of complex coalition politics will not help the future administration's efforts at reform. But Indonesia's April 9 legislative elections showed that the country's politics remain relatively familiar and stable, which, historically speaking, cannot be taken for granted. Analysis The legislative elections ensured that the People's Representative Council would continue to be composed of rocky coalitions of relatively small parties, each pursuing a greater share of power, as has been the case since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998. The final results will become available May 9, but preliminary counts show a dramatic drop in votes for the incum...