Word: asia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Since the Soviet Union collapsed 17 years ago, Washington in particular has deluded itself into believing that it was somehow a real competitor to Russia in the southern tier of the former Soviet Union - that is, the eight states that make up the Caucasus and the former Soviet Central Asia. Washington acted as if these states were truly independent and sovereign, immune from the influence of the old metropolitan center, Moscow. Washington deliberately ignored how Russia had held on to its military bases in the southern tier, how the successor to the KGB stayed more plugged into intelligence from...
...foreign policy establishment has resisted. This despite the fact that in Ukraine in 2004, Russia tried to do what it could to tip the presidential election to its approved candidate - including, many believe, poisoning with dioxin the eventual winner, Viktor Yushchenko. Just over a week ago, traveling in Central Asia for a future TIME story, I asked a senior Western official about the likelihood that the tense Russia-Georgia standoff over South Ossetia could escalate. The source acknowledged that the presence of "hotheads" on both sides - a clear reference to Putin and Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili...
...have made quite a few accomplishments in our relations with the mainland, the United States and Japan in the last two and a half months. [After] many, many years, now the U.S., Japan and Southeast Asia can rest assured that hostilities or even confrontation is unlikely in the Taiwan Strait. This is the reason why when I will transit in the U.S. I don't want to do things not compatible with the purpose of transit. Why? There is no need for me to do that. I don't have to do things that will hurt the high level...
...fully accept Georgia's independence. Russia has long sought to re-establish influence in Georgia and prevent it from joining NATO (a move Russia sees as part of a hostile encirclement by the West), and also to prevent the oil pumped to Turkey from Azerbaijan and elsewhere in Central Asia from bypassing Russian control. Georgia claims that Russian planes have in recent days bombed the strategically important oil pipeline that transits Georgia. The pipeline actually had been inoperative since Aug. 6 as a result of a fire in its Turkish segment, and Azerbaijan instead kept supplying oil through two Georgian...
...their best in competition (if they are athletes); and indeed to celebrate China's greatest moment. "It could be that when the Games start, everybody forgets everything and it's all about the glory of sport," says Jamie Metzl, executive vice president of the New York City - based Asia Society and a former senior government official in the Clinton Administration. "I hope that that's the case. But there are a number of issues, whether it's Tibet, pollution, Falun Gong, doping. We don't know whether those issues are going to emerge. But they could and then take...