Manoj Ambat's Blog dealing with Defence, Foreign Affairs, Strategic Affairs and Politics

Logo of The Eurasia Economic Union Source- Eurasia Review Author- Dr. Rajaram Panda Since the launch of Doi Moi (Renovation) in 1986, Vietnam has leapfrogged from a centrally planned economy to a market-driven one and has undertaken comprehensive reforms to make the economy market-friendly. The various market-oriented reforms have helped encourage competition among economic units, which have helped boost the nation’s gross national wealth. There were three thrust areas where the reforms were focussed: improvement of institutions with enabling motives, stabilisation of macroeconomic situations and pro-active integration into the regional and world economy. In a world of increasing economic interdependence, the economies of nations are so closely interlinked that any adverse development in one country can have crippling effect on other nations. This calls for constant coordination of policies that serve the common goals – that is fostering economic prosperity across nat

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Author- Kremlin Archives Source- The Diplomat Author- Artyom Lukin In 1904 the founder of geopolitics Sir Halford Mackinder famously pronounced the end of “the Columbian epoch” – that of the dominance of the Western sea power – and the advent of the age of land power, in which the Heartland of Eurasia, or “the pivot area,” would hold the key to the world domination. The pivot area largely corresponded to the territory of the then Russian Empire – occupying central and northern Eurasia. Mackinder’s main concern was that a rapidly industrializing and expansionist Tsarist Russia could successfully challenge the West’s sea-power-based primacy, taking advantage of the Heartland’s geostrategic centrality and harnessing the huge potentialities of Inner Eurasia’s vast landmass. In actuality, Russia was never able to pull off such a feat – neither under the Tsar, nor in its Soviet reincarnation. It seems even less capable of achieving it now,

     KC-135 sits at the Manas Airbase ( Image courtesy- Wikimedia commons/ United States Air force)   The United States on Tuesday handed back its only Central Asian airbase to the government of Russia's close ally Kyrgyzstan, as President Barack Obama winds down U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Moscow makes a comeback in its old imperial backyard. In a move aimed at pleasing its former overlord Russia, parliament in Kyrgyzstan voted a year ago to give Washington until July 11 to vacate the Manas Transit Center, which has served U.S. operations in Afghanistan since 2001. The base, at the main civilian airport in the former Soviet republic, moved more than 5.3 million servicemen in and out of Afghanistan and handled tens of thousands of cargo shipments and refuelling missions. "We were known as the gateway to Afghanistan on freedom's frontier," Colonel John Millard, commander of the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing and Manas base head, told a group of