On 21 March this year, Indonesia officially announced the results of the general election held on 14 February, which elected a new President and Vice President, as well as the composition of the central parliament and local governments in all 38 provinces of the country. The official results of the most important part of the single day’s voting, for President and Vice-President, do not differ much from the exit polls published a day later.

As Business Day, a Nigerian newspaper based in Lagos, the Nigerian capital, notes, US attempts to pressure Niger’s military leadership to “distance itself from Russia”, combined with an arrogant attitude towards long-standing partners, have ultimately had a counterproductive effect, leading to a serious strain in relations with one of its key allies in the region and an equally serious blow to the hegemon’s prestige…

On 16 March this year, Niger’s military government announced the cancellation of its military cooperation agreement with the United States regarding the status of US Department of Defense personnel and civilians on Nigerian territory. In a statement on national television, Amadou Abdramane, a spokesman for Niger’s military leadership, said the agreement was imposed on Niger in 2012 in violation…

From 19 to 23 March, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, who only took up the post in February this year to replace Victoria Nuland, who resigned, travelled to Japan and Mongolia. In this context, let us make a few preliminary but, it would seem, fundamental observations. First, given Campbell’s initial specialisation (both in his previous diplomatic work and in research organisations)…

On 19 March, Badr Al-Busaidi, Foreign Minister of the Sultanate of Oman, gave an interview to CNN in which he commented on the situation in Gaza and the Israeli ground operation in Rafah. The Omani called on the international community to de-escalate the conflict and call for an immediate ceasefire. Al-Busaidi said that the crisis in the Red Sea, the activation of pro-Iranian proxies in the region…

In previous articles we have looked at the process of increasing European engagement in Inner Asia through bilateral initiatives. This time, the reader will get an overview of the interaction between the parties in the framework of the European Global Gateway initiative. On 25-26 October, Brussels hosted the Global Gateway Forum, which was soon described by journalists as “an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative”. It is noteworthy that it took place only a week…

The Taiwan issue was last discussed in the NEO in the context of the increasingly visible presence of two new centres of influence emerging in the Indo-Pacific, namely India and Japan. The latter is particularly active there. However, the two major world powers, China and the United States, remain the main players in the games around Taiwan. And from the point of view of the former, everything that is somehow related to Taiwan concerns only China and no one else. Washington’s official position can be described by the formula “Yes, but…”, which has three main components…

As for China, the second global player in the region, although it has not openly interfered in Ethiopian affairs until recently, its weight and influence are very much felt here and are likely to increase. The American financial group Morgan Stanley estimates that the total cost of China’s “One Belt, One Road” project will rise to $1.2-1.3 trillion by 2027 alone. As Beijing sees the Horn of Africa as the “gateway to Africa” in the implementation of this project, Ethiopia, as the continent’s second…

From the very beginning of Zelenskyy’s presidency, Ukraine was (and still is) both a window of opportunity for Turkey and an extremely delicate area of manoeuvring between Russia and Western countries. Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meets regularly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian president has travelled to Istanbul or Ankara once a year since 2019 (with the exception of 2022), while Recep Erdoğan visited Kiev in 2020 and twice in 2022…

In recent months, the Horn of Africa has become one of the world’s most active sources of political news. No sooner have analysts discussed the reasons for the signing, possible ways of implementation and possible consequences of the Memorandum of Understanding between Ethiopia and Somaliland, than new stories have appeared on the agenda. In particular, we are talking about the agreement signed between Turkey and the Federal Government of Somalia on 22 February 2024. Formally, the Turkish side undertook only to provide…

The recent trip by Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to South Korea and Japan, which began on March 5, represents a significant development in the political game being played out in the Indo-Pacific region. Particularly since the role of the main “local” players in the region, already very significant today, is only likely to increase with time. Not least because the regional influence of the present leading global power is set to decline, a process which the present author…

On 11 March 2024, Russian media reported that a 53-year-old South Korean citizen named Baek (the detainee’s name varies – Baek Won Sung, less frequently Baek Kwang-soon) had been arrested for espionage and was currently being held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, normally reserved for high-level political prisoners. The news raised eyebrows both in Russia and abroad, as it is the first time a South Korean citizen has been arrested in Russia…