There’s no better time than a pandemic lockdown to start blogging again

Welcome back, readers!

As many of you know, I had the good fortune of passing through Washington DC when the stay-at-home orders began descending down in response to the explosive spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. I waited for a few days to see if I could get back to London or Istanbul to wait it out, but then those days turned into a few weeks, and here we are.

In light of the current travel restrictions, and also because the world appears to be going through some fundamental and important geopolitical shifts as a result of the virus, we thought this would be an ideal time to once again start blogging on this website with greater regularity.

It’s somewhat hard to believe that we launched a mainly Russia-focused blog on this domain back in 2006 in the dark ages before social media, and +12,000 postings later, we are still finding it a useful place to publish our thoughts and views, hear back from readers, and stimulate debates on the issues adjacent to our international law practice.

In light of this re-invigoration of the site (which quite frankly had been left to the side in recent years), some big changes will be coming. We’re going to be writing not just about Russia, but also give more focus to the former CIS, a minor country called China, some European affairs, Africa, Latin America, and of course some Beltway topics.

This is also the place to hear about the latest episodes we are recording of our Departures podcast – check out recent interviews with Stephen Walt and David Kilcullen.

Below, a short video comment from me about why we’re restarting the site, some of the prevailing trends we’re interested in talking about, and an open invitation to all our readers out there to get in touch with us with contributions, feedback, and tips.