Russia
Essays

Spain has a long and diversified history that includes prehistory, the Romans, the Visigoths and Roman Catholicism, among others. All these influences make the country one of the most interesting as well as unique in a…

For hundreds of years, maritime expansion represented the only way to reach distant shores, to attack enemies across channels of water, to explore uncharted territories, to make trade with regional neighbors and to connect the comprised empires. Leading directly into the 20th century, this was the chief mode of making war, maintaining occupations, colonizing lands and conducting the transport of goods acquired by trade or force. Peter Padfield theorized that ultimately, British maritime power was decisive in creating breathing space for liberal democracy in the world, as opposed to the autocratic states of continental Europe like Spain, France, Prussia and Russia. The Hapsburgs, the Bourbons, Hitler and Stalin all failed to find a strategy that would defeat the maritime empires, which controlled the world's trade routes and raw materials. Successful maritime powers like Britain and, in the 20th Century, the United States, required coastlines with deep harbors and security from aggressive neighbors that Germany, France and Russia lacked. This allowed them to concentrate on trade and commerce, and to develop powerful mercantile classes that won a share of power in government. Britain and Holland were the "first supreme maritime powers of the modern age", succeeded by the United States after the world wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45, and the fact that democratic institutions developed first in relatively open societies like these was not coincidental. Of course, the United States was a very weak maritime power in the 18th Century and its navy hardly existed, yet the Battle of Chesapeake Bay in 1781 was the key event that enabled it to win its independence. It depended on French and Spanish sea power to divert the British Navy to other theaters of the war, such as India, the Caribbean, Gibraltar or the defense of the home islands and in the end this strategy was successful enough so that at a crucial moment of the war, Britain temporarily lost its maritime supremacy in North American waters.

The U.S. has focused on maintaining close relations with some of the countries that it has had an interdependent connection with during the recent decades. Even with this, changes resulting from globalization and other factors have influenced the superpower to revise its strategies concerning diplomatic policies. Its relationship with Russia is probably one of the most intriguing relations ever seen, considering that even though the Cold War has ended one can still observe that there is a lot of tension between the two international players. While most people are inclined to associate the U.S. with the hero who managed to destroy communism and to put an end to the Cold War, it is surely intriguing to look at U.S-Russian relations during the last two decades and at the fact that some attitudes have not changed at all.

The fall of the Ottoman Empire did not come all at once. Nor did it come from entirely inside the Empire itself. Rather, the geographical, military, and religious policies of great European powers did help influence the…

Avian Influenza: If H5N1 is the Virus to Fear, Is America Prepared for a Potential Outbreak?

Video games are the background noise of today's generation. Just as their parents grew up with the constant hum of the television and their great-great-grandparents grew up listening to the radio, today's millennial…

The Cold War is a generic name given to a certain period in the history of humanity after the Second World War, characterized by conflicts and tensions between the two great powers at the time and subsequently their…

Synopsis, with overview of story and approach:

The general topic of the proposed study concerns the evolving geopolitical and economic factors that are fueling the paradigm shift from a U.S.-based global power structure to one that centers on the Asian superpowers…

Robert M. Clark's Target-Centric intelligence model utilizes what is known as the intelligence cycle. Originally, the intelligence cycle was designed to create a complete set of data by breaking into stages the process…