Although the Kurdish population in Syria forms a very small and highly divided minority, the Kurds nevertheless have managed, thanks to the civil war, to gain relative autonomy in Northern Syria. 

Since 1991, Kurdish parties have dominated and administered “Iraqi Kurdistan”.

The Kurds in Iraq occupy what is practically a state. The Syrian civil war has resulted in the autonomization of the country’s Kurdish population. To Kurdish advantage, the JDP’s (Justice and Development Party – Turkey) ambiguous policy has cleared a new political space in Turkey.

Moscow has every intention of including Ukraine in its Eurasian Union, with one major playing card: the exchange of Kiev’s sovereignty for economic and financial advantages.

Ukraine is divided along historical, ideological, economic, religious and linguistic lines, which it has failed to unite in its brief history. 

The crisis in Ukraine seems at first to be the result of the impact of two misunderstandings of Russian and Western approaches.

President Obama presented the case for his foreign policy last week – again.  He addressed the cadet corps at West Point in what was billed as a comprehensive strategic statement for the balance of his tenure in office, and for America's future.  Obama's speech came just over a week after John Kerry issued his own call for America to take a large and active role in the world — urging Americans not to "allow a hangover from the excessive interventionism of the last decade to lead now to an excess of isolationism in this decade."  It set the pitch and tone for the President's address. [1]