Q & A Archive

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree mandating the dissolution of RIA Novosti, the main state news agency, and its replacement with a new agency aimed at promoting Russia’s image. In an email interview, Jukka Pietiläinen, a senior researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki, Finland, with expertise in Russian media and journalism, explained the relationship between the state and the media in Putin’s Russia. WPR: How has state involvement with media in Russia changed since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency? Jukka Pietiläinen: The Russian state has increased its presence in the media significantly […]

With the Obama administration moving toward its sixth year, the traditional nuclear arms control process—which has for the past several decades been driven in large part by a series of bilateral and multilateral treaties—appears to be lagging as nuclear threats and fears shift and as the U.S. political scene remains gridlocked. To move its broader nuclear agenda forward, the administration is pursuing mechanisms and institutions that allow the United States to build security and technical cooperation with partner nations without a time-consuming and politically bruising treaty ratification process. Some of these mechanisms are new, like the series of nuclear security […]

In December, the Philippine government and Muslim separatists in the country’s south reached a power-sharing agreement for governing the Muslim-dominated areas on the island of Mindanao. In an email interview, Steven Rood, the Asia Foundation’s country representative for the Philippines and Pacific Island nations, explained what the agreement implies for the economic development of the southern Philippines. WPR: How integrated are conflicted-affected areas of the southern Philippines with the rest of the national economy, and what impact has the conflict had in terms of economic development? Steven Rood: After decades of conflict, the economy of parts of the southern Philippines […]