Introduction President Vladimir Putin declared 2021 to be the Year of Science and Technology in Russia, with November named as the month of artificial intelligence (AI), signaling Russian leadership’s strong interest in this umbrella term. The Russian defense sector...

  Introduction  How will China respond to a potential Russian military escalation against Ukraine? Relations between Russia and China have intensified in recent years, with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping holding regular summits and the two countries’ militaries participating...

  Introduction  On October 26, 2021, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense released video of a TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) striking a separatist D-30 howitzer in Russian-occupied Donbas. The strike was Ukraine’s first confirmed use of the now ubiquitous...

  Executive Summary This report assesses the political impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Kazakhstan. Specifically, it examines whether and how the People’s Republic of China can pursue a strategy of economic statecraft to further its...

  Executive Summary This report argues that the government of Georgia needs to reshuffle its priorities in advancing its strategic connectivity in three major areas: democratic statecraft, economic modernization, and geopolitical identity. By prioritizing these three areas, Georgia can...

Executive Summary  Early in the millennium, Vladimir Putin resurrected the Russian economy and reasserted state power, but the methods that he employed have more recently led to economic stagnation. In response, the Kremlin regime proposed several economic reforms. It...

  According to press information, on 10 September 2021, the Russian Armed Forces plan to start the one-week-long active phase of this year’s annual strategic-level exercise (STRATEX), Zapad (West) 2021, a bilateral large-scale Russo-Belorussian strategic-level exercise, primarily in Belarus and Russia’s...

  Executive Summary The United States is examining how to narrow core objectives in the Middle East to focus on improving military readiness and increasing the number of low-density, high-demand assets available for deployment in Asia and Europe. To...

  Executive Summary As the United States seeks to prepare for a potential conflict with a peer-level adversary, the debate around the utility of the aircraft carrier—and its role in such a contingency—once again has resurfaced. Since the carrier’s...

  Introduction During March and April 2021, the Russian military conducted a large-scale buildup in its regions bordering Ukraine, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Scores of videos appeared on TikTok, Telegram, Twitter, and other social media sites...