Special Reports

  After the start of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the arms expenditures and military budget of Russia skyrocketed and continue to grow for the foreseeable future. However, the military industry is under threat Despite the...

Wagner Roadmap: Ten Recommendations to Fight the Group 1. The sanctions discussion needs to be expanded, as such designations should aim to shame Wagner’s state partners.  2. Sanctions lists should expand to include actors in third-party countries, such as...

  Executive Summary An unwillingness to decentralize decision making authority and a failure to communicate accurate information are the most consequential weaknesses at the state level that have contributed to the Russian military’s subpar performance to date in the...

China has struggled to gain support from its Central Asian neighbors to build the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway since the 1990s. The CKU railway is crucial to China for two interconnected purposes—to advance its geopolitical interests and to secure favorable...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long seen Central Asia as Russia’s “most stable region.” He has regularly exerted influence and political pressure over its leaders. However, after decades of stability, the last year has seen Russia’s influence in Central...

  After Russia’s February 24, 2022, re-invasion of Ukraine, all eyes turned to the brutal spectacle of Europe’s largest war since 1945. Yet, Russia’s ill-fated attempt to assert its sphere of influence in Europe has not been confined to...

  For the past century, Turkey’s foreign policy has been driven by the need to preserve the achievements of the Lausanne Treaty in the face of often serious threats from major powers. As a result, Turkey was a predominantly...

  Executive Summary When the People’s Republic of China’s president and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he publicly acknowledged that the Party faced an existential crisis from pervasive corruption at all levels of...

  Will Russia survive until 2084? Readers may recognize the query as an allusion to Andrei Amalrik’s historic 1969 essay, “Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?,” which itself was an allusion to Orwell’s famed novel. As with Amalrik’s...

  DISCLAIMER: The dialogue discussed in this report was sponsored by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency and their Strategic Trends Research Initiative (STRI) program. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect...