Publications

Shortly after the conclusion of the Russian-Belarusian strategic Zapad-2021 exercise, open-source analysts, corroborated by U.S. intelligence findings, began reporting a new build-up of Russian forces on the Ukrainian border. Though most tracking concentrates on the movement of Russian Ground...

On February 3, 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Kyiv, where he met with his Ukrainian counterpart, President Volodymyr Zelensky, for a pre-planned meeting to co-chair the tenth High-Level Strategic Council between the two countries. The two...

Access the Winter 2022 issue of Orbis here. Abstract This article examines the idea of a Baltic Nuclear-Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ) in the context of the Russian Federation’s deterrence and escalation management theories, largely as enunciated by Russian military theorists....

Access the Winter 2022 issue of Orbis here. Abstract Germany’s recent Ostpolitik (Eastern Policy) has become a major topic in Western discussions about how to deal best with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This essay proceeds from Interdependence Theory to argue...

Access the Winter 2022 issue of Orbis here. Abstract Europe’s current energy crisis underscores its failure to deal adequately with the problems posed by increasing dependence one Russian gas. Particularly in the Balkans Russia’s oligopolistic position if not monopoly in some...

Poland’s defense budget, currently over two percent of the country’s GDP, is apparently set to grow further. In October 2021, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński announced that his government intended to raise defense spending to “significantly higher” levels....

  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...

It is sometimes said that when Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined NATO in 2004 each still harbored some lingering regret that they were not joining the NATO of 1949 — an alliance with a resolute and single-track focus to deter...

  As the war in Ukraine heads into its eighth year, many fear that Moscow may be preparing a large-scale military escalation. Over the past few weeks, American, European, and NATO allies, as well as Ukrainian officials, have warned...

NATO has wrestled with how to defend its Baltic member states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania ever since their accession to the Alliance in 2004. All three militarily weak countries sit uncomfortably close to NATO’s main adversary, Russia. Making...