Russia

Russian president Putin clearly prefers President Obama over Mitt Romney in the U.S. presidential election. But no matter who wins, all indications are that U.S.-Russian relations are likely to get worse. The reason has nothing to do with future...

Overview Moscow’s relations with its eastern territories, especially the nine provinces of the Russian Far East (RFE), have significant security implications for Russia and for the Asia-Pacific community generally. With 36 percent of the national territory and 25,000 km...

As the Putin regime faces its first serious political challenge in more than twelve years, two recent developments have cast an ominous light on the criminal nature of the highest levels of Russian law enforcement. The first involves Alexander...

The failure of Presidents Obama and Putin to reach agreement over Syria at the G20 summit meeting in Mexico should not have come as a surprise. The Western world has been appalled by the Assad regime’s atrocities but this...

The recent actions of the indelicately named female punk band “Pussy Riot,” whose members on March 3 entered the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow and sang a song on the altar that included an appeal to the Virgin...

The rise of the democratic opposition to the Putin regime is being shadowed by the appearance of a more ominous type of opposition, that of extreme nationalists. At the first protest against falsified elections in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on...

A U.S. initiative treating Russia as a serious East Asian partner, engaging in a real dialogue on security threats there, and a strong public expression of U.S. willingness to invest in the Russian Far East (RFE) in return for...

By June 2011, the Arab revolutions had evolved into a series of disconnected but increasingly violent civil wars—particularly in Libya and Syria. The international community has certainly not been spared the effects of these wars. As a long-time patron—if...

On May 20, 2010, General Stanley McChrystal, then the American commander in Afghanistan, referred to the operation in Marjah, Helmand—an operation earlier touted as a potential turning point for U.S. Afghan counterinsurgency (COIN)—as a “bleeding ulcer.” Immediately, we...

Abstract On a number of recent occasions, the top Russian leadership has expressed its special interest in the affairs of former Soviet republics, including the assertion that Russia has a “privileged” relationship with these now independent states. Is this a...