Ukraine’s NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) Debates
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is expected to address Ukraine and Georgia’s requests to upgrade their relationship with the alliance at its Bucharest summit in April 2008, even if a…
National Security Implications of Russia’s Health and Demographic Crisis
The dimensions and contours of Russia's health and demographic situation are relatively well known. Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union and now Russia have experienced dramatic declines in population,…
A Year After the Color Revolutions: Preemptive Authoritarianism and Challenges for Democratization in the Former Soviet Union
In 1989, citizens across central Europe went to the streets to bring down communist dictatorships and assert their right to live in free societies. More than a decade later, people…
Linkages Between Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in Nuclear Smuggling: A Case Study of Chelyabinsk Oblast
An analysis of the cities in Russia’s Chelyabinsk oblast where weapons of mass destruction are researched and produced reveals that there are increasing threats that terrorist groups could use existing…
Hitler’s Cause is Alive and Well in Former Stalingrad
The city of Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, is the site of one of the most significant battles of World War II. To this day, the Battle of Stalingrad, in which approximately…
Ukraine Between a Multivector Foreign Policy and Euro-Atlantic Integration: Has It Made Its Choice?
The 2006 return of Viktor Yanukovych to the post of Ukrainian prime minister has again raised questions about the direction of Ukraine’s foreign policy. Will Ukraine continue along the path…
‘Unrecognized States’ in Russia’s Domestic and Foreign Policy
Predictably, the recognition of Kosovo’s independence by the United States and most members of the European Union was followed by pronounced appeals for recognition from three of the four “unrecognized…
The Next President of Ukraine: Predicting the Unpredictable
It is obvious that the epoch of Leonid Kuchma in Ukraine is coming to its end. When and how this epoch will end and what, let alone who, will follow Kuchma…
Oversight of Russia’s Intelligence and Security Agencies: The Need for and Prospects of Democratic Control
For a brief while after the collapse of the August 1991 coup in Moscow, speculation abounded that the Soviet state security apparatus, known since 1954 as the KGB, would be…
Is a More Democratic Europe Good News for Post-Soviet States?
The title of this memo—“Is a More Democratic Europe Good News for Post-Soviet States?”—may raise a few eyebrows. After all, how could the answer be anything but yes?! Such a quick and…
Missile Defense Cooperation in the U.S. – European – Russian Triangle
The United States’s persistence in seeking to develop a comprehensive missile defense system for the protection of the “homeland, deployed forces, friends, and allies” brought the issue of international cooperation to the…
‘A Sense of His Soul’: The Relation between Presidents Putin and Bush
It is an unfortunate truism that relations between the United States and Russia depend a great deal on the interpersona l connection between the two countries. Of course, personalities do not determine…