Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, and Baltic Security
As a small Russian exclave some 300 kilometers away from the bulk of the Russian Federation, Kaliningrad Oblast is rarely mentioned in discussions of NATO expansion. (Kaliningrad is the Russian…
Foreign Funding of Social Movements in Russia
Over the course of the last several years, the United States government and private US foundations have allocated funding to support the development of a women's movement in Russia. These…
The Regionalization of Autocracy in Russia
Despite the clear progress in Russian democratization at the federal level, the trend appears to be in the opposite direction at the regional level, a movement spearheaded by the Federation's…
The Emerging Sino-Russian Strategic Partnership and Eurasian Security
The evolution of Sino-Soviet/Russian relations from an antagonistic militarized stand-off in the early 1980s to a nascent partnership today is an important development in a changing Northeast Asian security environment.…
Value Tradeoffs and America’s Caspian Policy: Energy, the Environment, and Sustainable Development
The Caspian Sea embodies one of the crucial tensions of international politics. On one hand, its vast deposits of oil and gas beckon political elites and multinational corporations to compete…
Nuclear Weapons and Russia’s Economic Crisis
The recent announcement by vice-premier Yuri Masliukov that Russia would produce 30-40 Topol-M (SS-27) single-warhead ICBMs annually put the finishing touches on Russia's defense policy under the conditions of economic…
The Next Step in Democracy Assistance to Russia: Targeting Military Reform
If American policymakers want to help ensure a democratic future for Eastern Europe, then they should focus on ensuring a democratic future for Russia. If American policymakers see the condition…
Russia’s Strategic View: Diminished Threats and Diminished Capabilities
A recent Congressional Research Service report states that Russia is a "nuclear superpower" intent on "maintaining rough parity with the United States." In fact, Russians no longer view their state…
Yeltsin’s Latest Military Reform Initiative: Operational-Strategic Commands
This fall the Yeltsin administration announced a new military reform initiative: the transformation of existing military districts into operational strategic commands. While the proposed system has been adopted in order…
Promoting a Strong Civil Society: US Foreign Assistance and Russian NGOs
In February 1997, President Clinton launched the Partnership for Freedom, a new program of bilateral assistance for democracy promotion in Russia and the other NIS countries. This program asks for…
Russia’s Relations with NATO: Lessons from the History of the Entente Cordiale
As NATO contemplates the second wave of enlargement, many wonder what the Russian response might be. The experience of 1996-98 might suggest an optimistic scenario: the first wave was met…
The Rise and Fall of the Russian Internal Troops?
The conventional wisdom among both Russian and Western analysts is that the Internal Troops (VV) of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) have been a bureaucratic Pac-Man since the…