Russia Archive

Last week, I discussed why the Iran nuclear deal offers limited—if any—lessons for making progress on other regional nonproliferation issues. This week, I thought it would be valuable to assess the obstacles and opportunities that exist for making further global nonproliferation and arms control progress. One reason for the failure of this spring’s Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was the growing effort by some non-nuclear weapons states to highlight the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. This initiative seeks to mobilize support behind a Nuclear Weapons Convention that would mandate immediate nuclear disarmament. The existing nuclear weapons states […]

Ever since the 2004 “Orange Revolution” that led to its first turn toward the West, Ukraine’s future alignment between Russia and the Euro-Atlantic bloc has been the subject of much debate and speculation. The promise of a durable Western shift, already dimmed by 2010, receded even further under the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, who tried to steer a middle course between Moscow and Brussels with some success until pressure from Brussels and Moscow, but also Ukraine’s pro-European public opinion, made nonalignment no longer tenable. Since the Euromaidan protests that drove Yanukovych from power in February 2014 and through the emergence […]

Ties between Russia and Japan are slowly picking up steam again after a 16-month chill following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Earlier this month, Shotaro Yachi, Japan’s national security adviser, traveled to Moscow and met with his Russian counterpart to discuss President Vladimir Putin’s plans to visit Japan later this year. And despite ongoing tensions over Ukraine, there are also signs that Japan’s foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, may travel to Russia in the coming months to prepare for a potential Putin visit. Japan-Russia cooperation is also continuing on the security front with bilateral maritime security drills, focused primarily […]

Can international legal mechanisms defuse tensions among the West, Russia and China? Last week, U.S. and European officials praised their Chinese and Russian counterparts for helping seal the nuclear deal with Iran. Yet there were warning signs of new spats with Beijing and Moscow over the South China Sea and Ukraine. These tensions concern not only the countries’ core national interests, but also their readiness to submit these interests to legal reviews. China and Russia seem determined to ensure that, as great powers, they cannot be contained through international law. In The Hague, the low-profile but august Permanent Court of […]

Electric Yerevan, the name given to protests in Armenia that started last month, has mostly ended. But the grievances that catapulted anger over a utility rate hike into weeks of protests in the capital, Yerevan, and across the country remain all too relevant. While much international commentary on the protests has examined the geopolitical significance and repercussions of the unrest, both the Armenian government and the thousands of demonstrators themselves have insisted the protests focused on issues a little closer to home. Rather than a repudiation of Russia or a nod to the West, the protests sought to highlight the […]

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which held its leaders summit in the Russian city of Ufa last week, remains a puzzle. Despite its potential, the organization has yet to have a major impact on world affairs. The decision at the summit to admit India and Pakistan as new members, which could occur as soon as 2016, should breathe new life into the organization. But the group’s future relevance will be determined by its ability to effectively address the continuing economic and security problems of neighboring Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been an area of collective interest for the SCO—which comprises China, Russia, […]

After 20 months of negotiations, which came down to the wire over 18 straight days in Vienna, Iran and six world powers, led by the United States, reached a deal Tuesday to curb Iran’s nuclear program for more than a decade in exchange for lifting sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy. All U.S. and European Union nuclear-related sanctions will be suspended after international inspectors have verified that Iran is abiding by its commitments. According to The New York Times, “the United States preserved—and in some cases extended—the nuclear restrictions it sketched out with Iran in early April in Lausanne, […]

Who wants to live in a world designed by Vladimir Putin? The number of people who answer “yes” to that question may be rather higher than American and European officials might like to imagine. The Russian president has crafted a narrative about his nation’s revitalization as a global power that many of his countrymen clearly appreciate. Chauvinist nationalist leaders elsewhere, such as Marine Le Pen, the head of France’s National Front party, admire his success. But Western policymakers typically comfort themselves that Putin’s mainstream appeal remains limited. Moscow has not been able to offer a positive vision of a new […]

On June 30, the Pentagon issued the latest iteration of the National Military Strategy (NMS) of the United States. The new version, the first update to the strategy since 2011, depicts today’s international security environment as being more challenging for the United States due to the unprecedented reach of globalization, the diffusion of military technologies and the rise of revisionist great powers. The NMS establishes U.S. military objectives and explains how the Pentagon will achieve them. It describes the overall global security environment in which the U.S. military operates as well as the threats and opportunities that affect U.S. national […]

It seems a little odd that the final countdown to a Greek default saw the clock run out on what was in reality a puny payment. Greece was due to pay the International Monetary Fund a mere 1.55 billion euros Tuesday, by itself a rather inconsequential sum in the global credit markets. Athens’ inability to pay that small amount set off the chain of events that put global markets on high alert and continues to threaten the decades-old project of European integration. While Greece has held testy exchanges with creditors from the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central […]