Column Archive

On Jan. 1, 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s flagship geopolitical project, the Eurasian Union, formally came into existence. Building on the existing Customs Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the Eurasian Union’s official goals are to enhance its members’ economic prosperity and political influence by promoting the free flow of capital, goods, labor and services, and by coordinating their agricultural, energy, industrial and transportation sectors. Back in the fall of 2011, when still prime minister, Putin made establishing a Eurasian Union among the former Soviet republics a major theme of his successful presidential campaign. He argued that by coordinating their […]

When diplomats want to explore a way out of a crisis, they like to talk about striking a “grand bargain” and try to avoid the word “climb-down,” which tends to imply an acknowledgement of failure or defeat. Nevertheless, Russia and the United States, trapped in costly confrontations over Syria and Ukraine, may need to agree to a sort of “grand climb-down” that allows the two powers to get out of unsustainable positions as painlessly as possible. Moscow and Washington both begin 2015 stuck with the consequences of poor strategic bets. Russia’s intervention in Ukraine now looks like a truly disastrous […]

A few days ago, U.S. Army General John Campbell announced the formal end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan. “The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion,” U.S. President Barack Obama then added. Whether accurate or not, the declaration of victory launched a scramble among national security experts to identify the strategic lessons of Afghanistan. The stakes of this debate are high. Because the lessons of Afghanistan will shape American security policy for decades, it is vital to get them right. The process of identifying strategic lessons is always rife with tempting missteps. For Afghanistan, […]