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The papers included here, except for the editor's introduction, all
come from the Strategic Studies Institute's annual conference on
Russia in May 2012. In one way or another, they all point to the
internal pathologies that render Russian security a precarious
affair, at the best of times. As the editor suggests, the very fact
of this precariousness makes Russia an inherently unpredictable and
even potentially dangerous actor, not necessarily because it will
actively attack its neighbors, though we certainly cannot exclude
that possibility, but rather because it may come apart trying to
play the role of a great power in Eurasia or elsewhere. As we all
know, that outcome happened in 1917 and in 1989-91, with profound
implications for international security and U.S. interests.
In one way or another, the papers included in this monograph, from
the Strategic Studies Institute's annual conference on Russia in
May 2012, all point to the internal pathologies that render Russian
security a precarious affair at the best of times. As the editor
suggests, the very fact of this precariousness makes Russia an
inherently unpredictable and even potentially dangerous actor, not
necessarily because it will actively attack its neighbors, though
we certainly cannot exclude that possibility, but rather because
Russia may come apart trying to play the role of a great power in
Eurasia or elsewhere. As we all know, that outcome happened in 1917
and in 1989-91, with profound implications for international
security and U.S. interests.
The following three papers comprise one of the panels from a
conference on U.S.-Russia relations that SSI co-sponsored with the
Carnegie Council at Pocantico, NY, from June 1-3, 2011: Carnegie
Council's Program on "U.S. Global Engagement: A Two-Year
Retrospective." The papers offer three contrasting looks at one of
the major issues in today's arms control agenda, namely the future
of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE). The three papers
were written by leading experts in the field from the United
States, the United Kingdom, and Russia and provide a revealing
glimpse into the very different assessments that are being made by
those three governments and the difficult issues involved in
attempting to regenerate the process that led to the original
treaty in 1990. These three chapters also implicitly contribute to
a better understanding of the intractabilities facing the major
players in any effort to advance not only arms control but also
European stability.
As NATO and the United States proceed to withdraw their forces from
Afghanistan, the inherent and preexisting geopolitical, security,
and strategic challenges in Central Asia become ever more apparent.
The rivalry among the great powers: the United States, China,
Russia, India, and others to a lesser degree, are all becoming
increasingly more visible as a key factor that will shape this
region after the allied withdrawal from Afghanistan. The papers
collected here, presented at SSI's annual conference on Russia in
2012, go far to explaining what the agenda for that rivalry is and
how it is likely to influence regional trends after 2013.
Therefore, these papers provide a vital set of insights into an
increasingly critical area of international politics and security,
especially as it is clear that the United States is reducing, but
not totally withdrawing, its military establishment in Afghanistan
and is seeking to consolidate long-term relationships with Central
Asian states. Accordingly, these papers provide assessments of
Sino-Russian rivalry, the U.S.-Russian rivalry, and a neglected but
critical topic-Chinese military capability for action in Central
Asia. All of these issues are essential for any informed analysis
of the future of Central Asian security, as well as relations among
the great powers in Central Asia.
The three papers presented here are by well-known experts and were
delivered at SSI's third annual conference on Russia that took
place at Carlisle, PA, on September 26-27, 2011. This conference,
like its predecessors, had as its goal the assemblage of Russian,
European, and American experts to engage in a regular, open, and
candid dialogue on critical issues in contemporary security.
The author assesses the interests of the United States in Central
Asia and the challenges to them. These challenges consist of the
revival of the Taliban, Russo-Chinese efforts to oust U.S.
strategic presence from the area, and the possibility of internal
instability generated by the regression of local regimes form
democratizing and liberalizing policies. The author then recommends
policies designed to meet those challenges to American policy in
this increasingly more important area of the world.
These three chapters originated in an SSI conference in January
2010 and go to the heart of a question of vital significance for
both Asia and Russia, namely what are Russia's prospects in Asia.
The three chapters outline the challenges Russia faces in Asia, the
nature of the dynamic and complex Asian security environment, and
the extent to which Russia is or is not meeting those challenges.
These chapters represent both Russian and U.S. views and clearly do
not agree in their conclusions or analyses. For this reason, they
are all the more interesting. These chapters should provoke debate,
reflection, and greater awareness as to the complexities of the
current international scene in Asia and of Russia's success or lack
thereof in participating in that environment. In view of the
extraordinary dynamism that now characterizes Asia and the fact
that it is the center of the world economy, the analysis provided
here goes beyond obvious issues to address questions that we
believe are unjustly neglected, e.g., Russia's prospects as an
Asian power and as an independent great power player in Asia. The
answers to these questions are urgent for Russians, but very
consequential for the U.S. because getting Asia right will be among
the most critical challenges to U.S. policymakers in the coming
years.
Given the stakes involved in achieving a correct understanding of
Russian and Chinese defense policies and military developments, the
magnitude of Mary Fitzgerald's enlightening accomplishments in this
regard becomes clear. However, the problems that we have outlined
in this volume were not unfamiliar to students of the Soviet Union.
Indeed, they are enduring strategic issues for Russian policymakers
as well as those who analyze or contribute to foreign policies
toward the Russian military, despite the magnitude of the
tremendous changes that have occurred since 1989 when the Soviet
empire began to collapse. Even more importantly, Mary and her
colleagues recognized that the issues outlined here are not just
tasks relevant for the general study of Russia, but by addressing
these strategic issues, and their underlying implications,
policymakers will engage in the essential tasks necessary for the
creation of an enduring structure of peace.
While the Cold War is long past, the importance of arms control in
Russo-American relations and the related issue of nuclear weapons
for Russia remain vital concerns. Indeed, without an appreciation
of the multiple dimensions of the latter, progress in the former
domain is inconceivable. With this in mind, following essays
explore many, if not all, of the issues connected with Russia's
relatively greater reliance on nuclear weapons for its security. As
such, they constitute an important contribution to the analysis of
the Obama administration's reset policy, Russo-American relations,
Russian foreign and defense policy, and international security in
both Europe and Asia. Additionally, questions concerning the
approach taken by other nuclear power nations in reference to the
arms control agenda provide a crucial backdrop for the progress
toward curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a
long-standing central goal of U.S. security policy.
These papers represent the first in a series of papers taken from
the Strategic Studies Institute's (SSI) fourth annual Russia
conference that took place at SSI's headquarters in Carlisle, PA,
on September 26-27, 2011. As such, they also are part of our
on-going effort to make sense of and clarify developments in
Russia. The three papers presented here offer attempts to
characterize first of all, the nature of the state; second, the
prospects for economic reform within that state-perhaps the most
pressing domestic issue and one with considerable spillover into
defense and security agendas as well-in contemporary Russia; and
third, the nature and lasting effects of the defense reform that
began in 2008. The papers are forthright and pull no punches,
though we certainly do not claim that they provide the last or
definitive word on these subjects.
Immediately after the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World
Trade Center, NATO members unanimously voted their support for the
United States under Article V of the Washington Treaty. This
unprecedented action, the first time such a vote has occurred in
NATO's history, underscores the vitality of the Atlantic Alliance
and its tremendous strategic value for its members. This vote
conferred great legitimacy upon any response that the United States
will make to those attacks and reminded us that the solidity of
NATO allows the United States to defend its interests on the world
stage with great confidence about European security. Nevertheless,
the Alliance is not a wholly untroubled or static relationship. In
the first half of 2001, there were numerous public signs of stress
among the allies as they faced new challenges. Many of the issues
involved in these tensions are particularly important to the future
of European security and must be resolved for NATO to move
forward...
It is obvious that U.S.-Russian relations and East-West relations
more broadly have recently deteriorated. Yet analyses of why this
is the case have often been confined to American policy. The author
examines some of the key strategic issues at stake in this
relationship and traces that decline to Russian factors which have
been overlooked or neglected. At the same time, he has devoted
considerable time to recording some of the shortcomings of U.S.
policy and recommending a way out of the growing impasse
confronting both sides.
Although Russian observers believe that Washington imposed
sanctions in Russian arms sellers and producers because of these
firms' arms sales to Venezuela. Sales to such dangerous states
oblige us to analyze the Russian defense export program and the
structure of its defense industry. Until now, that industry would
have collapsed without arms sales. Arms sales thus have become the
main source of its reveneue until the present and will play a key
role in Russia's ongoing attempt to regenerate its armed forces
while winning friends and influence abroad.
The best recent scholarship on Russian civil-military relations
explicitly addresses this issue's importance for both domestic and
external security. An inquiry into the present state of those
relations under conditions of defense reform and the current
international situation is of immense analytical and policy
relevance for both domestic and external security in Russia. While
the Russian regime is serious about military reform, it is
encountering severe objections from the uniformed military, and the
military has successfully persuaded the government to accept its
expansive concept of the threats to Russia, i.e., its threat
assessment. Therefore, we must closely follow those developments to
understand more clearly current tendencies in Russian politics and
policy as a whole. Specifically, this chapter examines issues
pertaining to civil-military relations in several areas of Russian
national security policies that suggest some disturbing trends for
the future.
The war in Afghanistan has added considerably to the strategic
significance of Central Asia due to its proximity to the conflict.
Moreover, the continuation of the war increasingly involves the
vital interests of many other actors other than the U.S. and NATO
forces currently there. This monograph, taken from SSI's conference
with European and Russian scholars in 2010, provides a
comprehensive analysis of the means and objectives of Russia's
involvement in Central Asia. It also provides Russian perspectives
concerning the other actors in Central Asia and how Moscow views
the policy significance of those efforts.
These three papers represent the third monograph to come out of the
SSI-U.S. State Department conference "Contemporary issues in
International Security," that took place at the Finnish Embassy in
Washington, DC, on January 25-26, 2010. This monograph consists of
three deeply probing essays into the genesis of Russia's 2010
defense doctrine, the political struggle behind it, and the actual
content of the doctrine. They reveal a highly politicized minefield
of struggle comprising leading actors in the military, the
government, and in Russian security policy as a whole. They duly
illuminate the ongoing struggles between and among these sets of
military and civilian elites and therefore cast a shining light on
critical aspects of Russian policy that all too often are left in
darkness. They are essential to any understanding of Russian
defense and security policy as well as the nature of the
relationship between the Russian military and the government and
the way in which these actors formulate key policy statements and
resolve pressing political issues.
The new agreements between NATO and Russia and between the United
States and Russia create opportunities for strengthening bilateral
and multilateral military activities throughout the former Soviet
Union. These could embrace all the militaries of the former Soviet
Union and not only enhance military security in the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS), but also foster military-political
integration with the West and possibly defense reform in all or at
least some of the CIS regimes. Most importantly, Russia is pledged
to cooperate in these activities. This monograph explores the
unprecedented opportunities that are now before the United States
and recommends actions that the Government and armed forces,
especially, but not only the U.S. Army, should undertake to
consolidate and extend the newly emerging military partnership and
cooperative security regime that are now developing.
Assessment of the threat environment is a critical element in the
formulation of any state's strategy and defense doctrine. It also
should be an inherently critical process that seeks to free
policymakers from incorrect, antiquated, or misconceived
perceptions about the threat. Consequently, the nature of the
threat(s) the United States or any other government faces is the
subject of a never-ending debate. For several years U.S.
policymakers, officials, and writers on defense have employed the
terms "asymmetric" or "asymmetry" to characterize everything from
the nature of the threats we face to the nature of war and beyond.
This monograph challenges the utility of using those terms to
characterize the threats we face, one element of the broader debate
over the nature of war, U.S. strategy, and the threats confronting
us. As a work of critique, it aims to make an important
contribution to the threat debate.
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