Since its inception as a state, Russia has been both a European and an Asian power. Although Russia today, as was true during much of its history, is torn by an identity crisis over where it belongs, its elites have never renounced Russia's vital interests in Asia and the belief that it should be recognized as a great power there. However, that belief and Moscow's ability to sustain it are now under threat, due, as Dr. Stephen Blank's thorough analysis informs us, to the ongoing failures of Russian policymakers to come to grips with changed Russian and Asian realities. At the same time, this aspect of Russian policy has been neglected in American assessments of Russia. This is a serious shortcoming, because, in Dr. Blank's view, Russia's Asian policies, viewed in their full breadth, are important signs of present and future trends concerning its behavior at home and in the wider world. Those policies are also significant as Asia's importance in world affairs rises. We ignore the threatening situation facing Russia, and Moscow's failure to adjust to those threats, only at our own peril. The growing concern over Russian arms transfers to China, a subject addressed in the study, is only one sign of unexpected negative trends that might work against U.S. interests if we continue to neglect Asian aspects of Russia's global behavior and policy.
Russia has recently sold or transferred many military weapons or technologies to China. Russian state policy has also officially joined with China in a relationship described as a strategic cooperative partnership. Some Russian diplomats also say that there is virtually complete identity with China on all issues of Asian and global security. Dr. Stephen Blank examines this relationship carefully for what it reveals about both states' international security policies.
Civil-military relations is a critical topic in understanding the domestic and foreign policy trajectories of the Russian state. The papers here do not deny that civilian control exists. But they both highlight how highly undemocratic, and even dangerous, is the absence of those democratic controls over the military and the police forces in Russia which, taken together, comprise multiple militaries. These papers present differing U.S. and European assessments of the problems connected with civilian and democratic controls over the possessors of force in the Russian state.
President Obama has outlined a comprehensive strategy for the war in Afghanistan which is now the central front of our campaign against Islamic terrorism. The strategy strongly connects our prosecution of that war to our policy in Pakistan and internal developments there as a necessary condition of victory. But the strategy has also provided for a new logistics road through Central Asia. The author argues that a winning strategy in Afghanistan depends as well upon the systematic leveraging of the opportunity provided by that road and a new coordinated nonmilitary approach to Central Asia. That approach would rely heavily on improved coordination at home and the more effective leveraging of our superior economic power in Central Asia to help stabilize the region so that it provides a secure rear to Afghanistan. In this fashion we would help Central Asia meet the challenges of extremism, of economic decline due to the global economic crisis, and thus help provide political stability in states that are likely to be challenged by the confluence of those trends.
One of the most likely candidates for future membership in NATO is the Czech Republic. Inasmuch as the debate over this issue is engaging chancelleries all over the United States and Europe, it is necessary to understand how the prospective members view European security issues, what they hope to gain from membership, and how their interests and security relationships mesh with NATO's. Dr. Stephen Blank examines Czech policy. His purpose is not to determine whether the United States or any other members should support or oppose NATO enlargement. Instead, he seeks to analyze Czech views and inform our audience as to their meaning and importance for both the Czech Republic and the other NATO members.
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 ("Contemporary Issues in International Security") with European and Russian scholars in 2010, provides a comprehensive analysis of the means and objectives of Russia's involvement in Central Asia. It provides Russian perspectives concerning the other actors in Central Asia and how Moscow views the policy significance of those efforts, and a French analysis of the strategic situation evolving there. For obvious reasons: the war in Afghanistan, proximity to major global actors, large energy holdings, and for less obvious reasons, i.e., that possibility that domestic instability in one or more of these states could spread to other Muslim states as we now see in the Arab revolutions of 2011, Central Asia is an increasingly important and interesting region.
The essays gathered here represent a panel at SSI's annual Russia conference in 2011. They focus on the analysis of Russian foreign policy both on its material side or actual conduct as well as on the cognitive bases of Russian thinking about international affairs and Russian national security. They span much of the gamut of that foreign policy and also show its strong linkages to the Russian historical tradition and to the imperatives of Russian domestic development.
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 of this monograph, Dr. Stephen Blank, seeks to analyze some of the key strategic issues at stake in this relationship and trace 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. This analysis, originally presented at the annual Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) strategy conference of 2007, was part of a panel that engaged the strategic challenges confronting the United States from Russia. As such, it was part of the conference's larger theme of analyzing regional strategic challenges to U.S. interests and policy across the globe.
The Arctic is the newest sphere of international competition for energy and security access. It pits Russia against the other Arctic states. These essays fully explore and analyze what is at stake here and what Moscow has done to increase its capability and influence in the Arctic.
Many military analysts believe or fear that the wars of the 1990s will be akin to the wars in the former Yugoslavia: small-scale but long-lasting and recurrent ethnic wars that also elude easy international resolution. There are consequently well-founded concerns about prospects for deployment of U.S. forces there in a unilateral or U.N. capacity. Some of the lessons of this kind of war were already apparent in the wars of the 1980s. They were known then as low-intensity conflicts and now as operations other than, or short of, war. This report focuses mainly on lessons from one of the most crucial of these wars, i.e., in Afghanistan as a result of the Soviet invasion in 1979, and attempts to draw lessons that are relevant for current wars, like those in Yugoslavia or the ex-Soviet Union. The purpose is to stimulate analysis and reflection on the strategic and operational, if not also tactical nature of these wars by both analysts and policymakers so that all interested groups can more easily come to terms with a form of warfare that promises to be both deeply destructive and deeply rooted in longstanding political and social antagonisms that cannot be easily or quickly resolved. Naturally some of the lessons drawn from Afghanistan and other wars may either only apply to Russian and Soviet forces or conversely may apply to war in general. But our primary intention is to make a contribution to the study of future wars particularly of the ethnic and small-scale type that promise to continue in many parts of the globe lest we devise better ways for averting and then resolving them.
In the course of its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has deployed forces to hitherto undreamt of destinations in Central Asia and the Caucasus. These deployments reflect more than the exigencies of specific contingencies, but rather are the latest stage in a revolution in strategic affairs that has intersected with the coinciding revolution in military affairs. Thanks to the linked developments in these two processes, the Transcaspian area has now become an area of strategic importance to the United States for many reasons, and not just energy. In this monograph, Dr. Stephen Blank explains how this newly won access to the Transcaspian has come about and why it will remain important to the United States. He then offers analysis and recommendations as to how we might retain access to deal with future contingencies. By examining intersecting geopolitical and strategic trends, Dr. Blank carries on the Strategic Studies Institute's mission of providing timely and relevant analysis...
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