Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Bradley Thayer and I co-authored an article in the September/October issue of the The National Interest entitled, “Russia Goes Ballistic.” Here’s a brief excerpt:
OVER THE next ten to twenty years, the erosion of American nuclear superiority will have major ramifications for the global balance of power. It will place new constraints on our freedom of [...]
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Yesterday, the government in Tbilisi announced that it cut diplomatic ties with Russia to protest the continued presence of Russian troops in Georgian territory. The situation in Eurasia is not improving. Russia’s decision to recognize the “independence” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was particularly problematic since these two regions are part of Georgia.
This [...]
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appealed to China and other Central Asian nations to show its support for Russia’s actions in Georgia at a Shangai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tajikistan today. International press offered conflicting analysis, which of course, is no surprise. What is striking, however, is that the break was not along traditional media [...]
Initial assessments of the military effectiveness of the Russian and Georgian forces are being written. Over to the blogosphere!
Robert Farley:
The Georgians did have some technical advantages, such as nightfighting gear on their tanks and attack aircraft. While this article indicates that the Georgian T-72s (with the nightfighting gear and some other technical upgrades) were superior [...]
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The other day Thomas P.M. Barnett asked whether or not Russia could eventually be a strategic partner for United States. He argued that Washington’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Georgia has been overly emotional:
Frankly, putting the political and strategic implications aside for a minute, Russia’s intervention in Georgia should strike us as more of a turn-on than turn-off. [...]
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Here’s a great article on the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn by Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Moscow keeps upping the ante. Today, the Kremlin announced that it is willing to use means other than diplomacy to respond to further development of the U.S. missile defense system in Poland. According to the Associated Press,
Russia lashed out at the United States on Wednesday over a missile defense deal with Poland and [...]
After the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, some defense analysts and international relations scholars believed that a new, peaceful era would emerge. One scholar, Francis Fukuyama, built his career on this idealistic hypothesis (which he now backed away from). He wrote a an article in 1989 entitled “The End of History?” which concluded [...]
Story from AFP:
Republican White House contender John McCain said Tuesday he would support Georgia’s bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if he is elected president in November.
“I would move forward at the right time with the application for membership in NATO by Georgia,” McCain told Fox News television.
“As you know, through the [...]