Analysis

This listing contains all the analytical materials posted on the Russia Matters website. These include: RM Exclusives, commissioned by Russia Matters exclusively for this website; Recommended Reads, deemed particularly noteworthy by our editorial team; Partner Posts, originally published by our partners elsewhere; and Future Policy Leaders, pieces by promising young scholars and policy thinkers. Content can be filtered by genre and subject-specific criteria and is updated often. Gradually we will be adding older Recommended Reads and Partner Posts dating back as far as 2011.
article

Trump Aside, What's the U.S. Role in NATO?

Barry Posen March 10, 2019 Recommended Reads
Trump's movement away from NATO is easily dismissed as poor foreign policy, given his history of bad ideas. This is not the case, as modern NATO takes more than it gives when it comes to strengthening American national security.
article

How Not to Compete in the Arctic: The Blurry Lines Between Friend and Foe

Stephanie Pezard February 27, 2019 Recommended Reads
Recent U.S. strategic documents portray Russia as a competitor of the United States and an unambiguous rival. Yet in the Arctic, Russia is also a neighbor with whom trivial matters need to be discussed and de-conflicted before they become nontrivial.
article

Russia May Have Violated the INF Treaty. Here's How the United States Appears to Have Done the Same.

Theodore A. Postol February 07, 2019
The death of INF involved violations on both sides, as Russia developed a cruise missile that allegedly broke weapon range rules while the U.S. built missile interception facilities in Eastern Europe with defense and attack dual-capability.
article

Killing the INF Treaty was a Gift to Russia

Jon Wolfsthal February 07, 2019
Withdrawing now from the INF Treaty is a fundamental mistake of the Trump presidency, absolving Russia of its arms violations and removing the most effective tool for decreasing the likelihood of nuclear crisis.
article

Mixed Messages on Trump’s Missile Defense Review

Matt Korda and Hans M. Kristensen January 17, 2019 Recommended Reads
Despite the document’s assertion that “Missile Defenses are Stabilizing,” the Missile Defense Review promotes a posture that is anything but.
article

With Russia and the US, Nuclear Risks Never Go Out of Vogue

Jon B. Wolfsthal November 08, 2018 RM Exclusives
Thirty-five years after Able Archer, the lack of sustained, high-level engagement with Russia risks once again putting America and its allies at unnecessary risk of a nuclear conflict no one wants or even expects.
article

NATO’s Trident Juncture Exercise as a Deterrence Signal to Russia

Dmitry Gorenburg November 01, 2018 RM Exclusives
The military lessons for the exercise’s participants promise to be significant, while the immediate political impact will be minor. Russia’s main worry? A permanent U.S. troop deployment in eastern Europe.
article

Putin Deepens Confusion About Russian Nuclear Policy

Abigail Stowe-Thurston, Matt Korda and Hans M. Kristensen October 25, 2018 RM Exclusives
Rather than strengthening deterrence, ambiguity surrounding U.S. and Russian nuclear thresholds is causing both sides to make dangerous assumptions about one another’s intentions.
article

Vostok-2018: Russia and China Signal Growing Military Cooperation

Michael Kofman September 10, 2018 RM Exclusives
This year’s strategic military exercise demonstrates both that Russia is still a power in Asia and that it will work with China to offset threats from Washington.
article

The August War, Ten Years On: A Retrospective on the Russo-Georgian War

Michael Kofman August 17, 2018 Recommended Reads
In 2008, Moscow demonstrated the will and ability to actively contest the U.S. vision for European security, veto NATO expansion in its neighborhood and challenge Washington’s design for a normative international order where small states can determine their own affairs independent of the interests of great powers.
research paper

Russian Strategists Debate Preemption as Defense Against NATO Surprise Attack

Alexander Velez-Green March 14, 2018 RM Exclusives
Russian leaders have long debated what to do in the face of a NATO surprise attack. One group of military strategists believes that, in the near future, defensive operations alone will not suffice.
article

From Mutually Assured Destruction to Mutually Assured Delusion (and Back?)

Simon Saradzhyan March 12, 2018 Recommended Reads
If U.S. and Russian decision-makers do not just profess but also genuinely believe in the continuing decline and pending collapse of each other’s countries, then chances are they will act more assertively against each other.
Refine & Filter

By Section

By Topic

By Country

By Regions

By Groups

By Genre