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

Dangerous Expectations

Paul Saunders March 17, 2017 RM Exclusives
Could new and lower Russian expectations for U.S.-Russia relations limit U.S. leverage?
article

Russia, Trump and a New Détente: Fixing US-Russian Relations

Robert David English March 10, 2017 Recommended Reads
Demonizing Russia only widens the gulf of U.S.-Russian misunderstanding and encourages dangerous misconceptions.
article

Damage Done: How Russia Hysteria Has Hurt US-Russia Relations

Nikolas K. Gvosdev March 06, 2017 Recommended Reads
Cooperation and communication between Russia and the U.S. is a diplomatic necessity, but the previously difficult task of creating a normal bilateral encounter may now be all but impossible.
article

Neo-McCarthyite Furor Around Russia Is Counterproductive

Katrina vanden Heuvel February 21, 2017 Recommended Reads
In this political climate, common sense is being lost and important questions are not being addressed.
article

Why Trump Is Right on Russia

Anatol Lieven February 14, 2017 Recommended Reads
Recent policy failures suggest that cooperation with Russia is unavoidable.
article

The ABCs of Russian Military Power: A Primer for the New Administration

Michael Kofman February 02, 2017 Recommended Reads
Russia has been busy restoring its military power, and these reforms have serious implications for the new U.S. administration.
multimedia

25 Years After the Collapse of the Soviet Union: What Comes Next?

RM staff December 08, 2016 RM Exclusives
Graham Allison, Niall Ferguson, Mary Elise Sarotte and Arne Westad consider the fall of the USSR as “applied history,” pondering what went right, what went wrong and what policymakers can learn.
research paper

Wargaming NATO's Defense of the Baltics

David A. Shlapak and Michael Johnson August 23, 2016 Recommended Reads
The games’ findings are unambiguous: At present NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members; fortunately, changing that will not require Herculean effort.
report

False Alarms, True Dangers?

Anthony Barrett June 09, 2016 Recommended Reads
Because the U.S. does not a have a consistent method of risk assessment for inadvertent nuclear war, misinterpretations could lead to a nuclear strike, either by U.S. or Russian forces.
article

Quite Possibly the Dumbest Military Concept Ever: A 'Limited' Nuclear War

Geoff Wilson and Will Saetren May 27, 2016 Recommended Reads
Thinking we can use nuclear weapons in a “limited” way without inviting nuclear catastrophe is a dangerous fantasy.
article

US-Russian Relations: The Middle Cannot Hold

Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro May 03, 2016 Recommended Reads
The Obama administration's "middle-way" strategy towards Russian policy of concurrent antagonism and cooperation must be ended in favor of a more stable path.
article

Blurring the Line Between Nuclear and Nonnuclear Weapons: Increasing the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War?

Pavel Podvig April 15, 2016 Recommended Reads
Combining the controls for conventional and nuclear weapons into a single system, as Russia has done in recent years, increases the likelihood of accidental nuclear war.
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