This Week's Highlights

U.S. President Joe Biden finds himself in a situation not unlike that faced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s, writes Sergey Radchenko of Johns Hopkins University. At the basis of both decisions [to withdraw from Afghanistan]—Biden’s and Gorbachev’s—there is a realization that, as Gorbachev put it in his time, Afghanistan was a “bleeding wound,” Radchenko writes. For the Americans—like for the Soviets in their time—Afghanistan was a place where one wins every single battle and still loses the war, he argues. Between them, the Soviet Union and the United States have now spent 30 years nation-building in Afghanistan, and both efforts proved miserable failures.......Getting in was a mistake; getting out was the right thing to do, because in the end Afghanistan was never Moscow’s, or Washington’s, to win or lose, Radchenko argues.

What has been missing in all of the recent discussions of what is going to happen to the government of Afghanistan as the United States completes its withdrawal is  discussion of how Afghanistan’s status as America’s designated non-NATO ally is playing out, writes Nikolas Gvosdev of the U.S. Naval War College. “Watching events in Kabul, a government in Kyiv, or Tbilisi, or Chisinau would wonder whether getting even the non-NATO [ally status] would bring much benefit,” he writes.

Russia has been struck by the speed of the unraveling of the U.S.-installed government in Kabul, said Fyodor Lukyanov, the chairman of Russia's Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and editor in chief of the magazine Russia in Global Affairs, writes Liz Sly, Beirut bureau chief for the Washington Post. Lukyanov noted, the government left behind by the Soviets survived for three years after the withdrawal of Red Army forces; "we believe our failure was big, but it seems the Americans achieved an even bigger failure," he said, as quoted by Sly.

The Biden administration should take steps to develop better, faster, and more reliable offensive options to target nonstate cybercriminals, writes the Belfer Center’s Eric Rosenbach, Juliette Kayyem and Lara Mitra.  First, the U.S. intelligence community needs to ramp up its collection of the requisite intelligence on Russian and Chinese ransomware groups by designating them as a top-tier priority, they write. Second, given the evasive and shadowy nature of organized crime groups, the U.S. government must devise creative offensive tools that target cybercriminal infrastructure without impacting civilians, they argue.  And, third, if ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure continue, the Biden administration should establish the legal foundations for noncovert offensive actions against nonstate actors—something that will require building domestic and international support for such actions, according to Rosenbach, Kayyem and Mitra.

The negative trend in building a strong understanding of Russia within U.S. academia, media and government is easily reversible, writes Jeff Hawn, a Ph.D. candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science.  First, funding for Title VIII should be restored and increased, he writes. Moreover, new scholarships and grants should be created with the goal of expanding the amount of research being conducted on Russia, Hawn argues. The U.S. government should also change its hiring practices to emphasize the recruitment and employment of regional specialists, he writes. Finally, Washington should actively encourage institution-to-institution partnerships and educational and cultural exchanges, according to Hawn. 

The president’s battle against the influence of Ukraine’s oligarchs may not be as hopeless as it might first seem, writes independent journalist Konstantin Skorkin. It looks like this will be the main issue on which he will campaign for a second term, and if that’s the case, it’s better for big business to play along with the president than to get involved in the risky business of sinking money into his opponents from the old elite (other serious rivals have so far failed to materialize), he argues.

Russia's declared strategy can generally be considered a reliable predictor of the state's efforts, according to the authors of a new RAND report. Usually, Moscow attempts to match its actions with its words. However, at times, its efforts fall short of rhetoric; Russian strategy prioritizes threats and thus implies acceptance of certain risks in lower-priority areas; in practice, however, Russia seems unwilling or unable to accept these risks and thus allocates resources in ways that are inconsistent with its stated strategy, according to the report. The Russian leadership’s pervasive insecurity and related attempts to create buffers against instability on multiple fronts—domestic or interstate, regional or global— often prevent effective implementation of stated strategy while further constraining Russia’s already limited resources.

 

I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security:

• No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• No significant developments.

Great Power rivalry/New Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:

“Afghanistan Has Never Been Moscow or Washington’s to Win or Lose. Getting in was a bad mistake. Getting out was the right thing to do,” Sergey Radchenko, The Moscow Times, 08.16.21. The author, the Wilson E. Schmidt Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, writes:

• “The Taliban’s stunning victory after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has prompted impassioned commentary about the potential horrors of their coming rule. Should the United States have done something to save the government that it has already spent so much blood and treasure on sustaining?  The obvious answer is no.”
• “U.S. President Joe Biden finds himself in a situation not unlike that faced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s.  At the basis of both decisions—Biden’s and Gorbachev’s—there is a realization that, as Gorbachev put it in his time, Afghanistan was a ‘bleeding wound.’ For the Americans—like for the Soviets in their time—Afghanistan was a place where one wins every single battle and still loses the war. Between them, the Soviet Union and the United States have now spent 30 years nation-building in Afghanistan. Both efforts proved miserable failures.”
• “After the Soviet withdrawal, Afghanistan went through years of civil war, followed by the brutal reign of the Taliban, followed by 9/11 and the war on terror. One might ask: Could this have been averted if the Soviets had stayed? But a better question would be: Could this have been averted if the Soviets had never invaded in the first place? Drawing the right lessons is all about asking the right questions.”
• “Today, 30 years after the fall of the Soviet client regime in Afghanistan, few miss the imperial misadventure with its appalling toll of death and destruction imposed on the long-suffering people of Afghanistan. Even many of those in Russia who eagerly point the finger of blame at Gorbachev for his real and imaginary mistakes would probably think twice before blaming him for losing Afghanistan.”
• “Some 30 years later, it certainly seems that by withdrawing from Afghanistan Gorbachev made the right call, despite all the criticism that he faced at the time from some of his comrades-in-leadership. ...Getting in was a mistake; getting out was the right thing to do. Because in the end Afghanistan was never Moscow’s, or Washington’s, to win or lose.”

“Afghanistan Is a Wake-Up Call for ‘Major Non-NATO Allies’, Nikolas K. Gvosdev, National Interest, 08.14.21. The author, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and a contributing editor at the National Interest, writes:

• “A number of years ago, ... there was a push within Congress to formally designate Ukraine as a non-NATO ally of the United States. In theory, this would put Ukraine at the same level as countries like Israel (another state which lacks a formal treaty of alliance with the United States). However, watching events unfold in Afghanistan, Ukrainian policymakers might reconsider the value of such a declaration. After all, with much ballyhoo, in 2012 Afghanistan was so designated as a ‘major non-NATO ally’ of the United States, a step that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared represented ‘a powerful commitment to Afghanistan’s future’ through which ‘a number of benefits’ would accrue to Kabul. At the time, this declaration was seen as significant…”
• “Over the last two weeks, in all of the discussions of what is going to happen to the government of Afghanistan as the United States completes its withdrawal, I have not come across any discussion of how Afghanistan’s status as a designated ‘ally’ of the United States is playing out. In other words, the erosion of the power of the recognized government in Kabul—with predictions of complete collapse now increasingly being heard—is discussed without any reference to its status as a formally designated ally of the United States. … Watching events in Kabul, a government in Kyiv, or Tbilisi, or Chisinau would wonder whether getting even the non-NATO status would bring much benefit.”
• “There is another trend currently in play: countries that are fulfilling the letter of their formal alliance commitments but who are pursuing domestic or foreign policies at odds with U.S. preferences being cast out, at least in terms of public and elite discourse, from the ranks of U.S. allies.”
• “From Afghanistan to Hungary, there is confusion about what alliance means and what steps the United States is prepared to take on behalf of those it considers allies. These matters need resolution because the United States cannot allow any doubt about what commitments it is prepared to enforce, especially with great power competitors more prepared to test any ambiguity in America’s stance.”

“Moscow Watches Kabul’s Fall With Some Satisfaction, Much Concern,” Mark Galeotti, The Moscow Times, 08.16.21. The author, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and an honorary professor at the University College London School of Slavonic & East European Studies, writes:

• “Moscow has … actively been developing its own diplomatic connections not only with the main Taliban leadership but also with local warlords within and outside the movement.”
• “The activities that some U.S. sources claimed last year were Russian efforts to offer bounties for dead American soldiers were more likely old-fashioned efforts to buy alliances through cash payments, a practice as familiar to the Soviet KGB in the 1980s as British political officers in Afghanistan in the nineteenth century.”
• “The Taliban delegation which came to Moscow in July reassured the Kremlin that their rise posed no threat, and indeed there are no current plans to evacuate the Russian embassy in Kabul, which is reportedly now actually being guarded by Taliban fighters. Zamir Kabulov, the highly-regarded head of the Foreign Ministry’s Second Asian Department, has expressed confidence that a positive relationship will hold: ‘I not only hope, I am sure of this.’”
• “The real test will be what happens now, not least as the Taliban is less monolithic than it may appear. The fight about the Western-backed government provided a unifying force, but now that this war is won, divisions over future policy—and especially as to how hard-line a Sharia regime to impose—as well as all kinds of personal, factional and regional disputes are likely to emerge.”
• “The Kremlin is waiting to see whether the Taliban will fare any better than any of the other powers who have thought they could reshape the country.  Ironically, the Kremlin probably hopes they do.”

“Afghanistan’s collapse leaves allies questioning U.S. resolve on other fronts,” Liz Sly, The Washington Post, 08.14.21. The author, Beirut bureau chief for the newspaper, writes:

• “The Taliban's stunningly swift advances across Afghanistan have sparked global alarm, reviving doubts about the credibility of U.S. foreign policy promises and drawing harsh criticisms even from some of the United States' closest allies. … ‘Whatever happened to 'America is back'?’ said Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the Defense Committee in the British Parliament, citing Biden's foreign policy promise to rebuild alliances and restore U.S. prestige damaged during the Trump administration.”
• “In comments Friday, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace predicted civil war and the return of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization whose attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, prompted the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan. … The manner and implementation of the withdrawal has left allies feeling betrayed, said Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations. ...some German officials and lawmakers are seething at Washington's failure to consult coalition partners such as Berlin, Clüver Ashbrook said.”
• “The United States' Arab allies, which have long counted on the U.S. military to come to their aid in the event of an attack by Iran, also have faced questions over whether they will be able to rely on the United States.”
• “For China and Russia, there is opportunity as well as concern in the departure of U.S. troops. Both Moscow and Beijing have hosted Taliban delegations in recent weeks in an attempt to pave the way for a post-American future in the region. Washington ‘bears an unavoidable responsibility for the current situation in Afghanistan,’ Col. Wu Qian, a spokesman for China's Ministry of National Defense, said earlier this month. ‘It cannot leave and shed the burden on regional countries.’”
• “Russia has been struck by the speed of the unraveling of the U.S.-installed government in Kabul, said Fyodor Lukyanov, the chairman of Russia's Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and editor in chief of the magazine Russia in Global Affairs. The decade-long Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which ended in 1989, is widely remembered as a failure, one that leaves Russia in no mood to reengage too closely with Afghanistan, he said. But at least, Lukyanov noted, the government left behind by the Soviets survived for three years after the withdrawal of Red Army forces. ‘We believe our failure was big, but it seems the Americans achieved an even bigger failure,’ he said.”

“In Afghanistan, the Tragic Toll of Washington Delusion,” H.R. McMaster and Bradley Bowman, The Wall Street Journal, 08.15.21. The authors, both of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, write:

• “Self-styled strategists in Washington still rationalize the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as necessary to focus on China and great-power competition. But the refusal to provide the Afghan people the support necessary to stem a humanitarian catastrophe emboldens China, Russia and other adversaries eager to proclaim the U.S. an unreliable partner and a declining power.”
• “Calls from Washington urged Afghans to fight harder. But that insults the memory of tens of thousands of Afghans who made the ultimate sacrifice in the fight against our common enemies and underestimates the psychological blow from America’s sudden abandonment.”
• “The gap between fantasy in Washington and reality in Afghanistan explains how we have arrived at this point. The end of self-delusion is necessary if there is any hope of mitigating a growing disaster that won’t stay confined to the Middle East and South Asia.”
• “The Biden administration ignored the warnings, and now the Afghan president has fled and Kabul is falling to the Taliban. The administration must focus on immediately evacuating Americans to safety, then use any remaining time to evacuate Afghans who worked with the U.S. and now understandably fear retribution from the Taliban. Once that task is complete, the U.S., along with willing international partners, should begin the painstaking work of mitigating the humanitarian and security catastrophe.”

“Final Failure in Afghanistan Is Biden’s to Own,” David Sanger, The New York Times, 08.15.21. The author, a White House and national security correspondent at the newspaper, writes:

• “Rarely in modern presidential history have words come back to bite an American commander in chief as swiftly as these from President Biden a little more than five weeks ago: ‘There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States in Afghanistan.’ Then, digging the hole deeper, he added, ‘The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.’”
• “Mr. Biden will go down in history, fairly or unfairly, as the president who presided over a long-brewing, humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan. After seven months in which his administration seemed to exude much-need competence—getting more than 70 percent of the country’s adults vaccinated, engineering surging job growth and making progress toward a bipartisan infrastructure bill—everything about America’s last days in Afghanistan shattered the imagery.”
• “To his [Biden’s] mind, years of refashioning American foreign policy in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks gave China room to rise, Russia room to disrupt, Iran and North Korea room to focus on their nuclear ambitions. Getting out of Afghanistan is part of a broader effort to refocus on core strategic challenges, and new threats from cyberspace to outer space. But this weekend was evidence that the past is never really in the past.” 

“We All Lost Afghanistan. Two Decades of Mistakes, Misjudgments, and Collective Failure,” P. Michael McKinley, Foreign Affairs, August 16, 2021. The author, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan in 2014-2016, writes:

• “We misread the Taliban when we were fighting them; we also misread their more recent pledge to negotiate peace as they shadow-boxed in Doha with the Ghani government after reaching agreement with the United States on the withdrawal timetable. They never had any intention of reaching a settlement.”
• “Now, threats to withhold international recognition as the Taliban capture Kabul by force mean little. Taliban leaders are not concerned about whether the United States recognizes them as a government; other international actors probably will no matter what Washington does.” 
• “Perhaps the resurgence of a terrorist threat will develop more quickly under a future Taliban government than it would have otherwise. But to conclude that this outcome demands an indefinite U.S. troop presence would imply that U.S. troops should also be deployed indefinitely in the many other parts of the world where Islamic State (also known as ISIS) and al Qaeda offshoots are active in greater numbers than they are in Afghanistan and pose a greater threat to the United States. Moreover, U.S. capabilities to monitor and strike at terrorist groups have grown exponentially since 2001.”
• “Ultimately, Washington’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops is not the sole or even most important explanation for what is unfolding in Afghanistan today. The explanation lies in 20 years of failed policies and the shortcomings of Afghanistan’s political leadership. We can still hope that we in the United States do not end up in a poisonous debate about ‘who lost Afghanistan.’ But if we do, let’s acknowledge that it was all of us.”

“Joe Biden’s credibility has been shredded in Afghanistan,” Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, 08.13.21. The author, chief foreign affairs columnist for the newspaper, writes:

• “If Donald Trump were presiding over the debacle in Afghanistan, the U.S. foreign policy establishment would be loudly condemning the irresponsibility and immorality of American strategy. Since it is Joe Biden in the White House there is instead, largely, an embarrassed silence.”
• “The final collapse of the government looks inevitable. It may come just in time for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that originally led to the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. … On Afghanistan, Biden’s credibility is now shot. … The broader strategic question is what the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan will do for United States’ credibility around the world.”
• “So how does America’s defeat in Afghanistan—in reality, a defeat for the entire western alliance—play into the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing? The U.S. failure makes it much harder for Biden to push his core message that ‘America is back’. By contrast, it fits perfectly with two key messages pushed by the Chinese (and Russian) governments. First, that U.S. power is in decline. Second, that American security guarantees cannot be relied upon.”
• “If the United States will not commit to a fight against the Taliban, there will be a question mark over whether America would really be willing to go to war with China or Russia. Yet America’s global network of alliances is based on the idea that, in the last resort, U.S. troops would indeed be deployed to defend their allies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere.”
• “In time, China might face a classical superpower’s dilemma. Is it better to intervene militarily in turbulent Afghanistan, or to leave the country to its own devices? As Andrew Small of the European Council on Foreign Relations points out, Chinese commentary on Afghanistan is already replete with references to the country as the ‘graveyard of empires.’”

“Russia’s Battle for the Black Sea. Why Moscow’s Moves Could Determine the Future of Navigation,” Angela Stent, Foreign Affairs, 08.16.21. The author, a Senior Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes:

• “The Biden administration must decide how to respond to the Kremlin’s growing military presence in Black Sea region and to its bid to control the waters around Crimea. The stakes are higher than just Russia and the Black Sea, moreover. The fate of Crimea’s territorial waters could have profound resonance in the South China Sea, where Beijing claims sovereignty over most of its territorial waters.”
• “Countering Russia’s play for naval dominance in the Black Sea will need to involve Turkey, since it controls access to the Black Sea....the Biden administration will have to press Turkey to work with NATO more actively to counter Russia in the Black Sea.”
• “In the short and medium term, the United States and NATO should also continue to provide political and military support to Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine to help them build resilience against Russia’s power play in the Black Sea. They should work with Georgia and Ukraine to modernize their militaries within the framework of enhanced cooperation with NATO and, increasingly important, to identify and counter Russian disinformation aimed at undermining the United States’ and NATO’s role in the region.”
• “In the longer term, Washington should seek to persuade all Black Sea states to comply with existing agreements that assure freedom of navigation and the right of “innocent passage” in territorial waters. Jettisoning these agreements in Crimea would represent a threat to regional security, global trade, and the current world order.”

“Operational Unpredictability and Deterrence. Evaluating Options for Complicating Adversary Decisionmaking,” Miranda Priebe, Angela O'Mahony, Bryan Frederick, Alyssa Demus, Bonny Lin, Michelle Grisé, Derek Eaton, Abby Doll, RAND, August 2021. The authors write:

• “The 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy instructed the U.S. military to become more operationally unpredictable and suggested that doing so would help the United States deter attacks on U.S. partners. The authors of this report propose a definition of U.S. operational unpredictability—adversary uncertainty about how the United States would fight; develop four potential approaches for increasing U.S. operational unpredictability and deterring attacks on U.S. allies and partners; and assess how the four approaches could affect U.S. relations with Russia and China. They also examine two Cold War–era cases in which the United States sought to be more operationally unpredictable.”
• “The authors find that increasing adversaries' perceptions of U.S. operational unpredictability may be possible if the United States has detailed information about their operational analysis and decisionmaking processes. The most promising way to increase U.S. operational unpredictability is to publicize new U.S. capabilities and demonstrate that they give the United States multiple options for achieving its key objectives. However, increasing U.S. operational unpredictability may be costly and, in some cases, involve negative side effects (e.g., reducing U.S. military effectiveness and increasing China's and Russia's threat perceptions). The authors recommend weighing the potential costs and effectiveness of these approaches against more traditional approaches to deterring U.S. adversaries.”

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

• No significant developments.

Missile defense:

“Is a Third Trade for Missile Defenses Possible?” Michael Krepon, Arms Control Wonk, 08.05.21. The author, co-founder of the Stimson Center, writes:

• “Two U.S. Presidents have already made sound trades topping off national ballistic missile defenses. They accepted limits on programs burdened by technological and operational constraints to gain something of greater value. Might a third trade be in the cards? Don’t bet on it, but let’s consider the possibilities after a brief walk down memory lane.”
  • “The first trade occurred when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger agreed to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in return for capping Soviet missile launcher deployments in the first strategic arms limitation talks. “
  • “The second trade became possible when Ronald Reagan embraced the concept of making nuclear weapons ‘impotent and obsolete’ by means of futuristic missile defenses. This trade was finalized in the George H.W. Bush administration, which negotiated not one, but two strategic arms reduction treaties, the latter eliminating land-based missiles carrying multiple warheads.” 
• “Deeper reductions became harder for Bush’s successors after the ABM Treaty’s demise. The Kremlin continues be wary of U.S. missile defense upgrades. Consequently, Putin values land-based missiles carrying MIRVs and other means of attack to make national missile defenses impotent and obsolete.  Another reason why deeper reductions are harder to accomplish is because China is significantly ramping up its deployed land-based missiles amidst calls that Beijing be included in any future strategic arms limitation agreement.” 

Nuclear arms control:

“Russia, the US and the post-New START agenda,” William Alberque and Chelsey Wiley, The International Institutes for Strategic Studies (IISS), 08.06.21. The authors, respectively the director and administrator for non-proliferation and nuclear policy at IISS, write:

• “On 28 July, the United States and Russia restarted the bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue in order to conduct ‘a deliberate and robust dialogue … that will seek to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures’. The meeting followed the 3 February renewal of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the Biden−Putin summit in Geneva on 16 June and the 21 July confirmation of Bonnie Jenkins as U.S. under-secretary of state for arms control and international security.”
• “The nuclear talks will likely focus on three pillars: strategic stability, limitations and verification.”
• “A single treaty that covers all of these issues will be difficult to achieve. Addressing security concerns would involve not only emerging technologies and weapons systems, but also successfully navigating conversations with a broader set of players, such as states that rely on extended-deterrence guarantees, and other nuclear-armed states. A narrowly focused, one-issue-at-a-time approach is unlikely to succeed. Instead, a set of interlinked and politically binding agreements, augmented by multilateral, bilateral or unilateral statements of restraint, is a more plausible avenue to explore. For instance, in the early 1970s the United States and the Soviet Union conducted talks on strategic forces, bilateral stability and risk reduction, outer space and missile defense, while broader talks were under way on European security and conventional-force reductions. This facilitated cross-domain bargaining.  It is therefore possible that the U.S.−Russia dialogue will not lead to treaty negotiations at all.”
• “Regardless of the outcome, the agreement to continue the U.S.−Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue is an important contribution to risk reduction between the world’s two largest nuclear states.”

“Topping-off National Missile Defenses for Tac Nuke Reductions?” Michael Krepon, Arms Control Wonk, 08.12.21. The author, co-founder of the Stimson Center, writes:

• “The Biden administration has yet to share with us its definition of success in the strategic stability talks. We do know, however, that success requires making sound choices. Biden’s decisions on national and theater missile defenses will be made on national security interest-based grounds. The Kremlin doesn’t get a veto. Nor does Washington have a veto on Moscow’s requirements for tactical nuclear weapons. There are sound reasons for parallel restraint, but these decisions won’t be sealed by trade or by treaty; they’ll reflect national security calculations.”
• “Parallel restraint is probably the best we can expect in the near term. Restraint is inherently impermanent, but treaties are also impermanent—even those intended to have indefinite duration like the ABM Treaty and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.”
• “Whether restraints are informal or treaty-based, their longevity will depend on how much national leaders value freedom of action and whether there are perceived advantages in ditching restraint. The likelihood of parallel restraint regarding national missile defenses and tac nukes could increase if these concerns rank high enough in Moscow and Washington’s respective priorities in the strategic stability talks.”

Counter-terrorism:

“America Failed Its Way to Counterterrorism Success. How a Flawed “War on Terror” Eventually Yielded the Right Approach,” Hal Brands and Michael O’Hanlon, Foreign Affairs, 08.12.21. The authors, respectively the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a senior fellow and research director at the Brookings Institution, write:

• “For 20 years, Washington has struggled and mostly failed to reduce the overall level of global terrorism and to create a healthier political climate in the Muslim world. It has also endured slow, grinding quagmires and sharp, humiliating setbacks. Yet on the most fundamental level, the United States has achieved its strategic objective: it has prevented catastrophic attacks against the U.S. homeland, mainly by becoming extremely proficient at destroying terrorists’ sanctuaries and pulverizing their networks.”
• “The United States has paid too high a price for this success. Yet that price has fallen dramatically over time as Washington has developed what is, on balance, a better counterterrorism approach. After conducting unsustainably expensive military commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States underreached by pulling back from the broader Middle East too fast and allowing old threats to reemerge. But since around 2014, Washington has settled on a medium-footprint model based on modest investments, particularly in special operations forces and airpower, to support local forces that do most of the fighting and dying. When combined with nonmilitary tools such as intelligence cooperation, law enforcement efforts, and economic aid, this approach provides reasonably good protection at a reasonable price.”
  • “The United States needs a minimum level of stability in the greater Middle East—and a minimum level of safety from terrorist threats—to focus properly on the challenge from China and Russia. Without these, it risks the dreaded ‘yo-yo effect,’ whereby withdrawal leads to surging threats that then require renewed intervention at a higher price. That is a formula for failure in counterterrorism and great-power competition alike.”
• “The medium-footprint strategy is not an ideal solution to the ongoing problem of jihadi terrorism. But there is no ideal solution. Perhaps the two most important lessons of the past 20 years are that all of the United States’ counterterrorism options are imperfect, and that as bad as things seem in the greater Middle East, they can always get worse. As the United States reaches a generational milestone in the war on terror, it should acknowledge what has gone wrong—but also preserve the strategy that has allowed it to get a fair amount right.”

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security:

“The Limits of Cyberoffense.Why America Struggles to Fight Back,” Eric Rosenbach, Juliette Kayyem, and Lara Mitra, Foreign Affairs, 08.11.21. The authors, respectively co-director, senior lecturer and fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, write:

• “The recent wave of high-profile cyberattacks by Russian organized crime groups has forced U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to confront a difficult question: How should the United States respond to hacks not by hostile foreign governments but by criminal nonstate actors?”
• “As the administration weighs its options in the wake of the recent attacks, it first has to confront a more basic question: Is the United States in fact capable of launching effective offensive cyberattacks against criminals who are not backed by a state?”
• “The usual U.S. playbook for responding to state-sponsored cyberattacks is unfortunately not very useful when applied to organized crime.”
• “Persistent challenges in intelligence collection, weapons development, and legal authority for cyber-operations stood in the way of effective offensive cyber-action against ISIS—and continue to stand in the way of effective cyber-action against other nonstate actors today.”
  1. “The organized crime groups responsible for the recent ransomware attacks in the United States are among the most difficult targets for intelligence collection. … If the Biden administration decides to attempt preemptive cyberattacks against these kinds of hackers, the challenge of intelligence collection will be compounded by resistance from the intelligence community, which will not want to give up potentially valuable intelligence for the sake of cyberoffensives.”
  2. “Just as daunting as intelligence collection is the challenge of developing cyberweapons to target specific networks—a process that also often takes months.”
  3. “The final obstacle to offensive cyber-operations against nonstate actors is securing a legal justification. ...Gaining legal approval for publicly disclosed offensive military operations remains complicated, particularly in the case of nonstate actors such as Russian organized crime groups.”
• “The Biden administration should take steps to develop better, faster, and more reliable offensive options to target nonstate cybercriminals.”
  1. “First, the U.S. intelligence community needs to ramp up its collection of the requisite intelligence on Russian and Chinese ransomware groups by designating them as a top-tier priority.”
  2. “Second, given the evasive and shadowy nature of organized crime groups, the U.S. government must devise creative offensive tools that target cybercriminal infrastructure without impacting civilians.”
  3. “And, third, if ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure continue, the Biden administration should establish the legal foundations for noncovert offensive actions against nonstate actors—something that will require building domestic and international support for such actions.”

“An undeclared war is breaking out in cyberspace. The Biden administration is fighting back.,” David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 08.10.21. The author, a foreign affairs columnist at the newspaper, writes:

• “If you go to the website of the National Security Agency and scroll down half a page, you'll come to a link for what the NSA calls its ‘Cybersecurity Collaboration Center’ for sharing ideas with tech companies about stopping malware attacks. That openness is a clear indication of how bad the cyber threat has become. The Biden administration has decided that the danger of cyberattacks from Russia, China and other nations is so serious that it is mobilizing all parts of the government, including an organization once so secretive it was known as ‘No Such Agency.’”
• “Cyberattacks on U.S. targets have, if anything, escalated since Biden took office.”
• “Russia is a special threat.”
  • “Biden warned President Vladimir Putin about cyberattacks in their June summit meeting in Geneva and demanded that Russia pursue criminal hackers operating within its territory. He also proposed an agreement that 16 areas of vital infrastructure should be ‘off limits’ to attack, the way hospitals are under the Geneva Conventions. Russian actions are hard to judge, but the Kremlin appears to have responded favorably. Two weeks after the summit, Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's FSB security agency, said in Moscow: ‘We will work together [on locating hackers] and hope for reciprocity.’”
  • “The NSA and other intelligence agencies have also given a public hint of U.S. retaliatory capabilities. Two weeks after Colonial Pipeline paid a ransom of 75 bitcoin to a Russian hacking group called DarkSide, the Justice Department announced it had seized about 64 bitcoin, worth about $2.3 million, from a hidden cryptocurrency wallet.”
    • “Jean-Louis Gergorin, a French cybersecurity expert,  said he was ‘convinced’ that the FSB's Bortnikov has curbed some Russian ransomware attacks as part of ‘some kind of implicit mutual restraint agreement between Russia and the United States.’”
• “China's recent cyberattacks have been as brazen as Russia's.”
  • “Microsoft revealed in March that the security of its widely used Exchange software had been breached, compromising tens of thousands of networks worldwide.”
  • “In July, the Biden administration revealed that this devastating hack was organized by China's Ministry of State Security, working through a network of criminal contract hackers. Joining this startling attribution of Chinese ‘irresponsible behavior’ were the European Union, Britain and NATO.”

Energy exports from CIS:

“Biden to Putin: Drill, Vlady, Drill,” James Freeman, The Wall Street Journal, 08.11.21. The author, assistant editor at the newspaper, writes:

• “A principal objective of the multitrillion-dollar Biden economic plan is to force Americans to reduce their production and consumption of fossil fuels. So why is the president now encouraging overseas production by petro-dictators, which in turn will encourage consumption world-wide? It’s almost as if disruption of the U.S. economy has become an end in itself for Washington’s ruling class.”
• “This morning Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan made the White House case for members of the cartel known as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, led by Saudi Arabia, plus a group of nonmembers like Russia, to pump more oil … Current U.S. policy is for oil from authoritarian abusers of human rights like Vladimir Putin to play a larger role in the energy market, while simultaneously asking U.S. taxpayers to spend unprecedented sums to reduce the use of oil in energy markets. Where are all the media’s Russia collusion theorists?”
• “Also this morning, while the Biden White House was making its pitch to petro-tyrants to produce more fossil fuels, the Biden political operation was emailing supporters to brag about White House programs to produce less. ‘The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is a historic piece of legislation,’ says the email from JoeBiden.com.”
• “Making foreign oil cheaper and more plentiful by definition makes it harder and more expensive to push Americans into electric vehicles. … The easy answer for this contradiction is that the White House is worried about the near-term politics of inflation and higher gas prices.”
• “Mr. Biden is asking American taxpayers—and future taxpayers who will bear the burden of federal debt—to make enormous sacrifices for the cause of reducing oil use. His companion policy to increase the use of foreign oil is a wholly unreasonable demand. … The Biden energy agenda is to saddle Americans with unsustainable costs to forgo oil in the future—while ensuring enough oil production now to get Democrats re-elected.”

“U.S.-Germany Deal Alleviates the Strategic Dangers of Nord Stream 2,” Arik Burakovsky, National Interest, 08.11.21. The author, assistant director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, writes:

• “Nord Stream 2 could eventually result in substantial financial losses for Ukraine, but Western investment is likely to cover the country’s temporary budget shortfalls and lessen its reliance on transit revenues. By doubling the capacity of the Nord Stream system, Gazprom will be able to gradually reduce gas flows through the Brotherhood and Soyuz pipelines to save on transit fees, giving Moscow more leverage in commercial negotiations with Kyiv. Nonetheless, shifting away from transporting Russian gas and fostering economic modernization will ultimately make Ukraine more resilient in the context of Europe’s energy transition. Hence, the U.S.-Germany compromise eliminates the need to worry about the political ramifications of Nord Stream 2.”

“Nord Stream 2’s Impact on Ukraine: The View From Kyiv,” Iryna Perezhogina, National Interest 08.12.21. The author, a graduate student at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, writes:

• “In the light of the energy transition and that Ukraine underground gas storage capacity is one of the largest in Europe, the country should focus its efforts on increasing its own natural gas production and developing the capacity to operate on alternative energy resources, which will bring Ukraine closer to Europe, enhancing energy security for itself as well as for its European partners.”
• “Additionally, as Ukrainian independent energy expert Valentin Zemlyansky has suggested, Ukrainian leadership should find ways to cooperate with Germany in the use of the Ukrainian gas transmission system (GTS) in hydrogen projects, thereby developing ways to modernize Ukrainian gas pipelines, reduce gas tariffs for the population, and reduce the cost of maintaining gas infrastructure.”

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“The black stain of being a hopeful Russia expert in the U.S.,” Jeff Hawn, Responsible Statecraft, 08.13.21. The author, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of International History at The London School of Economics and Political Science, writes:

• “The United States is engaged in an active and often hostile competition with Russia, but, instead of investing in building a robust network of Russian experts, Washington has neglected to invest in the field.”
  • “The outsourcing of background checks for security clearance to lowest-bid contractors means that would-be Russian experts applying for entry-level federal positions face daunting obstacles.”
  • “The increasingly polarized environment that rewards jingoism and punishes nuanced analysis means that many experts have been left on the sidelines. Take, for example, the recent controversy surrounding Matthew Rojansky, director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute.”
  • “Think tanks and NGOs as well as the media are also to blame for these problems. Several factors, including shrinking budgets and donations increasingly being tied to ideological purity rather than quality of research, has severely curtailed the number of entry-level positions at American non-governmental institutions.”
  • “Many of the existing crop of researchers are mired in their own Cold War experiences.”
• “The negative trend in building a strong understanding of Russia within U.S. academia, media and government is easily reversible.”
  • “First, funding for Title VIII should be restored and increased. ... Moreover, new scholarships and grants should be created with the goal of expanding the amount of research being conducted on Russia.”
  • “The U.S. government should also change its hiring practices to emphasize the recruitment and employment of regional specialists.”
  • “Finally, Washington should actively encourage institution-to-institution partnerships and educational and cultural exchanges.” 
• “If U.S.-Russian relations remain on a confrontational trajectory, it is in Washington’s interest to enhance, rather than diminish its understanding of its adversary.” 

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“'That's who we are',” The Washington Post Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 08.10.21. The newspaper’s editorial board writes:

• “All of Russian civil society is under pressure. News organizations are regularly being labeled ‘foreign agents’ and required to issue a disclaimer on every article and broadcast. Those singled out include Meduza; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; a business news site, VTimes; and an investigative news site, the Insider. Authorities raided the home of the Insider's editor in chief, Roman Dobrokhotov, who has often partnered with Bellingcat, the open-source organization that helped expose the actions of Russia's security services, including the attack on Mr. Navalny. The investigative site Proekt was labeled an ‘undesirable organization’ and banned.”
• “Russia used a chemical weapon to poison Mr. Navalny. President Biden is overdue in imposing mandatory sanctions for it. When Mr. Biden met with Mr. Putin in June, the American president raised Mr. Navalny's persecution and vowed to keep up the pressure, because ‘that's what we are, that's who we are.’ Mr. Biden pledged to ‘stand up for the universal and fundamental freedoms that all men and women have, in our view.’ Yet two months later, Mr. Putin's war on civil society grinds on.”

Russia’s Ruling Party Wants a Big Win in Upcoming Elections, Jeff Hawn and Sim Tack, Foreign Policy, 08.10.21. The authors, respectively a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of International History at The London School of Economics and Political Science and an analyst at Force Analysis, write:

• “From Sept. 17 to Sept. 19, Russians will go to the polls to elect their parliament: the State Duma. The Russian parliament, though still less powerful than the presidency, has acquired expanded responsibilities under the new constitution, especially in regard to economic affairs. The institution also serves as a vital means of communication between various segments of the population and the government.” 
• “Now that open association with Navalny is illegal, the opposition remains fragmented but still active; and increasingly, independents and younger members of established opposition parties are making isolated inroads against United Russia. It is plausible that at least a few seats will be lost to the opposition in this election. The opposition will continue to make inroads in regional and local politics by focusing on bread and butter issues. Yet the opposition remains deeply divided and unable to offer a coherent alternative vision for Russia other than being outside the established power structure.”
• “Ultimately, United Russia remains in a strong electoral position and is likely to dominate political life in the Russian Federation for some time to come. With challenges mounting, however, the party’s focus will increasingly shift to maintaining that position domestically. This could represent a break from the past, when United Russia enjoyed the freedom—granted by its electoral security—to focus on policy rather than politicking. The party itself may also have to evolve in terms of how it shapes itself for this new role and how it deals with internal tensions that may arise from it.”

Defense and aerospace:

• No significant developments. 

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant developments.

 

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

Russia’s general foreign policy and relations with “far abroad” countries:

“Russian Grand Strategy.Rhetoric and Reality,” Samuel Charap, Dara Massicot, Miranda Priebe, Alyssa Demus, Clint Reach, Mark Stalczynski, Eugeniu Han, Lynn E. Davis, RAND, August 2021. The authors write:

• “Russia's declared strategy can generally be considered a reliable predictor of the state's efforts. Usually, Moscow attempts to match its actions with its words. However, at times, its efforts fall short of rhetoric.  Moreover, Russian stated strategy tends to articulate specific—if lofty— ambitions, while Russian actions and resource decisions to effectuate strategy appear to be more experimental, ambiguous, and reactive.”
• “Russia has reacted to the Ukraine crisis and subsequent breakdown in relations with the West in ways that cause its behavior to diverge from its stated strategic goals. These events have had dramatic consequences that altered Russia’s political, economic, and military outlook. Moscow’s reactions to the major exogenous shock of the Maidan revolution can account for several of the divergences between its stated strategy and its demonstrated behavior.”
• “Insufficient economic resources and a lack of political influence limit Moscow's ability to realize its stated objectives. Russia faces multiple challenges in implementing its lofty ambitions, given its shaky economic foundations and the opposition to its plans even in its immediate neighborhood in post-Soviet Eurasia, let alone at a global level.”
• “Russian strategy prioritizes threats and thus implies acceptance of certain risks in lower-priority areas; in practice, however, Russia seems unwilling or unable to accept these risks and thus allocates resources in ways that are inconsistent with its stated strategy. . The Kremlin sees threats emerging from many areas, domains, and countries. The Russian leadership’s pervasive insecurity and related attempts to create buffers against instability on multiple fronts—domestic or interstate, regional or global— often prevent effective implementation of stated strategy while further constraining Russia’s already limited resources.”
• The analysis does not suggest that Russia's revealed grand strategy is fundamentally divergent from its stated one. The divergences between stated strategy and observed behavior discussed in this study seem to be element-specific and contingent rather than systematic. Russia does not achieve true leadership in its neighborhood largely because of resistance to its objectives from neighboring states; in most cases, Moscow settles for less than its sought-after level of control if it encounters that pushback, with the prominent exception of Ukraine.”

“Understanding and Defending Against Russia's Malign and Subversive Information Efforts in Europe,” Miriam Matthews, Alyssa Demus, Elina Treyger, Marek N. Posard, Hilary Reininger, Christopher Paul, RAND, August 2021. The authors write:

• “Russia's information activities appear to be deployed in service of diverse political objectives. … Although Russia appears to have abandoned Soviet-era efforts to spread an ideology, it is still interested in popularizing its worldview and raising its esteem in the eyes of international audiences.”
• “Russia and its agents may manipulate or completely falsify information as part of efforts to disseminate messages that align with Russian interests.”
• “The information manipulation techniques that Russia and its agents appear to use range from completely manufacturing content to the misuse or misapplication of factual information. The characteristics of Russian information efforts have the potential to influence audiences.”
• “The targeted content that appears to be disseminated by Russia and its agents can affect selected audiences. Diverse audiences might have difficulty deliberately processing the deluge of fabricated and misleading information to which they are exposed, thereby increasing the potential that they will be affected by these efforts. Possible defense efforts can be conceptualized as addressing three parts of Russian malign or subversive information efforts: production, distribution, and consumption of content.”
• “Current defensive practices that could be used to address Russia's malign or subversive information efforts would seek to reduce the volume of new false and misleading content, prevent the spread of existing false or misleading content, and promote consumer awareness of the information space.”

“The Rush for the North Pole,” Michael Paul, SWP, August 2021. The author, a senior fellow in SWP’s International Security Research Division, writes:

• “Russia requires peace and stability in the Arctic if it is to advance its plans to extract coal, oil and gas and ship them via the Northern Sea Route, whose modernization will demand considerable investment. To that extent national security – here concretely the energy sector and its military protection – generally enjoys priority, whereas the traditional concerns of the Arctic Council appear secondary to Russia. Nevertheless the Russian Chairmanship has laid out an ambitious program for the next two years. This gives grounds to hope that the Kremlin might devote more energy to population, environment and sustainability. Ideally the Arctic could even regain its role as a place of cooperation and a stabilizing factor in international politics.”
• “It remains a geopolitical mystery whether a Russian, Canadian, Danish or even Greenland flag will one day fly over the North Pole. Russia’s current mix of aggressive rhetoric and openness for dialogue keeps partners guessing while the Kremlin avoids concrete concessions. That does not make dialogue among the Arctic states any easier, especially as the ice on which they stand is getting ever thinner.”

Book review: “Dancing on Ropes by Anna Aslanyan—the joys and terrors of translation,” Rosie Goldsmith, Financial Times, 08.12.21. The author, director of the European Literature Network, writes:

• “Translation is a matter of life and death—and not only because it is poorly paid. That’s the thrilling, rather chilling, message of this wonderful history by translator and interpreter Anna Aslanyan, who blesses jaw-dropping and entertaining tales with an insider’s insight. ‘It’s much like dancing on ropes with fettered legs,’ wrote 17th-century poet John Dryden on translating Ovid’s Epistles. Dryden, Aslanyan and fellow practitioners have danced on ropes for centuries, risking their lives, becoming entangled in diplomatic and legal battles and, on occasion, changing the course of history.”
• “Among 20th-century leaders, Stalin was the interpreters’ dream (assuming they stayed alive), speaking in short, clear sentences and regularly praising his translator, Vladimir Pavlov. … The 1945-46 Nuremberg Trials of leading Nazis showed how complex translation could be in an era of emerging technology. Thirty-six interpreters, ‘a motley crew’ of ghetto survivors, refugees, journalists and academics, worked in German, French, English and Russian.”
• “Aslanyan traces the origins of the translator-diplomat back to the Ottoman dragoman figure, particularly Alexander Mavrocordato, born to Greek parents in 1641, ‘a polyglot who knew Ottoman, Persian, Arabic, Greek, Latin, French, Italian and probably also German and Romanian.’ He became a linguistic, cultural and political intermediary between east and west, negotiating peace between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans.”
• “History’s more flamboyant translators provide the book’s great color and joy. I loved the story of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and his Italian-Russian translator Ivan Melkumjan. Only someone as flashy as Berlusconi himself could do his interpreting, and when he was introduced to Melkumjan, an Armenian opera singer, he met his match. Melkumjan’s success in conveying Berlusconi’s jokes and extravagant linguistic flourishes took him to the top table, amusing even Russian president Vladimir Putin.”
• “Aslanyan is an enthusiastic storyteller. She outlines today’s dangers to her trade: frontline translators, as in Afghanistan, are still risking their lives; inadequate translation in courts jeopardizes justice; translation and interpreting across the world are underfunded and under-appreciated; and the United Kingdom’s decline in language-learning and cultural narrowing are hindrances to the country’s interests.”

Ukraine:

“Zelensky Wages War on Ukraine’s Oligarchs,” Konstantin Skorkin, Moscow Carnegie Center, 08.10.21. The author, an independent journalist, writes:

• “It’s not so long ago that Volodymyr Zelensky began his political career branded as nothing more than a puppet controlled by the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. Now the Ukrainian president has set his sights on removing the country’s powerful oligarchs from any decisions of state importance.”
• “Ukraine’s oligarchs once managed to privatize the Ukrainian parliamentary system by buying up political parties and TV channels. Now the president is filling that system with his own content: the parliament and government merely implement the will of the presidential vertical, and big business must accept that or run the risk of soft deoligarchization giving way to a harsher process.”
• “To add to the oligarchs’ woes, Ukraine’s Western allies approve wholeheartedly of the new path Zelensky has embarked upon, describing fighting corruption as one of the main conditions for Ukraine’s further rapprochement with Euro-Atlantic bodies.”
• “Despite all the predictions that Zelensky’s Servant of the People party would soon fall apart, the president has kept his majority in parliament, enabling him to get the required number of votes for his key initiatives. The opposition is split and impotent, and Ukraine’s permanent conflict with Russia gives the government carte blanche to take extraordinary measures.”
• “In other words, the president’s battle against the influence of Ukraine’s oligarchs may not be as hopeless as it might first seem. It looks like this will be the main issue on which he will campaign for a second term, and if that’s the case, it’s better for big business to play along with the president than to get involved in the risky business of sinking money into his opponents from the old elite (other serious rivals have so far failed to materialize). Paradoxically, Ukrainian democracy, though corrupted by the oligarchic clans, owes its survival largely to the constant struggle between those clans. By limiting the influence of the oligarchs, Zelensky is taking Ukraine’s political system into a new era. What form that new era will take is still a matter of conjecture.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

Minsk Is Teetering on the Brink of a Dangerous Escalation,” Artyom Shraibman, Carnegie Moscow Center, 08.12.21. The author, a political analyst, writes:

• “On the anniversary of the outbreak of the Belarusian protests, the United States, Canada, and the UK slapped new sanctions on Minsk. The Canadian and British measures were similar to the EU’s sectoral sanctions, plus London targeted Lukashenko’s old friend, the Russian oligarch Mikhail Gutseriev, whose family has assets in the United Kingdom.” 
• “EU interior ministers are holding a crisis meeting on August 18 to discuss the [Belarus] issue. If the crisis is not resolved by the end of the summer, Brussels will take action. Lithuania plans to initiate the expansion of EU sectoral sanctions against Minsk, and has already discussed with NATO the possibility of deploying a Counter Hybrid Support Team to Lithuania. That’s a more radical move than any previously on the table, such as completely banning the transit of Belarusian potash—one of the country’s main exports—through the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda.”
• “To add to the tension, Belarus and Russia are due to hold their Zapad 2021 quadrennial joint military exercises in September. Every time the drills are held, there are fears that they could be used as cover for Russian troops to launch an attack on a neighboring country or refuse to leave Belarus after the exercises are over.”
• “The new status quo in Eastern Europe is best reflected by the fact that until 2020, Minsk scored foreign policy points by positioning itself as a pragmatic partner for the West, contributing to regional stability and acting as a counterbalance to an aggressive Russia. Today, Moscow’s unwillingness to get embroiled in conflicts with NATO at the whim of its ally could just be the only factor exercising any restraint on Lukashenko’s notorious impulsivity.”