This Week’s Highlights

• The methods of managing great-power rivalry in the past 200 years—through balance-of-power mechanisms and, for brief periods, detente—are inadequate for the complexity of today’s world and the reality of substantial asymmetry between the United States and Russia, write Thomas Graham of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Dmitri Trenin. What might work, they argue, is responsible great-power rivalry, grounded in enlightened restraint, leavened with collaboration on a narrow range of issues and moderated by trilateral and multilateral formats. That would be the new model for U.S.–Russian relations, according to Trenin and Graham.
• To the extent that U.S. President Donald Trump "undermines U.S. policy," it is not necessarily because of his lauding of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but "because there is no coherent policy," a former senior administration official told The Washington Post. "There is no devolution to fill out the details of the kind of deals he wants to make." The result is what is widely seen among experts as tactical responses to Russian actions, according to news outlet. "Ultimately our goal is to shift Russian behavior in a way that is much more favorable to advance our national interest," Thomas Graham said. "Has anything that the administration has done . . . changed Russian behavior in any way favorable to the United States? I'd be hard put to say that it has." 
• The question of Russian President Vladimir Putin's eventual replacement is a critical matter both for Russia and for the United States, writes John Tefft, a senior fellow at RAND and former U.S. ambassador to Russia. Recent constitutional changes have given Putin more flexibility in mapping his succession. He can now run for reelection two additional times and can stay in power until 2036 if he wishes. Whatever Putin decides, Tefft argues, U.S. officials should prepare for the upcoming succession by sending clear signals on policy redlines and closely studying elite attitudes. The U.S. relationship will likely be competitive, if not adversarial, for some time to come, but a patient, careful approach will permit the United States to manage a succession transition and create the basis for the improvement of bilateral relations with any successor. 
• While American policymakers see military interventions in the Middle East and democracy promotion efforts in Eastern Europe as distinct policy portfolios, to Russian eyes, when undertaken at the same time, they appear to be part of one overarching strategy meant to displace governments that do not toe Washington’s line, writes Benjamin Denison, assistant director of the Notre Dame International Security Center. Only once American policymakers recognize this can they take steps to erase the link between democracy promotion and regime change in foreign minds. According to Denison, this will open the door for more considerable efforts to reduce tensions with Russia, help reduce the perceived benefits of Russia interfering in elections abroad and give the U.S. a greater ability to support civil society. 
• The occasional signs that China and Russia are not as closely aligned as sometimes feared are feeding hopes in some quarters that the U.S. could work with Russia to counter China. However, experts dismiss the idea that Washington could use Moscow against Beijing as naïve, the Financial Times reports. In a forthcoming paper for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Eugene Rumer and his colleagues argue that it is “magical thinking” to imagine the U.S. could drive a wedge between the pair’s strategic relationship. 
• Russia has so far issued almost 200,000 Russian passports to Ukrainians from the self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, writes Fabian Burkhardt of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies. The passportization of the Donbass is part of a tried and tested set of foreign policy instruments, according to Burkhardt. Russia is deliberately making it more difficult to resolve territorial conflicts in the post-Soviet space by creating controlled instability. By delaying any resolution to the conflict in Donbass, Russia achieves two objectives simultaneously: it retains permanent influence on Ukraine via the Donbass, and it becomes more attractive to many Ukrainians as a destination for emigration, Burkhardt writes.

 

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.

New Cold War/saber rattling:

“Don’t Call It a Cold War: Findings From the Russian-American Relations Survey,” Henry Hale and Olga Kamenchuk, The Working Group on the Future of U.S.-Russia Relations, July 2020: The authors, co-director of PONARS Eurasia and an associate research professor in the Northwestern University Institute for Policy Research, write:

• “While neither [the U.S. nor Russia] appears willing to  give in on some of the most important flash points, we at least do detect more underlying popular willingness to seek ways to avoid conflict and improve relations than may appear to be the case if one watches the news regularly in either country.”
• “We base these conclusions on the results of a survey we conducted simultaneously in both Russia and the United States in 2019 on these countries’ mutual relations. … Majorities in each country follow international affairs regularly but depend heavily on television, have very few sources of direct information about each other and have limited factual knowledge.”
• “Large shares of each country’s population see each other as more similar than different. … In neither country do negative views of the other completely dominate, though negativity is significantly greater in the United States than in Russia. … Majorities in each country see the other side as a source of threats … At the same time, both Russians and Americans favor treating the other country better than they think it is treating them, rejecting tit-for-tat foreign policymaking.”
• “The U.S. and Russian populations generally … support compromise for the sake of improving U.S.-Russian relations in the abstract. But majorities in both countries refuse to cede position on the two issues that are arguably the biggest points of conflict: Russian support for insurgents in eastern Ukraine and American economic sanctions on Russia.”
• “Framing current relations as ‘a new Cold War’ does not help unless one advocates further conflict. While Cold War imagery has no discernible effect on Russian public opinion, it does make Americans significantly more likely to favor an aggressive policy of containing Russia worldwide, including through the use of military force.”

“Britain Is Botching This Cold War Just Like the Last One,” Calder Walton, Foreign Policy, 07.29.20: The author, assistant director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Applied History Project, writes:

• “Britain’s long-awaited intelligence report into Russia has finally been published. The report, suspiciously delayed for seven months until after Britain’s December 2019 general election, is a damning indictment of London’s failure to recognize Russia’s threat. The British government took its eye off the ball regarding Russia, concludes the report, with its attention focused instead on counterterrorism.”
• “The British government has made similar miscalculations about Russia in the past. During World War II, when Britain was allies with Soviet Russia, it took its eye off the ball regarding Moscow’s long-term threat.”
• “Stalin’s British and American spies provided him with a firehose of secret intelligence about Western wartime and postwar strategy … Thanks to his agents, Stalin was at times better informed about Western secrets and strategy than Western leaders themselves.”
• “It was only after World War II when the British and U.S. governments woke up to the threat Soviet Russia posed. By that time, the damage was done.”
• “The history World War II shows that Britain and the United States were in a Cold War with Soviet Russia before they knew it. The same is true today: Whether policymakers in London and Washington like it or not, they are already in a new Cold War with Russia—or rather, for Putin, the Cold War that never really ended.”

NATO-Russia relations:

• No significant developments.

Impact of the pandemic:

• No significant developments.

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

“Abolition and Addiction,” Michael Krepon, Arms Control Wonk, 08.02.20: The author, co-founder of the Stimson Center, writes:

• “The sacrifice of Hiroshima can only be justified if it has future as well as historical meaning. The historical meaning was ‘enough already.’ The future meaning is ‘never again.’ … I’m not sure what to make of the Trump administration’s last noncompliance report that asserts possible Russian experimentation above the Treaty’s zero yield standard and an even hazier characterization of Chinese experimentation. The U.S. Intelligence Community has demonstrated a confirmation bias problem on nuclear testing in the past. On the other hand, Vladimir Putin is a serial treaty violator. I’m withholding judgment until a new administration calls in outside experts to review the evidence.”
• “All this is a digression, and it’s meant to be a digression by those who would like to resume testing. Experiments are happening in Nevada, at the U.S. Labs and elsewhere. They do not constitute a material breach of the CTBT. The U.S. Labs help us extend the moratorium on testing. Nuclear testing is not happening. Moratoria are holding.”
• “My vision is to keep moratoria in place until 2045. And then beyond.  Extending the No Use and No Testing norms up to and beyond the 100th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be remarkable feats.
• “Thanks to the hard work of those in positions of responsibility … the norms of No Use in warfare and No Testing have already been sustained for 75 years and 22 years—and counting. … They can be sustained in the future the same way that they were nurtured in the past: by raising ruckuses, by paying attention, by playing for time and by clarifying penalties.”
• “Now imagine, as I do, how useful nuclear weapons would be in 2045 if they haven’t been used in warfare for 100 years and haven’t been tested for 47 years. By staunchly defending the two most important norms we’ve got … we pay proper homage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We also keep our eyes on the prize of abolition.”

Counter-terrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security:

• No significant developments.

Elections interference:

• No significant developments.

Energy exports from CIS:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“Towards a New Model for US– Russian Relations,” Thomas Graham and Dmitri Trenin, Survival, 07.22.20: The authors, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, write:

• “To date, Russian and American experts disturbed by the sorry state of U.S.–Russian relations have sought ways to repair them, embracing old and inadequate models of cooperation or balance. The task, however, is to rethink them. We need to move beyond the current adversarial relationship, which runs too great a risk of accidental collision escalating to nuclear catastrophe, to one that promotes global stability, restrains competition within safe parameters and encourages needed cooperation against transnational threats.”
• “The hard truth is that the aspirations for partnership that the two sides harbored at the end of the Cold War have evaporated irretrievably. The future is going to feature a mixed relationship of competition and cooperation, with the balance heavily tilted towards competition and much of the cooperation aimed at managing it.”
• “The challenge is to prevent the rivalry from devolving into acute confrontation with the associated risk of nuclear cataclysm. In other words, the United States and Russia need to cooperate not to become friends, but to make their competition safer: a compelling and realistic incentive. The methods of managing great-power rivalry in the past 200 years—through balance-of-power mechanisms and, for brief periods, detente—are inadequate for the complexity of today’s world and the reality of substantial asymmetry between the United States and Russia. What might work is what we could call responsible great-power rivalry, grounded in enlightened restraint, leavened with collaboration on a narrow range of issues, and moderated by trilateral and multilateral formats. That is the new model for U.S.–Russian relations.”

“President Trump Is Committed to Defending the US, and Russia Knows It,” Robert C. O'Brien, The Washington Post, 08.02.20: The author, national security adviser for U.S. President Donald Trump, writes:

• “If recently reported allegations of Russian malign activity toward Americans in Afghanistan prove true, Russia knows from experience that it will pay a price—even if that price never becomes public.”
• “To deter Russian aggression and defend our NATO allies, President Trump has provided billions in additional funding for the European Deterrence Initiative. And to assist Ukraine, the administration sent critical self-defense weapons, including the long-sought-after Javelin antitank missiles.”
• “His administration has embarked upon a historic rebuilding of the U.S. military. … In June, the United States commenced talks with Russia on the New START accord. The United States is cautiously optimistic that we can reach an agreement with Moscow and China on a framework for arms control that seeks to limit all nuclear weapons in a verifiable manner.”
• “Another area of potential cooperation with Russia is counterterrorism. Both Russia and the United States have had their homelands attacked by violent extremists. U.S. officials will likely engage with their Russian intelligence and law enforcement counterparts on such matters in the coming months.”
• “No president since Reagan has shown such resolve to Moscow. Like Reagan, President Trump seeks another path with Russia—one in which Russia refrains from aggression abroad and becomes a friendly partner to the United States and Europe. In such a world, sanctions on Russia would be unnecessary, and trade between our countries would flourish. Russians, Americans and the world would all benefit from such a relationship.”

“Lack of Strategic Approach to Moscow Is Lost in Din of Trump, Aides,” Karen DeYoung, The Washington Post, 08.01.20: The author, an associate editor for the news outlet, writes:

• “The public dissonance between President Trump and his top national security team over Russia reached new heights in the past week. … Asked on Tuesday [July 28] if he had mentioned reports of Russian-paid bounties for killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan to President Vladimir Putin during any of the several phone calls they have had since the charge emerged, Trump said no.”
• “On Wednesday [July 29], as Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and military leaders announced plans to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany to better position the NATO alliance for ‘deterrence of Russia,’ Trump offered a different explanation. It was all about payback against NATO ally Germany for years of ripping off the United States on defense and trade, he told reporters at the White House.” 
• “Trump ‘doesn't want to be kicked around by the Russians,’ but he does want to ‘cozy up to Putin,’ said a former senior administration official. ‘If Russia didn't exist, and Putin was the badass leader of—pick a country—[Trump] would still want to be seen with him.’”
• “To the extent Trump ‘undermines U.S. policy,’ it is not necessarily because of his lauding of Putin, but ‘because there is no coherent policy,’ the former official said. … The result is what is widely seen among experts as tactical responses to Russian actions. Many of those responses, from sanctions to combating disinformation, have been initiated or promoted by Congress, which often finds bipartisan agreement on Kremlin perfidy.”
• “‘Ultimately our goal is to shift Russian behavior in a way that is much more favorable to advance our national interest,’ Thomas Graham said. ‘Has anything that the administration has done . . . changed Russian behavior in any way favorable to the United States? I'd be hard put to say that it has.’”

“Where US Sees Democracy Promotion, Russia Sees Regime Change,” Benjamin Denison, Russia Matters, 07.29.20: The author, the assistant director of the Notre Dame International Security Center, writes:

• “While American policymakers see military interventions in the Middle East and democracy promotion efforts in Eastern Europe as distinct policy portfolios, to Russian eyes, when undertaken at the same time, they appear to be part of one overarching strategy meant to displace governments that do not toe Washington’s line.”
• “The failure to critically assess the track record of American regime change, unfortunately, contributes to an unhelpful view that Russian statements against American democracy promotion are merely domestic propaganda, rather than legitimate expressions of anxiety about regime security.”
• “Importantly, though, this does not mean that the U.S. should give up supporting civil society programs and abandon democracy promotion, especially in Russia. It does mean that the U.S. needs to support these programs in a way that does not raise regime security fears that bring the specter of regime change to the forefront.”
• “While this will not allay fears in Russia that the U.S. is still interested in regime change, trying to show that the U.S. no longer will use armed force to support opposition movements to oust leaders is essential to a future sustainable relationship with Russia.”
• “Notably, this will not change the Russian regime or its perceptions of U.S. interests. However, in the long term, it will place the U.S. in the best position to deal with the external threats emanating from Russia and work with allies to achieve its goals. Continuing to create fears of Russian regime insecurity will only encourage greater aggression and create greater incentives to target American funded NGOs for repression. For the benefit of both U.S.-Russian relations and the future of democracy promotion, the link between these forms of aid programs and regime change needs to be severed by restraining American regime change ambitions globally.”

“Understanding the Factors That Will Impact the Succession to Vladimir Putin as Russian President,” John Tefft, RAND Corporation, July 2020: The author, a senior fellow at RAND and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, writes:

• “The question of Russian President Vladimir Putin's eventual replacement is a critical matter both for Russia and for the United States. Recent constitutional changes have given Putin more flexibility in mapping his succession. He can now run for reelection two additional times and can stay in power until 2036 if he wishes.”
• “Whatever Putin decides, U.S. officials should prepare for the upcoming succession by sending clear signals on policy redlines and closely studying elite attitudes. The U.S. relationship will likely be competitive, if not adversarial, for some time to come, but a patient, careful approach will permit the United States to manage a succession transition and create the basis for the improvement of bilateral relations with any successor.”
• “The four most critical factors in Russia’s succession are: tensions among the Russian elites and rivalries among the clans; role of the siloviki and the security services; the economic challenge; public dissatisfaction.”
• “I suggest several general lessons, both for understanding the direction that the Russian transition is taking and advancing U.S. policy while the transition occurs and afterward. … Personal relationships between presidents are important—but, at the end of the day, core national security interests are even more important. Send clear and consistent messages about U.S. policy before and during the transition. … Be open to change and compromise but resist accommodating Russia without changes on its part.” 
• “However Putin and Russia manage the transition to a new leader, Russia will still face the fundamental questions it has confronted since 1991. Can it build a successful modern nation-state? Can it do so without threatening its neighbors and European security? Can it become a more cooperative international partner than at present? … We cannot rule out more of what has transpired during Putin’s rule, but we need to be ready to move forward on areas where our national interests can be served.”

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Kremlin Accused of Losing Its Touch as Protests Put Putin on Back Foot,” Henry Foy, Financial Times, 07.29.20: The author, Moscow bureau chief for the news outlet, writes:

• “If Russian president Vladimir Putin was hoping for a political honeymoon after successfully rewriting the country’s constitution to potentially give him two more terms in office, he was mistaken. Just 10 days after winning a popular vote designed to depict the country as united behind its leader, protests erupted that instead demonstrated the level of simmering popular discontent. They also underscored the gulf between the president’s Kremlin and many ordinary citizens after his more than two decades in power.”
• “Last weekend more than 20,000 people took to the streets of Khabarovsk, a city in Russia’s far east on the border with China, in support of the former state governor who was dismissed by Mr. Putin earlier this month and charged with attempted murder. The protests—the largest ever seen in the city—have continued daily since July 11, two days after Sergei Furgal, who is not from Mr. Putin’s ruling United Russia party, was arrested, flown to Moscow and detained.”
• “Since then, the protesters’ demands have morphed from the local to the national: from demanding a fair trial for Mr. Furgal to calling for Mr. Putin to step down. They have intensified since the Kremlin dispatched Mikhail Degtyarev, a lawmaker from Moscow with no local experience, to replace Mr. Furgal.”
• “Putin’s response has divided political observers, between those who believe it illustrates an aloofness and lack of interest in what he views as a minor problem in a region 6,000 kilometers east of Moscow, and others who suggest he misread the scale of public anger, is now powerless to act and hopes the protests will simply peter out.”

“The Perils of Perestroika: Why Putin Chose to Prolong His Rule,” Alexander Baunov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 07.30.20: The author, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center and editor in chief of Carnegie.ru, writes:

• “To build his regime, Putin manipulated his predecessors’ crumbling institutions and the country’s economic system. Now, Putin must become his own successor—or let someone else pull his own trick on him. … By declaring his intention to stay in power almost indefinitely, Putin has broken that unwritten pact with the Russian public.”
• “As far as the president was concerned, Putin’s Russia was synonymous with Putin the individual: there is no one else who can drive the machine. So, he rejected the complicated constitutional maneuvers suggested by his advisers for 2024 and chose the simplest and crudest solution—to stay on as president.”
• “Why did Putin reverse the decision he apparently made in January? … He is afraid of ushering in a perestroika 2.0. … The biggest difference between Putin’s Russia and that of Yeltsin, his patron and predecessor, is that Putin fears and rejects the West. Yeltsin saw the end of the Soviet Union as liberation and the West as a partner. But Putin seeks a reincarnation of the union, not so much in economic or political terms as in geopolitical ones—with Russia representing the polar opposite of the West.”
• “Putin essentially faces two choices in 2024: to hand over power to a successor who is fully under his control or to be his own successor and stay in power.”
• “Putin’s bet is based on a strong conviction that his personal power makes Russia stronger and lowers the risk of a perestroika 2.0. And yet, the paradox is that by choosing what he regards as the safest option both domestically and geopolitically, Putin may condemn Russia to a new period of stagnation—and thereby become the unwitting godfather of the very perestroika he seeks to avoid.”

“The Caudillo of the Kremlin,” Andrei Kolesnikov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 07.30.20: The author, a senior fellow and the chair of the Russian domestic politics and political institutions program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

• “Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown his regime’s real intentions. By changing the constitution to allow him to remain in office until 2036 and incorporating conservative new language, it has cast off its teetering mask of democratic legitimacy. But just as Putin has sought to entrench his rule, his regime is looking weaker than ever.”
• “In the city of Khabarovsk, tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in recent weeks, chanting, ‘Putin resign!’ They are not alone. While Putin’s approval rating may seem high, it is low by Russian standards. In fact, his 59-60 percent approval rating in recent months is his lowest since October 1999, when he was prime minister. And it is unlikely to improve significantly for a simple reason: Putin tried-and-tested methods to win support have lost their firepower.”
• “The Khabarovsk protests were triggered by the sudden arrest of the popular governor, Sergei Furgal … Furgal is no liberal; he is a member of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, part of the ‘systemic opposition’ in the Duma. But he won his position in 2018 by defeating a Kremlin-backed candidate. … As the Khabarovsk protests have shown … unexpected surges of resistance are hardly beyond the realm of possibility.”
• “In any case, Putin’s strategy of preserving power by any means necessary will not solve Russia’s many problems. And there remains the question of what will happen to the system after him. What we are witnessing is a further “Francoization” of the Russian political regime: Putin is laying the groundwork to remain head of state for life, as Spain’s Francisco Franco did with the 1947 Law of Succession. By having the monarchy restored on Franco’s death, King Juan Carlos could ascend the throne. Putin, however, is leading Russia into a dead end. After all, he cannot bring back the czar. So he has simply postponed the problem of succession. Après lui, le deluge.”

“Voting With Their Feet: Russia’s Protests in the Far East Reveal Moscow’s Disconnect From Its Regions,” Emily Ferris, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), 07.30.20: The author, a research fellow in the international security studies department at RUSI, writes:

• “The detention of Sergei Furgal, former governor of the region of Khabarovsk in Russia’s Far East, prompted widespread protests that have taken on a distinctly anti-government edge. This has laid bare some of the Kremlin’s and incumbent United Russia [UR] party’s political vulnerabilities in the Far East.”
• “Physical geography, and especially distance from the capital, has meant that Russia’s Far East and Siberian regions have a sense of detachment from the political machinations of Moscow. This makes it more challenging for UR to instill a sense of party loyalty in far-flung regions. It also increases the likelihood of protest voting for other parties, which locals feel better represent their regional interests. These protests epitomize the alienation that locals have felt for years, and may present a more serious concern to UR ahead of the September regional elections.”

“Russia’s Permanent Revolution of Dignity,” Andrei Kolesnikov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 07.31.20: The author, a senior fellow and the chair of the Russian domestic politics and political institutions program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

• “The Kremlin has long been faced with a permanent revolution of dignity among differing levels of society. It has been going on since 2011, and each new wave of protests—whether political or initially depoliticized (over landfills, housing development projects and so on)—is at heart prompted by an insult to people’s dignity.”
• “This revolution of dignity exists like an underground fire that will spread above ground at any opportunity—and those opportunities are created not by civil society, but by the authorities themselves. It may create problems at unexpected times and places.”

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:

“Why Analysts in Moscow Dismiss the UK Parliament’s Russia Report,” Kadri Liik, European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), 07.30.20: The author, a senior policy fellow at ECFR, writes:

• “The July 2020 report by the U.K. Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee is part of a wider and somewhat depressing phenomenon: Western countries’ analyses of what Russia is doing are often mediocre in the eyes of those in Moscow.”
• “The ISC report plays a part in a wider and somewhat depressing phenomenon: Western countries, sensing Russia’s malign influence, seek to understand and counter it. But their analyses … are often so mediocre in the eyes of those in Moscow … that its effect there is the opposite to what one would desire: it inspires ridicule.”
• “Some Western Russia experts have noted this. ‘The report is worse than unhelpful,’ tweeted Samuel Greene of the King’s College London. ‘Rather than provide a sober risk assessment and propose concrete action, it identifies a ‘whole of state’ threat and calls for a ‘whole of government’ response—both of which are alarmist, jingoist and fundamentally meaningless.”
• “It is sad to see how many recent Western reports on ‘the Russian threat’ risk losing hearts and minds in Russia—and liberal-leaning and fair hearts and minds at that. … And yet it is possible … to convince the Russians, and not just the liberal-leaning ones. In early September 2018, the U.K. did exactly that by publishing a police report about the movements of the culprits in the Salisbury chemical weapons attack. This report was and remains one of the best actions anyone in the West has taken in the so-called ‘information war’ against Russia—it was a classic case of a well-investigated and clearly stated truth beating lies and confusion.”
• “If the West wants to demonstrate Russia’s guilt or generally say something about Russia’s actions—to itself and to the Russians—it needs to present well-verified facts that speak for themselves. It should keep its statements short and serious. It should avoid pompous eloquence and, for God’s sake, steer clear of partisan politics.”

China-Russia: Allied or Aligned?

“US Urged to Exploit Cracks in Russia-China Relationship,” Kathrin Hille, Katrina Manson, Henry Foy and Christian Shepherd, Financial Times, 07.25.20: The reporters for the news outlet write:

• “The occasional signs that the two nations [China and Russia] are not as closely aligned as sometimes feared are feeding hopes in some quarters that the U.S. could work with Russia to counter China. … So far, Washington’s attempts at working with Russia are limited to arms control talks. But Steve Biegun, Deputy U.S. Secretary of State, told the Financial Times last month that he was confident the U.S. could be more agile and find ‘the seam’ in the relationship between Russia and China. He said that seam was held together solely by a ‘mutual determination to challenge the United States.’”
• “Last week, China used its readout from a call between Wang Yi, the foreign minister, and his Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov to accuse the U.S. of ‘pursuing its egoism, unilateralism and bullying policy to the extreme.’ … In Moscow’s readout, the only mention of the U.S. was when the foreign ministry noted crisply that ‘Sergei Lavrov informed his colleague about the progress of the Russia-U.S. dialogue on arms control.’”
• “There are other apparent fissures in a relationship that presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have repeatedly praised as the best ever. … Last month, Mr. Lavrov skipped China’s Belt and Road Forum and sent an ambassador-at-large instead. … When Russia’s embassy in Beijing commemorated the 160th anniversary of the founding of Vladivostok … it triggered a backlash among Chinese internet users, who charged that Russia’s easternmost metropolis was built on formerly Chinese lands. … However, experts dismiss the idea that Washington could use Moscow against Beijing as naive.”
• “However, the two are far from an alliance in the Western sense. … Eugene Rumer … said that despite their entwined interests, Washington should not seek to split the duo. In a forthcoming paper for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, he and colleagues argue that it is ‘magical thinking’ to imagine the U.S. could drive a wedge between the pair’s strategic relationship.”

“Beware the Guns of August—in Asia. How to Keep US-Chinese Tensions From Sparking a War,” Kevin Rudd, Foreign Affairs, 08.03.20: The author, former prime minister of Australia, writes:

• “In a real-world scenario, beyond the clinical environment of a desktop exercise, the prevailing domestic political circumstances in Beijing and Washington could all too easily drive both sides to escalate. Political advisers might argue that a localized military escalation could be ‘contained’ within defined parameters. Nonetheless, given the highly charged public sentiment in both countries and the high political stakes in play for each country’s leader, there is little reason to be sanguine about the possibilities for restraint.”
• “For the nationalists in both Beijing and Washington … a good weekend read would be my compatriot Christopher Clark’s book on the failures of crisis management and diplomacy in 1914, evocatively titled ‘The Sleepwalkers.’ The core lesson in the events leading to World War I is that a relatively minor incident … can escalate into a war between great powers in a matter of weeks. Clark’s graphic account is one of relentless escalation, inadequate diplomacy and crude nationalism, along with a disbelief by populations and leaders alike that actual conflict was even possible—until the ‘guns of August’ grimly proved otherwise.”
• “For the United States, the China challenge is real and demands a coherent, long-term strategy across all policy domains and in coordination with allies. It also requires a new framework for the U.S.-Chinese relationship, one based on the principles of ‘managed’ strategic competition … But the foremost task now is to safely navigate the next several months, to avoid stumbling into conflict in the midst of a presidential campaign in the United States and a period of contested internal politics in China. Leaders on both sides should remember that nationalistic jingoism tends to become more muted after the shooting starts.”

“What Mike Pompeo Doesn't Understand About China, Richard Nixon and US Foreign Policy,” Richard Haass, The Washington Post, 07.25.20: The author, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes:

• “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a blistering speech about China on Thursday [July 23]. The problem was not simply that the nation's chief diplomat was decidedly undiplomatic. Worse was his misrepresentation of history and his failure to suggest a coherent or viable path forward for managing a relationship that more than any other will define this era.”
• “He … erected a straw man: U.S. policy failed, he said, because China did not evolve into a democracy when, in fact, the purpose of the policy developed by Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger was to use China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union and shape China's foreign policy, not its internal nature. What's more, their efforts largely succeeded.”
• “What the United States can and should try to do is shape China's choices, to bring about a China that acts with a degree of restraint at home and abroad and that works with us to deal with regional … and global challenges … Unfortunately, the Trump administration is undermining prospects for moderating China's behavior.”
• “Pompeo spent a good deal of his speech highlighting China's human rights failures, which are many and deserve U.S. condemnation. But our standing for criticizing China would be immeasurably greater if we were equally tough on Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.”
• “America's voice would be even stronger if we practiced at home what we preached abroad. President Trump and those who work for him have forfeited much of their credibility as democracy advocates with their repeated descriptions of the U.S. media as an enemy, their attacks on an independent judiciary and their use of federal forces to repress dissent in our cities. … Theodore Roosevelt advised the United States to speak softly and carry a big stick. This president and his chief diplomat are perilously close to getting it backward.”

Ukraine:

“Russia’s ‘Passportization’ of the Donbass,” Fabian Burkhardt, The German Institute for International and Security Affairs of Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), August 2020: The author, a research fellow at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, writes:

• “Russia has so far issued almost 200,000 Russian passports to Ukrainians from the ‘People’s Republics’ of Donetsk and Luhansk.”
• “This undermines the Minsk peace process. The passportization of the Donbass is part of a tried and tested set of foreign policy instruments. Russia is deliberately making it more difficult to resolve territorial conflicts in the post-Soviet space by creating controlled instability. This demonstrative intervention in state sovereignty exerts pressure on the Ukrainian central government in Kyiv.”
• “Domestically, Russia’s goal is to counteract its own natural population decline through immigration. Because of the war in eastern Ukraine, more and more Ukrainians have migrated to Russia; this was one of the reasons behind Russia revising its migration strategy in 2018.”
• “By delaying any resolution to the conflict, Russia achieves two objectives simultaneously: it retains permanent influence on Ukraine via the Donbass, and it becomes more attractive to many Ukrainians as a destination for emigration.”

“Why Ukraine Really Is on the Road to Reform,” Iuliia Mendel, The National Interest, 07.30.20: The author, press secretary to Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskiy, writes:

• “When President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took office in April 2019, he promised to change the old practices that have prevented Ukraine from growing. The foundation for this has been built. The walls and roof are soon to be completed. The solid home where every Ukrainian, regardless of his or her language, culture, religion or political views, is equally welcome is where we all want to be.”
• “This is not an easy task for a country that just recently broke up with its Soviet past. Adding to this is the devastating military conflict that is taking place for the seventh year. … We need to change the narrative of self-victimization in society and aggressive manners towards each other. It is the future of Ukraine that must unite us all. This is why Zelenskiy is taking steps to restore dialogue aimed at engaging different parts of society that would be ready to talk and listen about the essence of long-awaited changes.”
• “The other priority is to invite investors for the concession and privatization. … The third area where President Zelenskiy is making progress is the development of critical infrastructure … The road to change is long and difficult. We suffer and struggle on it together.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“‘Europe’s Last Dictator’ Faces Bold Opposition: Alexander Lukashenko is meeting hurdles to his continued rule in Belarus,” Editorial Board, Financial Times, 08.03.20: The news outlet’s editorial board writes:

• “Even in a region where democracy has experienced some reversals, Belarus seems a bizarre anachronism. ‘Europe’s last dictator,” Alexander Lukashenko, has been in power for 26 years in a country flanked to the north and west by three EU members.”
• “The president’s bid for a sixth term on Aug. 9 was expected to follow a similar script. It is not playing out that way. Instead, the strongman’s grip is being loosened by three determined women. Not one but two of Mr. Lukashenko’s would-be electoral opponents—Sergei Tikhanovsky, a charismatic vlogger, and Viktor Babariko, an ex-banker—were arrested this time and barred from running; a third, Valery Tsepkalo, an ex-ambassador, was also blocked. Wrongfooting the authorities, Mr. Tikhanovsky’s wife, Svetlana, stepped up as joint opposition candidate, backed by Mr. Tsepkalo’s wife and Mr. Babariko’s campaign manager. On a platform of holding free elections, Ms. Tikhanovskaya … has attracted big crowds across the country. In Minsk last Thursday, 63,000 braved arrest to attend the biggest opposition rally in Belarus since the Soviet collapse.”
• “Adding further intrigue, Belarus last week arrested 33 men it claimed were Russian mercenaries sent in to ‘destabilize the situation’ before the election, and paraded them on state television. It appears the camouflage-clad men, some of whom have fought beside Russian-led ‘separatists’ in east Ukraine, may have been using Belarus as a transit point—due to COVID-19 restrictions on flights from Russia—on their way to Africa. … Yet some fear that, with or without collusion from Moscow, Mr. Lukashenko might be preparing to use alleged election interference as a pretext for a clampdown.”
• “Neither Mr. Lukashenko nor Mr. Putin are likely to allow a shift in power to someone they do not control. In case of a long hot August in Belarus, EU countries should already be thinking through their possible response.”

“Azerbaijan’s President Aims to Finish off the Political Opposition,” Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 07.29.20: The news outlet’s editorial board writes:

• “Now, in the midst of the pandemic, low oil prices and tensions with archrival Armenia, Mr. [Ilham] Aliyev has suddenly discovered a ‘fifth column’ of enemies, the political opposition, and has begun throwing them in jail. Mr. Aliyev's tantrum is threatening to obliterate what remains of independent political forces in Azerbaijan.”
• “In a speech to the nation on the Novruz holiday in March, Mr. Aliyev … said Azerbaijan was being undermined by ‘the enemies who are among us, the elements calling themselves opposition, the traitors who receive money from abroad. Their main goal is to destroy Azerbaijan.’ The president said that during the pandemic, ‘the isolation of representatives of the fifth column will become a historical necessity.’”
• “Then, from July 12 to 16, Azeri forces fought with Armenia in the Tovuz district of northwestern Azerbaijan, the first conflict between them since 2016. Eleven Azeri servicemen, including a general, and a civilian were killed in fighting, and four Armenians died. The conflict set off a July 14-15 pro-military rally in Baku, the Azeri capital. Late in the protest, a group of people briefly stormed into the parliament building in Baku before they were removed by police, and several police cars were overturned by angry crowds.”
• “Mr. Aliyev saw the protest as a pretext to go after the ‘fifth column.’ In a screed delivered on July 15, the day after the rally, he attacked the largest opposition party, the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan. … After he spoke, Azeri security services began arresting party members and others. Sources in Azerbaijan say that as many as 120 people are currently held, including some deputy leaders of the party as well as journalists.”
• “Mr. Aliyev's use of the iron fist to destroy his critics is the opposite of democracy and why everyone should worry about this intemperate tyrant.”