U.S. Policy Toward Russia
A set of policy papers intended to assess and critique the policy approaches of recent years and to propose a new framework for approaching U.S.-Russia relations.
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Russia's Policy in the Middle East: Prospects for Consensus and Conflict in the Middle East
In Russia's Policy in the Middle East, Dmitri Trenin maps the complicated relationship between Russia and the Middle East, and how Russia's renewed involvement in the region will have far-reaching effects on American foreign policy. Russia, by the mid-2000s, had recovered from its domestic crisis, and so did its global ambitions. While Moscow’s principal interests still lie mostly toward the west, the Middle East is back on Moscow’s radar screen and Russia’s withdrawal from the region has been reversed. The Middle East is important to Moscow for several reasons-- its physical proximity; the Muslim factor, as continuing religious and political turbulence within the Muslim world brings radical ideas and militants from the Middle East into Russia and impacts Russia’s policy in the Caucasus, the central Russian republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, and post-Soviet Central Asia; large emigration from Russia to Israel, where 20 percent of the population are former Soviet Jews; the energy riches of the region; and Russian attention to the current U.S. focus on the region, and American military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Download the paper. -
U.S.-Russian Relations and the Democracy and Rule of Law Deficit
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, every U.S. administration has considered Russia's political trajectory a national security concern. While the Obama administration plans to cooperate with Moscow on a number of issues, it will find that Russia's current deficit in the areas of democracy and the rule of law complicate the relationship and may, in some cases, undermine attempts at engagement. Results from nearly a dozen large, random sample surveys in Russia since 2001 that examine the views and experiences of literally thousands of Russians, combined with other research and newspaper reporting, all suggest the current democracy and rule of law deficit is rather stark. In this report, Sarah Mendelson assesses the political dynamics that have shaped Russia's authoritarian drift, addresses a few of the ways in which they matter for U.S. policy, and suggests several organizing principles to help the Obama administration manage this critical relationship. Download the PDF here. -
Pressing That Re-set Button: Shared Interests, Competing Values, and U.S.-Russian Relations
As the Obama administration redirects U.S. policy on many fronts, the President’s declaration of a fresh start for relations between the United States and Russia has significant implications for the management of many critical issues. The roundtable will assess the direction of policy under the new administration in the week ahead of President Obama’s visit to Moscow, and it will explore the challenges and opportunities the two countries face on issues of mutual and global concern.
