Analysis

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

Sarah Hummel and Andrey Baklitskiy May 01, 2018 Partner Posts
Looking at U.S. and Russian perspectives on five key challenges to cooperation on nuclear arms control, the authors offer policy recommendations for improving the increasingly strained relationship.
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Averting the US-Russia Warpath

James N. Miller, Richard Fontaine and Alexander Velez-Green February 22, 2018 Partner Posts
For Russia and the U.S., new incentives for using "nonkinetic" weapons, like cyber attacks, threaten the stability afforded by mutually assured destruction.
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New START Expires in 3 Years and Nobody Knows What Comes Next

Nikolai Sokov February 06, 2018 Partner Posts
Much stands in the way of a new treaty, but allowing New START to expire would not be in either country's interest.
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The Russification of US Deterrence Policy

Nikolai Sokov December 25, 2017 Recommended Reads
The United States now shares the same concerns as Russia. This might be good news or bad news, depending on political decisions.
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Nuclear Dangers from North Korea: Managing the Risks to the US and Russia

Joshua H. Pollack October 27, 2017 RM Exclusives
The risk of an American conflict with North Korea is growing, and along with it so is the risk of an accidental war between the two nuclear superpowers.
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Cooperative Threat Reduction or: How I Stopped Worrying and Got Rid of the Bomb

Nukes of Hazard September 15, 2017 Recommended Reads
Former U.S. Sens. Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, along with former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Andrew Weber, discuss the challenge of securing and eliminating the disintegrating Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal at the end of the Cold War in this Nukes of Hazard podcast. 
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Russian Military Buildup in the West: Fact Versus Fiction

Michael Kofman September 07, 2017 RM Exclusives
Until 2014 Russia was largely cutting the number of troops on NATO's borders to move them elsewhere. The war with Ukraine changed that, reawakening Moscow to the possibility of a large-scale war on its western front.
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Yes, Russian Generals Are Preparing for War. That Doesn’t Necessarily Mean the Kremlin Wants to Start One

Simon Saradzhyan August 30, 2017 RM Exclusives
Past experience suggests that two conditions must exist for Russia to use military exercises as a cover for foreign military interventions and neither one is in place today.
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A Roadmap for US-Russia Relations

Edited by Andrey Kortunov and Olga Oliker August 01, 2017 Partner Posts
This report by the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program and the Russian International Affairs Council looks at the troubled state of the U.S.-Russia relationship and recommends areas of potential cooperation.
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Survey: Tips for President Trump Ahead of His First Meeting With Putin

RM Experts July 03, 2017 RM Exclusives
What should be at the top of the two leaders’ agenda? Avoiding war, bolstering arms control, cooperating on counter-terrorism, Ukraine … and not getting their hopes too high.
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Strengthening Strategic Stability with Russia

Christopher S. Chivvis, Andrew Radin, Dara Massicot and Clinton Bruce Reach July 01, 2017 Recommended Reads
With the U.S. and Russia still possessing nuclear arsenals that could devastate whole continents, what can be done to shore up strategic stability amid rising tensions between the two countries? A new report looks for answers.
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25 Years of Nuclear Security Cooperation by the US, Russia and Other Newly Independent States: A Timeline

Mariana Budjeryn, Simon Saradzhyan and William Tobey June 16, 2017 RM Exclusives
At a time when the U.S. and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union still saw each other as mortal enemies, they found the courage, creativity and capacity for trust to work together in the name of preventing nuclear catastrophe.