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.
book review

Robert Gates’ Insights on How to Employ Instruments of US National Power

Simon Saradzhyan November 18, 2020 RM Exclusives
Robert Gates’ new book constitutes the most coherent of recent attempts to catalogue the key instruments of modern America’s national power and then discern how their use has evolved following the end of the Cold War and to what effect.
book review

The Honest Spy

William Tobey October 07, 2020 RM Exclusives
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen’s “A State of Mind: Faith and the CIA” offers an engaging, if eccentric, memoir from a man who battled some of America’s greatest post-World War II enemies, from the Soviet Union to al-Qaida.
primer

Russia’s Impact on US National Interests: Ensuring Energy Security

Li-Chen Sim September 10, 2020 RM Exclusives
Continued debate over the future of Nord Stream 2 underscores Russia's significant role in the global energy market. So how does Russia impact the United States’ vital interest in ensuring its energy security?
book review

The Role of Russian Espionage in Re-Shaping the West

Arthur Martirosyan August 26, 2020 RM Exclusives
Luke Harding scrupulously presents every bit of data behind the hypothesis that Vladimir Putin controls Donald Trump and Boris Johnson in a book that can be extolled by one political camp and dismissed as a “fake” conspiracy theory by another.
multimedia

A Conversation Between Graham Allison and Angela Stent

Graham Allison and Angela Stent August 01, 2020 Recommended Reads
The U.S. leadership is slowly waking up to the reality of a Russia-China entente. This is an unnatural partnership. But U.S. policies have driven China and Russia closer, and Putin and Xi have managed their differences well.
column

The Curious Case of ‘Russian Lives Matter’

Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon July 11, 2020 Recommended Reads
In Moscow, the Kremlin attacks U.S. racism while the liberal opposition ignores it, or worse.
book review

The Dark Arts of Disinformation Through a Historical Lens

Arthur Martirosyan May 20, 2020 RM Exclusives
Understanding the fantastic past of disinformation is key to deciphering the present, argues Thomas Rid in his pioneering analysis of modern disinformation warfare from a historical perspective.
multimedia

Video: Spheres of Influence Webinar

Center for the National Interest April 08, 2020 Partner Posts
When policymakers in the United States declared in the aftermath of the Cold War that the age of “spheres of influence” had ended, were they misdiagnosing the issue?
interview

Timothy Colton on Political Succession in Russia

Ekaterina Karpenko and Mariam Dadashyan October 31, 2019
Harvard's Timothy Colton discusses the problem of orderly succession in Russia, the chances for a thaw in U.S.-Russian relations and much more in this interview with Gazeta.ru.
interview

Getting Somewhere With Russia: A Q&A With Angela Stent

RM Staff May 01, 2019 RM Exclusives
An eminent Russia expert discuses Russia “as is,” competing and cooperating, the end of arms control, sanctions, Ukraine, Venezuela and much more.
book review

7 Pillars of Putin’s World: New Book Shows US Policymakers Russia as It Is

Nikolas K. Gvosdev April 04, 2019 RM Exclusives
Angela Stent clearly lays out Russia’s strategic imperatives and the mindset of Putin and his circle to present a coherent, compelling analysis of contemporary Russian behavior in the world.
book review

How the US Managed, and Mismanaged, Russia: A Superstar Diplomat Tells His Story

Graham Allison March 12, 2019 RM Exclusives
William Burns’ new book describes his warnings to the Bush administration that pushing for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine would spur Moscow to use armed force in the former and to meddle in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.