This Week’s Highlights:

• In the first trading day since dozens of Russian tycoons and companies were slapped with sanctions, Moscow-traded stocks headed for the biggest drop in four years, according to Bloomberg. Financial Times spoke to a former U.S. Treasury official who noted that the people working on the latest round of sanctions seem to have lost their way a little. Due to a shallow bench on Russia, the official said, Washington ends up “acting more-or-less at random.”

• Strategic advisory firm associate Omar S. Bashir argues in favor of Columbia University research scholar Richard Nephew’s call on policymakers to understand a sanctions target’s national interests and “commitment to whatever it did to prompt sanctions,” as opposed to simply identifying and exploiting the target’s vulnerabilities. Understanding what targets want is just as important as knowing how pain can be brought to bear.

• Russia and China are unlikely to step into a formal alliance, and would only do so if the U.S. and its allies were to pursue an ideological course of “democratism” that brought them into serious confrontation with both Moscow and Beijing, writes Alexander Lukin, head of the international relations department at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, in his new book.

• China is now signaling that it wants to play a more active security role in Central Asia, which is the last buffer between it and the instability in the Muslim world, according to Carnegie senior fellow Paul Stronski. To cope with the regional challenges, China is reportedly building a military base on the Tajik–Afghan border.

• At least 12,000 women in Russia die at the hands of their abusers each year, according to Human Rights Watch, writes Amie Ferris-Rotman.

• Only eight of Russia's regional capitals—less than a 10th—allowed citizens to elect their mayors. As of last week, the number is down to seven, writes Vladimir Kara-Murza.

• A new RAND report observes that Russia’s political warfare is a response to the West’s own. While Russia has wide-ranging capabilities, including proxies, non-kinetic use of military forces, information activities, cyber warfare and economic influence, these tools are not unlimited and are generally used in specific contexts in limited and opportunistic ways, according to RAND.

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

Nuclear security:

• No significant commentary.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant commentary.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• No significant commentary.

New Cold War/Sabre Rattling:

• No significant commentary.

NATO-Russia relations:

• No significant commentary.

Missile defense:

• No significant commentary.

Nuclear arms control:

• No significant commentary.

Counter-terrorism:

• No significant commentary.

Conflict in Syria:

“Trump's More Likely to Pay a 'Big Price' Than Assad,” Hal Brands, Bloomberg, 04.09.18: The author, a professor of global affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, writes: “Donald Trump has already promised that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad will pay a ‘big price’ for the Syrian regime’s alleged chemical weapons attack this weekend. … America’s ability to change the course of the Syrian war for the better, and without paying a ‘big price’ itself, has been dwindling for years. … Trump now seems set on dissipating what little leverage the U.S. has left. … [I]f there was ever a time when the U.S. should have intervened decisively against Assad … it was in 2011 or 2012. … By the later stages of Barack Obama’s presidency … it was clear that Assad would not go absent a stronger U.S. effort … . Another pinprick military strike in response to Assad’s most recent outrage would be emotionally satisfying. It might even lead to a temporary halt in Assad’s use of chemical weapons. But it would almost certainly have negligible impact … . If Trump is serious about making Assad pay a ‘big price,’ the U.S. could intervene in ways that might actually make a strategic difference. The U.S. military could … undertake a larger, sustained air campaign, … against a range of Syrian military assets and symbols of Assad’s power. It could make its response … deliberately disproportionate to the offense that triggered them, as a way of signaling that the U.S. is willing to turn up the military pressure in ways that could prove quite dangerous for both Assad and his Russian backers. … Yet doing so … means running a significant risk of escalation with Russia and Iran … . But whatever Trump may say, it seems doubtful that a president who has repeatedly criticized U.S. military interventions in the Middle East and called for getting out of Syria as soon as possible will be willing to pay the costs of this approach over any appreciable length of time.”

Cyber security:

• No significant commentary.

Elections interference:

“Modern Political Warfare. Current Practices and Possible Responses,” Linda Robinson, Todd C. Helmus, Raphael S. Cohen, Alireza Nader, Andrew Radin, Madeline Magnuson and Katya Migacheva, RAND Corporation, April 2018: The authors, policy analysts and researchers, write: “This report analyzes political warfare as it is practiced today by both state and nonstate actors, and provides detailed recommendations … [for responding to] this type of conflict to achieve U.S. ends and protect U.S. interests. … The authors examine historical antecedents of political warfare and current-day practices through in-depth case studies of Russia, Iran and the Islamic State … to derive common attributes of modern political warfare.” The authors present the characteristics of modern political warfare along with several gaps in U.S. information capabilities and practices. “The term political warfare is not ideal for a variety of reasons, chief among them its association with actual warfare. It may be more useful to think of effective statecraft and an integration of measures short of war as necessary aspects of the U.S. arsenal. … Russia’s political warfare activities are informed by Russian understanding of new generation warfare, by Russian and Soviet historical uses of political warfare and by recent Russian domestic politics. While Russia has wide-ranging capabilities … these tools are not unlimited and are generally used in specific contexts in limited and opportunistic ways. … three central observations about Russian political warfare … have important implications … : political warfare is a response to Western political warfare, Russian political warfare stokes conflict and capitalizes on crises [and] Russian political warfare depends on the geographic and political context.”

“If Everything Is a Russia Bombshell, Nothing Is. On the media's overreaction to news about Robert Mueller's investigation,” Matt Ford, The New Republic, 04.09.18: The author, a staff writer for the publication, argues that there is “a growing tendency to over-interpret news about the Russia inquiry. Significant details still get published on a regular basis, but they largely flesh out stories already known about election meddling, collusion and obstruction of justice. … Every development sparks breaking news alerts and lengthy panel discussions on cable news, giving undue weight to revelations that don’t necessarily deserve it. … There are two questions I ask myself when reading about any new details in the Russia investigation. First, is the latest revelation unusual for those under Mueller’s scrutiny? Second, is the latest revelation unexpected on Mueller’s part? … Mueller has a reputation for meticulousness … . This makes it hard to distinguish between what he’s doing to be thorough and what he’s doing because it’s central to the investigation.”

Energy exports from CIS:

• No significant commentary.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant commentary.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“Search for rationale behind US sanctions list. Selection may be warning to Moscow of how much damage new legislation could impose,” Kathrin Hille, Max Seddon and Courtney Weaver, Financial Times, 04.09.18: The authors, correspondents for the news outlet, write: “While the Treasury said the sanctions were linked to Russia’s actions in Crimea, Syria and Ukraine and its interference in the West, including its cyber activities, some observers have voiced surprise as to why some oligarchs are on the list and others are not. … A senior [Russian] official … said … it could have been worse because Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg, … who are among the hardest hit, were not members of Mr Putin’s inner circle. … A former Russian government official said he believed the U.S. government had settled for a selection of names that would also serve the administration’s other policies. … ‘It seems that the people working on this lost their way a bit,’ said a former Treasury official who was involved in drafting the sanctions imposed in the wake of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. ‘The bottom line is that the U.S. government has a very shallow bench on Russia. And so they end up acting more-or-less at random.’” According to opposition politician Alexei Navalny, “The goal isn’t to divide the elites any more but to make things painful for the elite group close to Putin.”

“Russian Markets Slide After US Ups Ante With the Worst Sanctions Yet,” Ksenia Galouchko and Yuliya Fedorinova, Bloomberg, 04.09.18: The authors, reporters for the news outlet, write: “In the first trading day since dozens of Russian tycoons and companies were slapped with penalties, Moscow-traded stocks headed for the biggest drop in four years, the currency slid the most in the world and the nation’s credit risk soared. … While Russian companies have faced a slew of sanctions since the conflict with Ukraine [began] … , the latest penalties are markedly more devastating. For the first time, major publicly traded Russian companies with global clients are on the black list. … The new sanctions  coincide with a worsening of tensions between Russia and the U.S. over the war in Syria after an alleged chemical attack outside Damascus April 7. … Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered his cabinet to come up with ways to assist the affected companies and draft possible retaliatory measures, but provided no details. The Kremlin needs time to assess ‘the scale of the real damage’ from the new sanctions and formulate a response, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. … Part of the worry is that Putin’s hands will be tied on how much he can help out targeted companies. Even state-controlled banks may not be willing to take the risk of continuing to do business with the industrial giants targeted by the U.S. for fear of repercussions.”

“Questions of Power: Beyond the Conventional Wisdom on Sanctions and Coercion,” Omar S. Bashir, War on the Rocks, 04.09.18: The author, an associate at a strategic advisory firm, writes: “Joseph Nye argued that Russia had miscalculated in halting Ukraine’s gas supplies, because export interruptions harm Russia, too, by undermining its reputation as a reliable supplier to the rest of Europe. … According to his influential argument that ‘power arises from asymmetries in interdependence,’ Russia would be unable to attempt gas coercion because it was just as vulnerable as its targets. … Nye and other scholars have advised policymakers that economic coercion in a mutually beneficial relationship is only possible when one side would be hurt more by a complete or partial exit. … But Russia cut or threatened to reduce its gas exports multiple times after 2006. … As sanctions and economic coercion increasingly become foreign policy tools of choice, it’s worth asking whether we really understand the fundamentals of power short of war. The asymmetry shortcut may be highly intuitive, but it’s misleading. [In] Richard Nephew’s The Art of Sanctions: A View from the Field … he departs from analysis that focuses too much on relative pain and too little on the reasons that states choose to inflict or resist that pain. … Nephew appreciates that sanctions outcomes are subject to chance. Sanctions may fail because of inherent strategic flaws, but also because of unrelated changes that neither side can predict. The decision to implement sanctions is thus a gamble. So is the decision to resist them in hopes that the sanctioner will tire of the costs that she, too, suffers. … Nephew’s framework calls on policymakers to understand a target’s national interests and ‘commitment to whatever it did to prompt sanctions,’ not simply to identify and exploit the target’s vulnerabilities. Understanding what targets want, in his view, is just as important as knowing how pain can be brought to bear.”

“When Diplomats and Spies Must Go. Expelling Russians, Then and Now,” Daniel Fried, Foreign Affairs, 04.03.18: The author, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, writes: “Russia's act of aggression in the United Kingdom called for a sharp response … . The coordinated round of expulsions represents a big step in the ongoing effort to challenge Russia for its provocations. But will it work? Is it enough? The short answer is: not yet. Diplomatic expulsions are a standard if extreme way of showing outrage. But tactically speaking, they have mixed results. … expulsions work best as part of a broad strategy to deter, pressure and ultimately change an adversary's behavior. Without that strategic context, the Trump administration's actions risk being interpreted as a symbolic slap on the wrist … . A proper Russia strategy would, as did Reagan and Shultz's, integrate Trump's reasonable (if overly optimistic) desire to work with Russia on areas of common interest with the reality of Russia's aggression. … The Trump administration should make such solidarity a habit and, accordingly, should work with U.S. allies to take steps to impose a cost on Putin and, crucially, on those in his circle … . Following the money is often a good way to start. … If the United States wants to cooperate with a better Russia in the future, it needs to confound the Russia it faces now, so that Russians begin to reassess their current path.”

II. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

• No significant commentary.

China:

“China and Russia’s Uneasy Partnership in Central Asia,” Paul Stronski, East Asia Forum, 03.29.18: The author, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes: “After Russia’s rift with the West over Ukraine, isolation pushed Moscow even closer to Beijing. But their relationship is marked by historic insecurity and mistrust that only deepens as the imbalance of power between Beijing and Moscow grows. This dynamic is particularly seen in Central Asia, where Chinese economic, political and soft power is shifting the geopolitical landscape. … Central Asia is the last buffer between it [China] and the instability that is rocking much of the Muslim world … . China is reportedly building a military base on the Tajik–Afghan border, which will give it a security presence in both countries.  … It quietly increased security assistance to Kyrgyzstan after the 2016 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Bishkek and sells weapons to Turkmenistan. … The Russia–China partnership in Central Asia remains generally stable for now. China’s deft diplomacy towards Russia—along with both states’ desires to keep the West out of their common backyard—has kept tensions behind closed doors. But with China now recognizing it may need to strengthen its security posture in the region, it is unclear how long this stability will last.”

“China and Russia: The New Rapprochement,” Alexander Lukin, March 2018: In his new book, the author, head of the international relations department at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, writes that “a rising China will be a much bigger challenge to the Western ideology of global dominance than Russia, which still remains quite weak. …  Political, cultural and ideological differences between China and Western ‘democratism’ will deepen with time, and an increasingly powerful China will have ever less desire to compromise. That will eventually make China an alternative to the West as a major center of global influence.  … China regards Russia as an important geopolitical partner. … [A former Chinese official writes that Beijing and Moscow] will not enter into a legally binding alliance or form an anti-Western bloc … . [China wants partners that] are generally supportive of Beijing's desire for a multipolar world, speak out against U.S. domination of the global system and can work with China as a counterweight to that influence. Russia is the most important of such states. … China prefers that Russia be stable and strong-though perhaps not too powerful. … Russia's pivot to Asia … is largely irreversible … if anyone in Washington thinks the U.S. can use Russia as a pawn in its confrontation with Beijing, they are sorely mistaken. … What Moscow and Beijing are trying to achieve is not spheres of exclusive influence … but an international agreement on a new set of rules, which would suit the interests not only of the U.S. and its allies but of other major international players. … A formal alliance … would become a reality only if the U.S. and its allies were to pursue an ideological course of ‘democratism’ that brought them into serious confrontation with both Russia and China. However, … ‘democratism’ is experiencing a crisis … . Forces in the West that favor greater pragmatism and realism are on the rise, and in this respect, they have more in common with the Russian and Chinese authorities who long ago abandoned any ideological underpinnings in their foreign policies.”

Ukraine:

“When Does Russian Propaganda Work—And When Does It Backfire? Here's What We Found. It doesn't change minds—but it does polarize audiences. That could undermine democracy,” Leonid Peisakhin and Arturas Rozenas, The Washington Post, 04.03.18: The authors, assistant professors of political science, write: “After examining Russia's 2014 disinformation campaign in Ukraine, we found that Russian propaganda has very uneven effects. Whether it sways individuals to vote for pro-Russian candidates—or backfires, and makes them less likely to do so—depends on the political predispositions of the target audience. … In some Ukrainian settlements but not others, residents are able to watch Russian state-owned television. The sets of settlements are demographically and economically very similar. We used this variation to examine how—or whether—Russian broadcasts influenced Ukrainians' votes in the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2014. … Ukrainians who were already predisposed in Russia's favor found its media message persuasive. … Those with anti-Russian views were dissuaded by the Russian media message and became more likely to vote for pro-Western politicians. Individuals with no strong political priors seem not to have been swayed in either direction. … Assuming that Russia knows how its propaganda affects its audience, we might be able to figure out what it was trying to do in the U.S. election. … [I]f Russia spread its biased messages broadly, that would suggest its goal was increasing U.S. political polarization, making it harder for U.S. democracy to function smoothly.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant commentary.

III. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Is Putin a CIA Agent?” Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 04.03.18: The author, a columnist for the news outlet, writes: “If I were a Russian citizen, I’d be asking this question: Is Putin a U.S. agent? Why? Because Putin has undertaken so many actions in recent years that contributed to the weakening of Russia’s economy and human capital base that you have to wonder whether he’s secretly on the CIA’s payroll. … Putin decided to look for dignity for Russia in all the wrong places … . Les Echos, France’s top business daily, recently quoted a Russian techy as pointing out that ‘Microsoft alone registers more patents than the whole of Russia!’ … Putin consistently acts like a farmer who sells his most valuable beef in return for cubes of sugar. That is, he looks for short-term sugar highs to boost his popularity with his Russian nationalist base because he is insecure, and pays for it by giving up real beef, leaving Russia weaker in the long term. … Putin’s latest beef-for-sugar trade was his apparent ordering of the use of a military-grade nerve agent … to poison … Sergei Skripal and his daughter … . And then there is Putin’s long-range strategy—to bet against Mother Nature, human nature and Moore’s Law, all at once. He’s betting … that the world will indefinitely remain addicted to his oil and gas in an age of disruptive climate change … that his young people won’t want to be free to realize their full potential, not just live off sugar-high memories of historical greatness … that the steady growth of technology won’t empower Russia’s youth to connect and collaborate, and see through his charade. … A weak, isolated and humiliated Russia is a dangerous animal. But to thrive in the long term, Russia needs a ‘reset,’ and it can come only from within, but Putin won’t press the button.”

“Putin’s War on Women. Why #MeToo skipped Russia,” Amie Ferris-Rotman, Foreign Policy, 04.09.18: The author, a correspondent for the news outlet, writes: “When Russia decriminalized domestic violence in February 2017 … few officials opposed the measure. President Vladimir Putin signed off on the bill after the lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma, overwhelmingly approved it by a vote of 380 to 3. … At least 12,000 women in Russia die at the hands of their abusers each year, according to Human Rights Watch. The real number is likely higher. Over the past half-year, the #MeToo movement has swept across Europe, the Americas and parts of Asia and Africa. But many Russian women’s rights activists fear the global reckoning has simply passed them by. … Theirs could be an uphill battle, for Putin’s bare-chested machismo … has been accompanied by a sharp rise in misogyny at home. … Despite the intimidation, some Russian women—particularly millennials in Moscow and St. Petersburg—are continuing to fight back. ... Still, attempts to create a Russian form of #MeToo are embryonic, at best. In February, after female reporters complained that lawmaker Leonid Slutsky had harassed them in parliament … a deputy speaker of the Duma, Igor Lebedev, called for these journalists to be barred from covering the legislature. Slutsky and other male lawmakers then took to Facebook, where they openly boasted about how many female reporters they could ‘take.’”

“In Russia, a Democratically Elected Mayor Finally Succumbs to Putinism,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, The Washington Post, 04.05.18: The author, a Russian liberal opposition leader, writes: “For a government that claims to be popular, Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime is strikingly afraid of elections. … Directly elected mayors were once the norm in Russian cities. Today they are fast approaching extinction. As of last week, only eight of Russia's regional capitals—less than a 10th—still allowed citizens to elect their mayors. As of this week, the number is down to seven. The latest casualty … is Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth-largest city of roughly 1.5 million. On Tuesday, the regional legislature abolished direct elections for the city's mayor, replacing them with a bureaucratic appointment procedure. … No justification was necessary, because the real reason behind the move is well known. In 2013, voters in Yekaterinburg elected Yevgeny Roizman, a charismatic opposition politician, as mayor over the candidate from Putin's United Russia party. Roizman … has called for the release of political prisoners, criticized the Kremlin's military involvement in Ukraine and Syria and supported opposition activist Alexei Navalny's calls for a boycott of last month's staged presidential election. … In recent years, the Kremlin has suffered a number of high-profile defeats in mayoral elections across the country. … The winners have been arrested, removed from office or, in the best case, allowed to complete their term—but in all those cities, direct mayoral elections were later abolished.”

Defense and aerospace:

• No significant commentary.

 Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant commentary.