This Week’s Highlights

• Biden’s most important long-term goal at home should be to foster a powerful sense of American nationalism, argues Prof. John J. Mearsheimer. Turning to foreign policy, the Biden administration should work assiduously to improve relations with America’s Asian allies and create an effective alliance that can keep Beijing at bay. Relatedly, Mearsheimer writes, it would be especially wise for Biden to abandon his misguided Russophobia and work to bring Moscow into the balancing coalition against China. It is Beijing, not Moscow, that poses the main threat to U.S. interests today, and Russia could be a valuable ally in addressing that threat. 
• The American order after 1945 was neither global nor always very liberal, writes Prof. Joseph S. Nye. It left out more than half the world and included many authoritarian states. American hegemony was always exaggerated. Furthermore, Nye writes, the growth of Chinese and Russian power has set stricter limits to liberal interventionism. The question now is whether the United States can work with an inner core of allies to promote democracy and human rights while cooperating with a broader set of states to manage the rules-based international institutions needed to cope with transnational threats such as climate change, pandemics, cyber-attacks, terrorism, and economic instability, Nye writes. Can America learn to manage a “cooperative rivalry?” 
• A series of executive actions that the new president can take in his earliest days in office [should include extension of] the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, argue Ernest J. Moniz and Sam Nunn of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.  In the long term, the Biden administration will specifically need to  restart talks about crisis management with Russia and between NATO and Russia. It will also need to restart separate talks with China, according to Moniz and Nunn. More broadly, they write, the United States and Russia should revive the admonition, articulated by both President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”  
• U.S. policy towards Syria should recognize the primacy of great power competition and necessity of pragmatic engagement with Russia, argue Brookings’ Daniel L. Magruder Jr. and Rodrick H. McHaty. The decisive Russian intervention in Syria provides Moscow opportunities for engagement with the West. Even though Russia is an adversary and competitor, they write, the cornerstone of a Syrian policy should be to recognize the necessity of a pragmatic relationship.  
• The Belfer Center’s Paul Kolbe writes that there has been a sense that rules written by those with the biggest guns—that is Washington—can unilaterally impose global cyberorder, but the SolarWinds hack has laid waste to that notion. Kolbe argues that even in the face of perpetual [cyber] conflict, we should be prepared to sit down and talk with our cyberadversaries. Meanwhile, George Beebe of the Center for the National Interest, underscores that America’s new “persistent engagement” strategy has ruled out diplomatic engagement with Russia that might establish some rules of the cyber road and encourage mutual restraint.  
• The post-Cold War picture of Russia as weak and declining is outdated, argues Stanford’s Kathryn E. Stoner. President-elect Joe Biden and his foreign-policy team must meet the true threat posed by today's Russia. This means working with Vladimir Putin where the U.S. must, she writes, while challenging his many efforts to harm American interests, both overseas and at home. 
• No country may be better positioned to capitalize on climate change than Russia, writes reporter Abrahm Lustgarten. Marshall Burke of Stanford University projects that over the next 80 years, per capita GDP in Russia will quadruple. Russia could see as much as fivefold bursts in their per capita gross domestic products by the end of the century so long as they have enough people to power their economies at that level, Lustgarten writes.

 

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

Nuclear security:

• No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

“Russia’s Waning Influence on North Korea,” Andrei Lankov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12.21.20. The author, a historian and a professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University in Seoul, writes:

• “Unlike China, Russia cannot apply any economic pressure to North Korea. Despite sanctions and unprecedentedly harsh lockdown measures, the North Korean economy remains afloat largely thanks to Chinese subsidies … Russia, however, has provided precious little economic aid to North Korea in the last thirty years. … The trade volume between Russia and North Korea … also remains very small, and can be measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than the billions in which trade with China is counted.”
• “Until recently, Russia was of some interest to Pyongyang as a relatively friendly and nonthreatening intermediary in talks with the United States and the West, as well as something of a diplomatic counterweight in those talks … However, with the sharp escalation of the U.S.-Russian confrontation since 2014, Russia’s opportunities to mediate have decreased.” 
• “Option one is for Russia to try to conduct its own policy there, which may be a little different to China’s. But though such a position might seem tempting, it would be quite costly, since any influence on North Korea must always be paid for—often with cold hard cash.”
• “Option two is for Russia to reconcile itself with following in China’s slipstream. That approach doesn’t require major investment, but it does, of course, mean temporarily relinquishing autonomy in its actions on the Korean Peninsula.”
• “Biden’s election increases the likelihood of the second scenario … Embroiled in its confrontation with the West, Russia cannot play the role of an effective intermediary, and Moscow’s unwillingness to subsidize North Korea means that for Pyongyang, Russia is of no interest as a potential donor. This decreases its ability to influence the situation, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing: as a Taoist sage taught, there are times when ‘non-action’ is not just the only realistic option, but also the best policy.”

Iran and its nuclear program:

• No significant developments.

Great Power rivalry/New Cold War/saber rattling:

“Does the International Liberal Order Have a Future?” Joseph S. Nye, The National Interest, 12.28.20. The author, a professor at Harvard University, writes:

• “Trump was the first president since 1945 to call into question the American liberal international order. Should Biden try to revive it, or is it an ancient relic? … The American order after 1945 was neither global nor always very liberal. It left out more than half the world (the Soviet bloc and China) and included many authoritarian states. American hegemony was always exaggerated.”
• “After the Cold War, neither Russia nor China could balance American power, and the United States overrode sovereignty in pursuit of liberal values. … Russia and China felt deceived by the hubris of American unipolarity. Since then, the growth of Chinese and Russian power has set stricter limits to liberal interventionism.”
• “Russia and China stress the norm of sovereignty that was enshrined in the U.N. Charter in 1945. States can go to war only for self-defense or with Security Council approval. … Limited cooperation is possible within the U.N., for example, on the deployment of peacekeeping forces in troubled countries, and political cooperation has limited the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”
• “On economic relations, many rules will require revision. China’s hybrid state capitalism underpinned an unfair mercantilist model that distorted the functioning of the World Trade Organization. The result will be a partial decoupling of global supply chains when security is at stake … Ecological interdependence, however, poses an insurmountable obstacle to sovereignty, because the threats are transnational and obey the laws of biology and physics rather than the logic of contemporary geopolitics. … Cyberspace is another new issue—partly transnational, but also subject to sovereign government controls.”
• “The question Biden faces is not whether to restore the liberal international order. It is whether the United States can work with an inner core of allies to promote democracy and human rights while cooperating with a broader set of states to manage the rules-based international institutions needed to cope with transnational threats.”

“Joe Biden Must Embrace Liberal Nationalism to Lead America Forward,” John J. Mearsheimer, The National Interest, 12.29.20. The author, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, writes:

• “The U.S. is in deep trouble at home and abroad. But the problems are not simply President Donald Trump’s fault: both his Democratic and Republican predecessors also bear considerable responsibility … Trump has made a bad situation worse, however, which means that President-elect Joe Biden faces a Herculean task in trying to right the ship of state.”
• “The biggest and most serious problems are on the home front. … The most important short-term domestic goal should be dealing with the coronavirus, which is likely to be spreading like wildfire when Biden moves into the White House. … Biden’s most important long-term goal at home should be to foster a powerful sense of American nationalism. The United States is not simply a liberal state, it is a liberal nation-state.”
• “Turning to foreign policy, the dominating issue is how to contain a rising China. … Toward that end, the Biden administration should work assiduously to improve relations with America’s Asian allies and create an effective alliance that can keep Beijing at bay. … Relatedly, it would be especially wise for Biden to abandon his misguided Russophobia and work to bring Moscow into the balancing coalition against China. It is Beijing, not Moscow, that poses the main threat to U.S. interests today, and Russia could be a valuable ally in addressing that threat.”
• “Given the proclivities of the foreign policy establishment, Biden will come under pressure to pursue regime change abroad, sometimes with military force. Iran will be the most likely target … Biden should not start a war against Iran even if it is on a path to acquiring a nuclear deterrent. … Nevertheless, the Biden administration should go to great lengths to discourage proliferation, while recognizing that there are limits to what it can do to achieve that goal.”

“Why the Baltics Behave as They Do Toward Russia,” Kadri Liik, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12.31.20. The author, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, writes:

• “Following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, a new assessment of Russia as a challenger to the European Union, if not a threat, has become mainstream. It’s fair to say that up until 2011, the Baltic states were ahead of the debate. … Now, the real question is what to do about it [Russia]—and the Baltic states could contribute more toward providing answers than they are currently doing.”
• “There is a demand for such answers in the EU. … [T]oday’s challenge for the Baltic states is to transform their moralist position into a policy that could work, both for them and for the EU as a whole. And to do that, it would be handy to have some real curiosity toward Russia as it is, and some real contacts there, as opposed to just adherence to rigid moral high ground.”
• “The Baltics also need to come to terms with the fact that Russia will never return to the path it strayed from at some point in the 1990s: the path of pro-Western democratization as a rule-taker, in the style of Central Europe and the Baltics. That window has closed. … This means that the Baltic crusade to democratize Russia by means of criticism will have to be wound down.”
• “Frustrated maximalism is likely to make everyone more humble and more practical. The Baltic states will be more likely to look at Russia as it is, not as they want it to be. One day Russia might also look at the Baltic states as just neighbors: not as an amputated part of the Soviet Union, or Washington’s hostile lapdog. … With some luck, in the years ahead the relationship between Russia and the Baltic states could move from maximalism to a quiet neighborliness. This is not a glamorous perspective. But it is a good and reliable one, and probably exactly what we need.”

“Respect Thy Neighbor: Russia and the Baltic Region,” Dmitri Trenin, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12.31.20. The author, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

• “Russia and its Baltic Sea neighbors could start repairing their badly broken relationship on a common basis of neighborliness. This would fall far short of partnership, but it would end unchecked hostility.”
• “While the Russia-NATO confrontation itself has deep roots and will not be resolved in the foreseeable future, something can and must be done about bolstering military security in the Baltic Sea region. A number of reasonably noncontroversial steps have been recommended by various experts from Russia and the West.”
• “These include: Reliable 24/7 communications between Russian and NATO military headquarters, from the Chief of the General Staff/Supreme Allied Commander Europe level down to the operational headquarters; regular personal contacts between the Chief of the Russian General Staff and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, as well as national military headquarters; incident prevention mechanisms; confidence-building measures; exercising unilateral/bilateral restraint, such as … non-deployment of nuclear- and non-nuclear-armed intermediate-range systems (INF) in Europe.”
• “Russia and its Baltic Sea neighbors will continue to disagree bitterly about many things, but they would seek to manage these conflicts and disagreements in order to prevent a war that neither side wants or needs; desist from provoking their neighbors; give those neighbors a modicum of respect, no matter how grudging; find niches, however small, for productive dialogue and even cooperation.”

NATO-Russia relations:

“Biden Has a Chance to Revive America’s Alliances,” Editorial Board, Financial Times, 12.28.20. The news outlet’s editorial board writes:

• “As U.S. president, Donald Trump has specialized in bullying and berating allies. By contrast, Joe Biden has promised that he will treat U.S. allies with respect and consideration. This is more than a matter of common courtesy. Allies are a crucial American asset in pushing back against unwelcome behavior by China, Russia and other potential adversaries.”
• “Fortunately, the new president is pushing at an open door. After four years of Mr. Trump, America’s allies in both Europe and Asia are eager to embrace a new era of cooperation with the U.S. The EU has already taken the striking step of setting out its own agenda for transatlantic cooperation, even before Mr. Biden has been sworn in. The priorities identified by the Europeans look like the basis for a new era of engagement. They include global health, climate change, trade, technology and security.”
• “The past four years have put a huge strain on the transatlantic alliance. The next four provide an opportunity to breathe new life into the partnership between the U.S. and Europe.”

“Team Biden, Pay Attention to the European Dust-Up Over NATO,” Jedidiah Royal, War on the Rocks, 12.30.20. The author, director for defense policy and planning at the United States Mission to NATO, writes:

• “The debate over building a common European defense is an old chestnut amongst Euro-watchers. … In its current manifestation, the debate has taken a predictable but unsettling turn, coming to focus on the reliability of U.S. foreign policy. … Team Biden would be wise to pay close attention. Left to continue on its current trajectory, this debate will erode European unity, transatlantic bonds and the capacity of the United States and Europe to jointly defend the Western-led international order.”
• “In the first round of North Atlantic Council meetings after Jan. 20, the Biden administration will start to lay the foundation of its European agenda and simultaneously begin to establish a new national security reputation for the United States. Allies will be paying very close attention in three key areas.”
• “First, as president, Biden will be faced with the same resource dilemma that Trump had to manage. … Second, all international forces are currently slated to withdraw from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021 … Allies are deeply skeptical that the conditions agreed to by U.S. and Taliban negotiators will be met by February to allow for an orderly withdrawal. … Third, the Biden team will need to reconsider and reevaluate the merits of treaties that Trump viewed as bad deals.”
• “Most urgent will be Biden’s approach to the New START treaty … Most NATO allies support an extension of that treaty, but they also recognize its shortcomings and understand that an automatic extension favors Russia more than the United States. … Biden’s negotiators should accept that they must represent both American and transatlantic interests as they move forward or risk degrading NATO’s united front on countering Russian aggression.”
• “Finally, in the long term, the greater and certainly more difficult challenge for Team Biden will be to re-anchor transatlantic relations at home.”

“The Black Sea: How America Can Avoid a Great-Power Conflict,” Philip Breedlove and Michael E. O’Hanlon, The National Interest/Brookings Institution, 12.15.20. The authors, a distinguished Professor at Georgia Tech and the director of research in foreign policy at Brookings, write:

• “The Black Sea region is best viewed as having three big anchors—Ukraine to the north, Turkey to the south, Russia to the northeast. Then there are three countries on either side of the region—Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova on the left or west, Georgia and Armenia and Azerbaijan to the east. Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria are NATO allies; America and NATO’s other 26 members … are sworn to their defense through a mutual-defense treaty.”
• “None of this is to say that America needs to prepare for war against China, or Russia for that matter, in the Black Sea region. … Indeed, as with many parts of the world, China does not pose a direct military threat, rather it challenges American interests in the realms of economics, technology and espionage.”
• “To be specific: China is offering loans, through its Belt and Road Initiative, to many countries along a vast periphery and perimeter. … China’s software and hardware are optimized for intrusive monitoring of the population, i.e., Black Sea inhabitants will be monitored if and when they accept Chinese technology. … China is actively trying to buy into sectors that have huge security implications. … In general, Chinese infrastructure comes with long-term controlling interests. … In general, default on Chinese loans results in Chinese ownership of assets—and the default is a distinct possibility when big projects are foisted upon unsuspecting countries with weak economies and a lack of transparency in their investment decisions.”
• “America needs to be present. It needs to be a part of the leadership in this region. … The good news is that war does not have to be the future for the Black Sea. Military support is important, but it is just one of our tools for engagement in this vital region. To avoid bad news, America must engage effectively, be patient and sustain our effort.”

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

“Sleepwalking Toward the Nuclear Precipice. The World Needs a Wake-Up Call,”  Ernest J. Moniz and Sam Nunn, Foreign Affairs, 12.15.20. The authors, co-chairs of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, write:

• “One lesson of COVID-19 is that the unthinkable does happen. U.S.-Russian relations are in a dismal state, but Washington and Moscow must once again acknowledge that they share an existential interest in preventing the use of nuclear weapons. … The Biden administration and congressional leaders must also acknowledge that fact and work together to reverse the erosion of arms control dialogue and structures that have for many decades made the world a safer place.”
• “Both the Biden administration and Congress must create the political space for the United States and Russia to renew military-to-military, diplomat-to-diplomat, and scientist-to-scientist engagement. … There is much Biden can do to signal an immediate shift in U.S. policy.”
• “He can begin to rebuild alliances and regional security structures that have atrophied under his predecessor. … He can set out a national security strategy that reduces the role of nuclear weapons. … And he can articulate these changes in a comprehensive speech on nuclear policy … Equally important will be a series of executive actions that the new president can take in his earliest days in office. … Chief among them will be to make good on his promise to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia.”
• “In the long term, the Biden administration will need to make a sustained diplomatic effort to revive the many processes, mechanisms and agreements that allow nations to manage their relations in peacetime and thus to avoid nuclear conflict.”
• “The United States will specifically need to restart talks about crisis management with Russia and between NATO and Russia. … It will also need to restart separate talks with China. … More broadly, the United States and Russia should revive the admonition, articulated by both President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, that ‘a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.’”

“Biden Plans Renewed Nuclear Talks With Russia While Punishing Kremlin, Adviser Says,” David E. Sanger, New York Times, 01.03.21. The author, national security correspondent for the news outlet, writes:

• “President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s incoming national security adviser said on Sunday [Jan. 3] that the new administration would move quickly to renew the last remaining major nuclear arms treaty with Russia, even while seeking to make President Vladimir V. Putin pay for what appeared to be the largest-ever hacking of United States government networks.”
• “Jake Sullivan … also said that as soon as Iran re-entered compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal … there would be a ‘follow-on negotiation’ over its missile capabilities.”
• “Renewing the New START [treaty], will be made more complex because of Mr. Biden’s vow to assure that Moscow pays for the hacking of more than 250 American government and private networks, an intrusion that now appears far more extensive than first thought. … But that means moving to punish Russia while keeping New START … from lapsing and setting off a new arms race.”
• “Mr. Sullivan cited arms control as one of the few areas where Moscow and the new administration could cooperate. Extending the treaty, which would not require Senate action, would be the first test of whether that cooperation is possible. … ‘We will have to look at extending that treaty in the interest of the United States,’ Mr. Sullivan said.”
• “So far, there have been no discussions between Mr. Biden’s representatives and the Russians about the treaty, transition officials said, because of what Mr. Sullivan referred to as the tradition of ‘one president at a time.’”

Counter-terrorism:

“2020 Appears to Be a Good Year for Counterterrorism,” Daniel L. Byman, The Washington Post/Brookings Institution, 12.24.20. The author, a senior fellow at Brookings, writes:

• “Data from the New America Foundation shows that zero Americans died from jihadist attacks in the United States this year. For 2020 so far, New America tallies eight terrorism deaths on U.S. soil, far fewer than the 30 Americans killed in 2019.”
• “Of course, 2020 could be an outlier year. Terrorists regularly plot, and sometimes they are caught and sometimes they succeed. Data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, for example, shows 32, 41 and 43 attacks in the United States for 2000, 2001 and 2002, respectively—roughly similar numbers for each year. In 2000 and 2002, there were zero and four deaths, respectively. In 2001, there were 3,005.”
• “But U.S. policy has also played a role. Since 9/11, the United States has maintained an aggressive campaign against al-Qaeda leadership that became more effective over time. U.S. operations against the Islamic State began in 2014. Under constant pressure, the Islamic State steadily lost territory until its self-proclaimed caliphate disappeared, damaging its credibility, finances and recruiting.”
• “Predicting the frequency of terrorism is difficult, though the global jihadist movement shows little immediate sign of resurgence. Here in the United States, the FBI remains vigilant, and the incoming Biden administration appears more likely to take violent white supremacy seriously. But possible efforts by President-elect Joe Biden to mandate masks, restrict gun ownership, increase immigration or other hot-button issues could meet resistance. Anti-government and white supremacist violence may grow in the wake of Trump’s embrace of conspiracy theories and attacks on the legitimacy of voting in cities with large minority populations.”

Conflict in Syria:

“Reframing US Syria Policy: The Road to Damascus Runs Through Moscow,” Daniel L. Magruder Jr. and Rodrick H. McHaty, Brookings Institution, December 2020. The authors, federal executive fellows with Brookings, write:

• “The ongoing partnership between Iran and Russia in Syria has proved effective and successful since the outbreak of civil war in the country in 2011, preventing the fall of the Assad regime, contributing to the defeat of the Islamic State group (IS) and significantly increasing both countries’ geopolitical, diplomatic and military footprint and influence in the region.”
• “The path forward for reconciliation and reconstruction will be determined by great power competition and cooperation. … U.S. policy towards Syria should recognize the primacy of great power competition and necessity of pragmatic engagement with Russia. The decisive Russian intervention in Syria provides Moscow opportunities for engagement with the West.”
• “In the long term, Russia knows that the West seeks a political transition from the Assad regime. However, in the short term, the U.S. should incentivize Russia through diplomatic and economic engagement and pressure to stabilize areas it controls, reduce Iranian proxy militia presence and weapon build-ups near Israel’s borders and continue cooperation with counterterrorism and deconfliction operations.”
• “It is time the U.S. takes action to prioritize global competition over narrow counterterrorism interests. Even though Russia is an adversary and competitor, the cornerstone of a Syrian policy should be to recognize the necessity of a pragmatic relationship. … Recognizing and accepting Russian influence and dominance in Syria will be anathema to many.”
• “For its part, the U.S. and its allies should keep pressure on IS in northeast Syria and Iraq, contain harmful Iranian actions, continue to fund limited humanitarian relief and bring Arab states along to negotiate a lasting political settlement. Taking these actions are better than maintaining the status quo and expecting a new result. The irony of the Syrian civil war is that mitigating bad outcomes from becoming worse is the best we can do.”

“What Will Biden Offer Russia in Syria and Libya?” Alexander Aksenyonok, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12.22.20. The author, vice president of the Russian International Affairs Council, writes:

• “The new president [Biden] has been fiercely critical of Trump’s policy in Syria, which he says has allowed Russia and Iran to strengthen their positions there. The economic pressure on Syria will most likely be kept up, but it will be made clear to President Bashar Assad what he needs to do to get sanctions against his regime eased.  The relatively small U.S. military contingent in northeastern Syria, which can easily be expanded or decreased through the border with Iraq, will remain.”
• “The impending reassessment of U.S. policy in the Middle East can’t definitively be described as good or bad for Russia. In some respects, it will create hurdles for Moscow, though bigger difficulties will be posed by local powers. But new opportunities may also arise: the Biden administration will be less oriented on the Pentagon and the battle between parties in Congress, so will have more freedom to search for compromises. Of particular importance for Moscow will be the new administration’s policy on Syria.”
• “In a situation in which Turkish troops are entrenched in northeast Syria, and the Americans hold territory east of the Euphrates, restoring Syria’s territorial integrity—something both Moscow and Washington regularly talk about—is unlikely to be possible without political agreements held in the Geneva peace talks format and based on the U.N. resolution on a political settlement.”
• “Right now, the main threats to Syria, which is suffering as a result of harsh sanctions and the pandemic, are not so much military as economic. … The economic reconstruction of Syria requires political compromises. … Clear-headed representatives of both the regime and the opposition are ever closer to reaching an agreement on three points: there can be no political solution without Russia; no end to hostilities without Turkey; and no economic reconstruction without the United States. The closer Syrian presidential elections get, the more critically Russia needs a new agenda in Syria, so that having won in war, it does not lose out in peacetime.”

“The Russian Way of War in Syria: Implications for the West,” Robert E. Hamilton, Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), December 2020. The author, an associate professor of Eurasian Studies at the U.S. Army War College and a Black Sea Fellow at FPRI, writes:

• “Russia has not won conclusively in Syria, but may not need to in order to achieve its objectives. … Russia hopes to make Syria the centerpiece of its regional presence, but seeks to avoid engaging in reconstruction or nation-building there.”
• “Russian strategy has been minimalist in the means deployed and flexible in the ways it used those means; it pursued multiple vectors and reinforced those that had success. … Russia is risk-tolerant, unconcerned about reputational damage and sees all agreements in instrumental terms, violating them as soon as it is convenient.”
• “Syria was transformational for the Russian armed forces, but the transformation was uneven, with the Aerospace Forces the most transformed, the Army partially transformed and the Navy least transformed. … The institutionalization of the lessons of Syria may change the way in which Russia approaches warfare, from seeing each war as an isolated case to forming a doctrinal template for certain types of warfare.”

“Biden, Russia and the Middle East,” Ksenia Svetlova, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12.24.20. The author, an expert in Arab studies and a member of the Israeli Knesset, writes:

• “Recognizing that Russia is in the Middle East for the long haul, many countries in the region are actively developing their relationships with Moscow: diversifying their arms supplies, increasing grain imports and even cooperating in a gray area over the use of private armies and mercenaries.”
• “This situation creates a contradiction between Washington’s desire to expend fewer resources on the Middle East, and another important priority for the incoming administration: containing Russia, which Biden sees as the biggest threat to the United States.”
• “Despite Biden’s inevitable focus on domestic problems, he won’t be able to ignore the Middle East. His task is to reduce U.S. involvement in the region without allowing Russia to take advantage; use new agreements to restrain Iran’s nuclear weapons progress without alienating old allies; stabilize the region without pandering to local autocrats; and pacify the Israelis without returning to the traditional U.S. path in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Even taken separately, each of these tasks is very hard to accomplish, never mind in combination.”

Cyber security:

“With Hacking, the United States Needs to Stop Playing the Victim: The U.S. also uses cybertools to defend its interests. It’s the age of perpetual cyberconflict,” Paul R. Kolbe, New York Times, 12.24.20. The author, director of the Intelligence Project at the Belfer Center, writes:

• “There is indignant howling over what is surely Russia’s role in infiltrating, again, the networks of the U.S. government and corporations—this time through a tainted software update by the company SolarWinds. … The United States is, of course, engaged in the same type of operations at an even grander scale. We are active participants in an ambient cyberconflict that rages, largely unseen and unacknowledged, across the digital globe.”
• “As solid as the U.S. cyberoffense is, the defense leaves much to be desired … The reality is that the U.S. government and private companies both underinvest in cybersecurity.”
• “In recent years, there have been suggestions that the United States might explore international agreements by which nations would agree to put constraints on cyberwarfare and espionage. But this idea isn’t really taken seriously. There’s a sense that rules are written by those with the biggest guns—that is Washington—can unilaterally impose global cyberorder. The SolarWinds hack lays waste to that notion. … Unable to match the United States in military spending, Russia, China, Iran and even North Korea view cybertools as a great equalizer. Why? Because the United States is singularly vulnerable to cyberattack.”
• “So, does the United States give up and do nothing? Of course not. … First, the United States should recognize that it has entered an age of perpetual cyberconflict. … Second, it’s time to build a true national cyberdefense. … Third, the United States must relentlessly counter our adversaries’ cyberoperations by penetrating their most sensitive systems. … Finally, even in the face of perpetual conflict, we should be prepared to sit down and talk with our cyberadversaries.”
• “In the meantime, until some order or law takes hold in the cyber-Wild West, it’s time for the United States to stop acting surprised and stop posturing. Instead, we must better defend our digital homeland, learn to block and shake off a punch and, when needed, quietly bloody a few noses. We are in for a long fight; the American people deserve to know the nature of it.”

“Why America’s Cyber Strategy Is Failing: Cyber technology is blurring the lines that once separated espionage and warfare,” George Beebe, The National Interest, 12.24.20. The author, vice president and director of studies at the Center for the National Interest, writes:

• “The pattern has become disturbingly regular. Every few years, evidence surfaces of a major cyber penetration of U.S. networks, and each instance prompts a wave of indignant American calls for tough retaliation. Last week’s report of the ‘Solar Winds’ operation … is in many ways a repetition of the detection, attribution and retaliation cycle that has been on endless replay.”
• “In a world where supply chains and commercial transactions and early warning systems and nuclear command and control are all digitally based, cyber sabotage could have enormously damaging—even existential—consequences. Awareness that these systems are vulnerable to cyber penetration, coupled with the difficulty of distinguishing cyber espionage against them from destructive sabotage, could make managing a regional crisis involving Russia or China far more precarious than it was in the Cold War era. The redlines in this escalating cyber competition might become apparent only after they are crossed.”
• “What then should we do? … Showing Moscow that we can hold Russian systems at risk is a necessary part of the solution, but it is only one part. Ironically, our new “persistent engagement” strategy has ruled out diplomatic engagement with Russia that might establish some rules of the cyber road and encourage mutual restraint. We have mistakenly regarded diplomacy as a reward for bad Russian behavior, when in fact it is an indispensable element of our own self-defense.”
• “We cannot rely on deterrence and mutual restraint pledges by themselves, however. We need to weaken the perilous link between cyber espionage and cyber sabotage by old-fashioned hardening of our critical infrastructure and reducing our dependency on digital networks. … Building such resilience and redundancy will be expensive. The alternative, however, could be catastrophic.”

“An 'Act of War?' Avoiding a Dangerous Crisis in Cyberspace,” Dmitri Trenin, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12.22.20. The author, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

• “Just when some Russians were heaving a sigh of relief that this time, unlike four years ago, Russia was not accused of meddling in the U.S. presidential election, news came of a massive hack of several U.S. government agencies. … Yet the present case is different to 2016. Essentially, the hacking was aimed at collecting information … Spying is, of course, one of the world’s oldest professions … Of all nations, the United States is perhaps best equipped for it, and is likely most active.”
• “Tit-for-tat is an established modus operandi among hostile intelligence services. What is not clear is what kind of retaliation the United States will eventually decide upon. … Ron Klain, the incoming White House Chief of Staff, has suggested that it could well be a cyberattack, going beyond a ‘mirroring’ hacking operation. … Therein lies the problem. In the hybrid war now being fought between America and Russia, the information domain is a principal battlefield, and cyber tools are the weapons of first resort. Yet unlike in the nuclear sphere, there are no rules governing the increasingly intense rivalry.”
• “Cyber intelligence, however intrusive, is one thing. Cyber war is another. A kinetic state-versus-state collision, traditionally known as a shooting war, is yet another category. Yet Democratic Senator Richard Durbin has already called the operation attributed to SVR an act of war. The United States policy does allow for the use of military force in response to hostile actions short of war, as is commonly understood.”
• “The current U.S.-Russian confrontation is a state of relations one step removed from war. Preventing war is the only real item on the bilateral agenda. The only thing that can help to keep the hybrid war cold … is fear and the associated sense of self-preservation. The present environment is broadly similar to the one that followed the emergence of nuclear weapons … This time, however, the subject matter is much more arcane, and the impact on world affairs more complicated.”

“3 Lessons From Russia's Cyberhack Into US Agencies,” Erica Borghard and Jacquelyn Schneider, The Washington Post, 12.16.20. The authors, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University, write:

• “[S]oftware company SolarWinds released a statement that its security products—used by U.S. government agencies, among others—had been hacked and weaponized in a ‘highly-sophisticated, targeted … attack by a nation state.’”
• “Here are three important lessons from this hack. Lesson 1: Governments no longer control the announcement of who’s behind a cyberoperation. Rather than wait for the U.S. government to assign blame, media outlets immediately pointed to Russia. … Lesson 2: Cyberoperations are still mainly spy vs. spy. While this appears to be a huge intelligence loss for the United States, so far no one has reported that the hacker manipulated, destroyed or disrupted data.
• “Lesson 3: Deterrence is complicated: Rather than attempting to prevent spying through deterrence … governments might benefit instead from improving their networks and systems' defense and resilience; preparing for such infiltrations with counterintelligence operations; and when appropriate, launching retaliatory cyber-campaigns to degrade their adversaries' capabilities and tools that could be used for spying.”
• “No strategy is capable of disrupting or halting all malicious cyberactivity. Russian success against SolarWinds may instead suggest the Defense Department should be still more assertive in its ‘defend forward’ cyberoperations. What's more, the U.S. might want to take the SolarWinds hack into consideration as it helps develop international cyber norms.”
• “Research suggests obvious hypocrisy doesn't convince others to conform to cybersecurity norms. The U.S. might therefore wish to push for reciprocal restraint with its adversaries, such as a no-first use policy for cyberattacks that cause civilian violence. That might more meaningfully shape the rules of the cyber-road than policies against cyber espionage.”

“Deterrence Is America’s Best Response to Russian Cyber Intrusions,” Milton Bearden, The National Interest, 12.23.20. The author, a distinguished non-resident fellow at the Center for the National Interest, writes:

• “With this latest, massive electronic intrusion by the Russian foreign intelligence service (SVR) into American cyberspace have come the usual uninformed demands for instant, decisive retaliation. There are inflammatory cries that the SVR cyber intrusion constitutes an act of war, pushing the United States toward a confrontation with Russia.”
• “The Russian hack is not an act of war. At least not yet. Instead of launching the missiles, we might step back about a half-century to see what a genuine crisis looked and felt like … According to publicly available estimates, the combined intelligence budget of the United States in 2020 had reached about $85 billion. The Russian intelligence budget was estimated at about $65 billion and while China’s intelligence budget, still more than a little opaque, was probably around half that of the Russians.”
• “In this latest Russian SVR hack, the Russians were apparently able to get their fingers on many of the strategic ‘switches’ within the United States, and possibly other countries. For the time being, the Russian effort seems limited to intelligence collection. But to move from the intelligence collection mode to an attack mode would only require flipping a couple of switches, something like long-range bombers moving from peaceful orbit into an attack when the authentication code orders it. That is where we are at the moment.”
• “Instead of a sharp counterattack, a twenty-first-century version of Mutual Assured Destruction needs to be established by the Biden administration.”
• “As the incoming administration looks over its ‘to-do list’ for its first one hundred days, it will see the need for a resolution of this cyber standoff with the Russians. They might start with the concept of the Nash Equilibrium. And in the process, they should set about making it not quite so easy for the Russians, or anyone else, to get their fingers on our switches.”

“Russia's SolarWinds Hack Was Espionage, Not an Act of War,” David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 12.22.20. The author, a foreign affairs columnist for the news outlet, writes:

• “One simple way to think about the threat posed by Russian intelligence in its ‘SolarWinds’ hack is that it exposed the vulnerability of the vast store of supposedly secure personal and corporate data known as the ‘cloud.’ This wasn't an attack on classified systems or a sabotage mission, from what we know. Loose talk by Sen. Richard J. Durbin … calling it ‘virtually a declaration of war’ is misplaced.”
• “But make no mistake: The SolarWinds hack … was a scary snapshot of today's Internet—a world where personal privacy has all but vanished and nation states or private actors can penetrate systems and steal data almost at will. If you're used to thinking of the United States as a fortress, forget it. Our information space has become the terrain where people fight their cyberwars.”
• “What's really happening here, I suspect, is a problem very familiar for the United States—a failure to ‘connect the dots’ and share information between silos. … Connecting the dots should also involve private companies. … To understand why tech companies are so concerned, check out the Cybersecurity Advisory issued by the NSA last week … The NSA warned that these hacking tools ‘subvert the mechanisms that the organization uses to grant access to cloud and on-premises resources and/or to compromise administrator credentials with the ability to manage cloud resources.’”
• “Fortunately, this is the rare crisis where the needed reforms have just been enacted into law—too late to stop the SolarWinds hack, obviously, but perhaps in time to prevent the next one. The National Defense Authorization Act … contained 26 amendments from the blue-ribbon Cyberspace Solarium Commission's report … including a new White House cyber director and a new threat-hunting team at the Department of Homeland Security.”
• “New laws will encourage the ‘layered deterrence’ the commission recommended. And if other tech companies follow the lead of Microsoft and find ways to work with democratic governments, we might have a better chance of protecting the security of our data.”

“Hackers Bolster Kremlin Ambitions—Cyber operations play a major role in Russia's confrontation with the West,” Warren Strobel and Georgi Kantchev, Wall Street Journal, 01.02.21. The authors, reporters for the news outlet, write:

• “The sprawling SolarWinds hack by suspected Russian state-backed hackers is the latest sign of Moscow's growing resolve and improving technical ability to cause disruption and conduct espionage at a global scale in cyberspace. … The hack … adds to a string of increasingly sophisticated and ever more brazen online intrusions, demonstrating how cyber operations have become a key plank in Russia's confrontation with the West, analysts and officials say.”
• “Moscow's relations with the West continue to sour, and the Kremlin sees the cyber operations as a cheap and effective way to achieve its geopolitical goals, analysts say. Russia, they say, is therefore unlikely to back off from such tactics, even while facing U.S. sanctions or countermeasures.”
• “Jeffrey Edmonds, a former White House and Central Intelligence Agency official who studies Russia at CAN … said that Russia's cyber operations have numerous simultaneous goals, including gathering intelligence, testing capabilities, preparing for potential conflict by mapping adversaries' critical infrastructure and laying the groundwork for cyber negotiations.”
• “Such operations are a relatively inexpensive and effective way to conduct geopolitics, said Bilyana Lilly, researcher at think tank Rand Corp. That is crucial for Russia, which is facing considerable economic and demographic challenges and whose economy is smaller than Italy's. A 2012 article in an official Russian military journal said that the ‘complete destruction of the information infrastructures’ of the U.S. or Russia could be carried out by just one battalion of 600 ‘info warriors’ at a price tag of $100 million.”

“Russia's Massive Hack Demands a Reckoning for US Cyber Defenses,” Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 12.16.20. The news outlet’s editorial board writes:

• “The disclosure from software vendor SolarWinds that ‘fewer than 18,000 customers’ were compromised by a Russian hack … was apparently meant to be reassuring—a sign of just how big and just how bad this attack is. Responsible officials must explain how it happened, as well as how they plan to prevent such a thing from happening again.”
• “Damage control to contain the attack and to rebuild networks now that they're infiltrated is essential. Yet it's also essential to hold accountable those who were supposed to protect those networks, and who failed. The Stanford Internet Observatory's Alex Stamos recommended in a Post commentary the creation of an investigative board that tracks attacks, learns lessons and issues public recommendations. … But the questions for the government here are also bigger.”
• “Why did the multibillion-dollar detection tool, called Einstein, fail to catch the perpetrators in the act—even after a 2018 Government Accountability Office report suggested that the technology needed to evolve to catch novel malware? … Why, despite this administration's touting of its intention to ‘defend forward’ through a newly unified Cyber Command, were the Russians able to carry out so massive a strike?”
• “We don't know what the hackers are planning to do with whatever information they've gained. We may not know for years to come. This could be a matter of traditional espionage: extracting secrets to aid the Kremlin in understanding the upper echelons of U.S. power. Or it could be something more, with capabilities crippled or data manipulated in a manner that could harm even civilians. The message to our adversaries must be that there are lines the United States won't permit them to cross—and that now we are watching.”

“Cyber Threats and NATO 2030: Horizon Scanning and Analysis,” NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) in cooperation with King’s College London and William & Mary, December 2020.

• “The book includes 13 chapters that look ahead to how NATO can best address the cyber threats, as well as opportunities and challenges from emerging and disruptive technologies in the cyber domain over the next decade. The present volume addresses these conceptual and practical requirements and contributes constructively to the NATO 2030 discussions. The book is arranged in five short parts.”
• “The first part, ‘Cyberspace Adversaries and NATO’s Response,’ opens with two papers on Russian internet and cyber capacity. Juha Kukkola explores the strategic implications of Russian plans for a closed national network … Joe Cheravitch and Bilyana Lilly draw attention to the constraints on Russian cyber capacity caused by domestic recruitment and resourcing issues and suggest how NATO might be able to leverage these limitations … Martin C. Libicki and Olesya Tkacheva offer a novel perspective on cyber conflict with an adversary like Russia.”
• “Part two, ‘New Technologies and NATO’s Response’, opens with a chapter on 5G by Luiz A. DaSilva, Jeffrey H. Reed, Sachin Shetty, Jerry Park, Duminda Wijsekera and Haining Wang. … Jacopo Bellasio and Erik Silfversten identify a range of new and emerging technologies likely to shape the future cyber threat landscape and propose ways in which NATO can prepare for and adapt to these eventualities. Simona R. Soare and Joe Burton demonstrate the vulnerabilities of hyperconnectivity through the hypothetical scenario of a smart city under concerted cyber attack.”
• “Part three, ‘Warfighting, the Cyber Domain and NATO’s Response,’ contains two chapters concerned with Multi-Domain Operations (MDO), the warfighting concept being adopted across NATO.”
• “Part four, ‘Information Sharing, Cyber Threat Intelligence and Exercises,’ begins with a view from the cybersecurity industry by Michael Daniel and Joshua Kenway of the Cyber Threat Alliance. … Chon Abraham and Sally Daultrey’s comparative analysis of CTI sharing in Japan, the U.S. and U.K. suggests that national contextual factors can inhibit this critical cooperative function … Andreas Haggman makes a distinct methodological contribution to the NATO cybersecurity discussion with its promotion of wargaming as a tool for imagining and anticipating conflictual futures in their diverse social, political and technical dimensions.”
• “Part five looks at ‘Regulatory and Policy Responses to Cyber Security Challenges’. Cindy Whang focuses on how export control regimes should be reinvigorated to accommodate cybersecurity concerns across the Alliance. Laurin B. Weissinger concludes the volume with an appeal to improve NATO’s understanding of networked complexity, including through threat and attack modelling, to provide more effective and tailored cybersecurity solutions.”

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:

“The US Should Stop Underestimating Russian Power: Vladimir Putin deploys capabilities and resources that have made his country a resurgent global player,” Kathryn E. Stoner, The Wall Street Journal, 12.23.20. The author, a senior fellow and deputy director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, writes:

• “Russia's equivalent to the CIA almost certainly executed the most devastating cyber-offensive in history. … [T]he attack fits neatly into a narrative … that Vladimir Putin has a weak hand in international politics…but plays it well. … The problem with this bit of conventional wisdom is that it seriously underestimates the value of the cards in Mr. Putin's hand.”
• “Russia still supplies much of the world with oil and gas … That gives Mr. Putin the kind of leverage and influence … that doesn't show up in measures of relative power such as GDP. … Russia is also the world's largest exporter of grain, and it sells many things of far greater value.”
• “Russian forces performed a snap mobilization by air and sea into Syria, … changing the balance of power in the Middle East. Russian military hardware … now sit on the soil of Turkey and Greece (both NATO members), as well as in Iran and Syria; America's regional partner Saudi Arabia recently agreed to buy such systems too.”
• “Russia has taken advantage of the vacuum created by Mr. Trump's isolationism and the resulting strains with U.S. allies. … Meanwhile, Russia has used oil and weapons sales to forge an axis of mutual convenience with China. … Under Narendra Modi, India too relies heavily on Russia for weaponry. Yet Russia saves plenty of arms for itself and has transformed the remnants of the decrepit Soviet military.”
• “President-elect Joe Biden and his foreign-policy team must meet the true threat posed by today's Russia. This means working with Mr. Putin where the U.S. must while challenging his many efforts to harm American interests. … Russia … possesses a diverse set of powerful tools and, under Mr. Putin, the will to use them to remain a formidable global player.”

“What Is the Purpose of American Foreign Policy?” Discussion by John Mearsheimer, Graham Allison, Melinda Haring, Dimitri K. Simes and Jacob Heilbrunn, The National Interest, 12.20.20. In this discussion, the participants said:

• Allison: “The effort to see China and Russia as twins … misunderstands more than it appreciates. China is … not just another great power competitor … but a Thucydidean rival. … Absent American efforts to ostracize and even to threaten the regimes … these two very unnatural allies would not be finding themselves so entangled. … I give first marks to Xi for a great job of diplomacy and engaging Putin and making him his ‘best buddy,’ but secondly, he couldn't have succeeded without the U.S.”
• Simes: “We increasingly forgot that we live in a nuclear age, that we are still dealing with a Russian superpower. … If you put together the focus on further NATO expansion and the desire to change Russian domestic rules, and even the very structure of Russian power, you may get a pretty explosive combination. … The Russian establishment is increasingly concerned about the power of China. …But obviously, if you want to confront Russia … then you will see Russia increasingly trying to support China.”
• Simes: “Russia cannot be a hegemonic power at this point. …But … they are determined to prevent somebody else's hegemony.”

• Mearsheimer: “The United States, again, is dominated by policymakers who didn't come of age in the Cold War … and pursue policies that are likely to scare the Russians. And … you could imagine [the Russians] using nuclear weapons to rescue a desperate situation. So I think we are in a situation today where there is a serious danger of nuclear escalation.”
• Haring: “Nuclear war is not something that I would worry about. … Russia's not going to be a hegemon … The United States is not trying to take over Russia. … That's a grand delusion. I understand how Moscow might see it differently.”

“How to Reinvent Democracy Promotion,” Melinda Haring, The National Interest, 12.24.20. The author, the deputy director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council, writes:

• “The United States cannot credibly promote democracy abroad any longer, and the Biden administration must act swiftly to eliminate this obvious hypocrisy. Before we lecture Georgians and Kazakhs about the many ways in which their elections fell short, it’s time to look under the hood of our own. … First, Biden should close USAID’s democracy and governance programs and never look back. The development mammoth tries to deliver food security, economic growth, health, education, and democracy around the world, and there’s an argument that it succeeds with all but the last.”
• “Second, Biden’s team should link foreign assistance and democracy promotion to a larger foreign policy strategy of democratic transformation—and be very selective about the countries and the goals. … In the Eurasia region, Biden should bet the house on Belarus and Ukraine.”
• “Third, as a short-term solution, the new president should distribute democracy dollars through the grant-making model of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).”
• “Fourth, Biden should call a blue-ribbon commission together to rethink democracy promotion and international broadcasting. Both bureaucracies came of age during the Cold War and need a massive overhaul.”
• “Fifth, the Biden administration must invest in civic education in the United States. … All Americans should have a rudimentary understanding of the U.S. Constitution and the system of government.”

“Why American Needs a Foreign Policy Reset,” Dimitri K. Simes, The National Interest, 12.20.20. The author, the president and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, writes:

• “The United States is confronted by emboldened and embittered adversaries such as China and Russia and handicapped by confused and uncertain alliances. … Proponents of NATO expansion rarely bother to look at the history of Eastern Europe before making snap judgments about the strategic and moral imperative for U.S. involvement in the region. … The introduction of a new military infrastructure in the Baltic states has only triggered an increase in Russian military activity.”
• “There is also a widespread misconception about the challenges that come from … China and Russia. Both countries are, at this juncture, clearly adversaries. … Whether this state of relations is inevitable (and in the American interest) is another matter.”
• “Lurching into a … war with Beijing is inimical to American national interests. The Russia challenge is in a different category. As far as its economy is concerned, Russia is not in the same league as America. Vladimir Putin is reluctant, however, to surrender to the notion that the United States … is entitled to more or less govern the world. … But Moscow is not looking for a permanent confrontation with the United States and NATO.”
• “The appointment of Russia as the main enemy could do unjustified harm to American interests. Such exaggerated depictions not only prevent the United States from focusing on other priorities—foremost, China—but also tend needlessly toward nuclear brinkmanship.”
• “There are three main dangers associated with the current American … policy toward Russia. … There is the real and dangerous possibility of escalation in areas where U.S. and Russian forces stand eyeball-to-eyeball. … There is … a growing insistence that the only way to change the negative dynamic with the West is through escalation. … There is a realistic possibility of a Chinese-Russian tactical alliance.”

“A Bleak Year Looms for Russian Dissenters. Western Support for Civil Society Must Be Carefully Calibrated,” Tony Barber, Financial Times, 12.30.20. The author, Europe editor of the Financial Times, writes:

• “The long Russian tradition of ruthless suppression of dissent suggests that 2021 will be a bleak year for oppositionists. … There is widespread discontent with the ruling United Russia party, but the Kremlin aims to neutralize any opposition.”
• “One lesson for the Kremlin from those events [protests in Belarus] is that official manipulation of an election must be expertly prepared in advance. Another is that under no circumstances should a dissenting candidate be allowed to capitalize on general social dissatisfaction. … Even if Mr. Navalny were allowed to campaign in the upcoming elections, it is open to question whether he would make much impact.”
• “If western governments have no choice but to deal with Mr. Putin, what attitude should they adopt towards Russian opposition activists? Earlier this year, US president-elect Joe Biden wrote that ‘we must . . . stand with Russian civil society, which has bravely stood up time and again against [Mr.] Putin’s kleptocratic authoritarian system.’ These are bold words. But the record of U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Russian relations over the past 50 years indicates that a focus on civil liberties achieves useful results only if certain conditions are in place.”
• “First, the Kremlin should form the impression that the US and its allies are serious about engaging with Moscow on other issues of direct interest to itself. … Second, Russia’s leaders need to be in the mood for domestic political reform.”
• “Mr. Putin is extending his crackdown on civil society even before Mr. Biden’s inauguration. He is contemptuous of western lectures on liberty and the rule of law. Attempts at constructive engagement with Moscow will therefore be extremely difficult, perhaps even inadvisable. But if Mr. Biden really wants to help Russian dissenters, he will need at some point to consider how to restore a degree of trust between Washington and Moscow.”

“The Obstacles to a Joe Biden Agenda,” Dov S. Zakheim, The National Interest, 01.02.21.

The author, a former U.S. Department of Defense official, writes:

• “America’s enemies may attempt to take advantage of the new administration whose policymaking offices will have yet to be filled. … Should fortune smile on the new president and no international incident materialize during his first months in office, he will still have to cope with the domestic issues that will confront him the minute he has taken his oath of office.”
• “Biden will likely have relatively more success in the international arena, where presidents, in any event, have more degrees of freedom than on domestic matters. … He will find Republicans supportive of efforts to tighten sanctions against Russia. … He can expect Congressional support for renewing joint military exercises with South Korea. … He may find it relatively easy to hold up arms sales to Saudi Arabia. … Should Biden seek to pressure Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to drop any plans to delay Russian built S-400 missiles, he will find considerable support from both parties in Congress. … Biden may also find little resistance to seeking some sort of relationship with the Trans-Pacific Partnership.”
• “On the other hand, Biden will encounter considerable Republican resistance to America’s rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and even fiercer opposition to any effort to return to the Iran nuclear deal.”
• “Biden has asserted that he will reach out to Republicans, with whom he has cooperated on occasion in the past, even when serving as Barack Obama’s vice president. He will have to call upon his considerable charm and his intimate knowledge of Capitol Hill, however, if he wishes to achieve any degree of comity with the leaders of the party in opposition. And he will have to be very careful to ensure that the incoming senior officials with whom he will surround himself are equally open and flexible.”

“Russia's Blatant Violation,” Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 12.17.20. The news outlet’s editorial board writes:

• “The disclosure that a clandestine unit in Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, used a chemical nerve agent in the assassination attempt against opposition leader Alexei Navalny is genuinely alarming. It appears that President Vladimir Putin has deployed the FSB to kill his leading critic and challenger.”
• “The Bellingcat probe suggests the FSB, supposedly a law enforcement body, serves as Mr. Putin's extrajudicial death squad. While the Chemical Weapons Convention has allowances for developing antidotes and defenses against chemical weapons, producing and using Novichok agents to poison Mr. Navalny are a brazen treaty violation. A U.S. response is essential. The House last month approved a resolution calling for tougher action, and a bipartisan group of senators has proposed sanctions. Yet when Mr. Trump, whose affinity for Mr. Putin has never been satisfactorily explained, was asked by a reporter on Sept. 21 who might have poisoned Mr. Navalny, he responded: ‘We'll talk about that at another time.’”
• “The administration has barely slapped Russia on the wrist, putting two Russian facilities suspected of chemical weapons development on a Commerce Department blacklist. We don't have much hope Mr. Trump will do more. But President-elect Joe Biden should make it clear the United States will not excuse such dangerous behavior, and impose stricter sanctions on Russian officials, including those measures available under the Magnitsky Act and other laws.”

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy, and energy:

“How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis: Climate change and its enormous human migrations will transform agriculture and remake the world order—and no country stands to gain more than Russia,” Abrahm Lustgarten, New York Times Magazine, 12.20.20. The author, a senior environmental reporter for ProPublica who frequently works in partnership with the New York Times Magazine, writes:

• “No country may be better positioned to capitalize on climate change than Russia. Russia has the largest land mass by far of any northern nation. … It is positioned farther north than all of its South Asian neighbors, which collectively are home to the largest global population fending off displacement from rising seas, drought and an overheating climate. … Its crop production is expected to be boosted by warming temperatures over the coming decades even as farm yields in the United States, Europe and India are all forecast to decrease. … And … the steps its leaders have steadily taken … have increasingly positioned Russia to regain its superpower mantle in a warmer world.”
• “Marshall Burke projects that over the next 80 years, per capita G.D.P. in the United States will drop by 36 percent compared to what it would be in a non-warming world, even as per capita G.D.P. in Russia will quadruple.”
• “Canada, Scandinavia, Iceland and Russia each could see as much as fivefold bursts in their per capita gross domestic products by the end of the century.”
• “And as climate change increasingly drives mass migration, the eventual pressure from the population to the south is quite real. Northeastern China … will face water shortages and droughts that could drive its population into Russia ‘in large numbers,’ potentially unsettling the entire region. … And it won’t just be from China. Water shortages and more frequent droughts across Central Asia and Mongolia and south as far as India could push large numbers of people north. A 2015 study by Russian demographers … looked at how unabated climate change would force the ‘resettlement of millions’ of Vietnamese, many of whom might also come to Russia, as sea levels inundate the Mekong Delta by the end of this century.”

“The Kremlin Need Have No Fear of Mass Economic Protests,” Vladislav Inozemtsev, Vtimes/The Moscow Times, 01.04.21. The author, professor and director of the Center for Post-Industrial Studies, writes:

• “Yet another year ends with Russians poorer and worse off than before, as both disposable incomes and the standard of living have fallen. …This begs the question: Will the worsening economic outlook for millions of Russians translate into political protest?”
• “The current situation reminds many observers of the final years of the Soviet era, when economic difficulties led people to feel they ‘couldn’t live like this anymore,’ thereby triggering the subsequent changes.”
• “For at least a decade I have been saying that the current system will not collapse before the late 2020s, when the problem of orchestrating a transition of power becomes acute, and so hopes that the current economic problems will destabilize the ruling regime mistakenly ignore the fundamental difference between the late Soviet era and today’s realities.”
• “The Russia of the 2000s and 2010s is a completely different phenomenon. … Millions of Russians have benefited from the appearance of property rights and a market economy … is up and running. The deficit has been eliminated and the mechanisms for influencing politics are in place. … All this has so changed the system that, whereas before, when a person walked into the store and found only empty shelves, they blamed the system, but now, when they walk into a store chock full of consumer goods but cannot afford to buy them, they blame themself.”
• “Post-Soviet societies … are too atomized to form a united front of struggle for economic demands.  Stolen elections, politicians who cheat people’s expectations, police brutality and the persecution of popular public figures can still shake people out of their lethargy—but economic injustice no longer can. … What’s more, there is not even a hint of a left-wing movement calling for collective, rather than individual solutions to the country’s mounting problems.”

“The Kremlin Faces a Difficult 2021: The opposition has become more diverse and noticeably stronger,” Abbas Gallyamov, The Moscow Times, 12.28.20. The author, a Russian independent political analyst and the former speechwriter for Russian President Vladimir Putin, writes:

• “President Vladimir Putin has exhausted his political agenda. Even his recent referendum to ‘reset’ the political clock hasn’t helped. Putin might physically remain in power for some time, but he has already become a ‘lame duck’ president in the eyes of many people, a leader on his way out the door. Nobody—not even loyalists—has any hope that the country will improve while Putin remains in office.”
• “The only real questions now are, when will all of this end? And who will be the next president?”
• “The time has come for Kremlin loyalists to exit the political scene—as many are doing now—and for the opposition to return. Such is the Zeitgeist now. Accordingly, it is safe to say that the opposition will enjoy a strong turnout in the upcoming Duma elections. If the authorities try to block that by refusing to register the strongest opposition candidates, protests will likely erupt. And, unlike the protests that ensued after elections for the Moscow City Duma, these demonstrations might extent well beyond the capital.”

“How Navalny's Mock FSB Call Laid Bare a Country of Yes Men,” Kirill Martynov, The Moscow Times, 12.22.20. The author, the political editor at Novaya Gazeta, writes:

• “Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny called intelligence agent Konstantin Kudryavtsev and used special software to trick him into believing that he was actually an assistant to former Federal Security Services (FSB) Director Nikolai Patrushev. Like a dutiful agent, Kudryavtsev reported everything he knew.”
• “The agent then explained how a combination of circumstances prevented him and his fellow cowardly killers from eliminating this enemy of the Russian state: the pilot made an emergency landing so quickly and the paramedics on the ground administered an antidote so effectively that they actually managed to save Navalny’s life.”
• “Apparently, these people did not understand that if the state sets out to kill someone, they do so with good reason and all patriotic citizens should step aside and let them do their work. Clearly, more work is required to get this important message across. Although everyone now laughs at Kudryavtsev and calls him an unprofessional loser, the latter moniker better describes the society that allows such agents to operate freely.”
• “For generations, Russians have grown accustomed to slavishly following orders and to the fact that they, and every member of their family, are completely subject to the whims of their superiors.”
• “In effect, every Russian could be a Kudryavtsev. … We all become Kudryavtsevs when we try to stay out of politics, avoid taking responsibility and making the hard decisions. This is our common fate, our tacit collusion with evil. … When the vast majority of citizens have taken a collective vow of silence, the state feels it can act with complete impunity, even reaching straight into people’s underwear—with poison, no less. Where will they reach next?”

Defense and aerospace:

The Real and Projected Strategic Dimension of the Russian Black Sea Fleet,” Polina Sinovets, PONARS, December 2020. The author, an associate professor in the faculty of international relations and head of the Odessa Center for Nonproliferation at Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University, writes:

• “Since its annexation of Crimea, Russia has not deviated from its coercive military behavior, displaying its military might again and again. The substance of its military exercises, however, appears to have evolved. Last October, the Grom-2019 military training simulated Russian involvement in a global nuclear war and resurrected the ‘nuclear card’ in Russian military rhetoric. This year’s January Black Sea exercises support the argument.”
• “The Russian Black Sea Fleet may not have many warships, but the appropriate combination of offensive and defensive weapons provides it with the capability of performing tactical operations in the spirit described in the Navy Fundamentals de-escalatory actions. Its fleet’s main mission can be seen in two interconnected domains: power projection/coercion and NATO deterrence.”
• “First, Russia will keep using the Black Sea as a platform for expanding its influence in neighboring regions. … Second, the Black Sea Fleet’s rise is a means of frustrating NATO.  Russia seeks to deter NATO from military expansion to the southeast while neutralizing any of its new military infrastructure.”
• “In the 2020 ‘Basic Principles on Nuclear Deterrence,’ Russia declared that its territorial integrity is essentially the main object of protection for its nuclear deterrence. This immediately raises the Crimean issue, which could be a reason for the de-escalatory use of nuclear weapons in cases where Russian conventional deterrence cannot withstand a direct military (Western) intervention.”
• “The second mission of the Black Sea Fleet is connected with the Crimea annexation and is about countering NATO Aegis Ashore missile defense sites in Europe (in Romania and soon in Poland). These developments have always been severely criticized by Moscow as being potentially not only defensive infrastructure but also offensive. By taking Crimea, Russia enhanced its strategic position in the Black Sea, denying NATO superiority at its southeastern flank.”

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:

• No significant developments.

China-Russia: Allied or Aligned?

“Can Biden Find Clarity on China and Russia?” Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal, 12.14.20. The author, the Global View Columnist at the Wall Street Journal, writes:

• “Though there is much to criticize about the Trump administration, its members understood that without geopolitical success it doesn't really matter what Americans think about climate change, human rights or the politics of gender.”
• “This is not an endorsement of ‘America First’ foreign policy. Quite the contrary. Strong alliances matter in geopolitical competition. Nor is good geopolitics values-free. … First the 9/11 attacks and then the hostility of Russia and China over time shifted American foreign policy toward a focus on great-power rivalries. This culminated in the Trump administration's 2017 National Security Strategy that put ‘great-power competition’ at the center of America's international agenda. Many of the people around the president-elect believe this was a tragic error. … They also believe humanity has such a compelling common interest in wrestling with issues from public health to financial regulation.”
• “Unfortunately, that is not how things work. Common interests can help shape geopolitical rivalry: America and the Soviet Union shared a desire to avoid a nuclear death match and so were able to reach arms-control agreements. But that didn't make the Cold War disappear. The hard reality is geopolitics come first.”
• “Russia and China sensed American weakness at the end of the George W. Bush administration, as the U.S. was bogged down in unpopular Middle East conflicts and the financial crisis. The Obama administration wasn't responsible for this situation, but Washington did fail to address it effectively. The geopolitical conditions grew significantly more threatening over the next eight years as Russia and China moved aggressively against an indecisive and often uncomprehending American government.”
• “The global governance issues that many on Team Biden care most about cannot be addressed without the hard-nosed geopolitics that many Democrats reject. The president-elect's foreign policy will stand or fall on his ability to manage that paradox.”

“Pandemic Changes Face of Farming in Russian Far East,” Ivan Zuenko, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12.18.20. The author, a research fellow at Center for Asia Pacific Studies of Russian Academy of Sciences Far Eastern Branch, writes:

• “Long before the pandemic prevented Chinese seasonal workers from entering the country this year, their role in Far Eastern agriculture was already on the wane, and had been since the mid-2010s, following the collapse of the ruble and subsequent fall in seasonal workers’ wages, which made it harder to attract Chinese workers…..Chinese laborers were replaced with local people, and 2020 became the first year since the late 1980s in which Far Eastern land was tended almost exclusively by Russians.”
• “Exporting Russian agricultural produce is becoming more profitable, with prices for grain and oil-bearing crops growing much faster than their production costs, especially at the end of this year. Soybeans, for example—the main crop cultivated in the Far East—brought in about 15,000 rubles per ton in the Amur region in 2016. This year’s harvest is selling at 38,000 to 43,000 rubles ($518–587) per ton.Russian produce has also been helped by the decline of the ruble against the dollar in the past year, and for Far Eastern soybeans in particular, proximity to the Chinese market is an advantage.”
• “China consumes over 100 million tons of soybeans per year, of which up to 87 percent is imported.”
• “Since the start of its trade war with the United States, its main supplier of soybeans, China has been looking to Russia. While Russia can’t yet satisfy its neighbor’s demand for soybeans on its own (it sent 800,000 to 900,000 tons to China per year in 2018–2019), these favorable circumstances do allow it to sell nearly all of the soybeans it produces to China.”

“China’s Relations with Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova: Less Than Meets the Eye,” Maxim

Samorukov and Temur Umarov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12.31.20. Samorukov, a fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center and deputy editor of Carnegie.ru, and Umarov, an expert on China and Central Asia and a consultant at Carnegie Moscow Center, write:

• “For all the talk of Beijing’s growing presence in the former Soviet Union, the fruits of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova’s efforts to deepen cooperation with China have been underwhelming.”
• “Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, it appears, are building their international standing on their ability to exploit Moscow’s differences with the West and these two rivals’ persistent view that influence in the lands situated between the Russian Federation and the European Union is important and worth fighting for. Unafflicted by the historical and geopolitical hang-ups that encourage this kind of thinking, China has no trouble recognizing that the three countries have little to offer it.”
• “The resulting failures of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova in their cooperation with China speak to the bleak prospects the three countries will have if Russia and the West ever abandon their view of the region as geopolitically important. More immediately, they give reason to doubt that Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova will become new flashpoints in Russia’s relations with China or in China’s interactions with the West. For Beijing, even a victory in the competition for dominance in the region would not justify the effort. Thus, the game is simply not worth playing.”

Ukraine:

• No significant developments.

Belarus:

• No significant developments.

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Drones Are Destabilizing Global Politics. Simple Vehicles Make Conflict Tempting and Cheap,” Jason Lyall, Foreign Affairs, 12.16.20. The author, chair of transnational studies at Dartmouth College, writes:

• “The world has entered an era of drone wars. In four major interstate wars in the last five years—those in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria and Ukraine—armed drones played a dominant, perhaps decisive, role.”
• “Libyan National Army and Armenian forces could have protected their vulnerable formations by better integrating them with air defenses, but only at the cost of chaining them to the range and availability of those systems. Moreover, the threat of armed drones appearing suddenly in supposedly safe rear areas complicates the movement of reserves and supplies.”
• “Drones are revising the modern war playbook in real time. Even today’s relatively simple vehicles are lethal and durable enough to tip the balance in regional conflicts. With surprisingly limited capabilities, drones can help states exploit new opportunities on the battlefield.”
• “The defense is playing catch up while the offense marches downfield. The gaps in short-range, low-level air defenses will be difficult to plug, at least in the near term. And offensive technology is simply cheaper: a Russian S-400 Triumpf missile system costs $300 million and a Pantsir, about $14 million. By contrast, a TB2 costs only $5 million, and its MAM-L missile, used to deadly effect in Nagorno-Karabakh, comes at only $100,000 a pop. Countries that rely on expensive legacy systems for defense might find themselves unable to afford to protect their armies or replace their wartime losses. Until defenses shift to drone-based countermeasures, these costly systems will likely remain vulnerable.”
• “Those countries that invest in armed drones will face a powerful temptation to restart simmering territorial conflicts or seek new advantages in those that have deadlocked. Chillingly, of the next ten countries predicted to acquire armed drones, nine are trapped in long-running territorial disputes or fighting internal wars.”

“The Strategic Partnership Between Georgia and the United States: Vision Wanted,” Franziska Smolnik, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, December 2020. The author, deputy head of the Eastern Europe and Eurasia research division at SWP, writes:

• “Georgia’s political leadership has been pursuing close ties to the United States and a geopolitical positioning in ‘the West’ at least since the presidency of Mikheil Saakashvili. A formal Strategic Partnership has structured the relationship since 2009.”
• “Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ policy and the transition to a supposedly less pro-American political leadership in Georgia have raised questions over the status of the bilateral relationship.”
• “Georgian-U.S. ties remain close and have intensified in recent years. They are still essential to Tbilisi. But the two sides do not always associate the same expectations, functions and priorities with the Strategic Partnership.”
• “Washington prioritizes democracy and rule of law, and corresponding reforms in Georgia. Tbilisi concentrates on security and defense and increasingly also economic and trade cooperation.”
• “The biggest obstacle to a further deepening of the relationship, however, is Washington’s lack of a strategic vision for Georgia and the region. … This strategic void places limits on Tbilisi’s efforts to establish its own imagined geography in Washington. Without a clear U.S. strategy the Strategic Partnership perpetuates Georgia’s liminality, its suspension between ‘east’ and ‘west.’ In this respect it resembles Georgia’s Association Agreement with the European Union.”

“Why Belarusians Are Turning Against Russia,” Artyom Shraibman, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12.16.20. The author, a political analyst based in Minsk, writes:

• “Several November polls point to a pronounced decline in pro-Russian attitudes in Belarus. … A telephone survey of 1,008 people conducted on November 5–8 by the Belarusian Analytical Workshop (BAW) asked respondents whether the Belarusian people would be better off in the EU or in a union with Russia. Forty percent opted for a union with Russia, while 33 percent chose the EU, compared with 52 percent and 27 percent in September, respectively.”
• “Another study was conducted in November by Chatham House among 864 people representative in terms of age, gender and town size. … Thirty-eight percent of Belarusians ardently supported the protests, 28 percent stood with Lukashenko, and 34 percent mostly sympathized with the protests and their goals from the sidelines, but did not identify with them.”
• “Most supporters of the protests (70 percent) and of Lukashenko (96 percent) had a positive view of Russia. Many of Lukashenko’s supporters are Russophiles, with 70 percent saying they consider Belarusians and Russians to be one people. By contrast, just a third of protest supporters say the same.”
• “The longer Lukashenko’s alliance with Moscow lasts, the more those dissatisfied with his rule will blame Russia for all that he has done since the outbreak of unrest in August.”
• “The danger for Moscow is that in post-Lukashenko Belarus, it may discover that opposition to a union with Russia extends beyond nationalists and ardent Europeanists to include those for whom Russia has become synonymous with the cruelty and depression of late Lukashism.”