Dear readers: Please be advised that the Russia Analytical Report will next be coming out on Tues., Jan. 16, due to a U.S. public holiday. 

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

Nuclear security:

• No significant commentary.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• No significant commentary.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

“In Pursuit of an 'Olympic Truce' on the Korean Peninsula,” Lyle J. Goldstein, The National Interest, 01.02.18: The author, professor of strategy in the China Maritime Studies Institute at the United States Naval War College, writes that “Russia has somewhat improbably become perhaps the key ‘lynchpin’ for maintaining peace on the Korean Peninsula. … Russia seems to now supersede China as the key ‘go between.’ … China is too close to North Korea, both geographically and culturally. Thus, it cannot but pose a kind of threat to Pyongyang.” Additionally, “Beijing has not shown nearly the appetite that Moscow has for directly challenging the West. … The ‘blob’ in Washington needs to accept that its ongoing endeavor to thoroughly despoil U.S.-Russian relations could actually have extremely deleterious effects—not least preventing skilled Russian specialists from acting as crucial emissaries and go betweens to alleviate this crisis. … A significant Russian diplomatic push spearheaded by Putin himself, and supported by his genuinely capable North Korea experts, to secure a compromise agreement … could quite possibly ‘kill two birds with one stone’ easing tensions simultaneously in Asia, but also in Europe … Putin did meet directly with Kim Jung-un’s father many years ago in Vladivostok, so there is a precedent.”

New Cold War/saber rattling:

“The Russification of US Deterrence Policy,” Nikolai Sokov, The National Interest, 12.25.17: The author, a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, writes that the new U.S. National Security Strategy “is a thoroughly realist document that places premium on effective deterrence—which, the document says, has degraded in the recent years. … the acquisition of precision-guided long-range conventional strike assets by Russia and, in the near future, by countries like China … change the strategic landscape in a fundamental way—after a quarter-century monopoly on such capabilities, the United States finds itself essentially in the same predicament that the Russians or Chinese have faced since the end of the Cold War: the threat of a strategic non-nuclear use. …What is truly conspicuous, the language of the NSS closely matches relevant language in the latest Russian National Security Strategy … . Now the United States shares the same concerns as Russia. This might be good news or bad news, depending on political decisions. … The United States held a monopoly for twenty-four years, since their first use in 1991 against Iraq, until 2015—Russia’s first use in Syria. Perhaps, instead of embarking on a new futile attempt, and keeping in mind budgetary constraints, it would make more sense to try to limit Russia’s (as well as China’s, India’s and others’) challenge through arms control.”

“New US Security Strategy Is a Clear Bureaucratic Victory for the ‘Russia Skeptics.’ Has the President Read It?” Nikolas K. Gvosdev, Russia Matters, 12.21.17: The author, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, writes that the “new U.S. National Security Strategy, or NSS … seems to reject any possibility for rapprochement between Moscow and Washington. … The new strategy identifies Russia as an ideological, military and economic competitor to the United States that is seeking to overturn or modify the post-Cold War order and to undermine U.S. global leadership. … the U.S.-Russia relationship is described in adversarial terms and where the continued resurgence of Russian military, economic, political and informational power is seen as problematic for the United States. … The core assumption of the strategy, therefore, is that Russia is prepared to contest U.S. preferences, and in only one location does the document even hint at the possibility of strategic partnership with Moscow …  the continued expression by Trump of hopes for forging a more productive relationship with Russia has led some to question whether the president has perused the entire text of ‘his’ NSS. … The president is, in many ways, the only prominent member of his administration who sees the possibility of engaging Russia … . The NSS suggests that, as long as the president is not prepared to spend significant political capital, he will not alter the current trajectory of U.S.-Russia relations, assuming that he even has a concrete vision of his own.”

NATO-Russia relations:

“President Trump Might Be on to Something With Russia,” Michael E. O’Hanlon, Brookings Institution/USA Today, 12.20.17: The author, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, argues that the “possibility of direct NATO-Russia war that could erupt … is a potential threat to our very survival that we should be seeking ways to defuse. … one way [to do so] … begins by recognizing that NATO expansion, for all its past accomplishments, has gone far enough. We should seek, if Putin will do his part, to create a new security architecture for eastern Europe that would explicitly rule out bringing countries like Ukraine and Georgia into the 29-member alliance. Putin would have to agree not only to solve territorial disputes with his neighbors and end his aggressions against them, but to acknowledge their rights to join other organizations including someday the European Union. … This concept would address the crisis in U.S.-Russia relations, and Trump’s own dilemma … . We should consider a big idea—a new way to improve that part of the relationship that it may be within our power to do something about—while we otherwise continue to push back hard against every other element of aggressive Russian behavior around the world.”

Missile defense:

• No significant commentary.

Nuclear arms control:

•  No significant commentary.

Counter-terrorism:

“Thank You for Sharing: A Rare Counterterror Win for US-Russian Relations,” George Beebe, The National Interest, 12.19.17: The author, director of the Center for the National Interest’s intelligence program, writes that it “would be a mistake to regard the Kremlin’s announcement… saying the Central Intelligence Agency had shared threat intelligence with Russia’s special services that allowed them to prevent a deadly terrorist attack—as a breakthrough in the fraught bilateral relationship… . Nonetheless, the news is an important indicator that the United States and Russia remain capable of limited cooperation in areas where their interests overlap, despite their deep mutual suspicions. … If both sides can keep their ambitions for the relationship modest, viewing this success not as a breakthrough but as one step in a long process of rebuilding trust and averting calamity, we might avoid repeating the cycle of inflated hopes and dashed expectations that has plagued U.S.-Russian relations for the past twenty-five years.”

Conflict in Syria:

“Myths, Facts and Mysteries About Foreign Fighters Out of Russia,” Olga Oliker, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 12.21.17: The author, senior adviser and director of CSIS’s Russia and Eurasia Program, writes: “Those who follow the conflict in Syria are well aware that thousands of citizens and residents of the Russian Federation joined ISIS, al-Nusra and other violent jihadi groups fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria.” However, “answering the questions of who these people are, why they chose to go to Syria and where they’re likely to go next reveals a complicated patchwork of motivations, allegiances and repercussions that precludes easy solutions. … One narrative describes [Russians who traveled to Syria to fight Assad] as battle-hardened veterans of the rebellion against Moscow in Chechnya. This narrative, which ISIS itself has used in its propaganda, is misleading. … many of the so-called Chechens aren’t. … Many of Russia’s cities and some of its towns and villages have substantial Muslim communities … According to research … many of those communities report that some number of young people … have decamped for Syria in recent years. … Moreover, not all of the fighters who come from Russia are Russian nationals. A substantial proportion are originally from Central Asian countries. … We cannot know what all returning fighters and affiliates will do or where they will go. … We do know that denying their existence would be a mistake, as it will preclude tracking both individuals and groups and identifying both good and bad policy approaches.”

Cyber security:

• No significant commentary.

Elections interference:

“Russia Has Been Meddling in Foreign Elections for Decades. Has It Made a Difference?” Lucan Ahmad Way and Adam Casey, The Washington Post, 01.08.18: The authors, a professor of political science and PhD candidate in political science, through examining data from “all 27 Russian electoral interventions since 1991 … identified two waves of Russian meddling since the early 1990s. The first wave lasted until 2014 and targeted only post-Soviet countries. Since then, a second wave has expanded dramatically into established Western democracies. However, an examination of both of these waves shows that Russia's efforts have made little difference.” During the first wave, “Only once—in Ukraine in 1994—is there plausible evidence that Russian intervention was decisive.” In the second wave, of the 16 elections Russia appears to have tried to influence since 2015, “two—Brexit in 2016 and the Czech Republic in 2017—turned out the way the Kremlin apparently hoped.” In France’s 2017 presidential elections, “The National Front won an unprecedented amount of support—but the pro-European Union Emmanuel Macron won. Similarly, in the United States, Hillary Clinton was defeated, but U.S. sanctions against Russia remain in place. … Favorable outcomes in nine out of 16 elections may seem like a lot. But it's not at all clear that Russia's efforts made any difference. … Russian information warriors produced far less fake news and polarizing rhetoric than did domestic and other international sources.” Additionally, “the hacked emails had little obvious impact. The first batch of Democratic National Committee emails was released in July 2016, amid the two party conventions—after which Clinton's lead increased. Similarly, after WikiLeaks released John Podesta's emails in October, Clinton's support increased… There is far stronger evidence that other factors were more critical. … It's true that Russia has been increasingly trying to meddle in Western elections. But it hasn't gotten much for its efforts—and these efforts have often backfired.”

“There’s Still Little Evidence That Russia’s 2016 Social Media Efforts Did Much of Anything,” Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 12.28.17: The author, a correspondent for The Washington Post, writes: “Ten million people saw [the Facebook] ads run by the Russian agents—but 5.6 million of those views were after the election. … There’s a difference between a sophisticated tool and sophisticated targeting. … Twitter has identified some 2,700-plus accounts it believes were associated with Russian actors. … those Twitter accounts tweeted about 202,000 times. … Just before Election Day in 2016, Twitter announced 1 billion tweets had been sent from August 2015 through that point. Even assuming all 202,000 of those tweets from the Russian accounts were in that period, it means they constituted 0.02 percent of the election-related tweets. … As it stands, the public evidence doesn’t support the idea that the Russians executed a savvy electoral strategy on social media to ensure Trump’s victory.”

“Russia Never Stopped Its Cyberattacks on the United States,” Michael Morell and Mike Rogers, The Washington Post, 12.25.17: The authors, a former deputy director of the CIA and a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, argue: “The United States has failed to establish deterrence in the aftermath of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. We know we failed because Russia continues to aggressively employ the most significant aspect of its 2016 tool kit: the use of social media as a platform to disseminate propaganda designed to weaken our nation. … In a single week this month, Moscow used these [Twitter] accounts to discredit the FBI after it was revealed that an agent had been demoted for sending anti-Donald Trump texts; to attack ABC News for an erroneous report involving President Trump and Michael Flynn …; to critique the Obama administration for allegedly ‘green lighting’ the communication between Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; and to warn about violence by immigrants after a jury acquitted an undocumented Mexican accused of murdering a San Francisco woman. … The sanctions that the Obama administration and Congress put in place in the aftermath of the 2016 election are steps in the right direction, but they were not significant enough to check Russian President Vladimir Putin. True deterrence requires policies that prevent adversaries from achieving their objectives while imposing significant costs on their regimes.”

Energy exports from CIS:

• No significant commentary.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant commentary.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“I Am Proud of Our Diplomacy,” Rex Tillerson, New York Times, 12.27.17: The author, the U.S. secretary of state, makes the case that “Americans should be encouraged by the progress” the Trump administration has made in “pushing for global peace and stability.” The author points to the “strongest sanctions resolutions in history” against North Korea passed by the U.N. Security Council. “A central component of our North Korea strategy is persuading China to exert its decisive economic leverage on Pyongyang. China has applied certain import bans and sanctions, but it could and should do more.” The author concedes that the U.S. has a poor relationship with Russia, a resurgent country "that has invaded its neighbors Georgia and Ukraine in the last decade and undermined the sovereignty of Western nations by meddling in our election and others’.” Still, the author writes: “While we are on guard against Russian aggression, we recognize the need to work with Russia where mutual interests intersect,” specifically in Syria, where “President Vladimir Putin has committed to the United Nations-backed Geneva political process for providing a new future.”

“A revived Russia and the US vie for center stage. Vladimir Putin has made progress in restoring Moscow’s status as a great power,” Thomas Graham and Eugene Rumer, Financial Times, 12.27.17: The authors, both veteran Russia scholars, write that as the U.S. takes a less assertive role in foreign affairs, Russia “is emerging as the new indispensable nation on the world stage.” President Vladimir Putin has made considerable progress in achieving his aim “to restore his country’s status as a great power—one of the few that determine the structure, substance and direction of world affairs.” In Syria, Putin’s “audacious intervention” saved “President Bashar al-Assad from almost certain defeat and helped him reassert control over much of the country,” and “Moscow is now leading the diplomatic effort to settle the conflict.” In Europe, Russia has demonstrated through its incursion into Ukraine that it has an effective veto over the eastward expansion of NATO and the EU through the use of force. No longer can those organizations develop and implement policy toward their eastern neighbors without accommodating Moscow’s interests, in sharp contrast to the situation in the 1990s and 2000s.” The authors conclude: “The hard truth is that America cannot ignore Russia or seek to isolate the country, as it has tried to do in recent years. That is the reality of today’s emerging multipolar world.”

II. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

“Russia's Afghanistan Strategy. How Moscow Is Preparing to Go It Alone,” Julia Gurganus, Foreign Affairs, 01.02.18: The author, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes that the Afghanistan policies of the U.S. and Russia, while both are rooted in seeking stability and limiting terrorism, have significantly diverged. Russia increasingly believes that the United States’ approach of backing a strong central government in Kabul “isn’t working and that political will in Washington for continued engagement will run out before long.” Russia, the author continues, “is convinced that it must be prepared to deal with an unstable Afghanistan on its own”—a strategy that has included reaching out to the Taliban. “For Russia, this presents a serious challenge. But it also offers an opportunity to undermine the United States—by playing kingmaker while Washington flounders.”

China:

• No significant commentary. 

Ukraine:

“Tie Lethal Aid for Ukraine to an Admission that NATO Made a Mistake,” John R. Deni, War on the Rocks, 12.22.17: The author, a research professor of security studies at the U.S. Army War College, argues that the U.S., in order to temper the impact of providing lethal military assistance to Ukraine, should take the lead in conceding that NATO “made a mistake when it prematurely declared in 2008 that Ukraine (and Georgia)” could join the alliance. “Tying these two policies together will avoid the downsides associated with opening up the arms trade spigot while simultaneously strengthening the West’s position vis-à-vis Moscow.”

“Trump’s worthy choice to provide Ukraine weapons,” The Washington Post, 12.30.17: This editorial calls President Trump’s decision to provide lethal aid to Ukrainian forces “a worthy application of the ‘peace through strength’ principle of President Ronald Reagan.” The author writes: “President Trump’s decision to supply Ukrainian forces with Javelin antitank missiles and approve the commercial sale of sniper rifles, wouldn’t stop a Russian offensive if there were one—but it could give Mr. Putin pause.”

“Ukraine on the brink of kleptocracy,” Gustav Gressel, European Council on Foreign Relations, 01.05.18: The author, a senior policy fellow at the ECFR Berlin Office, writes that the Ukrainian political establishment is waging a “war on anti-corruption efforts.” He cites several alarming developments, including the likely deportation of Mikheil Saakashvili and a bill backed by President Petro Poroshenko that would remove the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and tighten political control over the agency. The author writes: “The central demands of the revolution of dignity were to transform Ukraine into a country that respects the rule of law, treats its citizens equally and respectfully, and puts checks and balances in place to prevent the unlawful enrichment of political elites. Poroshenko and his government have failed miserably regarding all of these demands. Increasingly, his administration is transforming new Ukraine into a mirror image of the old Ukraine. European leaders should not provide geopolitical fig-leaves for this regression.”

“Ukrainians are protesting corruption—and using a new approach. Here's how it works,” Graeme Robertson and Grigore Pop-Eleches, The Washington Post, 01.05.18: The authors—a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a professor of politics and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, respectively—write that anti-corruption advocates have adopted a new strategy in Ukraine: "the sandwich” in which “domestic civil society activists pressure the government for reform from one side" and "the international community does so from another.” The authors continue: “Typically, when international organizations try to help eliminate government corruption, they focus on providing political and technical support, helping reformers in incumbent governments push through reforms. Or they support the parliamentary opposition running to oust anti-reform incumbents. But these aren't options in Ukraine; neither the ruling parties nor the opposition supports real reform.”

“By Fait Accompli, Not Coercion: How States Wrest Territory from Their Adversaries,” Dan Altman, International Studies Quarterly, 12.29.17: The author, a professor at Georgia State University, analyzes Russia’s decision to wrest Crimea away from Ukraine in 2014: “Russia unilaterally occupied and annexed the territory, gambling that it could take Crimea without provoking war. This alternative strategy—the fait accompli—receives little scholarly attention. At issue is a fundamental question of statecraft in international politics: How do states make gains? By coercion or by fait accompli? Territorial acquisitions offer the best single-issue domain within which to address this question. Using new data on all ‘land grabs’ since 1918, this research note documents a stark discrepancy. From 1918 to 2016, 112 land grabs seized territory by fait accompli. In that same span, only thirteen publicly declared coercive threats elicited cessions of territory. This fact suggests that the fait accompli deserves a larger role in the field's thinking about strategy and statecraft on the brink of war. It carries with it important implications for canonical theories of war that rely on assumptions about coercive bargaining during crises.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant commentary.

III. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

 

“Between Night and Day: Who Will Control Putin’s Fourth Term?” Konstantin Gaaze, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12.21.17: The author, a Russian reporter and political commentator, writes that Russia’s “night rulers” are expanding their power as President Vladimir Putin, approaching a likely fourth term, sees his personal power diminish. “In the recent corruption case against Minister Ulyukayev, the licensing of European University, and lawsuits against Sistema Financial Corporation, Putin has been either unwilling or unable to interfere.” The author continues: “Russia’s state bureaucrats face an even greater challenge. Are they ready to subordinate themselves to the patronage networks that have formed around the president and cross into the realm of illegality? Or are they ready to defend their autonomy and their capacity to influence a president whom they see losing touch with the state and with the regime that is associated with his name?”

“Putin’s dark cult of the secret police,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, The Washington Post, 12.28.17: The author, a prominent Russian liberal opposition activist, writes: “The failure to condemn and eliminate the vestiges of the KGB in 1990s Russia is a textbook example of why it is important for post-totalitarian (or post-authoritarian) governments to fully face up to—and deal with—the past. … A democratic post-Putin government in Russia must make every effort to fully come to terms with past crimes committed on behalf of the state—and to make an official celebration of the founding of the Cheka in Russia as unthinkable as a celebration of the founding of the Gestapo or Stasi would be in today’s Germany.”

Defense and aerospace:

• No significant commentary.

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant commentary.