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

Nuclear security:

• No significant commentary.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant commentary.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• No significant commentary.

New Cold War/Sabre Rattling:

“There's No Cold War at the Poles; World Peace Reigns in Both the Arctic and the Antarctic,” Ray Arnaudo, Wall Street Journal, 11.30.17: The author, a senior scholar at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, writes that “World peace reigns in the polar regions! Give thanks, in part, to the Antarctic Treaty, signed on Dec. 1, 1959. … Of the 12 countries that first signed it—including the U.S. and the Soviet Union—seven had previously staked claims to sectors of the continent. In a stroke of genius, the treaty simply deferred these claims … Today more than 50 countries have signed the treaty, and about 30 maintain Antarctic research stations. … Americans, Russians and Chinese cooperate. South Korea is a party to the Antarctic Treaty, and North Korea is, too. … Perhaps this success at the poles might inspire solutions for other problem areas.”

NATO-Russia relations:

“Beyond Zapad 2017: Russia’s Destabilizing Approach to Military Exercises,” Lee Litzenberger. War on the Rocks, 11.28.17: The author, a State Department senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund and former U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to NATO, writes: “Western concerns about the possible size and purpose of Zapad 2017 were a direct consequence of Russia’s consistent lack of transparency regarding its military activities over the last several years. … This behavior … contributes to the perception that Russia is prepared to use military force again against its neighbors and shows that it feels little obligation to play by the rules it has agreed to. … What was different about Zapad 2017 was not Russia’s lack of transparency; it was the continued lack of transparency against the backdrop of heightened tensions with the West and the proximity of the exercise to NATO’s Baltic state members. … If Russia wants to hold large military exercises—and it has every right to do so—then it should be honest about their size from the beginning and open them up to the Vienna Document observation requirements it is committed to respect. … A genuine effort by Russia in this regard may be a first step in creating new confidence in European security.”

Missile defense:

• No significant commentary.

Nuclear arms control:

“Arms Control, Security Cooperation, and US-Russian Relations,” Steven Pifer, Valdai Discussion Club/Brookings Institution, 11.17.17: The author, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argues that a breakdown of the agreements “regulating the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms relationship … is in neither side’s interest. U.S. and Russian officials should seek to preserve the existing arms control regime and explore how to strengthen it.” Regarding INF Treaty compliance issues, “solutions could be worked out in the Special Verification Commission,” while for the New START Treaty, the U.S. and Russia “should explore an early extension.” For reducing the risk of miscalculation, the author advises the two to draw on antecedents, revive the Cooperative Airspace Initiative and fully implement the Vienna Document. The author also advises Moscow and Washington to “exchange views on their nuclear force modernization programs.” Additionally, they should “have a common understanding of this [escalate to de-escalate] doctrine—and its official status [in Moscow]. It would also be useful for Russian officials to have an understanding of how the United States and NATO would respond to a Russian first use of nuclear weapons in the case of a conventional conflict initiated by Moscow.” The two should also “consider whether lesser measures—such as a missile defense transparency agreement … could help defuse the missile defense issue”; discuss precision-guided conventional strikes systems “before actually deploying them”; “address how the stability in the relationship between the two countries is affected by … decisions taken by third countries”; and “consider how operations in the cyber and space domains affect operations on land, sea and air, including the nuclear area … Many more factors affect strategic stability today, which is evolving from a bilateral strategic offense-defense concept to a multilateral and multi-domain construct. … Strategic stability talks offer a logical venue for U.S. and Russian officials to sort through the implications.”

Counter-terrorism:

• No significant commentary.

Conflict in Syria:

“A Peace Plan for Syria IV: A Bottom-Up Approach, Linking Reconstruction Assistance to Local Government Formation,” James Dobbins, Philip Gordon and Jeffrey Martini, RAND, 2017: The authors, experts in international affairs, write: “The Syria civil war is approaching, if not a conclusion, at least a hiatus that might be converted into a conclusion. More than six years of efforts to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al-Assad have failed. … what leverage the United States and its allies still possess derives largely from their ability to offer or withhold reconstruction assistance. The United Nations–brokered Geneva peace talks between the Syrian government and the opposition are going nowhere … An approach to reconstruction offered on a community-by-community basis could foster a bottom-up political process, help consolidate the peace, reduce the regime’s reliance on Russia and Iran and make the reemergence of a terrorist movement like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) less likely.”

Cyber security:

• No significant commentary.

Elections interference:

“Emails Dispute Picture of Flynn as a Rogue Actor,” Michael S. Schmidt, Sharon Lafraniere and Scott Shane, New York Times, 12.02.17: The authors, reporters for The New York Times, write that following U.S. President Donald Trump’s firing of Michael Flynn, “White House officials portrayed him [Flynn] as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official during the presidential transition and then lied to his colleagues … But emails among top transition officials … coupled with interviews and court documents filed on Friday, showed that Mr. Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia. … The records suggest that the Trump transition team was intensely focused on improving relations with Moscow and was willing to intervene to pursue that goal … After learning that President Barack Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia. … As part of the outreach, [Trump transition adviser] Ms. McFarland wrote, Mr. Flynn would be speaking with the Russian ambassador … hours after Mr. Obama's sanctions were announced. … The new details about Mr. Flynn's Russia contacts underscore the possibility that the president may have been worried not just about Mr. Flynn but also about whether any investigation might reach into the White House and perhaps to the Oval Office.”

Energy exports from CIS:

“America's New Energy Diplomacy; Liquefied Natural Gas Exports Weaken Russia's Regional Influence,” Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, 11.27.17: The editorial argues that “Russia's era of go-freeze-yourself foreign policy may be drawing to a close. In 2015 … the U.S. surpassed Russia as the world's top natural-gas producer. By February 2016 major shipments of American LNG were headed abroad for the first time. Two months after U.S. LNG from the lower 48 states hit the export market, Poland's PGNiG announced that it didn't intend to renew its long-term agreement with Gazprom … Poland's long-term goal is to ‘increase the energy security in this region, which has historically been dominated by Russian gas’ … By offering an alternative to Russian energy, the U.S. empowers its European allies and weakens the Kremlin's coercive regional influence.”

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

“Dysfunction in US-Russia Relations,” Matthew Rojansky, Kennan Institute’s The Russia File, 11.27.17: The author, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center, argues that “the U.S. has never had a more dysfunctional or less effective relationship with post-Soviet Russia than it does today. While it is more than fair to blame that dysfunction on … heads of state past and present … it now has far deeper causes than just state policies. On the Russian side, the dysfunction builds on insecurities and grievances fanned by widely embraced conspiracy theories and historical narratives … On the American side, the dysfunction begins from a national mood that combines Cold War style paranoia about the Russian bogeyman with a zero-sum, ‘us versus them’ view … Yet not a single one of these threats posed by Russia has a military solution. We can hit the Russians as hard as we want … but as long as they have the ability to hit back, they will do so, and the cycle will continue. … Americans have embraced a logic of conspiracy theories and strictly zero-sum thinking that is, if anything, familiar to Russians from decades of Soviet and post-Soviet life. In this climate, efforts to understand and explain Russian conduct as something more than earthly expressions of evil are condemned as victories for Russian propaganda and calls for diplomatic engagement are dismissed as hopelessly naïve. … there simply is no longer room for the pragmatism that has been at the very core of our American worldview, and that ensured our survival and success despite half a century of Cold War. This is not who we are as Americans.  This is not how the good guys behave. And, most importantly, this cannot end well.”

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

• No significant commentary.

II. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

• No significant commentary.

China:

• No significant commentary. 

Ukraine:

“Why the US Shouldn’t Send Arms to Ukraine,” Daniel DePetris, Reuters, 11.28.17: The author, a fellow at Defense Priorities, argues that “opening up America’s stockpile to Ukraine is not in Washington’s national security interest. … it is bound to make a conflict that is mostly frozen into a more deadly one and it complicates any reasonable chance of a diplomatic resolution. … ‘Ukraine matters more to Russia than it does to the United States.’ … At best, Ukraine is a peripheral country that the United States doesn’t have a treaty obligation to defend if its territory is invaded. To Putin, however, Ukraine is an integral puzzle in his grand strategy of making Russia as relevant a global player as it was during the Cold War. … As former National Security Council official Charles Kupchan argued in the Washington Post: ‘The notion that Russian President Vladimir Putin would give up his hold on Donbass [Eastern Ukraine] if a few more Russians come home in body bags is to dramatically misread the Kremlin.’ … The most negative impact of additional U.S. involvement is that it will likely spoil Moscow’s willingness to cooperate on a Ukrainian peacekeeping proposal. … Moscow could also … use its veto power in the U.N. Security Council to block U.S.-led efforts to stop North Korea’s nuclear program. Putin could expand military and intelligence cooperation with Iran to undermine the Trump administration’s policy of containing Iranian expansionism.”

“The Luhansk Coup: Why Armed Conflict Erupted in Russia’s Puppet Regime,’ Maxim Vikhrov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 11.29.17: The author, a Kiev-based journalist who previously worked in Donbass, writes that recent “events in the rebel-held Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine caught many observers off guard and sparked a wave of rumors and interpretations. … for over two years, LPR leader Igor Plotnitsky has been in conflict with the siloviki … last week’s ‘Luhansk coup’ will not meaningfully alter the situation … Rather, it demonstrates the limits of Moscow's control … the LPR ‘parliament’ criticized the ‘Interior Ministry’ and accused its leader, Kornet, of residing in an illegally appropriated house. Plotnitsky publicly evicted Kornet from the house and, on Nov. 20, sacked the ‘minister.’ However, the next day, the ‘Interior Ministry’ announced that its officers recognized only Kornet as their chief … [and] called the accusations against Kornet fabricated. … since 2014, Plotnitsky has struggled to build his own power vertical, using extremely harsh methods in the fight to eliminate competitors. Moscow backed his efforts in order to make the ‘republic’ more manageable. … Power in the ‘republic’ was transferred to the siloviki, with MGB head Leonid Pasechnik becoming the acting LPR leader. … The ‘republic’ will remain under Moscow’s general administration, awaiting denouement in the Donbass.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant commentary.

III. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Changing the Rules: What Comes After a Putin Election Victory? While the President Is Expected to Be Re-Elected, the March Vote Is Prompting a Debate About His Future,” Kathrin Hille, Financial Times, 12.04.17: The author, Moscow bureau chief at the Financial Times, writes that as“the March elections are shaping up … there is hectic activity and speculation about the president’s future, about the potential for a constitutional shake-up and even about just how much control Mr. Putin really does exert over daily events. … Moscow has been seething with gossip that Mr. Putin might arrange for a successor to run … people close to the Kremlin and independent observers believe it will start amending the constitution next year to secure Mr. Putin’s long-term future … One of the ideas … is to transform the State Council, an advisory body to the president … into the powerful main governing body. This would allow Mr. Putin to become head of the State Council … Putin’s inner circle … are seeking to protect their interests in a more sustainable way through constitutional change. … One concept that has been tabled calls for merging the government into the presidential administration, as in the U.S.”

“Nobody’s President? Putin Enters the Era of Transition,” Gleb Pavlovsky, Carnegie Moscow Center/The Moscow Times, 11.29.17: The author, president of the Russia Institute, writes: “Political life has returned to Russia. … Putin will have to fight against the unregistered Navalny Party … This will be the main conflict of the campaign—not the one between Putin and Navalny, but the one between Putin and Navalny’s supporters. … the most determined supporters of transition, of Russia’s passage into a post-Putin future. … Putin has not yet declared the candidacy that all expect. He is as visible as ever in the media, and yet he increasingly fails to convince that, as before, he is the author of Russia’s political activity … Putin has become nobody’s leader … he is now more akin to the centerpiece of the nation, a fixed entity against which other forces collide. … The management of Russia that is formally exercised by the president has been almost entirely taken over by his inner circle and the presidential administration, which … has turned into a player with its own special interests. … The system is not only functioning without a fully functional Putin, it also lacks any strategic direction. … The start of the 2018–2024 presidential term will be the occasion for deal-making at the highest level. … The deal that is made will have to have a firmly fixed objective and a deadline, which may be 2024, for when a new kind of politics returns to Russia and there is real strategic planning for the future.”

“Putin Has a Rebellion Brewing in His Backyard,” Leonid Ragozin, Bloomberg, 11.27.17: The author, a Russian journalist, writes: “Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin might maintain a strong grip on Russia, but since a Sep. 10 election, the ancient fortress on the Moscow River has been surrounded by the opposition. Anti-Putin liberals have filled local councils in the Russian capital’s historic and commercial core, as well as a few upmarket residential areas … The central administrative area of Moscow includes 10 districts, of which five have majority-opposition councils, four are evenly split and one is controlled by pro-Kremlin deputies. … Moscow’s moderate political climate contrasts with more conservative, pro-Putin sentiment elsewhere. … Putin tolerates his Moscow opponents in the same way China tolerates dissent in Hong Kong. The thinking is that, out in the suburbs and beyond, the Kremlin doesn’t really have anything to worry about.”

Defense and aerospace:

• No significant commentary.

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant commentary.