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42. Wars of the Future
- Author:
- Armen Oganesyan
- Publication Date:
- 10-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
- Institution:
- East View Information Services
- Abstract:
- Unfortunately, the new millennium has not brought peace to mankind. The global agenda still includes the security problem, the resolution of armed conflicts and the prevention of new wars. Realizing the importance of the subject, the International Affairs' editorial board and the institute of international studies at the Moscow State Institute (University) of international Relations invited experts and analysts to discuss the military concepts that are being developed in the world today and the weapons that could be used in future armed conflicts.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, and Moscow
43. America's Post-Cold War Policies in the Post-Soviet Expanse
- Author:
- Vladimir Batyuk
- Publication Date:
- 12-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
- Institution:
- East View Information Services
- Abstract:
- The Russian-American Dialogue on regional issues differs greatly from the Soviet-American dialogue of the Cold War era maintained to prevent regional conflicts and their escalation among Moscow's and Washington's ideological allies to avoid a direct armed clash between the great Powers fraught with a nuclear catastrophe.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, Russia, and Moscow
44. Low Numbers: A Practical Path to Deep Nuclear Reductions
- Author:
- James M. Acton
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- U.S. policy seeks to create the conditions that would allow for deep reductions in nuclear arsenals. This report offers a practical approach to reducing the U.S. and Russian stockpiles to 500 nuclear warheads each and those of other nuclear armed states to no more than about half that number. This target would require Washington and Moscow to reduce their arsenals by a factor of ten.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Bilateral Relations
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, Washington, and Moscow
45. Why Moscow Say No
- Author:
- Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman
- Publication Date:
- 01-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Too often over the last decades, policymakers in Washington have viewed Moscow's resistance to U.S. policies through the lens of psychology. In fact, Russia's foreign policy has been driven by its own rational self-interest.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, Washington, and Moscow
46. China-Russia Relations: Between Geo-Economic and Geo-Politics
- Author:
- Yu Bin
- Publication Date:
- 09-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Comparative Connections
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- The last four months of 2011 were both ordinary and extraordinary for Beijing and Moscow. There was certainly business as usual as top leaders and bureaucrats frequented each other's countries for scheduled meetings. The world around them, however, was riddled with crises and conflicts. Some (Libya and Syria) had seriously undermined their respective interests; others (Iran and North Korea) were potentially more volatile, and even dangerous, for the region and the world. Regardless, 2011 was a year full of anniversaries with symbolic and substantive implications for not only China and Russia, but also much of the rest of the world.
- Political Geography:
- Russia, China, Iran, Beijing, North Korea, Libya, Moscow, and Syria
47. (Re)Engaging Russia in an Era of Uncertainty
- Author:
- Dmitri V. Trenin and Samuel A. Greene
- Publication Date:
- 01-2010
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- The rising costs of economic and political uncertainty in Russia are bringing a new, if tentative, willingness in Moscow to engage in real policy analysis. As it reels from a series of shocks, Russia risks falling further behind a world that is rethinking trade, security, nuclear nonproliferation, climate change, and other priorities. Western capitals seeking real engagement with Russia would do best to place relations with Moscow on an institutional, rather than a personal, footing. As the Kremlin struggles to formulate clear positions on emerging issues, Western policy makers must work with Russia's independent voices to ensure that the country's interests are duly represented at global policy tables.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Bilateral Relations
- Political Geography:
- Russia and Moscow
48. Nuclear Disorder
- Author:
- Graham T. Allison
- Publication Date:
- 01-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The global nuclear order today could be as fragile as the global financial order was two years ago, when conventional wisdom declared it to be sound, stable, and resilient. In the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, a confrontation that he thought had one chance in three of ending in nuclear war, U.S. President John F. Kennedy concluded that the nuclear order of the time posed unacceptable risks to mankind. "I see the possibility in the 1970s of the president of the United States having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons," he forecast. "I regard that as the greatest possible danger." Kennedy's estimate reflected the general expectation that as nations acquired the advanced technological capability to build nuclear weapons, they would do so. Although history did not proceed along that trajectory, Kennedy's warning helped awaken the world to the intolerable dangers of unconstrained nuclear proliferation. His conviction spurred a surge of diplomatic initiatives: a hot line between Washington and Moscow, a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, a ban on nuclear weapons in outer space. Refusing to accept the future Kennedy had spotlighted, the international community instead negotiated various international constraints, the centerpiece of which was the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Thanks to the nonproliferation regime, 184 nations, including more than 40 that have the technical ability to build nuclear arsenals, have renounced nuclear weapons. Four decades since the NPT was signed, there are only nine nuclear states. Moreover, for more than 60 years, no nuclear weapon has been used in an attack. In 2004, the secretary-general of the UN created a panel to review future threats to international peace and security. It identified nuclear Armageddon as the prime threat, warning, "We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the nonproliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation." Developments since 2004 have only magnified the risks of an irreversible cascade.
- Topic:
- United Nations
- Political Geography:
- United States, Washington, and Moscow
49. Going Critical: Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Reactor Starts Up
- Author:
- Simon Henderson and Stefanie Peterson
- Publication Date:
- 08-2010
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
- Abstract:
- At a ceremony near the southern Iranian coastal city of Bushehr this Saturday, Russia will begin the process of loading fuel rods into Iran's first civilian nuclear reactor. Theoretically distinct from the rest of the regime's disturbing nuclear program, the Bushehr plant nevertheless remains a major international concern. The low-enriched uranium in the fuel rods would, if diverted, substantially increase Iran's existing stock of the material, which many suspect is already being used to develop nuclear weapons. Even if they were used solely for electricity generation, the rods would eventually produce plutonium-rich residue that could also be reprocessed for use in a weapon. For Iran, the Bushehr event will be a gesture of defiance against U.S.-led international pressure; for Russia, a sign of Moscow's different diplomatic approach to the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran; and for the United States, an exception to the tightening sanctions regime, which officials claim is forcing Tehran to reconsider the wisdom of its policies.
- Topic:
- Nuclear Weapons
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, Europe, Iran, Middle East, Asia, and Moscow
50. Smaller is Safer: A New Plan for Nuclear Postures
- Author:
- Bruce Blair, Valery Yarynich, Matthew McKinzie, Victor Esin, and Pavel Zolotarev
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- On April 8, sitting beside each other in Prague Castle, U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). Just two days earlier, the Obama administration had issued its Nuclear Posture Review, only the third such comprehensive assessment of the United States' nuclear strategy. And in May, as a gesture of openness at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York, the U.S. government took the remarkable step of making public the size of its nuclear stockpile, which as of September 2009 totaled 5,113 warheads. For proponents of eliminating nuclear weapons, these events elicited both a nod and a sigh. On the one hand, they represented renewed engagement by Washington and Moscow on arms control, a step toward, as the treaty put it, "the historic goal of freeing humanity from the nuclear threat." On the other hand, they stopped short of fundamentally changing the Cold War face of deterrence. The New START agreement did not reduce the amount of "overkill" in either country's arsenal. Nor did it alter another important characteristic of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals: their launch-ready alert postures. The two countries' nuclear command, control, and communication systems, and sizable portions of their weapon systems, will still be poised for "launch on warning" -- ready to execute a mass firing of missiles before the quickest of potential enemy attacks could be carried out. This rapid-fire posture carries with it the risk of a launch in response to a false alarm resulting from human or technical error or even a malicious, unauthorized launch. Thus, under the New START treaty, the United States and Russia remain ready to inflict apocalyptic devastation in a nuclear exchange that would cause millions of casualties and wreak unfathomable environmental ruin. In the next round of arms control negotiations, Washington and Moscow need to pursue much deeper cuts in their nuclear stockpiles and agree to a lower level of launch readiness. These steps would help put the world on a path to the elimination of nuclear weapons -- "global zero." And they can be taken while still maintaining a stable relationship of mutual deterrence between the United States and Russia, based on a credible threat of retaliation, and while allowing limited but adequate missile defenses against nuclear proliferators such as Iran and North Korea.
- Topic:
- Cold War and Nuclear Weapons
- Political Geography:
- United States, Washington, North Korea, and Moscow