This is a legacy website featuring a collection of work by the Carnegie Endowment’s global network of scholars on topics including Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, and the post-Soviet states. This site is a product of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace based in Washington, D.C. For more recent work by Carnegie scholars in this field, please visit Carnegie Politika.
Modern Russia has exploited its Asia-Pacific advantages rather poorly, if at all. The country must find a pathway to a dynamic future and make a pivot from West to East—where the greatest geopolitical challenge is rising.
Conditional and tentative peace between Russia and other European countries is being replaced by much more durable relationships which eschew war as an instrument of policy among the countries concerned.
The APEC agenda focuses on trade and investment liberalization, business facilitation, and economic and technical cooperation—all things that are top priorities for Russia, if it seeks to develop its Asia-Pacific territory and increase its presence in the region.
While Russian military reform, aimed at creating a modern military institution, has proven relatively successful, the Putin leadership’s strategic thinking remains outdated.
Russians need to see themselves as a Euro-Pacific country, and act accordingly by developing Russia's own Asia-Pacific territory and increasing its activity in the whole region.
If Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is elected, there is reason to worry that bilateral relations between the United States and Russia may become frayed. However, Russia will not be Romney’s foreign policy priority.
If a solution to the Syria problem is not found soon, not only will Syria descend into wholesale carnage, but the prospects for future conflict management in the world will become much bleaker.
A political transition, rather than regime change, may be the only chance for international cooperation on Syria.
If United States and Russia fail to collaborate on urgent global issues, it could enhance the two countries’ mutual alienation, allow regional crises to run unabated, and even lead to a reconfiguration of the world’s strategic landscape.
In case of unobstructed civil war in Syria, the division between Russian and U.S. policies toward Syria will most probably deepen, and the choices of these two countries will have serious international implications, including stronger Russia-China cooperation to counter U.S. foreign policies.