Strategic Analysis

While environmental issues attract growing interest all over the world Russia has kept aside from this trend for a long time. Its participation in international environmental cooperation has always been determined primarily by the external policy’s objectives. In Soviet times, participation in global environmental initiatives was a channel of collaboration with the West. In the 1990s, it was a means of integration into the international community and one of the major areas of cooperation with the US.

• Igor A. Makarov
• November 2016 |
• Strategic Analysis
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Although the US–Russia relations are hardly the central axis of contemporary international relations, the systemic confrontation between Moscow and Washington, which began in 2014, will become a decisive factor for the emerging international order. This confrontation was caused by factors much deeper than a mere clash of national interests in Ukraine or Syria.

• Dmitry Suslov
• November 2016 |
• Strategic Analysis
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The current crisis and pause in development of the EU–Russia relations provide a unique chance to shed the burden of past problems and start new relations from scratch. Both sides should sort out their values and get rid of the ballast generated by the bureaucratic inertia or false understandings of partnership. Russia and Europe are unlikely to evolve a common vision for the future. Their future is not in unity but in co-existing next to each other. It is time that Russia and the EU clearly formulate their real interests and try to make relations predictable.

• Timofei Bordachev
• November 2016 |
• Strategic Analysis
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The article discusses the changes in Russia’s policy towards Asia, arguing that Russia’s pivot to Asia is a reality, one that is motivated by both political and economic interests. And although that shift is not progressing as quickly as some might want and occasionally encounters difficulties, the process has definitely begun and is in all likelihood irreversible. Only a small, marginal segment of Russian society continues to dream of unity with Europe—which itself has entered a period of severe crisis.

• Alexander Lukin
• November 2016 |
• Strategic Analysis
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A lot of literature has appeared in recent years on how Russia and China have come to present a common challenge to the US-led world order. But the author of the book Power Politics: How China and Russia Reshape the World, Rob de Wijk, has propounded a different theory to prove a case rather in an ominous way that the old-style power politics has never gone away from the global scene even after the end of the Cold War.

• P. Stobdan
• November 2016 |
• Strategic Analysis
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Eurasia’s preponderance in global politics is gaining because of its location, resources, as well as mosaic population having diverse ethnic backgrounds. Since the invasion by the Mongolians in the 13th century, Eurasia as a geopolitical unity, attempted by Chengiz Khan, has been the foundation for Russia’s policies towards this region, which has been a hotbed of competition among the Persian, Turkic and Russian Tsarist empires, and the British Empire also competed for influence in the region.

• Nalin Kumar Mohapatra
• November 2016 |
• Strategic Analysis
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Key ideas associated with Eurasianism were developed in the 19th century. The narrative of classical Eurasianism in the 1920s was developed to explain that Western civilisation was not superior to other civilisations. Eurasia is the middle continent between other parts of Europe and Asia. There are historical, geographical, and cultural impetuses here which push nations to different forms of association. However, the dissolution of the USSR gave birth to new ideologies and political theories of Eurasianism.

• Mark Entin , Ekaterina Entina
• November 2016 |
• Strategic Analysis
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After the Ukrainian crisis and Russia’s actions in Crimea and Donbass, there is a growing lack of understanding about Russian interests in the post-Soviet space. Russian authorities have been accused of having a desire to expand its territory, trying to re-Sovietise the region, and using neo-imperial approaches of doing business with its neighbours. However, the genesis of Russian strategy towards post-Soviet space is much more complicated.

• Andrei Skriba
• November 2016 |
• Strategic Analysis
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On December 25 of this year we will mark 25 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many in Russia and the West were optimistic about the seeming imminent integration of Russia into a Western-led liberal democratic global order. The United States, in particular, fresh off its ‘victory’ in the Cold War, could hardly restrain its triumphalism as it stood astride the world as the sole superpower.

• Andrew C. Kuchins
• November 2016 |
• Strategic Analysis
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Prof P. Stobdan (Senior Fellow, IDSA)’s reading of history fails to predict Tibet’s future from the beginning. The Dalai Lama has informed the Tibetan people about his thinking on the succession issue since as early as 1969. Later on September 24, 2011, the Dalai Lama took a definite position on the succession issue, where the Dalai Lama made it very clear that the decision to continue or not continue with the institution of the Dalai Lama lies with the Tibetan people. The real reason for ‘Younghusband’s visit’ to Tibet was not to lay a telegraph line.

• Tenzin Tsultrim
• September 2016 |
• Strategic Analysis
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