Section: The American Interest (USA)
U.S. Hits Russia with More Sanctions
The U.S. yesterday expanded its sanction regime to include 26 more individuals and entities, keeping pressure on the country over its continued aggression in Ukraine. The Hill reports: Under four separate executive orders, the Treasury Department on Wednesday designated and identified former officials and close associates of Ukrainian President...
Baltics Boost Defense Spending as Russian Threat Looms
Fearing Russia aggression, Latvia and Lithuania are boosting their defense spending after a meeting in Vilnius. Latvia, which shares a long border with Russia, is going up to 2 percent of GDP and Lithuania, which sits uncomfortably between Latvia, Ukraine, and Russia’s Baltic enclave (in which Moscow has been placing missiles lately), will...
Putinology
Two schools have vied at center stage in recent years seeking to explain the foreign policy behavior of Putin’s Russia. One essentially places the blame almost entirely at the West’s door: The annexation of Crimea and the war on Ukraine were responses to the West’s insufficient sensitivity to Russian “national interests.”...
Obama to Versailles
It’s time for a profile in constitutional courage from the Congress, from supporters and critics alike of the proposed nuclear deal with Iran as well as members yet undecided. Our legislative branch should embrace its duty to assess President Obama’s great venture in diplomacy, and do so in a civil and sober way, rather than quail at...
What Comes Next in Russia?
Even the most expert analysis is biased towards the rational extrapolation of known parameters. Gorbachev surprised the experts, and probably himself into the bargain: Both the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the peaceful way it came about remained at the outer edge of speculation for most of his time in the Kremlin. There is even today no...
Gazprom Doesn’t Think Turnabout Is Fair Play
If you’re a fan of irony, sit down, kick your feet up, and get ready: you’re in for a treat. Earlier this month, Turkmenistan called Gazprom out for allegedly not paying for any of its gas imports from the former Soviet country in 2015. This raised eyebrows because it’s normally Gazprom calling out one of its captive customers...
Russia Threatens Military “Countermeasures” if Sweden Joins NATO
We know that Putin, really, really hates NATO expansion, but even by the standards of today’s Russia, this is extreme: The Kremlin’s ambassador to Sweden said in an interview that Russia would take military action against Stockholm if it decides to join NATO. The Independent reports: In an interview with Swedish newspaper Dagens...
Focusing on the Bigger Picture
Any negotiation can be looked at in two different ways. First, there is the immediate deal and how it is reached. The focus is on who won and who lost, and whether the deal is one-sided or reasonably balanced. The questions are how shrewd were the negotiators, could they have gotten more, or were they hoodwinked into giving up too much? Call this...
Realism and the American Republic
In the crude violence of the contemporary international scene—with Russia running rampant in Ukraine and rattling its saber toward the Baltic states, with Muslims and Christians facing slaughter by ISIS in the Levant, and with thousands of African migrants boarding overloaded scows to cross the Mediterranean in a perilous search for work—it may...
Seeing Putin for the Threat He Really Is
Air Force General Paul Selva, in his confirmation hearing on Tuesday to be vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, became the latest military official to describe Russia as the greatest threat facing the United States. “Russia possesses the conventional and nuclear capability to be an existential threat to this nation should they choose to do...
