Carnegie Moscow Center
Rather than focus on preserving its status as a great power, Russia’s foreign policy should aim toward comprehensive modernization. Cooperation with Europe will be crucial to achieving that goal.
Haiti can become a model for how the global community can help prevent future natural disasters from becoming megadisasters by providing Port-au-Prince with essential infrastructure and early-warning technologies and regional and international disaster response training.
Medvedev’s recent gubernatorial nominations demonstrate both the Kremlin’s support for existing governors who have supported regime policies in the past as well as a new model for nominations that fills gubernatorial posts with members of the local political elite.
The Central and East European states integrated into liberal Europe because their ruling elites were able to reach a consensus, and because the European Union readily accepted them. By contrast, Russia has reverted to personalized power.
At some point Putin and Medvedev will have to decide between giving priority to the survival of the current system and accepting Russia's steady marginalization, or supporting modernization by opening up the system and putting its survival at risk.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's proposed European security treaty has its flaws, but it is a first step toward an important conversation that must take place if a viable and undivided Euro-Atlantic security space is to be created.
To the dismay of Russian reformers, a consensus seems to be growing among Western policymakers and intellectuals that Russia is not ready for liberalism and that there are even certain advantages to dealing with the illiberal political order built by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
To dismiss Medvedev as a mere Putin puppet would be a mistake; Medvedev was chosen to recruit an internet savvy and generally more liberal Russian constituency to the Kremlin’s program of conservative modernization.
Although Putin has the coercive power of the state firmly in hand, Medvedev plays an important role in the governance of Russia, and his appeal to a younger, generally liberal demographic is key to the Kremlin’s goal of conservative modernization.
A new procedure in Russia’s gubernatorial elections that allows the party dominating the regional legislature to nominate gubernatorial candidates only perpetuates the worst problems of the previous system of appointments.
Whoever wins the upcoming presidential election in Ukraine must lead a country divided by identity issues and hit hard by the global financial meltdown, while maintaining a delicate balance between Western integration and Eastern cultural roots and affinities.
President Obama has had some major accomplishments in the past year, but serious challenges still lay ahead: strengthening the nonproliferation regime, climate change, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran, and Afghanistan.
As the world headed to Copenhagen to talk about climate change, Russians were largely silent on the subject; by most accounts, the average Russian citizen doesn’t think about global warming at all.
Although Prime Minister Putin’s eighth annual call-in show was much livelier than the typical state television coverage of the government’s public policy, it will take much more than a yearly show to establish a genuine two-way dialogue between the government and the people.
In response to the diverse challenges facing the region, the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative—an international commission to build the intellectual framework for an inclusive transatlantic security system for the 21st century—has been launched.
While a Nobel Peace Prize seems the occasion to address an international audience, Obama must use this opportunity to speak to his domestic constituency on the three great present challenges to world peace: nuclear proliferation, climate change and the allure of radical Islam.
In his long-awaited address, President Obama presented a series of objectives but no clear strategy. His plan will likely leave Afghanistan looking worse than it does now.
As Asian countries seek to maintain trade advantage by manipulating their currencies, the United States and Europe, who have little room to devalue, may respond with protectionist measures that will hurt global trade.
President Medvedev’s modernization program seems more like another attempt to freshen up Russia’s democratic façade while maintaining the status quo, which could potentially worsen the country’s stagnation and perhaps make it irreversible.
President Medvedev's recent annual address reveals a political style characterized by sharp and wide-ranging criticisms, rhetorical flourishes, and the absence of a bridge between his strategic plans and his concrete proposals.