Russia Archive

According to Washington’s punditocracy, there are only two ways to interpret the Pentagon’s announcement Wednesday that it plans to move ahead with withdrawing nearly 12,000 U.S. troops currently stationed in Germany. One view is that President Donald Trump is capitulating yet again to pressure from Russian President Vladimir Putin and handing Putin a gift in the form of a weakened NATO. The other take is that the White House decision to pull troops out of Germany, as Trump has long wanted, is a foolish escalation in his standoff with German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the future of the trans-Atlantic alliance. […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Neil Bhatiya is filling in for Kimberly Ann Elliott, who will return next week. Two developments last week, in the United Kingdom and the United States, highlighted how their common adversaries are still exploiting the global financial system, using long-known loopholes to raise and move illicit money in order to undermine international security and the rule of law. While American and British authorities have often been slow to realize the full magnitude of this threat, their recent actions suggest they may finally be taking it more seriously. First, the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee released […]

At the opening of the World Health Assembly in mid-May, Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced his country would spend $2 billion over two years to help other countries fight the coronavirus pandemic. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, had already announced the U.S. would halt funding to the World Health Organization. His administration began the process of withdrawing from the WHO in early July. A week after Xi’s announcement, a 14-person medical team from China arrived in Tajikistan, which has had over 7,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 56 deaths. The Chinese squad brought 9 tons of medical equipment, bringing its total […]

News reports last week that U.S. President Donald Trump granted the CIA broad authority in 2018 to conduct offensive cyberattacks against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have rightfully raised alarm among some in Washington’s national security set. Recent history indicates that when the White House has greenlighted items at the top of the CIA’s wish list, things haven’t always turned out well. See the Senate “Torture Report” and leaked documents on lethal drone attacks in South Asia for more details. In light of these past CIA transgressions, the current handwringing is not unwarranted. Yet, as often happens with sensational […]

With public pressure growing on the Trump administration to take action in response to the reported Russian scheme to pay bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill American troops in Afghanistan, a natural question to ask is, “What is to be done?” Much of the congressional attention for now will inevitably focus on who in the White House knew what and when about intelligence on the Russian plot. But the reality is that Washington has a limited range of policy options to manage an escalation of tensions with Moscow, and this Congress isn’t likely to do much months before an election. […]

Russia’s Arctic region is experiencing one of the hottest summers on record, and it is only early July. The mercury hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of northern Russia last week, more than 30 degrees above the average for this time of year, and meteorologists are forecasting more blistering heat in the days and weeks ahead. At first glance, the heat wave might look like great news for Russia’s giant oil and natural gas companies. The higher temperatures will accelerate the melting of permafrost in the Arctic, making it easier to extract the rich deposits of natural resources buried underneath […]

From the moment The New York Times broke the news that U.S. forces had found massive amounts of cash during raids in Afghanistan, and ultimately concluded that Russia has been offering bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American and coalition troops, the focus has centered on President Donald Trump and his failure to take action in response. Observers have paid much less attention to whether this is the kind of operation Russia would run—and why Moscow might undertake activities so brazen that if discovered, they might qualify as a casus belli, risking armed confrontation or at least a sharp deterioration […]