Russia should use its formidable leverage to bring Azerbaijani and Armenian diplomats to the negotiating table.

The relationship between China and Russia is getting stronger by the hour. To ascertain that this is the case, one needs to look no further than Xi Jinping’s and Vladimir Putin’s calendar of visits. The two have met about 30 times and show no sign of developing fatigue from seeing each other.

As the COVID-19 pandemic devastates the world, nuclear power plants must remain safe and secure to provide electricity for food supply chains, emergency response teams, hospitals, and telecommunications in countries home to more than half of all people. Meanwhile, the Islamic State terror group has already announced its intent to exploit the pandemic, and other violent extremist organizations are also taking pains to use the crisis for their own purposes.

A popular talking point for many watchers of U.S.-Russian relations is to warn that reduced communication between the two countries, caused by the enduring animosities between Moscow and Washington, are increasing risks of a misunderstanding that could cause the world’s two nuclear superpowers to stumble into war. 

In an unscheduled, but quite choreographed appearance at the State Duma this week, Vladimir Putin has blessed a constitutional amendment that would allow him to stay in the Kremlin through 2036. “The President is the guarantor of the Constitution or, simply put, the guarantor of the country’s security, domestic stability and, as I said before, evolutionary development,” Putin told the lower chamber on March 10. What the 67-year-old leader, who may end up ruling Russia longer than Ivan the Terrible, did not mention in his address to the lower chamber, however, is that his lifetime presidency would actually bode ill for the stability of the country in the longer-term.

Putin is rumored to prefer focusing on foreign policy, where the Kremlin has proved itself to be a skilled player, while finding structural problems at home too boring to focus on. However, unless these are solved, he or his successor will continue to confront the reality that Russia remains too far behind the United States and China economically and demographically to be a true peer to these countries in the changing global order.

As we are all well aware, the original Cold War, which officially ended 40 years ago this month, featured a number of close calls that almost turned it into a hot war. Thankfully, neither the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 nor the Able Archer exercise of 1983 (nor any other perilous incidents), led to a war between Washington and Moscow. More recently, however, respected statesmen have again begun to sound alarms. “Not since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis has the risk of a U.S.-Russian confrontation involving the use of nuclear weapons been as high as it is today,” former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn warned in a recent article in Foreign Affairs. I have expressed some doubts about this proposition, but it is nevertheless worth asking what it is—other than the fear of mutually assured destruction—that keeps the U.S. and Russia from stumbling into a war today or tomorrow. Part of the answer lies in the bilateral and multilateral agreements specifically designed to prevent incidents that could escalate into a war. 

• Russians View Terrorists as Third Most Probable Source of Nuclear Attack
• U.S. Adopts New Strategy for Countering of WMD Terrorism
• Elbe Group Calls for U.S.-Russian Cooperation against Terrorism
• Belfer Center Experts on Combatting Complacency about Nuclear Terrorism
• Can Threat Emanating from Jihadists of Central Asia Have a WMD Dimension?
• NTI and CENESS on Radiological Risks in Central Asia
• Hecker Assesses Probability of Radiological and Nuclear Terrorism
• Luxembourg Forum: It’s Vital for US and Russia to Intensify Cooperation to Combat Nuclear Terrorism

Having both entered U.S. government service in the second half of the 1980s, Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice then spent three and a half decades alternating between making and shaping America’s foreign policies, and this extensive experience shows in their September 2019 book, To Build a Better World: Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth.

Former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz and former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn argue in a new Foreign Affairs article that the threat of nuclear war between Russia and the U.S. is higher now than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.