Conflict & Conflict Resolution

For the past eight years, a group of high-level American and Russian retired military and intelligence officials has met annually to discuss sensitive issues of U.S. - Russian relations. The purpose of the Elbe Group, launched by the Belfer Center in 2008, is to keep open an important channel of communications between the two countries that have the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. in the world. 

This month marks the tenth anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s first military intervention abroad, in Georgia. Since then there have been two more, continuing to this day, in Ukraine and Syria in 2014 and 2015, respectively. And still it’s worth asking: When does Putin authorize the use of military force, overtly or covertly, against other countries and why?

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Moscow on Tuesday with perhaps more experience negotiating with Russians than any new secretary of state since John Quincy Adams — whose first diplomatic mission to Saint Petersburg preceded his admission to Harvard, and who served as our young republic’s first minister to the czarist court. Tillerson needs no advice on how to deal with Moscow, but he leaves behind a country riven by arguments about Russia. Democrats are furious over interference in the U.S. presidential election, whereas some Republicans have developed a blind spot in the weather eye they traditionally train on U.S. national security issues. Reestablishing a rough consensus on principles to guide American relations with Russia, therefore, is a high foreign policy priority. Five ideas might start that process.

The disagreements between Moscow and Kiev on whether there were any armed skirmishes in Crimea at all and, if so, which side initiated them, did not stop international media from sounding alarms that a war may soon break out between Russia and Ukraine.

When Azeri and Armenian forces started to fire at each other in the early hours of April 2, it seemed that this exchange would enter the history of the decades-long conflict as just another of many routine violations of the ceasefire, which the parties to the Karabakh conflict clinched in 1994. However, rather than subside, as many of the previous violations did, the initial clashes spread and escalated, lasting four days and leaving dozens dead on both sides in what became the worst outbreak of hostilities since the 1994 agreement. Intended or not, this escalation substantially increases probability that Armenians and Azeris may stumble into an all-out war even though the latter would not be in the current interests of either Baku or Yerevan or those great powers, which have traditionally played important roles in the South Caucasus.

Simon Saradzhyan testified before the U.S. House of Representatives' Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats Subcommittee Hearing on "The Threat of Islamist Extremism in Russia," on September 30, 2015. 

In his testimony, Saradzhyan asked: "Can the United States and Russia cooperate against the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and other international terrorist organizations, even though the bilateral relationship has deteriorated in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine? My answer is they can and they will if they act in their best interest."

In celebration of the 70th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany and on the eve of the anniversary of the meeting of Soviet and American troops on the Elbe, the Carnegie Moscow Center organized a conference held April 23, 2015 in Moscow to discuss the experience of Russian-American alliance during the Second World War, as well as the experience of cooperation and rivalry after the end of the Cold War. The Elbe meeting took place on April 25, 1945.

Brigadier General (ret.) Kevin Ryan, director of the Belfer Center's Defense and Intelligence Projects and founder of The Elbe Group, spoke at the conference in Russian about the significance of the Elbe anniversary to U.S.-Russian relations today. His Russian remarks and English translation are available.