In a "policy memo" to President-elect Donald Trump, Graham Allison and Dimitri K. Simes write: "The two Chinese characters that make up the word “crisis” can be interpreted as meaning both “danger” and “opportunity.” Russia today offers your administration not only a serious challenge but a significant opportunity.

Russia is no longer the Evil Empire the United States confronted over decades of Cold War. Nonetheless, Russia remains a player whose choices affect vital U.S. interests profoundly across the agenda of global issues. First and foremost, Russia remains the only nation that can erase the United States from the map in thirty minutes.

"The twin trends of overdependence on U.S. power and underinvestment in military might have left European defenses at risk of becoming dangerously irrelevant."

Amid heightened fighting in eastern Ukraine this week, with separatist rebels gaining control of several checkpoints along the Russian border as well as various military bases in Luhansk, few observers are forecasting a peaceful resolution to the conflict anytime soon. Yet even as President Obama and Putin trade warnings alongside D-Day anniversary commemorations, the terms of an eventual agreement are not difficult to imagine.

Amidst the weeping and gnashing of teeth from the Prime Minister’s office after the interim agreement on Iran reached in Geneva, it is appropriate to pause to ask how President Obama’s interim agreement actually measures up on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s chosen yardstick.

The Belfer Center's Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, Ashraf Hegazy, Joseph S. Nye, and Stephen Walt consider the U.S.'s shifting foreign policy in the Middle East.

Sunday's elections give a fresh opportunity to fix a terrible collapse in bilateral ties. Imagine a stable, prosperous, secular Muslim democracy in the Middle East. The dream of just such an outcome was the worthiest, albeit least likely, of President Bush's stated aspirations for the war in Iraq. Unfortunately, the way in which the administration has pursued this objective has damaged what remains the best hope for a successful moderate Muslim democracy in the region: Turkey.

"Following the September 11 attacks on America, the great power relationship between the United States and Russia changed significantly...."

What is the gravest threat to the lives and liberties of Europeans and Americans today? Europeans and Americans differ profoundly in their answers to this fundamental question. Recent conversations with 100 security experts at NATO in Brussels and in Berlin, London and Athens underscored for me just how profoundly.

The path of transformation that the leaders of the Soviet Union can choose depends critically on the extent of Western engagement and assistance is critically dependent on the path of reform the Soviet Union is prepared to undertake.
Therefore, rather than each side waiting for the other to take the first step, the governments of the Soviet Union and the West should jointly develop a common program of what each would do if the other meets specific conditions.