Intelligence Project

Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center has announced that Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, senior fellow with the Center and former long-time intelligence officer, will succeed Brigadier General (ret) Kevin Ryan as director of the Center’s Defense and Intelligence Project and the Project on Saudi and GCC Security at the end of April.

In September of 1991, I met with Russian general officers in Minsk at a military reform seminar. Our discussions took place against the backdrop of the August coup attempt in Moscow, the subsequent collapse of Soviet power, and the so-called parade of sovereignty by former Soviet Republics. At the same time, President Yeltsin was signaling his intent to change dramatically the national security strategy, military doctrine, and military system the Soviet Union had developed since the 1940s.

A quarter-century after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, authoritarianism is staging a comeback. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in Russia, where Putin is progressing from consolidating power within Russia’s borders to projecting power beyond them. In response, the world continues to watch and react.

Later this month, members of the European Union will decide whether to renew sanctions against Russia in response to Putin’s continued aggression in eastern Ukraine. In July, NATO will convene in Warsaw for its annual summit to determine the most effective steps to take in the face of an encroaching Russia. What is not likely to be discussed in these deliberations, however, are the political conditions within Russia that are influencing Putin's actions abroad.

Radical transparency and a re-conceptualizing of our communications offices can engender the credibility the intelligence community needs to perform its duties in the coming decades, and in light of the increasingly powerful anarchic ideology of growing parts of the American polity.

An examination of the role of intelligence in negotiations and diplomacy, as viewed through the prism of the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Brigadier General Kevin Ryan (US Army retired), director of the Defense and Intelligence Projects at the Belfer Center, participated in the opening of a memorial dedicated to the meeting of American and Soviet Armies at the river Elbe in 1945. The dedication took place in Moscow on Monday, April 25, 2016. In this article, General Ryan describes the background to the memorial.

Stephen Covington explains the strategic and tactical reasons for Russia’s deployment to Syria and helps the reader see the world through the eyes of President Putin and his advisors. Together with his earlier paper, “Putin’s Choice for Russia,” published with the Belfer Center in August 2015, this paper provides the reader with the strategic threads that run through contemporary Russian geopolitics. His insights into Russian strategic thinking are based on years of study and practical experience with the Russian military and, his opinion matters as a person who advises NATO’s senior military leaders on Alliance security anddefense matters.

(From Foreword by BG Kevin Ryan (U.S. Army retired), Director, Defense and Intelligence Projects)

Fighter aircraft from NATO member Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 military plane along the Turkish-Syrian border on Nov. 24. One of the pilots, Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Peshkow, was killed as a result. Not since a Soviet sentry shot U.S. Army Major Arthur Nicholson in 1985, has there been a shooting death between the forces of Russia and members of NATO.

On November 24^th, 2015, fighter aircraft from Turkey, a NATO state, shot down a Russian Su24 fighter along the Turkish-Syrian border.  A local Syrian rebel group claimed to have found one of the pilots dead.  Not since a Soviet sentry shot US Army Major Arthur Nicholson in 1985, has there been a shooting death between the forces of Russia and members of NATO.....

Even if it is not possible to reconcile the two sides politically and diplomatically, it is vital that a military dialogue reopen now to provide national leaders with a means to deconflict and resolve security issues without resorting to force.  NATO and Russia should reopen military-to-military contacts to provide transparency over capabilities and intentions – the two components of a threat.  This kind of dialogue was able to keep the Cold War “cold” and is needed again.

This paper was written by Stephen R. Covington, with a Foreword written by Kevin Ryan.

In Putin’s view, any solution short of changing the European security system—including full integration, separation by erecting new walls, freezing the status quo around Russia, or partnering with other countries to counter-balance the powers in the European system—only means Russia’s inevitable loss of great power status and the loss of his personal power at home.