Asia & the Pacific

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.

For two days in October, Russian and American experts met at the Belfer Center to discuss the state of U.S.-Russia relations and look for glimmers of hope.

Unfortunately, few were seen. The conflict in Eastern Ukraine is only the most urgent manifestation of a deeply troubled relationship between Russia and the West—in particular the United States. As one Russian participant stated, “We should deal first with the problems that existed even before Ukraine.”

To hear Vladimir Putin say it, Russia is not at war with Ukraine. “I think that this apocalyptic scenario is highly unlikely, and I hope it never comes to that,” Putin said when asked on Russia’s Defender of the Fatherland Day whether his fellow citizens may “wake up one day to learn we are at war” with Ukraine. It can be inferred that the commander-in-chief of the Russian armed force believes (or wants us to believe) that there will be no war between Russia and Ukraine for as long as Moscow refuses to admit to its involvement in the conflict. But is there such a thing as a declared war any more? And how should other European nations respond if they become the target of an undeclared war? What can be done to prevent repetition of the Ukraine scenario elsewhere in Europe?

Armored personnel carriers engulfed in flames on city streets, where combatants maneuver, in between charred skeletons of burned vehicles, exchanging shots as the wounded are rushed away from the frontline behind a screen of thick black smoke produced by burning tires. This may sound like a scene from your kid’s new urban warfare computer game, writes Simon Saradzhyan, "but these were real episodes of street violence that gripped the Ukrainian capital of Kiev this week. Almost 80 people have been killed, and 570 people have been injured, in the kind of violence that this beautiful city has not seen since World War II."

Nuclear terrorism remains a real and urgent threat. Despite an array of mechanisms established to combat this threat, several serious problems persist, requiring relentless attention and actions by the United States, Russia and other responsible nations. These problems include continuing nuclear security vulnerabilities in a number of countries and the continued incidents of illicit trafficking in nuclear materials, radioactive sources and the various components.

This new report, “Steps to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism: Recommendations Based on the U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment,” was produced jointly by researchers at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies (ISKRAN). The study outlines concrete steps for the United States and Russia to take in leading international efforts to combat the threat of nuclear terrorism.

"So Snowden has left the building. The NSA leaker’s departure from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, for an undisclosed location in Russia, on Thursday is turning into a real blessing for the US-Russian relationship," writes Simon Saradzhyan. "It may sound perverse, but both Barack Obama, and, to a lesser extent, Vladimir Putin, have good cause to thank the man whom the US government has fruitlessly asked Russia to extradite and whom the Russian government has just granted temporary asylum."

"Fall 1991 saw U.S. and Soviet leaders display goodwill by pledging to unilaterally consolidate and reduce their nations' arsenals of tactical nuclear weapons in what became the last milestone in the history of U.S.-Soviet arms control....Twenty years after, however, the two countries still have thousands of tactical nuclear weapons outside any of the existing international arms control regimes," writes Simon Saradzhyan

Researchers from the United States and Russia issued in June a joint assessment of the global threat of nuclear terrorism, warning of a persistent danger that terrorists could obtain or make a nuclear device and use it with catastrophic consequences.

Russia is still a player whose choices affect our vital interests in nuclear security and energy writes Graham Allison and Robert D. Blackwill

During the Cold War, the threat of a nuclear attack came mainly from the U.S.-Russian nuclear arsenals, writes Kevin Ryan. Today, however, the United States and Russia have been forced to adapt to a new nuclear threat—that of dedicated terrorists with money and technological access who seek to obtain and use a nuclear device.