Russia

With the historic INF Treaty more than likely to terminate, and the future of New START in doubt, what guiding principles for interstate nuclear arms control can we hope for? Of eight U.S., Russian, European and Chinese experts surveyed by Russia Matters, most agree that bilateral agreements between the world’s two nuclear superpowers still have a role to play in any new arms control regime, but they differed considerably on the nature of that role.

Stephen Walt elaborates on five important lessons from the Cold War,  which should be guiding contemporary U.S. foreign policy. He also explains how President Donald Trump has been ignoring or violating every one of them.

Recently declassified documents reveal a heated debate within the Clinton administration about how to enlarge the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Central and Eastern Europe and when.

South Korean fighter jets fired over 300 warning shots at a Russian Air Force A-50 Mainstay Airborne Early Warning aircraft on July 23 after the Russian plane twice violated South Korea’s airspace above the East Sea, according to South Korean authorities cited by The Aviationist. Earlier that day, Russian and Chinese bombers had conducted their first long-range joint air patrol in the Asia-Pacific. Russia’s Defense Ministry said there had been “no violations of airspaces of foreign countries” in its joint patrol with China, according to the New York Times, and Russian diplomats in Seoul reportedly complained of inaccuracies in the official comments from South Korea.

Russia Matters asked some members of the Belfer Center’s Russia team for their take on the developments.

Stephen Walt writes that critics of offshore balancing claim a more restrained U.S. foreign policy will breed insecurity.  He then debunks five of their arguments.

Liberal market-oriented states are in a natural alliance to preserve and protect a global order that is systematically buttressing states’ embrace of market-oriented norms and values.

Chernobyl’s effects went well beyond radiation, rippling through the social and political fabric of a deteriorating society. Chernobyl helped to bring down the Soviet Union and constrained independent Ukraine’s nuclear options. It still reverberates today on the front lines of the war in eastern Ukraine and in Moscow’s denials that it is involved in undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

This week Project Syndicate catches up with Joseph Nye, Professor at Harvard University, and author of Is the American Century Over? and the forthcoming Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump.

Joel Clement writes that the innovation and implementation of adaptation measures must be equal in ambition to the scale of the climate threat to the Arctic.

The New York Times' David Brooks thinks Americans' foreign-policy ideas "stink." Stephen Walt writes that public discontent with U.S. foreign policy is well justified.