Originally published in 1990, this pertinent study focuses on the purely operational and strategic lessons of the war in Afghanistan. It insists that lessons of these kinds were present and that they offer significant insights both for such wars in general and for the course of Soviet military developments in the 1980s and 1990s. These lessons also offer important clues concerning the reforms required in order to preserve democratic civilian control over the military. It should also alert analysts everywhere as to the nature of local wars in the Third World in the 1990s, a phenomenon that...

Mary Fitzgerald made many contributions to the national security field over the course of the years through her close reading of the writing of Soviet and Russian military officers. Particularly useful was her focus on those of Soviet military theorists who put forward forecasts of future warfare and the impact of technology on warfare. These Russian reviews deserved respect and study; Mary's work made this possible. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it became easier to meet with and talk with a number to these Soviet officers so as to explore more fully their thinking and the...

The war in Afghanistan has made Central Asia an ever more important strategic theater and one over which many states compete to exert influence. This monograph comprehensively analyzes Russias efforts to exert its influence in the region through 2010

The Arctic is the newest sphere of international competition for energy and security access. It pits Russia against the other Arctic states. These essays fully explore and analyze what is at stake here and what Moscow has done to increase its capability and influence in the Arctic.

Russia, despite claims made for and against its importance, remains, by any objective standard, a key player in world affairs. Russia is an important barometer of trends in world politics, e.g., the course of democratization in the world. Furthermore, Russia, if it were so disposed, could be the abettor and/or supporter of a host of negative trends in the world today. Even so, if U.S. policymakers and analysts see Russia more as a spoiler than as a constructive partner (whether rightly or wrongly), the fact remains that during the Cold War the Soviet Union was an active supporter of threats...

The best recent scholarship on Russian civil-military relations explicitly addresses this issues importance for both domestic and external security. An inquiry into the present state of those relations under conditions of defense reform and the current international situation is of immense analytical and policy relevance for both domestic and external security in Russia. While the Russian regime is serious about military reform, it is encountering severe objections from the uniformed military, and the military has successfully persuaded the government to accept its expansive concept of the...

This book presents several essays analyzing Russias extensive nuclear agenda and the issues connected with it. It deals with strategy, doctrine, European, Eurasian, and East Asian security agendas, as well as the central U.S.-Russia nuclear and arms control equations. This work brings together American, European, and Russian analysts to discuss Russias defense and conventional forces reforms and their impact on nuclear forces, doctrine, strategy, and the critical issues of Russian security policies toward the United States, Europe, and China. It also deals directly with the present and future...

This monograph is the third in the series of monographs stemming from the Strategic Studies Institute- U.S. State Department conference on Russia in January 2010. It is devoted to a consideration of Russia's military doctrine. Russia had long before the conference announced the impending release of a new defense or military doctrine, but its release date was always being delayed, signifying a sharp political struggle over its contents. Although the doctrine ultimately was released on February 5, 2010, after the conference, the papers were nonetheless able to some degree to use the new text in...