[caption id="attachment_20891" align="alignleft" width="98" caption=" "][/caption] By Dr. Richard Weitz 11/17/2011 - As Nicholas Eberstadt, Murray Feshbach, and other scholars have noted, the Russian Federation has been experiencing an unrelenting demographic crisis throughout its two-decade history. Russia’s population has been shrinking more, and for a longer time, than almost any…
11/14/2011 by Dr. Richard Weitz The Russian government is turning its attention to revitalizing Russia’s fleet of cruise-missile and multi-purpose attack submarines. They are able to do so with the apparent completion of Russia’s fourth-generation Project Mk 955 Borey-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine and its new RSM-56 Bulava (NATO code…
10/26/2011 By Richard Weitz One of the few points of division we encountered among Turkish government officials and analysts was their competing views regarding future political developments in Central Asia. One group believes that Central Asia was ripe for deep political change through its own version of the Arab Spring.…
10/20/2011 By Richard Weitz China and Russia have the world’s two most powerful militaries after that of the United States. China is undertaking perhaps the most comprehensive military modernization program in the world today, while Russia still has approximately as much nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons potential as the United…
By Dr. Richard Weitz 07/11/2011 - The recent successful launch of Russia’s RSM-56 Bulava (NATO code name SS-NX-30) Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) may finally mark a turning point for this troubled weapons system. On June 28, a Bulava left a submerged next-generation Borey-class submarine, the Yuri Dolgoruky, and flew…
News Brief By Kirsten Ashbaugh 06/27/2011 - Russia has signed a long-expected agreement with France to buy two Mistral-class warships in a US$1.7 billion (€1.2 billion) contract. Anatoly Isaikin, director of the state-controlled arms exporter Rosoboronexport, and Patrick Boissier, president and CEO of the shipbuilder DCNS that will construct the…
By Richard Weitz 06/12/2011 - The role of nuclear weapons in NATO’s defense and deterrence policies is clearly declining. The alliance’s Strategic Concept adopted last November clearly states that NATO will retain nuclear weapons as long as they exist, and that NATO wants its nuclear deterrent to be credible and…
By Dr. Richard Weitz 06/07/2011 - The attendees of the November 19-20, 2010 NATO Lisbon summits (among the NATO heads of state alone and their subsequent meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev within the framework of the NATO-Russia Council) faced two independent BMD decisions: (1) whether NATO would agree to integrate…
