Russia’s Fragile Success
by Mark N. Katz Looking back over the past year, Moscow appears to have good reason to congratulate itself on the success of its foreign policy toward Iran and Syria in particular, and toward the...
View ArticleWhat are Russia’s Options in Ukraine?
via LobeLog by Mark N. Katz Now that Russian forces have taken Crimea away from Ukraine, what will President Vladimir Putin do next? There’s one thing he clearly will not do, and that’s give Crimea...
View ArticleWill the Ukraine Crisis Impact Russia’s Mideast Policy?
via LobeLog by Mark N. Katz As if the crisis in Ukraine wasn’t bad enough, the resulting tensions between Russia on the one hand and the US and most of Europe on the other will likely cause increased...
View ArticleThe Game in Ukraine
via LobeLog by Mark N. Katz How will the crisis in Ukraine turn out? Nobody knows for sure, but a role-playing game that I ran in my undergraduate government and politics of Russia course at George...
View ArticleWhy Russia Hasn’t Played Spoiler to the Iran Nuclear Talks
via LobeLog* by Mark N. Katz U.S.-Russian relations have sharply deteriorated, to put it mildly, over Ukraine in recent months. There has been widespread talk about the re-emergence of a new Cold War...
View ArticleThe Kremlin and the Kingdom: Contradictory Signals?
via LobeLog by Mark N. Katz Two storylines about Saudi-Russian relations have recently dominated the airwaves. One is that Moscow and Riyadh are sharply divided by several issues: not only Syria and...
View ArticleCan ISIS be Stopped?
via LobeLog by Mark N. Katz The radical jihadist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL or ISIS), has seized much of Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland and reached the outskirts of Baghdad. The...
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Imagining the Post-Putin Era
via LobeLog by Mark N. Katz It is not clear when, or how, Vladimir Putin will give up power (as opposed to only pretending to do so as he did during the 2008-12 Medvedev interlude). Nor is it at all...
View ArticleWhere is Putin Going with Ukraine?
via LobeLog by Mark N. Katz Just a few months ago, everything seemed to be going well for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. After the initial setback of Moscow’s ally, President Viktor...
View ArticleISIS and the Bolshevik Precedent
via Lobelog by Mark N. Katz All the major actors in the Middle East oppose the rise of the extremist group that calls itself the Islamic State (ISIS). In fact, ISIS has managed to incur the enmity of a...
View ArticleWill Putin Lash Out?
by Mark N. Katz What a difference a few months make. During much of 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin was riding high. Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine quickly and relatively bloodlessly. Putin...
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