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Russia’s Vladimir Putin Clearly Wants To Dominate All Of Europe

December 28, 2014 Stephen Blank Washington Times

Since Vladimir Putin launched his war against Ukraine back in February, speculation has run rampant about the Russian president's objectives. While objectives change in the course of any war, Mr. Putin himself has admitted that the invasion of Crimea was a strategic decision that, therefore, had strategic objectives in mind. Those objectives also relate to the current fighting in the Donbas region (encompassing Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces). As such, Russia's conduct repudiates the speculation in Washington that Russia's Ukraine policy is something of an improvisation. Rather, U.S. policymakers would be well-served in trying to figure out the factors driving Mr. Putin's decision-making, both at home and abroad.

Iran Democracy Monitor: No. 153

December 21, 2014

Iran's cyber threat, revisited;

Ahmadinejad's second act?;

Back to the territorial drawing board;

A new social ill: Shacking up;

Acid unnacountability

Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1946

December 21, 2014

Movement on Russian demographics... and missile defense;

Moscow's media boss in the Congressional crosshairs

American Deterrence and Future Conflicts

December 21, 2014 Richard M. Harrison

On the centennial of the start of World War I—a war that began largely as a result of crisis miscalculations and escalations—we are entering a new era with important implications for deterrence, escalation control, and coalition management. Today, like at the time of World War I, we confront a large number of actors who have the potential to misread cues and red lines while relying on treaty relationships if they miscalculate. Then, as now, military technologies were widely diffused. Prevailing assumptions about how an adversary (or potential adversary) would react in a crisis or confrontation were based on imperfect intelligence and inadequate understanding of red lines...

A North American Missile-Defense Alliance?

December 20, 2014 Ilan I. Berman The National Interest

America's discussion about missile defense tends to be a one-sided conversation. More often than not, it revolves around what capabilities the United States has fielded to date, and what it plans to provide to its allies overseas. But in the not-too-distant future, the United States might be able to count on a new voice in the missile-defense debate, as political and intellectual shifts progressively nudge Canada into alignment on the need to defend North America against ballistic-missile attack.