The task force will assess the strengths and weaknesses of U.S. and Western policy toward Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia since the end of the Cold War and offer a set of guiding principles for a durable U.S. policy framework. The task force is a joint effort with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and is supported, in part, by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The Russia and Eurasia Program continues Carnegie’s long tradition of independent research on major political, societal, and security trends in and U.S. policy toward a region that has been upended by Russia’s war against Ukraine. Leaders regularly turn to our work for clear-eyed, relevant analyses on the region to inform their policy decisions.
The EU must engage prudently with its Eastern European neighbors to encourage progress toward rules-based democratic governance while supporting their sovereignty in their dealings with Russia.
Even if it won't rebuild an imperial state, Moscow has many tools at its disposal to influence the political, economic, social, and foreign policy trajectories of its neighbors.
Recent Western assessments of Russia’s renewed military power have led to a wide range of differing conclusions and, taken together, provide a mixed and confusing picture of the scale and nature of the threat.
The current Russian regime is not static in terms of ideology. It was able to activate intense nationalist sentiment during the Ukraine crisis and calm it down later, without undermining Putin’s personal legitimacy and popular support.
NATO needs to strengthen its defenses while taking measured steps to contain an escalating adversarial relationship with Russia.
The challenge facing the Trump administration is to skillfully manage, rather than permanently resolve, current tensions with Moscow.
The new U.S. administration should avoid fueling unrealistic expectations of a breakthrough and instead seek incremental progress on specific topics based on a set of guiding principles.
The U.S.-Russian relationship is broken, and it cannot be repaired quickly or easily.
Meaningful intelligence sharing is not impossible with the Russians, but the cost is often high and usually not worth the investment.
The peculiarities of the religiosity, diversity of Orthodox views, and limits of patriarchal power are important to understand in post-Soviet politics.
