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Home page  About CSIS Programs Russia and Eurasia Program Russia Balance Sheet
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Russia Balance Sheet
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Historically, Russia has displayed a profound capacity to confound and confuse everybody and today is no different. Those more interested in economic and financial developments may be impressed the virtual macroeconomic revolution that has transformed Russia’s status from an economic basket case to an emerging market powerhouse. Those more interested in democracy, civil society, and human rights reach far less rosy conclusions. Policymakers, analysts, and scholars around the world concerned about international security also puzzle over how the Russians perceive and pursue their interests from Iran, to Kosovo, and China. Is Russia a partner or is it simply an unpredictable and unreliable troublemaker?
This question is more important today than ever before, so CSIS, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and the U.S.-Russia Business Council have launched a project to address this question by examining the key questions about Russia’s development through a focused, rigorous, multidisciplinary, and comprehensive approach. Despite inherent difficulties in anticipating Russia’s future, the stakes remain extraordinarily high for US policy interests. Russia still maintains the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons and fissile materials; its military industrial complex is second only to the United States, and its client list features many countries like China, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. Russia’s geography bordering on the periphery of Europe, East Asia, and the Greater Middle East makes its role as either a partner or troublemaker in theaters of greatest concern to US foreign policy very significant. As the world’s largest producer of hydrocarbons, and a major producer of civilian nuclear energy, coal, and electricity, Russia’s aspirations to being an energy superpower are not without foundation. Russia has established ambitious development goals including becoming the 5th largest economy in the world by 2020. Whether those aspirations will be realized remains, however, an open question.
Given Russia’s intrinsic importance, it is surprising that more effort is not devoted to understanding its possible trajectories of development. The timing is ripe for such an effort, especially with a new U.S. president coming to office in January 2009. In the last eight years, the relative positions of the two countries in the world have changed considerably, with Russia’s unexpected resurgence and the United States’ weakened by the draining war in Iraq and an economic and financial weakening. In the near term Washington needs to have a sense of how a new Russian president may consolidate power, the Kremlin ability to drive policy, and the broad outlines of that policy. In the longer term we need to consider a series of questions including: what kind of power is Russia likely to be in the world; how will it define its interests; what capacities will it have to pursue those interests; and how compatible will those interests be with US interests. |
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