Five factors are shown to be strongly related to civil war duration. Civil wars emerging from coups or revolutions tend to be short. Civil wars in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have also tended to be relatively brief, as have anti-colonial wars. By contrast, 'sons of the soil' wars that typically involve land conflict between a peripheral ethnic minority and state-supported migrants of a dominant ethnic group are on average quite long-lived. So are conflicts in which a rebel group derives major funding from contraband such as opium, diamonds, or coca. The article seeks to explain these regularities, developing a game model focused on the puzzle of what prevents negotiated settlements to long-running, destructive civil wars for which conflicting military expectations are an implausible explanation. In the model, regional autonomy deals may be unreachable when fluctuations in state strength undermine the government's ability to commit. The commitment problem binds harder when the center has an enduring political or economic interest in expansion into the periphery, as in "sons of the soil" wars, and when either government or rebels are able to earn some income during a conflict despite the costs of fighting, as in the case of contraband funding.

George W. Bush and his administration came into office with a self-consciously realist orientation in foreign policy. The president and his advisers derided the Clinton administration's multilateralism as mere form without national security substance. They viewed Russia and China as the main potential threats or sources of danger, and regarded Bill Clinton as a naïve idealist for neglecting these great powers in favor of "foreign policy as social work"--humanitarian ventures in areas peripheral to U.S. national security concerns. Consistent with a realist suspicion of multilateralism and confidence in self-help, the administration's principal foreign policy project in its first months was the unilateral pursuit of ballistic missile defense.

The Bush team was particularly critical of U.S. participation in quixotic efforts at nation building for failed states. The message was clear: The Bush administration would not engage in state-building efforts. Ironically, the Bush administration has since undertaken state-building projects that are vastly larger and more difficult than anything the Clinton administration ever attempted. It can be argued that despite the apparent about-face, the Bush administration has actually kept true to its realist principles. We argue to the contrary that the Bush administration's brand of realism has collided with post-Cold War realities that shaped the Clinton administration's foreign policy as well.

Gail Lapidus writes that the war in Chechnya has played a complex and highly negative role in Russia's political development. It served in some respects as a testing ground for policies that would be expanded to embrace the Russian Federation more broadly. It has been a major obstacle to the progress of reform and democratization in Russia, and has rather elicited and strengthened the more coercive and authoritarian impulses within the Russian elite. It has equally been a barometer of broader trends in Russian state-building and is highlighting many of the dramatic new departures this process is taking under President Putin.

For hundreds of years, dictators have ruled Russia. Do they still? In the late 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev launched a series of political reforms that eventually allowed for competitive elections, the emergence of an independent press, the formation of political parties, and the sprouting of civil society. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, these proto-democratic institutions endured in an independent Russia.

But did the processes unleashed by Gorbachev and continued under Russian President Boris Yeltsin lead eventually to liberal democracy in Russia? If not, what kind of political regime did take hold in post-Soviet Russia? And how has Vladimir Putin's rise to power influenced the course of democratic consolidation or the lack thereof? Between Dictatorship and Democracy seeks to give a comprehensive answer to these fundamental questions about the nature of Russian politics.

This book reflects the unique collaboration of Russian and American scholars. Additional contributors include: Viktor Sheinis, Mikhail Krasnov, Vladimir Petukhov, and Elina Treyger.

Foreword by George P. Shultz

At the dawn of the nuclear age, Albert Einstein remarked, "Everything has changed but our way of thinking." 

He was right for a time, but the devastating consequences of the use of a nuclear weapon did create a pattern of thinking that, with whatever flaws, served us well for
half a century or so. Containment through deterrent capability worked. But the Cold War powers also realized that prevention was essential and that energetic efforts should
be made to arrest the proliferation of nuclear weapons. I well remember preparations for my first meeting as secretary of state with Soviet foreign minister Gromyko in September 1982. I had assumed office in July. The temperature of the Cold War was frigid, the atmosphere confrontational, and I was counseled to act accordingly. I said,
"OK, but there must be something we can do to identify a mutual interest."

There were to be two meetings, held about a week apart. I got the president's authorization to suggest, at the end of the first meeting, a few topics on which we might
try to work collaboratively. Nuclear nonproliferation was one of them. Toward the end of the second meeting, Gromyko replied to my suggestions, expressing a willingness
to make open and joint efforts to avoid the proliferation of nuclear weapons. So, even at the height of the Cold War, we were hard at work on our way of thinking.

The subject took high priority on Ronald Reagan's agenda. He thought that "mutual assured destruction" was not only MAD but also was an essentially immoral way to keep the peace. He said repeatedly, "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." His aim was to abolish nuclear weapons. However elusive that goal may have been, he did start the ball rolling toward reduction in the Soviet and U.S. arsenals. But he worried, prophetically, about rogue states obtaining even one of these awesome weapons. 

Clearly, the end of the Cold War has drastically reduced the threat of nuclear holocaust. But the world remains a dangerous place in different ways. In a world of terrorist threats and rogues that call themselves states yet behave outside the bounds of civilized norms, we are once again called upon to examine our concepts. That is what this
book is about, and no intellectual task is more urgent or more relevant to current operational issues.

Sid Drell and Jim Goodby have between them vast experience in the area of nuclear weapons and have long been active voices in the nuclear debate. In this volume, they put their key recommendations right up front, in their introduction. That is appropriate. The reader knows at the outset where the authors are going. All of their conclusions have deep merit and the weight of careful argument and factual development. Some will be the subject of debate. That debate, in turn, is one of the important purposes of this book.

Having had the privilege of reading this work in earlier manuscript form and discussing its subject at length with the authors, I value this book because of its essence: the careful development of a framework for thinking about nuclear weapons in times punctuated by terrorist threats. 

All the elements are here: a relevant history, including an illuminating chart on page 6 on the time pattern of state acquisition of nuclear weapons; a virtual inventory of pre-
ventive actions; a searching examination of the circumstances when preemptive military action may be necessary; the problems of intelligence and monitoring; a new look at ballistic missile defenses; the importance of the U.S. example (as in testing); and ideas about what Russia and the United States can do with their special responsibilities. The authors develop the necessary interplay of strength and diplomacy as they address current problems. Work your way through the issues that are presented in settings in various countries. You will find, as I have, that the analytic framework will help you develop your own ideas of how to address critical problems.

Now is a time that cries out for new concepts, often using old principles, about how the world works. If he were still around, Einstein might well be challenging us once again to examine "our way of thinking." And in doing so, he would surely find in Drell and Goodby worthy partners as they address the gravest danger.

George P. Shultz September 2003

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Nuclear Danger

Chapter I: From the Past to the Present

Chapter II: Looking Forward

Chapter III: Denial Policies

Chapter IV: Defining Diplomacy's Task

Chapter V: Achieving Rollback: The Instruments of Diplomacy

Chapter VI: Applying Recommended Policies to Specific Cases

Chapter VII: Conclusion

About the Authors

In The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed, professors Waltz and Sagan resume their well-known dialogue concerning nuclear proliferation and the threat of nuclear war. Kenneth Waltz, Senior Research Scholar in the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, expands on his argument that "more may be better," contending that new nuclear states will use their acquired nuclear capabilities to deter threats and preserve peace. Scott Sagan, the leading proponent of organizational theories in international politics, continues to make the counterpoint that "more will be worse": novice nuclear states lack adequate organizational controls over their new weapons, resulting in a higher risk of either deliberate of accidental nuclear war. Treating issues from the ’long peace’ between the United States and Soviet Union made possible by the nuclear balance of the Cold War to more modern topics such as global terrorism, missile defense, and the Indian-Pakistani conflict, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed is an invaluable addition to any international relations course.

The third volume of The Cambridge History of Russia provides an authoritative political, intellectual, social and cultural history of the trials and triumphs of Russia and the Soviet Union during the twentieth century. It encompasses not only the ethnically Russian part of the country but also the non-Russian peoples of the tsarist and Soviet multinational states and of the post-Soviet republics. Beginning with the revolutions of the early twentieth century, chapters move through the 1920s to the Stalinist 1930s, World War II, the post-Stalin years and the decline and collapse of the USSR. The contributors attempt to go beyond the divisions that marred the historiography of the USSR during the Cold War to look for new syntheses and understandings. The volume is also the first major undertaking by historians and political scientists to use the new primary and archival sources that have become available since the break-up of the USSR.

Twice in the winter of 1999-2000, citizens of the Russian Federation flocked to their neighborhood voting stations and scratched their ballots in an atmosphere of uncertainty, rancor, and fear. This book is a tale of these two elections - one for the 450-seat Duma, the other for President.

Despite financial crisis, a national security emergency in Chechnya, and cabinet instability, Russian voters unexpectedly supported the status quo. The elected lawmakers prepared to cooperate with the executive branch, a gift that had eluded President Boris Yeltsin since he imposed a post-Soviet constitution by referendum in 1993. When Yeltsin retired six months in advance of schedule, the presidential mantle went to Vladimir Putin - a career KGB officer who fused new and old ways of doing politics. Putin was easily elected President in his own right.

This book demonstrates key trends in an extinct superpower, a troubled country in whose stability, modernization, and openness to the international community the West still has a huge stake.

Brookings Institution Press

Russia, once seen as America's greatest adversary, is now viewed by the United States as a potential partner. This book traces the evolution of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, and later Russia, during the tumultuous and uncertain period following the end of the cold war. It examines how American policymakers -- particularly in the executive branch -- coped with the opportunities and challenges presented by the new Russia.

Drawing on extensive interviews with senior U.S. and Russian officials, the authors explain George H. W. Bush's response to the dramatic coup of August 1991 and the Soviet breakup several months later, examine Bill Clinton's efforts to assist Russia's transformation and integration, and analyze George W. Bush's policy toward Russia as September 11 and the war in Iraq transformed international politics. Throughout, the book focuses on the benefits and perils of America's efforts to promote democracy and markets in Russia as well as reorient Russia from security threat to security ally.

Understanding how three U.S. administrations dealt with these critical policy questions is vital in assessing not only America's Russia policy, but also efforts that might help to transform and integrate other former adversaries in the future.

James M. Goldgeier is professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Michael McFaul is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, the Peter and Helen Bing senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and an associate professor of political science at Stanford University.