On ascending to the presidency in 2000, Vladimir Putin offered the Russian people a growing economy and higher living standards, the prospect of stability after the chaotic 1990s, and a vision for Russia's return to great power status. Twenty-three years late, he fails on all counts.

Russia's economy grew significantly from 2000 to 2008 but has essentially stagnated over the past decade and faces daunting future prospects. The proffered domestic stability has turned into authoritarianism on par with the worst of Soviet times and, as Yevgeniy Prigozhin showed in June, not necessarily lasting. Putin's policies have bogged Russia down in war with Ukraine, provoked NATO to rearm and enlarge, and increased Moscow's dependence on China.

Were a Russian citizen in 2013 to be told the situation his or her country would face in August 2023, he or she would conclude that Putin's policies for the coming decade would result in little short of disaster.

Economic Boom to Uncertainty

The eight years that followed the Soviet Union's collapse at the end of 1991 were not easy for Russia or for Russians. The transition from the Soviet command economy to one in which the market played a greater role meant economic dislocation and pain. Some estimates placed the cumulative economic contraction in the 1990s at 40 percent.

Boris Yeltsin stepped down as Russia's president on December 31, 1999. Prime Minister Putin became acting president and then won a special presidential election in March 2000. He got off to a good start on economic reforms, assisted by able advisors such as Alexei Kudrin. The Russian government adopted tax reform, a new civil code and deregulation, among other things.

Luck favored Putin. The prices for oil and natural gas, Russia's two largest export earners, began rising in 1999. The surge in revenues, on top of the reforms, helped the Russian economy grow at a rate averaging 7-8 percent per year between 2000 and 2008, nearly doubling its size. The 2008 global financial crisis struck just as Putin-constrained by the then-constitutional limit of two consecutive presidential terms-swapped places with his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev.

Putin chose to return to the presidency in 2012. Perhaps understanding that economic prospects were not bright, he ran a campaign stressing nationalism and restoring Russia's place in the world, largely leaving the economy aside. That proved prescient. From 2012 to 2021, gross domestic product grew at an anemic rate of 1 percent per year, before contracting in 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.Stagnant growth and inflation meant declining real living standards.

The West applied broad economic sanctions in 2022. While the economy weathered the sanctions better than most had anticipated, the future holds little reason for optimism. The IMF, whose estimates tend to the high side, projects Russian economic growth at 1.5 percent in 2023.

The government has maintained growth by dramatically increasing defense and other spending, which was 50 percent higher in the first five months of 2023 compared to 2022. That may not prove sustainable. Government revenues from oil and gas sales fell 64 percent in May 2023 compared to May 2022, as oil was diverted to far-away markets such as China, and some oil sold subject to a price cap, while Europe weaned itself off of Russian gas.

Hundreds of Western companies have exited the Russian market or suspended operations there, and sanctions blocking hi tech exports-even if weakened by evasion- will have an impact. Moreover, tens of thousands of IT workers have left the country over the past 17 months. The technology gap between Russia and Western economies will grow. The Russian automobile industry has been particularly hard hit, with car production in May 2023 just 40 percent of the January-February 2022 level. 

For many Russians, 2000-2008 were good years economically. but those lie 15 years in the past; the economic future looks cloudy at best, tending toward grim.

Political Stability to Authoritarianism

Yeltsin's tenure as a president during the 1990s was often chaotic, on the top of major economic dislocation and Russians' need to adjust to loss of an empire in the former Soviet space. Putin promised stability, and Russians in the early 2000s spoke of an implicit Putin deal with the public: they would not have a serious political voice but would see their personal economic situation improve (as it did, until 2008).

Putin built an autocratic system. The Kremlin used administrative resources to back Putin and, in 2008, Medvedev, in presidential elections and kept serious opponents off the ballot, as it did with Alexey Navalny, in 2018. The Kremlin ensured that United Russia, the pro-Putin party, scored victories in legislative elections. United Russia was joined in the Duma (lower house) by supposed opposition parties, such as the Communists and Liberal Democratic Party, but Putin and United Russia had their support on issues that mattered.

The Duma and Senat (upper house) demonstrated their rubber-stamp operation in 2020, when an amendment to the Russian constitution was proposed that would allow Putin, elected in 2012 and 2018, to run for two more terms as resident without stepping down, as he did in 2008. It took less than ten days for the amendment to win approval from both legislative bodies, as well as Russia's 89 regional legislatures. When Putin wants something, the legislature delivers. 

The Kremlin has worked with the legislative branch to pass a series of laws that restrict civil society and human rights. These include laws on undesirable and extremist organizations, foreign agent destinations, limits on demonstrations and, in 2022 "discrediting" the Russian military. Under the latter, referring to the so-called "special military operation" that Russia launched against Ukraine in February 2022 as a "war" can mean serious jail time. 

The personal autocracy that Putin has built is based neither on institutions nor law applied equally to all, and it matches some of the worst features of Soviet times. While the system for years had the appearance of stability, Prigozhin and his Wagner Group mercenaries challenged that in June. They conducted a military mutiny, seizing central Rostov in southern Russia and sending a military convoy to within 200 kilometers of Moscow before a settlement ending the mutiny was announced. Prigozhin has known Putin since the early 1990s and is very much a product of Putin's system. The state media claimed that the dénouement of the crisis showed the country's stability, but one has to wonder about the brittleness of a regime in which a private military force can shake things so badly.

Great Power Status?

Whatever progress Putin made in restoring Russia's great power status has been eroded by recent Kremlin policies. Most analysts believed that the 2011-2020 modernization program provided Russia with "a far more capable military." However, 17 months of grinding fighting against a smaller Ukrainian opponent have shredded that assessment. In June, the British Ministry of Defense estimated that the Russian military had suffered 220,000 casualties.

While causing widespread enmity toward Russia that will last for decades in Ukraine, the invasion has brought about Russia's near total isolation from Europe and the West. It accelerated changes in European security that began after the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014, changes that have dramatically worsened the geopolitical scene confronting Moscow. NTO is united, rearming in a serious way, and has increased forces on its eastern flank opposite Russia.

In 2014, only three NATO members spent 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. Today, eleven of the Alliance's members have hit that NATO-established goal, with more expected to meet it in 2024. All allies now meet the target of devoting 20 percent of defense spending to equipment purchases. Since February 2022, NATO members' cumulative spending on defense has jumped 8 percent in real terms. The Polish government set a target of at least 3 percent of GDP for defense and, in 2023, budgeted 3.9 percent, signing contracts to purchase hundreds of Abrams and K2 tanks from the United States and South Korea as well as other arms such as HIMARS rocket systems.

Prior to 2014, NATO deployed virtually no ground forces on the territory of countries that had joined the Alliance after 1997. Following Russia's seizure of Crimea and the start of the conflict in Donbras, NATO deployed multinational battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, with additional battlegroups stationed in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary after February 2022. In the first half of 2022, the U.S. military presence in Europe increased by 20,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen.

Shortly after the 2022 assault began, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany would meet the 2 percent goal; create a 100 billionEuro fund for defense; change its policy of not sending arms to war zones in order to provide weapons to Ukraine; and purchase F-35 aircraft to sustain Germany's role in NATO's nuclear-sharing arrangements. The follow-up has dragged, but seems to be gaining speed. Defense minister Boris Pistorius has announced that Germany will augment the battalion-sized battlegroup it leads in Lithuania by developing a full brigade as soon as the infrastructure is ready. Berlin appears to have abandoned five decades of Ostpolitik.

Russia's invasion caused Finland and Sweden, after decades of neutrality, to opt to seek NATO membership.Finland is now a full member, with Sweden expected to be in the Alliance later this year. That will effectively turn the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. The language on Ukraine joining NATO in the July 2023 NATO summit communique struck some as similar to the April 2008 NATO communique language that Ukraine "will" become a member. Still, more and more NATO members seem to have concluded that a stable and secure Europe requires a secure Ukraine-and that NATO membership is the best guarantee of that.

Putin has sought to balance his country's deteriorating situation in Europe with closer ties with China. However, his "no limits partnership" with Xi Jinping apparently has limits, particularly in the kinds of support Beijing is willing to provide Moscow in its war on Ukraine.

A Catastrophe for Russia

On each of the three areas where Putin held out the promise of something better to the Russian people-economic growth, political stability, geopolitical status- he has delivered failure. As CIA director Bill Burns aptly summed it up,

"Putin's war has already been a strategic failure for Russia-its military weaknesses laid bare; its economy badly damaged for years to come; its future as a junior partner and economic colony of China being shaped by Putin's mistakes; its revanchist ambitions blunted by a NATO which has only grown bigger and stronger."

Were a Russian citizen in 2013 to have forseen what a decade of Putin's policies would bring for Russia, he or she almost certainly would have regarded it as a shambolic catastrophe.

Impacts on Russia, Ukraine, and Beyond

Michael McFaul

The implications of the 72-hour mutiny will last much longer and extend much further beyond Rostov and Moscow, says FSI Director and former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

Speaking with Madeline Brand of KRCW, McFaul outlined the difficult situation Putin now finds himself in.

“This whole series of events has made Putin look a lot weaker than he looked three or four days ago. The very fact that the Wagner group exists is a sign of weakness. Putin needs them because he couldn’t rely on his armed forces.”

Elaborating further on Putin’s dilemma, McFaul says:

“As those mercenaries were getting closer to Moscow, Putin went on TV and sounded very macho, calling Prigozhin’s men traitors and promising to crush them, but then four hours later, he capitulates and starts to negotiate. And now he’s given another speech where it sounds like he’s pleading with these mercenaries to lay down their weapons and join the Russian forces. That clearly shows he hasn’t resolved this Wagner crisis yet.”

McFaul predicts that Putin’s remaining partners are also taking note of his fumbled reaction to the rebellion.

“​​If you’re Xi Jinping watching this, the big bet you made on Putin as a partner in opposing the West is looking really problematic right now.”

What Chinese officials fear most, McFaul explained to MSNBC’s Jonathn Capehart, is instability and dissolution, both internally and amongst their neighbors. Historically, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophic event for Chinese Communist Party officials, and a lesson the current leadership is loath to repeat.

McFaul asserts that, “The longer Putin’s war in Ukraine goes, the more probable it becomes that Russia becomes more unstable. The longer this war goes on, the more likely it is we could see something like this play out over and over again. So I would hope that Xi Jinping understands that putting pressure on Putin to end the war in Ukraine is the best way to prevent chaos on China's borders.”

There are also important lessons the United States and its allies need to consider when evaluating the kind of support they are willing to give Ukraine as the war wears on.

“Putin capitulated very fast, and I think that says a lot about how he’s going to fight in Ukraine and whether he needs an ‘off ramp’ like we’ve been saying. We’ve heard all of these arguments that if he’s backed into a corner he’ll never negotiate. Well, this weekend Putin was in a corner, and he didn't double down. He didn't escalate. He negotiated,” McFaul observes.

Continuing this thought on his Substack, McFaul emphasized that, “The lesson for the war in Ukraine is clear. Putin is more likely to negotiate and end his war if he is losing on the battlefield, not when there is a stalemate. Those who have argued that Ukraine must not attack Crimea for fear of triggering escalation must now reevaluate that hypothesis. The sooner Putin fears he is losing the war, the faster he will negotiate.”

Or, as McFaul writes in Journal on Democracy, “Anything that weakens Putin is good for Ukraine. It is as simple as that.”  

Fallout on Nuclear Security and Norms

Rose Gottemoeller

Throughout the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there have been concerns about nuclear sabre rattling by Putin and Kremlin-backed propagandists. Writing in the Financial Times, Rose Gottemoeller, the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at CISAC and former Deputy Secretary of NATO offered this insight:

“The fixation with nuclear apocalypse seems to be the symptom of a wider anxiety that the west is bent on Russian dismemberment because of its aspirations in Ukraine. The Kremlin argues that it only wanted to resume its ancestral right to a Slavic heartland, but that the U.S. and NATO are seeking as punishment Russia’s full and complete destruction as a nation state.”

Gottemoeller has been quick to condemn Putin’s casual threats of nuclear use and clear in her recommendations to the U.S. administration and its allies to find constructive ways to keep nuclear arms talks open despite the war in Ukraine and setbacks like Russia’s suspension of its participation in the New START Treaty.

The Wagner takeover of Rostov-on-Don adds a new layer to the security concerns surrounding Russia’s nuclear posture. Looking at the evolution of Putin’s nuclear rhetoric over the last 18 months, Gottemoeller writes:

“Putin embraced nuclear weapons to keep the United States and its NATO allies off his back and out of his way as he pursued his adventure in Ukraine. It did not work out that way. The United States and NATO were not ready to fight inside Ukraine, but they were willing to do everything else to support Kyiv’s cause — economic, political, security and military assistance to ensure Russia’s defeat. Nuclear weapons failed Putin as a guarantee against external meddling.”

Turning to the events of the last week, Gottemoeller continues:

“We learned on June 24 that they are no help to him internally, either. He could not brandish nuclear weapons in the face of the Wagner Group uprising . . . Nuclear weapons are not the authoritarian’s silver bullet when his power is strained to the breaking point — far from it. In fact, they represent a consummate threat to national and global security if they should fall into the wrong hands in the course of domestic unrest.”

In light of Prigozhin’s mutiny, she urges global leaders to “focus on the problem, stop loose nuclear talk, and put new measures in place to protect, control and account for nuclear weapons and the fissile material that go into them.” 

The Unknown Unknowns of the Settlement

Steven Pifer

Major questions remain about the deal struck between Putin, Prigozhin, and Lukashenko. While Lukashenko has confirmed that the Wagner boss is now in Belarusian territory, it is unclear — and many feel, unlikely — that he will stay there in quiet retirement. 

Weighing in on Twitter, Steven Pifer, an affiliate at the Center for International Cooperation and Security and The Europe Center, and a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, acknowledged, “We likely do not know all carrots and/or sticks that were in play to lead to Prigozhin’s decision to end his mutiny . . . Something does not add up.”

Following up in Politico, Pifer added:

“The ‘settlement’ supposedly brokered by President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus leaves Putin, who was invisible during the day except for a short morning TV broadcast, as damaged goods. It provided the impression that all was forgiven, likely because the Russian president feared the prospect of Prigozhin’s troops parading in Moscow — even if they lacked the numbers to take control of the capital. It is harder to understand Prigozhin. His demands went unmet, yet he ordered his troops back to garrison, accepted that they might join the Russian army that he detests, and meekly set off for Belarus. There clearly is more behind this ‘settlement’ than we understand.”

"We must never negotiate from fear, but we must never fear to negotiate."

- John F. Kennedy

These words, spoken long ago by President John F. Kennedy, have a special resonance now, as Russian President Vladimir Putin seems bent on upending the nuclear order that has been in place for over 50 years. From the start of Putin’s adventure in Ukraine, he has threatened “ominous consequences” for those who would meddle with Russia’s invasion.¹ His loyal deputies amplified these threats, calling for nuclear death to rain down on NATO capitals.² Thus, the United States and its NATO allies were put on notice from the outset that if their support for Kyiv brought allied soldiers into contact with the Russian invaders, nuclear escalation could ensue. Not since the darkest days of the Cold War had such explicit nuclear use been promised.

Nonetheless, the primary restraint on strategic nuclear weapons, the New START treaty, remained intact in the first year of the Ukraine war. Although on-site inspections had been paused by mutual agreement in March 2020,³ during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States and Russia continued to exchange notifications about the status of their nuclear delivery vehicles and launchers on a frequent basis, sometimes multiple times a day. This continued routine provided significant mutual confidence that initiating a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia was not an aspect of the Kremlin’s nuclear saber-rattling.

This mutual reassurance took a significant blow when, on Feb. 21, 2023, Putin suspended implementation of the New START treaty. He and his government stated that no “business as usual” could be conducted while the United States and its NATO allies continued to support Ukraine in its fight for continued independence and sovereignty.⁴

Continue reading at tnsr.org.

A Missed Phone Call and a New Career

Gottemoeller’s most recent government service came with a few hiccups. In December of 2008, she was living in a small, bare-bones rental unit in Moscow while she finished the last few weeks of her tenure as the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. Just a few weeks earlier, Barack Obama had been elected to the presidency of the United States, and the interim period of administration-building between Election Day and Inauguration Day was fully under way.

5,000 miles away from Washington D.C., Gottemoeller’s American cell phone rang. Racing across the apartment to try and answer it, the call ended before she could answer. Due to technological constraints at the time, there was no way to listen back to the voicemail on the Russian network.

Recounting the experience on “The Negotiators” podcast, Gottemoeller explained, “All I was thinking was, ‘Oh man, what is that, was the White House calling, or the Obama campaign? What if I’ve just lost my chance?’”

As soon as she landed back at the Washington Dulles airport, she got her answer. A return call to the number put her in touch with Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton’s office, where an offer to discuss the position of assistant secretary responsible for arms control issues was still on the table.

“Before I had even collected my luggage, I was on the phone letting them know I would be very glad to come interview with her,” said Gottemoeller.

That initial interview was nerve-wracking, to say the least. Walking into a borrowed New York apartment above Central Park where Clinton had set up her temporary office, Gottemoeller was grilled on nuclear deterrence, U.S. strategic policies, and strategic arms reductions by the future secretary and her two deputies for several hours.

“I thought it was going terribly. It was an exhausting hour and a half,” admits Gottemoeller. “I was convinced I hadn’t done very well.”

But a call the next day proved otherwise. Not only did Secretary Clinton offer her the job of assistant secretary responsible for arms control matters, but also put Gottemoeller’s name forward to the incoming White House to be the chief negotiator for the next strategic arms reduction treaty, what would eventually become the New START Treaty.

The New START Treaty, Then and Now

Formalized in 2010, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, builds on prior agreements put in place between the United State and Russia through the 1970s and 80s to actively reduce and limit the number of strategic nuclear weapons.

As the lead (and first female) negotiator of the treaty for the U.S. side, Gottemoeller knows its strengths and holes better than almost anyone. Building on the progress made by the START I Treaty in 1994, the New START Treaty has successfully reduced the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons in Russia to 1,550, a 30 percent reduction from the approximately 6,000 deployed warheads that existed in 2000, and an astonishing 87 percent reduction from the estimated 12,000 deployed nuclear warheads available to the USSR and United States at the end of the Cold War.

New START continues to limit the number of strategic nuclear warheads that Russia and the United States are permitted to deploy, and it sets extensive protocols for monitoring and controlling such warheads in both countries. However, it has proven much more difficult to count and verify Russian warheads once they have been removed from their delivery vehicles and sent into storage.

“One of the major developments moving forward needs to be this more direct kind of constraint and oversight of warheads,” says Gottemoeller. “We’ve made some baby steps in that direction, but there’s certainly more we could and should be pushing for.”

Similarly, while New START has clear protocols for managing strategic nuclear warheads, there are gaps in constraining Russia’s stockpile of non-strategic nuclear warheads. Strategic nuclear weapons, as defined by NATO, constitute “weapons to whose use or threat of use only the highest authority of the State can resort, conceptually and structurally.” In the popular imagination, these are the weapons of M.A.D, or “mutually assured destruction,” which rests on the idea that the United States and Russian hold each other at constant risk of nuclear annihilation. A legitimate strategic calculation, this also serves as the basis for the "nuclear Armageddon" trope of Hollywood.

By contrast, non-strategic nuclear weapons, also referred to as “tactical nuclear weapons,” often carry smaller explosive yields, are carried on shorter-range delivery vehicles, and are designed to be used on the battlefield in combination with conventional forces. It is this type of weapon — not strategic missiles — which has caused concerns in the course of Putin’s invasion and ongoing bombardment of Ukraine.

The Invasion of Ukraine and Nuclear Sabre-rattling

Gottemoeller is clear on the repercussions that Vladimir Putin’s veiled threats of a possible tactical nuclear strike against Ukraine are having.

“Putin and his coterie have been extremely irresponsible in their rattling of the nuclear sabre,” she says. “There's absolutely no reason to be threatening nuclear use in Ukraine. This is a war of choice and invasion that Putin decided to undertake, not something he was provoked into by Ukraine, or NATO, or anyone else for that matter.”

Having watched and worked in Putin’s orbit on-and-off for decades, Gottemoeller believes that Putin and those in his inner circle understand that a strategic nuclear exchange of any kind would be “suicide.” But the escalatory risks inherent in a single tactical nuclear strike are still high.

“Threatening nuclear use, even if it’s a single, non-strategic use, is playing with fire,” warns Gottemoeller. “It’s dangerous. There is still far too much potential for escalation in that scenario.”

Intended or not, Putin’s nuclear posturing has also brought the discussion of nuclear weapons and the policies governing their use back to the forefront for people both in and out of government.

“In some ways, that’s not a bad thing,” Gottemoeller acknowledges. “Younger people in particular don’t pay as much attention to nuclear weapons. They’re much more gripped by environmental threats and the threat of climate change.”

The two existential threats are not unrelated, however. Citing an MIT study, Gottemoeller points out that a nuclear exchange would have a profound effect on the climate, potentially even leading to an extinction event for large portions of the global population.

“The notion that we could see nuclear escalation in this war in Ukraine is very, very serious,” says Gottemoeller. “It’s brought these issues into much sharper focus than it has been since the Cold War.”

Developing Nuclear Policies for the Future

Meaningful nuclear policy has often been born out of such moments of sharp focus. The first major treaty, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), first came into force in 1970 following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The treaty created the first binding commitments toward the goal of disarmament for the nuclear powers at the time — the United States, USSR, and United Kingdom — as well as setting policies of nonproliferation for an additional 46 party states. To date, a total of 191 states have joined and upheld the treaty, including the five current nuclear-weapon states of the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China.

The work that Rose Gottemoeller is currently undertaking as an advisor to the Strategic Posture Commission and National Nuclear Strategy Administration aims to provide the necessary legwork and critical expertise needed to prepare policymakers for high-level negotiations on future nuclear treaties. New START, currently the last remaining nuclear arms agreement between the United States and Russia, will expire in 2026, and cannot be renewed again without re-ratification by the U.S. Senate. Given the uncertainty surrounding the Kremlin’s actions regarding tactical nuclear weapon use, the importance of providing this type of in-depth policy expertise cannot be understated.

At the Strategic Posture Commision, Gottemoeller is working alongside other experts on a committee chaired by Madelyn Creedon, an expert in national security and defense and former assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs at the Pentagon. Working under bi-partisan leadership from both the House and Senate, this commission is in the process of evaluating the long-term strategic posture of the United States. This includes nuclear weapons, but also conventional weapons, trade agreements, economic progress, arms control diplomacy, and other capabilities of United States national power.

In this realm, Gottemoeller stresses that while nuclear weapons will never cease to be important, new defense strategies need to be focused on emerging technologies rather than the nuclear standoffs of the past. Writing in the August 2022 edition of Foreign Affairs, she stresses that:

“New defense innovations promise not just to transform warfare but also to undermine the logic and utility of nuclear weapons. With advances in sensing technology, states may soon be able to track and target their adversaries’ nuclear missiles, making the weapons easier to eliminate. And with nuclear weapons more vulnerable, innovations such as drone swarms — large numbers of small automated weapons that collectively execute a coordinated attack—will increasingly define war. A fixation on building more nuclear weapons will only distract from this technological revolution, making it harder for the United States to master the advances that will shape the battlefield of the future.”

At the National Nuclear Security Administration, Gottemoeller is similarly applying her expertise to develop better policies to monitor the nuclear warheads already in existence. Launched by Jill Hruby and Frank Rose, the leaders of NNSA, the purpose of this review is to determine how to improve the nonproliferation tools and instruments, one of the Biden administration’s key missions. Working alongside partners at the National Nuclear Laboratories, the NNSA is developing innovative ways to monitor and verify constraints on warheads and their delivery vehicles, including exotic delivery vehicles such as the Russian hypersonic Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile.

“I do really see that there has been a lot of progress in this area and I feel like we are well prepared for a new negotiation,” says Gottemoeller.

The Power of Academia for the Good of Government

Thinking about her own dual career in government and academia, Gottemoeller is quick to point out the immense value that collaboration between the two brings to the policymaking process.

“Over the years, Stanford has been very active in these kinds of discussions and it's been extremely valuable, I think. The academic community plays a super important role for the policy community in Washington,” she says.

In her own recent experience, that has included a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, alongside fellow nuclear expert Scott Sagan, also of FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

Gottemoeller points out that sometimes academics and their institutions can go where governments can’t. These so-called “track-two” settings create opportunities for experts, academics, and professionals from various states to come together for discussion and discourse even if formal “track-one” government negotiations are stalled or stagnant. Even as the war in Ukraine has intensified the divide between the governments in Washington and Moscow, non-governmental experts from the U.S. and Russia continue to meet to ensure lines of communication and understanding regarding key issues remain open.

Gottemoeller believes institutes like FSI and other academic organizations can play a similarly important role in advancing discussion with China, particularly in the realm of nuclear security and weapons modernization. Some of these discussions, such as collaborations between the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Scientists Group on Arms control (of which Gottemoeller is a participating member), are already underway.

“I think dialogues like this are a way in which the academic community can help develop an environment in which the Chinese will then eventually be willing to come to the table in an official government-to-government way,” she explains.

As for her own academic home at the Freeman Spogli Institute, Gottemoeller is grateful for the work the institute and her fellow scholars allow her to do.

“Organizations like FSI and CISAC are a great home for practitioners as well as academic experts. The Freeman Spogli Institute attracts very senior figures with immense amounts of policy experience to come and work here. It’s clearly a resource for the government back in Washington, and I think these groups will continue to play that role very well for a long time.”

As Russia’s war against Ukraine illustrates, civilians often bear the brunt of suffering in conflict — sometimes directly killed or saddled with lifelong injuries, and sometimes from the destruction of critical infrastructure like hospitals, power plants and sanitation systems needed to survive. International laws of war prohibit targeting civilians — but often fail to protect them in practice.

How can this be stopped? Ireland recently organized the development of a multilateral declaration aimed at better protecting civilians from explosive weapons in populated areas. While it’s not a legally binding treaty, this declaration includes new guidelines developed to improve how international humanitarian law gets put into practice. Eighty countries, including the United States, signed this declaration in Dublin on Nov. 18.

Continue reading at washingtonpost.com.

As Russia’s military faltered and lost ground in its conventional war against Ukraine, concern grew in the West that Vladimir Putin might resort to nuclear weapons.  The Kremlin, however, has real reasons not to cross the nuclear threshold, and its hints of nuclear use have not brought Kyiv’s capitulation or an end to Western support for Ukraine any closer.  In recent weeks, Moscow has seemed to deescalate the nuclear rhetoric.

Russia’s military campaign in Donbas stalled over the summer, and Ukrainian counteroffensives in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions subsequently have liberated substantial tracts of territory.  As the Ukrainian army pressed forward, the Kremlin began to grow desperate, with Putin ordering mobilization of 300,000 men.  Many in the West began to fear that the Russian leader, facing an increasingly difficult situation, might play the nuclear card against Ukraine.

Putin set the stage for this early on. In February, just three days after the Russian army invaded Ukraine from the north, south and east, he ordered a “special combat readiness” for Russian nuclear forces.  In September, the situation deteriorated for Russia, and Putin set in motion his desired annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts (regions), none of which his military fully controlled.  His language, and that of other Russian officials, hinted at nuclear use.

Announcing the mobilization on September 21, Putin stated “In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity to our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us.  This is not a bluff.”  Many observers read “all weapons systems” as including nuclear arms.  Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev on September 27 said that it certainly “was not a bluff” and went on to “imagine” a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine.

In a September 30 speech, Putin proclaimed Ukraine’s Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts to be part of Russia and asserted “We will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have.”  In case anyone missed the point, he cited the U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 as having set a “precedent.”

Those remarks got attention.  On October 7, President Joe Biden commented in a private setting that he saw a direct threat of nuclear use for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.  Shortly thereafter, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley had conversations with their Russian counterparts.

The Kremlin may want Ukraine and the West to believe that Russia is prepared to escalate to the nuclear level, but it does not want a nuclear war.  Moscow has real reasons not to cross the nuclear threshold.

First, Ukraine does not mass its forces in a way that would create a tempting target for nuclear attack.  More importantly, a nuclear strike is unlikely to achieve the political objective of intimidating Kyiv into capitulation.  The Ukrainians understand all too well what Russian occupation means.  For them, this is an existential fight, and nothing suggests that the Russian threats have undercut their resolve.

Second, the same is true for the resolve of Ukraine’s Western supporters.  The flow of arms and other support for Ukraine continues, and Western officials have pushed back on the nuclear question.  Meeting on November 4, G7 foreign ministers stated “Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric is unacceptable.  Any use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by Russia would be met with severe consequences.”  That echoed the message following Biden’s October 7 phone conversation with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that consequences would be “extremely serious” and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s October 13 warning that Moscow not cross the “very important [nuclear] line.”  Russian officials—the senior military leadership, in particular—likely understand that, if they open the nuclear Pandora’s Box, no one can tell what would happen.

Third, Russian officials have to consider the reaction of other countries.  Putin’s close friend President Xi Jinping of China has been very clear in recent meetings.  Xi and Scholz on November 4 “rejected” the threat of nuclear weapons, and Xi and Biden on November 14 condemned Moscow’s nuclear threats.  The G20 leaders’ declaration issued on November 16 said “The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.”  Given his isolation from the West, Putin can hardly afford to alienate Xi or other countries in the Global South.  Few would like the precedent of Russia, a nuclear state, using nuclear arms against a smaller, non-nuclear neighbor after its conventional aggression had failed.

There are indications the Kremlin understands that it has overplayed its hand and in recent weeks has sought to tone down the nuclear rhetoric.

Speaking to the Valdai Discussion Club on October 27, Putin raised the question “that Russia might theoretically use nuclear weapons,” called “the current fuss” a “very primitive” attempt to turn countries against Moscow, and commented that “we have never said anything proactively about Russia potentially using nuclear weapons.”  While not exactly true, it was very different from the Russian leader’s September pronouncements.  A November 2 Russian Foreign Ministry statement said Russia is guided by the principle that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” reiterated commitment to the January 3, 2022 statement by the U.S., Russian, Chinese, British and French leaders on preventing a nuclear war, and noted that provocations with nuclear weapons could entail “catastrophic consequences.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reported that, in their November 16 meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had stated that nuclear use was “impossible and inadmissible.”  Representing Russia at the G20 summit, Lavrov agreed to the leaders’ declaration that included the language about the inadmissibility of the use or threat of use of nuclear arms.

Russian officials have backed away from the nuclear hints and threats of September and sought to tone down the rhetoric.  This does not mean they might not reemerge, but it does suggest that the Kremlin understands that the use of nuclear weapons would have significant consequences for Russia, and that its nuclear threats failed to achieve their desired political objectives while proving counterproductive for Russia’s image abroad.

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