The study of a state’s grand strategy can provide key insights into the direction of its foreign policy and its responses to national security challenges. Understanding Russia’s grand strategy therefore can help U.S. decisionmakers both avoid strategic surprise by anticipating Moscow’s actions and reactions and assess the depth and nature of potential conflicts between Russia and the United States. Because grand strategy is more than a collection of proclaimed foreign policy goals, a country’s grand strategy must be understood through both a study of key documents and statements and a close empirical analysis of patterns of behavior. In this event, Samuel Charap and Dara Massicot, the two principal authors of the new RAND report, “Russian Grand Strategy: Rhetoric and Reality,” will discuss elements of Russia’s declared grand strategy, corresponding behaviors of the state, and implications and considerations for U.S. policymakers.
Speakers:
Samuel Charap is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. His research interests include the foreign policies of Russia and the former Soviet states; European and Eurasian regional security; and U.S.-Russia deterrence, strategic stability, and arms control. From November 2012 until April 2017, Charap was the senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Prior to joining the IISS, he served at the U.S. Department of State as senior advisor to the undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security and on the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff, covering Russia and Eurasia. Charap’s book on the Ukraine crisis, Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia (coauthored with Timothy Colton), was published in January 2017. His articles have appeared in The Washington Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, Survival, Current History and several other journals. Charap holds a Ph.D. in political science and an M.Phil. in Russian and East European studies from the University of Oxford. He received his B.A. in Russian and political science from Amherst College.
Dara Massicot is a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Before joining RAND, she served as a senior analyst for Russian military capabilities at the Department of Defense.
Her work at RAND focuses on defense and security issues in Russia and Eurasia. She specializes in Russian military strategy, combat operations, and power projection, as well as Russian military modernization and escalation dynamics. Her interests include force posture, force planning, and grand strategy. She is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program.
Massicot received her M.A. in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College’s College of Naval Command and Staff in Newport, Rhode Island.
Moderator:
Henry E. Hale is a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, and Co-Director of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia). He has conducted intensive field research in post-Soviet Eurasia and is currently working on identity politics and political system change, with a focus on public opinion dynamics in Russia and Ukraine. His work has won prizes from the American Political Science Association and the Fulbright Foundation.