Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
11 to 20 of about 1529
Australia’s climate change policy has a lot in common with Russia’s. Is this enough for two countries, neither of whose climate plans are particularly ambitious, to become allies in international climate negotiations?
In its negotiations with the West, Russia is behaving not like a country preparing to wage war, but like a country that, if necessary, can afford to do so.
It seems clear that any war would destroy the still relevant Putinist model of the state as stable and successful. Instead of mobilizing public opinion ahead of the 2024 presidential election, it would have the opposite effect.
Following Moscow’s demands for security guarantees from the United States and NATO, Carnegie Moscow Center director Dmitri Trenin was interviewed by Kommersant’s Elena Chernenko about Russia’s future steps with regard to Ukraine and the West.
The hypothetical scenario of Moscow edging out the West from Kazakhstan would not necessarily mean that Russia could step into the resulting vacuum. It’s more likely that Moscow would simply be helping China to shore up its influence in Central Asia.
Russian officialdom is increasingly vocal about climate change, yet Russia continues to be hindered in its attempts to promote a different image of the country in this area—not only to foreign observers but also to domestic stakeholders, who are skeptical of Moscow’s promises and whose own efforts are erased in Russian messaging abroad.
If Moscow believes that the main security threat it faces is NATO military infrastructure moving closer to Russia’s western borders, it would make sense to focus on the infrastructure itself rather than the theoretical possibility of NATO expansion.
The rest of President Tokayev’s years in power are unlikely to be uneventful. The new Kazakh president has yet to establish his authority and to surround himself with trusted elites. Most importantly of all, he cannot rely on the loyalty of the security services.
This podcast episode focuses on the recent upheaval in Kazakhstan and what to expect moving forward.
Moscow’s demands of the United States and NATO are in fact the strategic goals of Russian policy in Europe. If Russia cannot achieve them by diplomatic means, it will resort to other methods.