Thirty-years on, the high expectations that accompanied the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Soviet communism have been largely confounded by the emergence of the autocratic Putin regime and the rekindling of Great Power rivalry between Russia and the United States. In this chapter, we argue that these outcomes were not inevitable, but rather were significantly the result of failures in Western, and particularly American, statecraft during the 1990s. First, the democratic transition was undermined by the type of economic transition, which Western policy networks promoted in post-Soviet Russia. Had Western influencers promoted a New Deal or social democratic model of economic transition, the distributional effects which undermined the legitimacy of the Yeltsin regime would have been far less severe. Second, the American failure to devise and pursue a strategy to effectively integrate Russia into a post-NATO European security architecture made it almost certain that “left out” Russia would react negatively to NATO expansion to the East. Had the United States followed up on Gorbachev’s vision of security architecture for a “Common European Home,” the ongoing clash between Russia and the West might well have been averted.

The United States emerged as the world’s sole superpower from the embers of the Cold War’s end, without, however, a wholesale reformulation of the principles and tools used to execute US grand strategy. This was particularly true in Europe, where the United States remained engaged politically, economically, and military; retained significant numbers of forward-deployed forces; and orchestrated the continuation and eventual expansion of NATO. For the United States, and for many Europeans, continued American dominance after 1991 of the continent’s security through NATO was a logical outgrowth of what Washington had provided in the West after 1945. Even within the context of America’s leadership of NATO, alternative strategies to the ultimate path of NATO’s post-1999 enlargement were possible. These included the Partnership for Peace, initially seen as an alternative to NATO enlargement formulated by the Pentagon; some enlargement of NATO to the east, but not as much as occurred; and a concrete path for Russia to join the alliance. This chapter considers the pros and cons of each of these alternatives to the NATO enlargement policy chosen by the United States and its partners in order to provide a more detailed assessment of the policy than has existed previously.

The Soviet Union’s official ideology, Marxism-Leninism, was universal, aspiring to explain all humanity’s past and future. It claimed to be a science, applicable to social relations, economics, and international politics. Culture, religion, and traditional social structures, Marxism-Leninism taught, would be swept away by economic and social change. This was true in Soviet domestic politics, where "feudal" practices such as religion and patriarchy were supposed to be replaced by the Party and the State. It was also true, experts in Marxism-Leninism taught, in international politics, where class not culture would determine the future. In the 1970s, however, Soviet experts, analysts, and officials began to question the supposed irrelevance of culture, religion, and tradition. In foreign policy, culture seemed of enduring relevance in explaining how countries in Asia and Africa interacted with the Soviet Union. In domestic politics, "traditional structures" in regions like Central Asia and the Caucasus seemed to persist generations after Soviet power had been established. This paper traces Soviet and later Russian belief in the importance of cultural, ethnic, national, and civilizational factors in politics from the 1970s to the present via several influential intellectuals who drove the shift. It connects the rising Soviet belief in the importance of clashing civilizations to declining faith in Russia in universalistic politics in general. In the West, the Cold War’s end was associated with Francis Fukuyama’s end-of-history thesis. In Russia, the Cold War’s demise corresponded with a rejection of Marxist-Leninist universalism and a new emphasis on cultural and civilizational difference.

What are the essential features of the post-Cold War world order and how is it likely to evolve? In this chapter, Nuno P. Monteiro analyzes the magnitude of the power shifts that took place around the 1989/91 watershed – between the United States and both Russia and China – and examines the ways in which the post-Cold War order relates to earlier times. Much has changed on the surface, above all the emergence of a preponderant global power, the United States. At the same time, much has also remained the same: the centrality of states, their goals and strategies, the role of material capabilities and ideology in furthering state goals, the effects of the nuclear revolution, and so on. Combining these continuities and changes, Monteiro distills the central features of world order in the post-Cold War era. He then concludes by looking at current transformations in world politics – such as the emergence of a viable alternative to the Western way of life backed by the massive capabilities of the Chinese state – and highlighting the major issues on which the future of world order hangs.

The collapse of the Soviet Union radically changed the external and domestic environment for a new Russian state. Existing political science theories predict that radical changes to the international system or to the domestic regime affect the content of nuclear strategy. This chapter uses Russian archival and oral history sources on nuclear decision-making from the 1980s and 1990s to demonstrate that such change did not take place in Russian nuclear strategy. Soviet strategic thought and institutional mechanisms for strategy formulation would prove sticky, producing continuity rather than change in this area. The Soviet tradition for deterring nuclear war by preparing to fight it has continued to shape Russian nuclear strategy throughout the entire post-Cold War era.

What Bernard Brodie said about nuclear weapons in 1946 continues to be true: The most important thing about nuclear weapons is that they exist and are terribly powerful. This was true in both the Cold War and the subsequent era. Although the situation has changed a great deal, there are striking continuities, especially in American attitudes and policies. Most obviously, the United States has consistently opposed nuclear proliferation, with only a very few exceptions for its closest friends. Second, the debate within the United States about the role of nuclear weapons has been altered only slightly by the end of the Cold War. The fundamental division between those who see nuclear weapons as having a revolutionary impact on world politics and those who do not continues. Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review makes arguments that are remarkably similar to those made under the Raegan administration. In parallel, the arguments made against Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) systems today are quite similar to those advanced during the Cold War, despite the radically changed conditions. This indicates that ways of thinking about nuclear weapons have become deeply engrained.

Continuity in Russian strategy reflects a set of enduring predilections indicative of strategic culture preferences, and habitual responses to persistent, or recurring challenges. While individual leaders and their ideas matter, the pursuit of a geopolitical space where Russian interests predominate has remained central to Russian thinking, along with a quest for status, and influence as a Great Power. The strategy for pursuing these goals, and for dealing with other leading powers like the United States, has proven sticky. Contemporary Russian strategy reprises the offensive approach which defined much of the Soviet Union’s consensus, investing in the military means for direct competition and leveraging indirect approaches to sustain a contest against a much stronger opponent in the international system. Russian grand strategy has proven evolutionary: While it grapples with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the post-Cold War world, there is greater continuity than change in the calculus and ambitions that define Russian decision-making.

This chapter’s analysis of post-revolutionary professional continuities is sensitive to the logics of the expertise-derived autonomy, leverage, and agency of the professional, the scholar, and the torchbearer of the enlightenment that are characteristic of modern societies, broadly and narrowly, of a totalizing revolutionary order, where those very agents of knowledge are subjected to ideological stigma. A full-variance cross-regional analysis provides baseline evidence of a self-reproducing nature of professional knowledge – in space and in time. While this exercise helps us partially account for regional heterogeneity in the social structure, a linear account would not do justice to the nuances of professional–personal life cycles given the checkered nature of professional reproduction; the heterogeneity in adaptation within employment sites and among social groups; and the horizontal network ties aiding social possibilities and effecting shifts within networks. The chapter provides a conceptual framework sensitive to the formal professional channels of social reproduction, namely (1) the “organization man” channels, capturing the established professions; (2) the proto-professional arenas peculiar to states with a radical social agenda, which I label the “pop-up” sphere; and (3) the “museum society,” where persecuted intellectuals, cultural figures, and the literati found safe havens. It also deploys insights from social network analysis to explore horizontal and spatial aspects of the social ties that facilitated the educated estates’ adaptation.

This chapter reviews the results of studies of late- and postglacial faults in the Russian part of the Fennoscandian Shield (Kola Peninsula, Karelia, Sankt-Petersburg region). It provides a brief overview and description from north to south of the main seismic lineaments (Murmansk and Kandalaksha) as well as results from a study of some secondary lineaments, individual late- and postglacial faults and seismic dislocations. The obtained data allowed defining a decrease in seismic activity from the Late Glaciation to the present times. It is due to the fading glacial isostatic uplift of the shield and the change of the leading role from the vertically directed forces of glacial isostasy to horizontal compressive strains. Glacial isostasy as a factor giving rise to stresses has nearly exhausted itself by the present time, while the tectonic factor continues to be felt.

This chapter discusses how the preceding analysis has wider, portable, comparative implications for understanding the drivers of variations in shades of authoritarianism and illiberalism in other communist legacy countries. I structure the chapter as follows. I first sketch out an analytical framework for a comparative analysis of two new cases: Hungary and China. The section also delineates limitations of scope and restrictions in applications to the universe of communist states and beyond. I then proceed to analyze each case with reference to the key variables of interest. A final section concludes with reflections on the utility of the framework for understanding social inequalities and the long shadow of premodern societies in effecting democratic vulnerabilities and resilience in the present-day illiberal world.

The genealogy of the key ideas, institutions and norms of what is religious and what is political in each national context sheds light on different types of relations between the religious and political sets of the three Bs: belief, behaving and belonging. The qualitative work on religion and politics in Syria, Turkey, India, China and Russia has revealed four arenas of politicization of religion: the belonging to the national and the belonging to the religious community line up; the association between national community and religious community is contested; national belonging supersedes religious communities; and the connection between national community and religious community is contested, as well as the actions of the state on the immanent axis. The patterns of politicization of religion for each of these cases were produced by data mining and Python programming applied to the EOS database of Georgetown University.

Moscow’s air power success in Syria presents an opportunity to assess Russian inter- and intra-war adaptation in kinetic counterinsurgency. New technologies and tactics have enhanced the Russian Aerospace Force’s battlefield lethality and resilience but have not yet triggered a fundamental transition in operating concept. Russia’s air force has yet to actualize a reconnaissance-strike regime or advanced air-ground integration. Instead, situational and strategic factors appear to be more powerful contributors to its superior performance in the Syrian conflict. The way in which Russia has chosen to leverage its improvements in accurate munitions delivery, moreover, highlights key differences between its warfighting philosophy and that embraced by major Western powers. The resultant findings provide insight into Moscow’s coercive campaign logic, force-planning imperatives, and the likelihood that it might re-export the Syria model elsewhere.

Authoritarian states have used international law in many ways, but generally have mimicked democracies in the postwar period. Authoritarians are now beginning to introduce normative content into the international legal arena. As compared to prodemocratic international law, authoritarian use of international law places greater emphasis on internal security and has a different style, being more flexible and less amenable to third-party dispute resolution. As authoritarian governments become more powerful in the international system, their contribution to international law is growing, potentially diluting the role of democracies.

Chapter 2 presents a chronological approach to the July crisis, the main theme emphasizing that it was Austria-Hungary that instigated the war, its leaders believing that Serbia had to be crushed. Particular attention is paid to the correspondence between the two general staffs and the emperors of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Demolishes all postwar Habsburg apologia and myths.