Search results
This book offers a nuanced and detailed examination of Russia’s international activity. In broad terms, the book contributes to two of the most important current debates about contemporary Russian actions: whether Moscow is acting strategically or opportunistically, and whether this should be understood in regional or global terms. The book goes against the majority opinions on both questions, and introduces contributions in a number of under-researched themes. It argues that Moscow is not acting in a simply ad hoc, reactive way, but in a consistently strategic manner, and that this is best understood not by analysing Russia’s return to specific regions, but in a more holistic way with a global horizon, linking activity across different regions. This means that the Russian challenge is likely to continue rather than fade away.
The book addresses core themes of Russian activity – military, energy, and economic. But it offers an unusual multi-disciplinary analysis to these themes, incorporating both regional and thematic specialist expertise. Underpinned by detailed analyses of the revolution in Russian geospatial capabilities and the establishment of a strategic planning foundation, the book includes chapters on military and maritime strategies, energy security, and economic diversification and influence. This serves to highlight the connections between military and economic interests that shape and drive Russian strategy.
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.10 Conclusions The grand strategy with which Bush entered office amounts, in post-9/11 practice, to a defensive unilateralism that is at the core of the announced policy of pre-emptive hegemonism. The Clinton administration accepted the globalist soft power world model, and saw Kosovo as a necessary component of making that framework work in the post-Cold War environment. Bush is uninterested in, and even hostile to, European institutional transformation and global institutions, including NATO, the UN, and any
Under Vladimir Putin, the Russian leadership has consistently sought to shape a strategic agenda. This book discusses the strategy planning process and the legislative and policy architecture that has taken shape. It explores the nature of the agenda itself, particularly Putin's May Edicts of 2012, which set out Moscow's core strategic agenda. The book examines the questions raised by the numerous problems in planning and the extent to which they undermine the idea of Russian grand strategy. It explores what the Russian leadership means by a 'unified action programme', its emphasis on military modernisation, problems that Russian observers emphasise, strategy undermining, and the relation of mobilisation with the Russian grand strategy. The book argues that Russian strategy is less to be found in Moscow's plans, and more in the so-called vertical of power. The broader picture of Russian grand strategy, and the leadership's ability to implement those plans, is examined. The book discusses patriotic mass mobilisation often referred to as the 'Crimea effect', and the role of the All Russian Popular Front in the implementation of the leadership's plans, especially the May Edicts. It talks about the ongoing debate in the Russian armed forces. Finally, some points regarding Russian grand strategy are discussed.
So where does this leave us regarding our opening questions about Russian grand strategy? Four points stand out. First, the Russian leadership has a strategic agenda. A structured process, with the Security Council at its heart, has taken shape from the mid-2000s, albeit slowly and with difficulty, resulting in the overhaul of Moscow’s strategic planning. A cascade of documents and initiatives indicating Moscow’s intentions across a great range of subjects has resulted. There are still gaps, shortfalls and delays, and they are often overtaken by events
This book is about a lost moment in British, and especially Scots, history. It explores in detail the events of 1708. The book uses this as a platform to analyse the dynamics of the Jacobite movement, the English/British government's response to the Jacobites' activities and the way the Jacobites interacted with the French government. Grand historical theses need, however, to be well grounded in the nitty-gritty of human affairs. The book offers a detailed narrative of the execution of the Enterprise of Scotland. It introduces the reader to the operation's climactic moment and at the same time corrects misapprehensions about it that have crept in to the historiography that touches on the operation proper. The book also offers a new interpretation of the role of Queen Mary of Modena as de facto regent and thus director of the movement in the early eighteenth century. It highlights the unusually prominent role played by particular Scots noblewomen, such as Anne Drummond, countess of Erroll, and Elizabeth Howard, duchess of Gordon, in the conspiracy leading to the '08. In a context set by a desperate, epic global war and the angry, febrile politics of early eighteenth-century Scotland, the book contends that Britain was on the cusp of a military and constitutional upheaval.
Does the Russian leadership have a grand strategy? Is there a coherent and consistent strategic agenda? If so, what is it? What does President Putin have in mind? Is he, indeed, a strategic genius – or is he making it up day-to-day? What will Russia do next? And what are Putin’s intentions regarding the West? As French journalists inquired of Putin himself, is Russian strategy ‘on a path of dialogue, or expansion and conquest?’ 1 Since the sharp deterioration in relations between the Euro-Atlantic community and Russia following the eruption of war in Ukraine
strategic difficulties in the War of Spanish Succession. FRENCH GRAND STRATEGY AND THE WAR OF SPANISH  SUCCESSION, 1701–8 If war, to quote Carl von Clausewitz, is about making the enemy ‘fulfil our will’, grand strategy is the organisation and direction of all of the state’s assets to make this happen.3 As Edward Luttwak has cogently argued, it is where the interactions of the lower, military levels yield final results within the broad setting of international politics, in further interactions with the nonmilitary relations of states: the formal exchanges of diplomacy
-term consequences for American power and for Asia more generally of the strategies pursued by the Trump administration and its predecessors? 4 Though we appear to be at a key historical moment, this is hardly the first time American elites have faced uncertainty over grand strategy – either in general or in relation to specific regions. 5 Yet, the stakes now seem a lot higher, as the spectre of economic and military conflict hangs over the region. In Asia, Kenneth Lieberthal argues, ‘Obama moved boldly to shift the center of gravity among the key multilateral organizations in
Subsequently, the Russian leadership has often reiterated this commitment in a series of major planning documents, supplemented by articles by senior figures, and prominent speeches such as the president’s annual speech to the Federal Assembly. This strategic planning process is multifaceted and more complex than allowed for in most discussions of Russian strategy. It opens up three sets of questions that are central to our understanding of the ‘formulation’ aspects of Russian grand strategy. These are, first, the strategy planning process and the legislative and policy
about what politicians believe they represent are an integral part of their power in the European Union (political mimesis). For many French politicians, Europe is a means of regaining lost power. In contrast, politicians in smaller member-states like Finland, dominated in the emerging European political field, adopt a more adaptive strategy toward European integration, seeking to find their place rather than attempting to mould the whole according to their own image. The requirements of the French Grand Strategy Everything also depends on Europe, that is, first of