Publications

Сергей Караганов

Publications

Why do we need national identity?

Valdai Discussion Club
August 19, 2013

During a discussion held last year at the 20 th Assembly of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, some Russian participants emphasized the need for its members to start a work to define Russia’s identity. Many council members, who rightly consider themselves an enlightened part of the Russian elite, thought this was a corny idea.

The Map of the World: Geopolitics Stages a Comeback

Vedomosti
April 10, 2013

Geopolitics as a theory has been almost an outcast for nearly half a century. In Soviet Union it was blacklisted as bourgeois, while in the West it was dismissed as politically incorrect and remained a hobby of provincial university professors, who had no chances of entering the official establishment.

A ruthless fight for Europe?

Rossiiskaya Gazeta
March 26, 2013

EU leaders purposely crushed the Cypriot banking system so as to frighten other debtors Just to get this straight, I don’t have any secret information on the real reason for the Eurogroup’s sudden ultimatum to Cyprus on taxing deposits, that is, to expropriate them partially in exchange for European loans, without which the banking system would collapse.

Russia right to refuse Cyprus bail out but should back strong EU

Financial times
March 25, 2013

When the eurogroup of finance ministers first issued its ultimatum to Cyprus demanding a levy on deposits – requiring their de facto partial confiscation – many Russians were indignant. Even Russia’s leaders called the Eurogroup demand absurd, non-professional, unfair and dangerous.

Xi in Russia

Project Syndicate
March 18, 2013

MOSCOW – The atmospherics surrounding Xi Jinping’s coming trip to Russia – his first visit to a foreign country as China’s new president – remind me of a slogan from my early childhood in the late 1950’s: “Russia-China, Friendship Forever.” The irony is that, even in that slogan’s heyday, Sino-Russian relations were deteriorating fast, culminating in spasms of combat along the Amur River in Siberia less than a decade later.

Fatal Thaws

Project Syndicate
March 4, 2013

MOSCOW – During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and, in a milder way, the United States imposed external limits on the activities of states and societies, causing longstanding conflicts among smaller countries to be “frozen.” Following the Soviet Union’s collapse in the 1990’s, those conflicts began to “unfreeze.” With interethnic tensions already on the rise, Yugoslavia was the first country to dissolve into conflict.

A 21st Century Vienna Concert

Rossiiskaya Gazeta
June 3, 2015

The year 2015 is a year of many jubilees – 70 years since the Great Victory and the end of the Second World War; 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent unification of Germany; and 40 years since the signing of the Helsinki Final Act and the subsequent creation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Eurasian Way Out of the European Crisis

Russia in global affairs
May 24, 2015

I have already written before that having emerged from the Cold War, Europe lost the post-war peace. The continent is on the verge of strategic degradation that may either become a caricature of military-political division into opposing blocs or a time of disquieting uncertainty. The military-political conflict over Ukraine can escalate as well.

Europe: A Defeat at the Hands of Victory?

Russia in global affairs
February 20, 2015

Having won the Cold War (perhaps largely due to the courage of the Russian people who threw off a communist dictatorship and were prepared to take risks), Europe seems to be losing the peace.