Stephen Blank

10 Posts Found
A View from Russia

Russian policy and influence are failing across Asia. Russian analysts, if not the regime, know this and have long warned about it even if they must do so […]

Europe’s Threat Assessments of Russia and China

European governments, NATO, the EU, and the G7 all identify China and Russia as threats; however, an analysis of threat assessments reveals a mix of unity and diversity. […]

Military Aspects of the Russo-Chinese Alliance: A View from the United States

Recent official US statements postulate Sino-Russian enmity towards the US.1 Moreover, they rightly highlight an unprecedentedly close alignment of these two states against the US.2  In other words […]

US-Russia Relations

The unanticipated outbreak of a Korean peace process replete with unprecedented DPRK-US and inter-Korean summits has upended previous calculations among all the members of the six-party process in […]

Negative Scenario II

Moscow continues to pursue irreconcilable policies globally and in Asia. As Anna Kireeva has written, Russian writers, if not the government, highlight an allegedly irreconcilable Sino-American rivalry to […]

The Negative Scenario I

Donald Trump’s election to the presidency generated numerous articles expecting or advocating a rapprochement or even a “grand bargain” with Russia. This reaction reflected Trump’s many favorable campaign […]

Sino-Russian Relations and the Failure of Russo-Japanese Relations

As Sino-Russian relations drew closer after Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, Russo-Japanese relations also seemed to be poised for an upward trajectory. Given the troubled […]

Making Sense of the Russo-North Korean Rapprochement

Although the six-party process about North Korean nuclearization is moribund if not dead, ongoing informal discussions among those parties are robust and ever evolving. Because these multi-party relationships […]

Russo-Chinese Relations in Strategic Perspective

Russian and Chinese leaders regularly profess an ever-growing congruence of interests and ever-increasing economic, political, and even military cooperation. According to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in October 2013, […]

Cold War in Asia? China, Russia, and Asian Security

Although the Cold War ended by 1991, commentators, experts, and others repeatedly invoke this metaphor at any sign of great power tension. 1 Since the United States and […]