Recent and Current Research

Much of my work focuses on Russian foreign and security policy. Most recently, my analysis of Russia’s reaction to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 and its ongoing relations with Israel and Iran was published in the Fall 2024 issue of The Washington Quarterly. I also gave congressional testimony about Russian military and economic interests and influence in Latin America and the Caribbean (July 2022, written testimony here), and earlier wrote about Russia's overall aims in Africa in The Washington Quarterly.

I have explored in great depth Russia's relationship with NATO and NATO enlargement: in a 2023 edited volume chapter (an updated version of my earlier article in International Politics), and in the European Journal of International Security, an H-Diplo International Security Studies Forum roundtable, and a report commissioned by the Council on Foreign Relations. I analyzed Putin’s 2014 decision to intervene militarily in Ukraine in the Washington Quarterly. I wrote about how Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine posed dangers for NATO in the New York Daily News, analyzed Putin's rationality and the danger of inadvertent escalation in Ukraine in a PONARS-Eurasia policy memo, and discussed Finland's bid to join NATO in ForeignAffairs.com. I participated in a Council on Foreign Relations roundtable event that revisited NATO enlargement in light of Russia's full-scale invasion, and was interviewed about NATO's July 2023 summit and potential membership for Ukraine in Meduza. Earlier, I spoke about the brewing 2022 Russia/Ukraine crisis with Preet Bharara on his Stay Tuned podcast, on WNYC radio's "The Takeaway," and on an expert panel cosponsored by the Saltzman and Harriman Institutes. I then spoke about Russia's full-scale invasion with Amna Nawaz on NPR's 1A, with Hari Sreenivasan on PBS Newshour Weekend, and on Canada's CBC television. I participated in longer panel discussions at Barnard with then-President Sian Beilock and Trustee Steven Solnick, as well as at the Harriman Institute and at SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics.

I have analyzed Russia’s intelligence agencies under Putin (Routledge Handbook of Russian Security and the Journal of Slavic Military Studies), and explained (International Politics) Putin's decision to meddle in the 2016 U.S. elections. Other Russia-related current events analysis has appeared in The New Republic, ForeignAffairs.com, and H-Diplo. I have discussed various aspects of Putin's foreign and security policy on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CBS This Morning Saturday (here and here), the Charlie Rose Show, PBS NewsHour Weekend with Hari Sreenivasan (here, here, here, here, and here), NPR's All Things Considered with Ari Shapiro and Audie Cornish, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, The 1A (here, here, and here) with Joshua Johnson, Here and Now with Robin Young, KQED's Forum, and 17 times on WNYC's The Takeaway, among others.

An additional strand of my work focuses on Russian paramilitary groups, including the Wagner Group and its now-deceased contractor, Yevgeny Prigozhin. My latest update is a PONARS-Eurasia policy memo, published on the June 2024 anniversary of Prigozhin’s mutiny. I wrote a definitive 2019 study of the history and activities of the Wagner Group in Post-Soviet Affairs, and was honored to give congressional testimony twice on these topics (July 2020, written testimony here; and Sept. 2022, written testimony here). I wrote about Prigozhin's June 2023 mutiny in the Guardian. In fall 2023 I analyzed the mutiny, Prigozhin’s death, and what might happen next in Survival (the journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS) and Russia Matters (published by the Kennedy School's Belfer Center at Harvard University), and wrote about other Russian paramilitary groups in the Russian Analytical Digest. In 2024 the CNAS think-tank published my co-written piece (with Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Carisa Nietsche, Nicholas Lokker and Kristen Taylor) on why and how Russia might use similar groups in its own Eurasian neighborhood going forward. I was interviewed about the mutiny, and then later about Prigozhin's death, on CNN Newsroom with Laila Harrak, by Amna Nawaz on PBS Newshour, by the Democracy Now! public television show three times (here, here, and here), on NPR's Here and Now, PRX public radio's The World, NPR's The 1A and The Indicator, Germany's Der Spiegel and DW.com, and Forbes Breaking News video, twice (here and here), among others. I discussed the future of the group on the CNAS Brussels Sprouts podcast and a Brookings Institution panel. I was featured in a Columbia SIPA faculty spotlight, and took part in a SIPA faculty online panel. Earlier I analyzed Wagner's Feb. 2018 confrontation with US forces in Syria (War on the Rocks), the reasoning behind their semi-legal status (Lawfare), and their uses by the Russian state in Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, and Libya, in three additional PONARS-Eurasia memos (here, here and here). In 2022 I spoke about Russia's use of Wagner in its war in Ukraine for BBC World Service radio's The Inquiry (starting at about minute 17).

I also have a continuing research interest in the global politics of climate change. My chapter on geopolitics and security in the changing Arctic was published in a 2023 edited volume of the Routledge Advances in Defence Studies series, which grew out of a conference sponsored by the UK Army and Oxford University (my remarks start at about minute 34.00 here). In a Harriman Institute and Eurasianet podcast I was interviewed about my research on Russian Arctic extractive enterprises and climate change.

Earlier Research and Publications

My previous project analyzed the politics of warlords, asking how their patronage networks impact sovereignty and state failure. In Warlords: Strong-Arm Brokers in Weak States (Cornell University Press, 2012), I traced the development of warlordism and its consequences in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Sunni Arab areas of Iraq, and post-Soviet Georgia and the Republic of Chechnya in Russia. I discussed the book on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show and Wisconsin Public Radio. The book was reviewed in an H-Diplo International Security Studies Forum roundtable. In International Security, I compared warlordism in Afghanistan and Somalia to medieval Europe and Republican-era China. I researched militias and security sector reform in weak states, including work on the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, published in International Peacekeeping and the international edition of the New York Times. My chapter on the Afghan Local Police appears in an edited volume on The Transnational Governance of Violence and Crime, following an earlier opinion piece in the international edition of the New York Times. With Olga Oliker I wrote about the threat of warlordism in Ukraine's patriotic militias in War on the Rocks.

My earlier books include Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation (Princeton, 1993), which received the Marshall Shulman Prize from the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies; Weapons, Culture, and Self-Interest: Soviet Defense Managers in the New Russia (Columbia, 1997); and Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (Columbia, 2004).

Educational and Work History

I earned my A.B. in government in1985 at Harvard University (magna cum laude and with Phi Beta Kappa honors), and Ph.D. in political science in1991 at Stanford University, where I was a member of the Berkeley-Stanford Program in Soviet International Behavior. I was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation; a visiting scholar at Harvard's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies; a visiting scholar at Tokyo's Institute for International Policy Studies (via a Hitachi/Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in Japan); and a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. I have served as chair of the Barnard Political Science Department twice (2006-2009 and 2018-2021), and held the 5-year term Ann Whitney Olin Professorship there from 2013-18. My research has been supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Social Science Research Council/MacArthur Foundation, and the Government of Canada.