Foreign Affairs
Edinburgh’s Quest for Independence and the Future of Separatism “The monument to Sir William Wallace stands near the city of Stirling, a castle town not far from the Scottish capital of Edinburgh. On blustery days when the sun peeks through the clouds, the sandstone memorial glows golden and majestic. That is exactly the effect its…
Washington Quarterly (with Daniel Byman)
The rise of phantom states suggests that formal sovereignty has lost some of its caché. What will happen to the foundations of international relations if you can get by just fine by living in a country that nobody believes really exists? “In almost every region of the globe, there is a phantom state hovering like…
The New York Times (with Daniel Byman)
Three years ago this month, Russia and Georgia fought a brief and brutal war over an obscure slice of mountainous land called South Ossetia that had declared its independence from Georgia. Flouting international law, Russia stepped in to defend South Ossetia and later formally recognized the secessionists as a legitimate government. Hundreds died and thousands…
Foreign Affairs (with Rajan Menon)
The empty gymnasium of School No. 1 in Beslan is whipped by winds from the plains of North Ossetia, a republic in Russia’s North Caucasus region. “On September 1, 2004, the first day of classes, masked gunmen entered the elementary school and herded hundreds of children and their teachers onto the indoor basketball court. They…
International Herald Tribune (with Rajan Menon)
When Russian leaders speak of security threats, they tend to mention NATO expansion and the U.S. missile defense program in Eastern Europe “But the unremitting violence in Russia’s North Caucasus region — a sliver of land sandwiched between the Black and Caspian seas and inhabited primarily by Muslims whose lands the Russian Empire conquered in…
The American Interest
The history of Sevastopol illuminates contemporary geopolitical tensions. “The city of Sevastopol lies at the end of a narrow waterway leading inland from the cool waters of the Black Sea. The majestic approach to the city—about three miles long—forms a watery nave leading to the inner sanctum, a deep harbor secreted well away from the…
Washington Post
The tiny village of Ushguli lies in an emerald-green valley in the far north of the Republic of Georgia. “Hemmed in by the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus mountains, it’s a jumble of slate buildings flanking a glacier-fed stream. When I last visited, local elders showed me around the medieval stone towers that dot the…
Foreign Affairs
Managing Moscow After the Georgia Crisis “On August 8, as world leaders gathered in Beijing to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, Russian tanks rolled across the border into Georgia. The night before, Georgian forces had responded to attacks by secessionists in South Ossetia, an ethnic enclave in northern Georgia, by pummeling civilian…