Book talk with Fiona Hill, co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.” Fiona Hill is director of the Center on the United States and Europe, and senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. She is a frequent commentator on Russian and Eurasian affairs, who has researched and published extensively on issues related to Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, regional conflicts, energy, and strategic issues. She is also the co-author of the forthcoming...

Two decades after the end of the Soviet Union, the legacy of Soviet-era oil assets is beginning to run down. The next generation of Russian oil will be more demanding and higher-cost. This has serious implications for the Russian state, which depends on oil revenues as never before. Is there a crisis ahead, or will higher global prices, arctic offshore, and/or US-style ‘tight oil’ come to the rescue? Thane Gustafson is Professor of Government at Georgetown University and IHS Senior Director...

A a lecture by David Holloway, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History at Stanford University. Discussant: Robert Jervis, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor and Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. The first thermonuclear weapons tests (1952-1955) had a profound impact on the political leaders of the three nuclear powers of the time including the Soviet Union, leading them to view a general nuclear war as unacceptable in some profound if ill-defined...

A discussion with five ground-breaking Russian journalists on the future of investigative journalism in Russia and the challenges of working in a country with rapidly expanding government censorship. Panelists: Nataliya Rostova, Senior Correspondent, Slon.ru Elizaveta Osetinskaya, Editor-in-chief, Forbes Magazine, Russian Edition Ivan Ninenko, Deputy Director, Transparency International - Russia; Co-anchor TV program "Corruption on the Rain" Svetlana Reiter, Freelance Journalist and 2013...

China and Russia are giant countries whose recent economic and energy experience could hardly be more different: in the one, unprecedentedly rapid industrialisation has sent its share of world primary energy consumption soaring from 7 to 20 percent since 1985 (overtaking the USA); in the other the collapse of centrally planned industry has reduced its share from 11 to 6 percent during the same period. China has tried to exploit its modest energy endowments sparingly, while forging a...

Thomas F. Remington, Goodrich C. White Professor of Political Science, Emory University. Traditional theories of separation of powers systems have tended to emphasize the likelihood of conflict between president and assembly when a president can use decrees and other unilateral executive powers to bypass the legislature in making policy. More recent treatments have argued that decree-making can represent a tacit delegation of power to a president by parochial legislators confronting...