Russian navy shifts strategic focus with China in mind

I’m off to Russia again this week, for a conference on the Russian military. I’ll blog about the conference next week, but in the meantime, here’s an Oxford Analytica brief I wrote on Russian naval missions. This is from February 2011. – SUBJECT: Navy rearmament and the implications for its missions and strategy. SIGNIFICANCE: Recent [...]

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Is the Mistral deployment to the Pacific a dagger aimed at the heart of the US Pacific Fleet?

I suppose I should not be surprised that the professional fearmongers would not be fazed by the announcement that the Russian navy will deploy the first two Mistrals to the Pacific Fleet. Since a good chunk of the commentariat had spent well over a year arguing that placing these ships in Russian hands would destabilize [...]

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Mistrals to the Pacific

Russian news services reported yesterday that both of the first two Mistral ships to be built for Russia in France will be stationed in the Pacific fleet. Previous reports had suggested that just one would go to the Pacific. This announcement was made in the context of rising tensions with Japan over the disputed Kuril [...]

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What will the navy do with its ships?

Surprisingly, developments in the Russian military have continued apace over the last two months while I’ve been more or less away from writing new material. Now I’m back and at some point will write about some of the things I learned about Caspian security. But first, I came across a very interesting analysis of likely [...]

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