Brookings books to better understand Russia and Vladimir Putin
By: Chris McKenna
The past week has featured no shortage of high-profile meetings between President Trump and other heads of state. The latest, a sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin, came just days after 12 Russian intelligence officers were indicted for hacking the Democratic National Committee.
The Brookings Institution Press has published a number of books on Russia, NATO, and President Putin. Here are a few of our recent but timeless picks to help you better understand America’s relationship with Russia and Europe, and how it might change in the near future.
Mr. Putin, by Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy
What does Vladimir Putin want and how far is he willing to go for it? That’s what Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy address in their second edition of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin. Hill and Gaddy identify and dissect six of Putin’s identities — the Statist, History Man, Survivalist, Outsider, Free Marketeer, and the Case Officer — to create a portrait of his worldview and discuss how it has molded contemporary Russian politics.
“Rather than present a chronicle of events in which Putin played a role, we concentrate on events that shaped him. We look at formative experiences of Putin’s past. And where we do examine his actions, we focus on the circumstances in which he acted.” –Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy
Mr. Putin was named of the Financial Times Best Books for Summer 2015. In 2017, Fiona Hill was appointed Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on President Trump’s National Security Council. Read chapter one today and listen to Hill discuss Putin’s identities on The Exchange from NHPR.
Beyond NATO, by Michael O’Hanlon
Is NATO prepared to address questions about its further expansion? Could it incorporate states like Georgia and Ukraine and maintain its integrity? In Beyond NATO: A New Security Architecture for Eastern Europe, Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon suggests expansion has gone far enough and that it’s time for Western nations consider a new method for securing Europe.
O’Hanlon describes how we have “inadvertently built a type of NATO membership doomsday machine that raises the likelihood of conflict in Europe” by promising certain countries eventual membership without plans for how or when that would be accomplished. He also proposes a new security architecture based off permanent neutrality for a number of states, including Georgia, Ukraine, Cyprus, and Serbia, and describes how it would need to be enacted.
Watch O’Hanlon discuss his proposal with Brookings scholars Torrey Taussig and Steven Pifer at a Brookings event held in July 2017.
The New Autocracy, by Daniel Treisman
In The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin’s Russia, editor Daniel Treisman, founding director of the Russia Political Insight project, sets out to create a definitive account of how Putin centralized power and changed the way political decisions are made in Russia. Treisman and other expert authors delve into the Kremlin’s pursuit to control the flow of political information and create an “informational autocracy.” He notes Putin’s tendency to work outside official institutions before comparing him to Hugo Chavez and other dictators that prefer manipulating information to violence, writing: “Rather than killing and imprisoning thousands to inspire fear, they attempt to convince citizens that they are competent and benevolent leaders.”
When fake news and media manipulation dominate political conversations around the world, The New Autocracy should be required reading for anyone who wants to better understand what measures Putin will take to achieve his goals.
Imperial Gamble, Marvin Kalb
Russia’s swift occupation of Crimea in 2014 took the world by surprise and left onlookers wondering what Putin would do next. In Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War, Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Marvin Kalb describes the events that led to that moment and what implications it will have for Ukraine and future power struggles between Russia and the West.
Kalb has also more recently published a book, The Year I Was Peter the Great, on the time he spent as a diplomatic attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1956, a transformative time in Russian history shortly after Joseph Stalin’s death.
American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump, Hal Brands
The United States is arguably facing its most serious security threats since the Cold War, and the foundation of its longstanding foreign policy principles are in question. If Trump’s campaign of resentment toward internationalism is any indication of his policies, what will it mean for American grand strategy and our role in the world order?
In American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump, Hal Brands, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, addresses the most pressing questions about America’s foreign policy framework. Brands’ sharp analysis is not designed to catalog the most infamous tweets of Trump’s presidency, but to provide context on how his worldview will fit into the greater contours of American grand strategy. Focused less on Russia and Vladimir Putin, this book will nonetheless be a necessary guide for interpreting the 45th president and beyond.
Interested in more options of books on Russia and its role in the world? Here are a few additional recommendations:
Russia and the New World Disorder, by Bobo Lo
The Soviet Mind, by Henry Hardy and Isaiah Berlin; Foreword by Strobe Talbott
Russia in Decline, edited by S. Enders Wimbush and Elizabeth M. Portale; foreword by Paul A. Goble
