Strategic Studies Institute

Civil-military Relations in Medvedev's Russia Strategic Studies Institute

On January 25-26, 2010, the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) organized a conference entitled, ?Contemporary is¬sues in International Security.? This was the second in what is hoped will be annual conference bringing together U. S., European, and Russian scholars and experts to discuss such issues in an open forum. The panel presented here was devoted to civil-military relations in Russia. This is, as the papers included here show, a critical topic in understanding the domestic and foreign policy trajectories of the Russian state. The papers provided here do not deny that civilian control exists. But they both show how highly undemocratic, and even dangerous, is the absence of those democratic controls over the military and the police forces in Rus¬sia which, taken together, comprise multiple militaries. These papers present differing U. S. and European assessments of the problems connected with civilian and democratic controls over the possessors of force in the Russian state and should stimulate further reflection upon these issues and those related to them.