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Over 30 years after the end of the Cold War, military tensions have returned to Europe. Both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia are boosting their deployments in close proximity to one another and in multiple domains. At the same time, a host of new or dramatically improved conventional capabilities have been fielded, introducing a significant level of uncertainty into the security environment. Meanwhile, political and military-to-military relations are at a post–Cold War low, with communication as the exception, not the norm, and the structure of interaction created by arms control and confidence and security-building measures almost entirely collapsed. Through a combination of interviews, workshops, and structured analysis on the causes of potential conflict, the authors of this report outline new conventional arms control (CAC) measures to lower the risk of conflict in Europe. Although it once served as a cornerstone of European security, the current regional CAC regime is outdated and largely irrelevant to today's challenges. Rather than starting with the existing agreements, the authors begin with an investigation of the catalysts of possible conflict and build arms control policy options on that basis. How might specific changes in behavior, posture, presence, technology, or capabilities — and varying perceptions thereof — drive conflict? What capabilities or combination of capabilities are destabilizing, and why? And what CAC measures could be used to address these risks? The authors use the answers to these questions to suggest a menu of options for a new CAC regime that could address the regional security challenges of the 21st century.

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For decades, the Russian military has been faced with the same problem: how to overcome the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) strategic depth in a time of strategic nuclear parity. In the late Soviet era, this was done by building up massive numbers of ground forces to overcome prepared defenses. In 2008, Russia drastically reduced its land forces in the hopes that long-range strike could compensate for a lack of mass on the ground in a regional war. Russian strategists have since focused on the ways and means through which Russia can conduct offensive actions throughout the entire depth of NATO without large numbers of ground forces. As of 2021, Russia was still reliant to some degree on nonstrategic nuclear weapons (NSNW) for regional warfighting. Recent evidence suggests that Russian planning for regional war is trending toward a unified strategic operation. This notional concept is intended to more effectively organize and allocate Russia's conventional strike and nonkinetic attack capacity as it fills the role of Russian NSNW in regional war over the coming decades. To understand why this trend is occurring, this report examined Russia's evolution toward a unified strategic operation and associated capability development, focusing on four areas: long-range conventional strikes against critical military and civilian targets; electronic warfare (EW) to disrupt NATO command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; counterspace actions; and cyberattacks against critical infrastructure. The primary research for this report was completed in January 2022, before Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The few references to the war in Ukraine were added prior to publication.

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The Black Sea region is a central locus of the competition between Russia and the West for the future of Europe. The region experienced two decades of simmering conflicts even before Moscow's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and Russia has used military force against countries in the region four times since 2008. The Kremlin is seeking to establish a sphere of privileged influence over countries in the region and limit their integration into Euro-Atlantic structures while enhancing Russia's regime stability and improving military capabilities for homeland defense and wider power projection into the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Despite this instability and conflict, U.S. and European officials and analysts have not given nearly as much attention to the region's security challenges as they have to those in Northern Europe. In this report, the authors first assess how Russia is employing a variety of nonmilitary and military instruments to advance its goals. They then consider how the three North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies (Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey) and five NATO partners (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine) in the Black Sea region perceive and are responding to Russia's activities and where those countries' interests align and diverge. Finally, the authors identify possible elements of a Western strategy to protect mutual interests, counter Russian malign influence and aggression, and foster regional stability.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization. --- Rand Corporation. --- 2000-2099 --- Black Sea Region --- Black Sea Region. --- Russia (Federation) --- Politics and government --- Relations --- Strategic aspects.

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By the time it invaded Crimea in 2014, Russia seemed to have regained a significant portion of the military power it lost after the fall of the Soviet Union, reemerging as a perceived threat to democracy. But how capable is Russia of deploying and sustaining ground combat forces farther from its borders? An analysis of notional ground deployment scenarios constructed from real-world, open-source data, along with a review of historical cases spanning the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, reveals strengths and limitations of Russia's military infrastructure. In fact, despite Russia's status as a reemerging global military power, its ground force deployment capability is strong only near its western border and within range of its air defenses. Although it poses a credible threat to Eastern Europe, its ability to deploy ground combat units drops off sharply as geographic distance increases. Limited forces and transportation assets, a lack of international support, and an insufficient ability to sustain its deployed forces also prevent Russia from regaining its Soviet-era deployment capacity. This report presents additional detail on the notional scenarios that informed the analysis of Russian ground force deployment capabilities. The scenarios range from border deployments to long-range overseas deployments and were designed to test the limits of Russia's capacity to deploy forces and equipment. They were not necessarily chosen to reflect the probability or political feasibility of an actual Russian deployment.

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During the initial post-Soviet years, the personnel system of the Russian Armed Forces experienced pervasive challenges because of budget limitations and domestic and international collapse of prestige. Challenges included undermanning and low readiness, poor training quality and lack of funds, lack of military prestige and popular support, hazing, draft evasion, health problems and personnel deferments, military disillusionment, wage issues, criminality and corruption, and desertion. The authors of this report draw on Russian-language sources to examine trends in Russian military personnel policies and initiatives from the 1990s through December 2021, prior to Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Russian personnel policies from 1991 through 2021 sought to mitigate many of the existing problems with the Armed Forces during the implementation of Russia's military reform efforts, especially since 2009. While progress was made in many areas, key challenges remain.