Ariel Cohen and Richard Ericson have a new paper discussing Russia’s economic crisis and its relations with the United States. I would encourage reading this paper in full as it hits on all the major factors relevant to Russia’s economic situation though I will warn up front that a fair number of you will take exception to their interpretation of some of those factors. In addition there a couple of points that the authors have either overlooked or simply assumed readers would already be aware of that I think are worth spelling out briefly first.

The first has to do with the recommendations the authors make for US policy. I have no major disagreements with the recommendations themselves, but would argue that executing most of them depend on Putin being out of the picture, among other things.

Another point regards the China factor. As I have previously stated elsewhere on this blog, using transparent governance and/or human rights considerations as a negotiating lever with developing countries has decreasing effect in the face of regimes (China in this case) that are willing to make deals without any sort of lip service to such concerns. While Russia clearly needs more than just China’s business to remain afloat, we shouldn’t underestimate how much time such a dynamic can buy for governments the west considers to be less than cooperative.