The world can be relieved that Russia did not use this fall’s Zapad 2017 military exercise as a pretext for aggression or to permanently base troops in Belarus, as many analysts feared before the event. Much has been written about the exercise, most of it focusing on competing claims regarding its size and purpose. What has received less attention is a more fundamental and longer-term concern: the way Zapad fits a longstanding pattern of non-transparent Russian military exercises that destabilize regional security by seeking to dodge confidence-building commitments Moscow has made in Europe.
Western concerns about the possible size and purpose …read more
Beyond Zapad 2017: Russia’s Destabilizing Approach to Military Exercises
