In the most detailed study to date of the emerging international political economy of the former Soviet Union, Economic Interdependence in Ukrainian-Russian Relations analyzes the intractable economic dilemmas facing Russia's neighbors, and shows how economic interdependence has become the key axis for the pursuit of power politics in the region. Ukraine's quest for complete political autonomy from Russia is in tension with the deep economic interdependence between the two countries, and Ukraine's leaders have found that pursuit of three key goals—sovereignty, prosperity, and security—often conflict with one another. While the years since independence have seen Ukraine consolidate its sovereignty, prosperity remains elusive and there remains no long-term strategy for maintaining Ukraine's political economy.

Explores the emerging political economy of the former Soviet Union.

D'Anieri explores the long-term dynamics of international conflict between Ukraine, Russia and the West, revealing the historic roots of the conflict over Ukraine. He demonstrates how the security dilemma, the impact of democratization on geopolitics, and the incompatible goals of a post-Cold War Europe have led to 'a new Cold War'.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has transformed relations between Russia and the West into what many are calling a new cold war. The West has slowly come to understand that Russia's annexations, interventions and support for anti-EU populists emerge from Vladimir Putin's belief that Russia is at war with the West.

In light of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and destabilization of Ukraine, West-Russia relations have so dramatically deteriorated that talk of a new Cold War has become routine. NATO’s role in Europe is again in the spotlight, with experts and policymakers pondering whether the Alliance needs to go back to its historical roots and re-calibrate itself as an instrument of defence from and containment of Russia. At the same time, cooperation between Russia and the West has not collapsed altogether coordinate on issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme. Clearly, tensions over Ukraine are so strong that the risk of a breakdown in relations cannot be ruled out. The contributions to this volume, the result of an international conference jointly organized by the Istituto Affari Internazionali and the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, analyze the dramatic shift in Europe’s strategic context and explore the question of whether Russia and the West can contain tensions, manage competition, and keep cooperating on issues of mutual concern.

Co-winner of the 2009 SUNY Press Dissertation/First Book Prize in Women's and Gender Studies, Imagining Russia uses U.S.–Russian relations between the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a case study to examine the deployment of gendered, racialized, and heteronormative visual and narrative depictions of Russia and Russians in contemporary narratives of American nationalism and U.S. foreign policy. Through analyses of several key post-Soviet American popular and political texts, including the hit television series The West Wing, Washington D.C.'s International Spy Museum, and the legislative hearings of the Freedom Support Act and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, Williams calls attention to the production and operation of five types of "gendered Russian imaginaries" that were explicitly used to bolster support for and legitimize U.S. geopolitical unilateralism after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, demonstrating the ways that the masculinization of U.S. military, political, and financial power after 1991 paved the way for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.