From the AGI Bookshelf: The Limits of Partnership
Gale Mattox
Senior Fellow; Director, Foreign & Security Policy Program
Dr. Gale A. Mattox is Director of the Foreign & Security Policy Program at AICGS and a Professor in the Political Science Department at the U.S. Naval Academy. She is a former elected department chair and chair of chairs, and was awarded the Distinguished Fulbright-Dow Research Chair at the Roosevelt Center in the Netherlands 2009, Fulbright Scholar for NATO Strategic Studies in Brussels in Summer 2017, and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellow in 2016-17. Dr. Mattox served on the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State, was a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow at the State Department Office of Strategic and Theater Nuclear Policy, and an International Affairs Analyst at the Congressional Research Service.
She has been a Bosch Fellow in Germany (also Founding President of the Bosch Alumni Association), NATO Research Fellow, and a Fulbright PhD Scholar. Dr. Mattox has held the offices of President (1996-2003) and Vice President of Women in International Security (WIIS); Adjunct Professor, Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University; and served as Vice President of the International Studies Association and co-chair of the ISA Women’s Caucus.
She has served on numerous boards, including the Tactical Advisory Council, Center for Naval Analysis, and the George Marshall Center Advisory Board in Germany; the advisory boards of St. Mary’s College Women’s Center, the Forum for Security Studies at the Swedish National Defense University, and WIIS. Dr. Mattox published Coalition Challenges in Afghanistan: The Politics of Alliance with S. Grenier, Enlarging NATO: The National Debates with A. Rachwald, and Evolving European Defense Policies with C. Kelleher. She is the co-editor of Germany in Transition, Germany at the Crossroads, and Germany Through American Eyes, and has published widely in scholarly journals. She holds numerous awards and has appeared on the Lehrer News Hour and other media outlets. She holds a PhD from the University of Virginia.
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Dr. Angela E. Stent in The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2014) has written an important contribution to our understanding of the U.S.-Russian relationship and the persistent difficulties in calibrating that relationship. She surveys the four resets between the United States and Russia and addresses six major sets of issues that have challenged the two sides: the nuclear legacy (arms control, missile defense); WMD nonproliferation efforts (Iran, North Korea); the post-Soviet space (Ukraine, Central Asia); European security (NATO enlargement, the Balkans, security architecture); the Arab world and its uprisings; and the Russian domestic situation (Chechnya, North Caucasus), including democracy and human rights. The Limits of Partnership explores each of these sets of issues in depth and from the perspective of an author with experience at a high level, advising both the Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations as one of the country’s most respected Russian experts. Invited for over a decade to small discussion rounds with Vladimir Putin, Stent has observed U.S.-Russian relations up close and brings a unique and incisive perspective to the subject that also reflects her academic credentials as director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies at Georgetown University.
A central premise of the book and major contribution to the field and the literature is the contrast in the importance accorded to the United States by Russia, which is considerably greater than importance accorded to Russia by the United States. This disparity in the two countries’ priorities has impacted the relationship in almost all of the major sets of issues. Her review of the attempts to forge closer ties only to fail repeatedly is fascinating for the reader, particularly in her depiction of a Putin regime “resentful of American dominance and determined to restore Russia’s great power status.” Well-researched and written, the book provides a fascinating chronological discussion of the ebb and flow of the relations between the former Cold War superpowers and the distinctive nature of those relations with each U.S. administration. A chapter devoted to economics and energy expands on her earlier work and explores the difficulties even in this less political arena to strike an even keeled balance between the two countries.
Although the focus of the book is the U.S.-Russia partnership, Europe is clearly critical to the challenges faced in that partnership. Stent’s expertise on Europe broadly and Germany specifically make The Limits of Partnership a must-read for those interested in the central role of not only U.S.-Russian relations, but also the role of Europe in the relationship. Professor Stent brings her considerable knowledge of Europe and Germany to the new book—see also her also excellent earlier book Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse and the New Europe. The discussion of the Medvedev-proposed European Security Treaty in 2009 represents just one of several issues supporting Stent’s argument that while cooperation with Russia has been workable on a number of practical levels—counter-narcotics, anti-piracy, search and rescue, and others—fundamental differences have meant that substantial Russian cooperation with the United States as well as Europe has proved elusive and limited.
Stent, Angela E. The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2014). Her previous book Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse and the New Europe may also be purchased on amazon.com.
