Intro text. Who is this guy? What is this site? what do I do next?
Latest Work
Introduction to the Источники project
What are the sources of nuclear deterrence strategy for the Russian Federation national security enterprise?
It is not sufficient to argue that we cannot know because it is all a secret held in the impenetrable, red-walled castle of Putin’s mind. Nor that it is spelled out unambiguously in declaratory statements from the ministry of defense. Counting RT-2PM Topols will only lull you to sleep and get you no closer to why they deploy what they deploy.
Comprehensive interdisciplinary study will generate a wider variety of explanations or predictions of behavior. We can capture viewpoints through different disciplinary lenses, include the overlapping and non-overlapping domains each discipline privileges in its research, and most importantly consider intersections or interactions between systems.
Are Russia and Ukraine Cooperating? The Black Sea Grain Initiative
Why would Russia and Ukraine sign a deal to allow grain shipments while they are at war? What happened? Possibly as early as a week
Is Sderzhivanie a nuclear strategy concept or not: Reading Charap’s essay
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is not necessarily an утку. Samuel Charap’s essay Strategic Sderzhivanie: Understanding Contemporary Russian
Editing a glossary of sociolinguistic terms for the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences
One of my most rewarding opportunties was aworking with Dr. Aisa Bitkeeva, a sociolinguist and “Leading Researcher, Research Center on Ethnic and Language Relations” at the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences. Initially she asked me to read and edit some English journal articles for Sociolinguistica, but I’m not sure they were used, and we pivoted pretty quickly to a much different piece of work.
About copywriting and production of Folklorica
For four years, I assisted Dr. Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby with the production and distribution of Folklorica, the Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association.
Leading an Exchange Program Redesign
In 2020, I took responsibility for requesting visa eligibility documents for South Korean applicants to a twelve-year international exchange program in a university graduate department. As I was learning the application process, COVID-19 was grinding international exchange to a halt.
Evaluating The International Atomic Energy Agency
If you had walked out of the signing of the United Nations Charter on June 26th, 1945 and taken a bicycle ride south and then east along US40 for roughly six hours per day, in three weeks you could have shown up in Socorro, New Mexico on July 16th to witness the first ever detonation of a nuclear weapon.
What is Counter-Proliferation Finance?
The efforts to use explicit sanctions on banks, companies and individuals is new, and has introduced a new field of transnational economic statecraft: counter-proliferation finance.
Buying a Russian S-400 Triumf Air Defense System
In September of 2017 Turkey signed a $2.5 billion contract to buy S-400 Triumf air defense systems from Russia. The US was none-too-pleased with the news and voiced disdain for the purchase repeatedly. What was the big deal?
How hard is it to get a sense of the Russian Armed Forces budget data?
It’s not very hard to get a number, or a couple numbers. I found close to a dozen sources that would state a budget or a spending number. Those are not necessarily the same thing.