Vladimir Putin enjoyed a successful 2020 despite a slate of setbacks to his agenda. New constitutional amendments will allow him to rule the Russian state for life. Putin manipulated the crisis in Belarus to gain leverage over that country and successfully expanded Russian military ties to several other states in the former Soviet Union. He exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to fuel disinformation campaigns against the United States and undermine sanctions imposed on Russia by the West. These successes came amid milder setbacks for Putin’s ambitions in the Balkans and Ukraine. The collapse in oil and gas prices ravaged the fuel-driven Russian economy but failed to derail Putin’s campaigns. On this episode of Overwatch, ISW Russia Team Lead Mason Clark and George Barros discuss Putin and the Kremlin’s biggest successes and setbacks in 2020.

A civil war between Ethiopia’s central government and one of its regional states threatens security across East Africa. Ethiopia is Africa’s second-most populous country and a US security partner; the humanitarian and security consequences of this domestic conflict have already begun to affect the surrounding region. The fighting has pushed refugees into Sudan, drawn in fighters from Eritrea, and created fertile ground for militant groups like Al-Shabaab to recruit and expand. On this episode of Overwatch, Jessica Kocan, an analyst from the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, discusses the Ethiopian conflict and the dangers it poses to US national security interests and the surrounding region. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the global order and reshaping the balance of power on the world stage. The lessons that nations and their militaries take from this crisis will shape their capacity to adapt to COVID-19 and enhance their resilience to future crises. Elsa Kania, ISW’s Non-Resident Fellow in Indo-Pacific Security, recently published a detailed report examining China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Chinese state and military’s coordinated nationwide response to the COVID-19 pandemic tested their national defense mobilization and civil-military fusion strategies. These are the capabilities China would use to move from peacetime to wartime in response to potential future crises and conflicts, including with the United States and its allies. Elsa discusses her assessment of these newly revealed capabilities and more on this episode of Overwatch.

The United States holds enormous power and responsibility in the world. With the US presidential transition underway, ISW President Kim Kagan sat down with Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster (US Army, ret.) to discuss the many challenges facing the United States, including the pernicious effect of Chinese military diplomacy and the threat from Iran. McMaster argues that US troop deployments, and other forms of engagement abroad, "are immensely important to sustaining our security and prosperity" and that the US must savvily modernize its armed forces. McMaster outlines his view of the strategic successes and failures of the Obama and Trump administrations and his recommendations for President-elect Biden and his team. H.R. McMaster served as national security advisor from 2017 to 2018 and is the author of the recently published book Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World.

The recent local elections in Ukraine were an important political battleground in Putin’s contest to restore Kremlin-friendly rule and annex territory in that country, the objective behind his 2014 invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin’s costly military operations failed to achieve their desired political outcome, resulting instead in a protracted war between Ukrainian armed forces and Russian proxies occupying eastern Ukraine and sophisticated political and information warfare aimed at shaping Kyiv’s government. The Kremlin recently sought to manipulate local elections in Ukraine to legitimize Russian proxies in Donbas, the territory they occupy in eastern Ukraine, and include its electorate within Ukraine itself. On this episode of Overwatch, ISW Russia Team member George Barros discusses the outcome of Ukraine’s recent elections; the Kremlin’s techniques to attempt to influence Ukrainian elections; and the integration of military, political, and information operations in Russia’s hybrid war against its neighbor.