September 11 and the Challenge of Integrating Russia into the West

The events of September 11, 2001, have triggered a significant rethinking of international security priorities in major states that has not occurred since the end of the Cold War. Clearly, the major security challenges for the United States, western Europe, and Russia have shifted toward “soft” security issues such as international terrorism and transboundary crime that traditional military means could have difficulty meeting. The source of various challenges to western security may have also shifted geographically to a huge belt beginning at Casablanca and stretching toward the Isle of Mindanao and the Korean peninsula. The challenges emerging from that belt are both quite traditional, like situation in the Taiwan Strait, and new, like the most acute task of fighting the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. […]

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