The Monkey Cage

A while ago I recommended Dmitry Gorenburg’s blog on Russian military reform. Since that time, Dmitry has moved into providing interesting analysis of Russian foreign policy more generally. In his most recent post, Dmitry takes on Stratfor’s current series on Expanding Russian Influence. Stratfor’s core argument, according to Dmitry, is that there:

are four countries where Russia feels it must fully reconsolidate its influence: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Georgia. These countries protect Russia from Asia and Europe and give Moscow access to the Black and Caspian seas. They are also the key points integrated with Russia’s industrial and agricultural heartland. Without all four of them, Russia is essentially impotent. So far, Russia has reconsolidated power in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, and part of Georgia is militarily occupied. In 2010, Russia will focus on strengthening its grasp on these countries.

Dmitry’s response:

This analysis is so wrong as to be funny. To say that Russia has reconsolidated its influence in those three countries is to be completely ignorant of current events. Belarus has recently turned away from Russia and is trying to get closer to the EU. Kazakhstan is primarily focused on developing its economy and is turning more and more to China in the economic and even inthe security sphere. And anyone who thinks that Yanukovich will do whatever Russia wants will be sorely disappointed. All signs in Ukraine point to him driving a hard bargain and making Russia pay for what it wants — it won’t be the knee-jerk anti-Russianism of Yushchenko, but he won’t meekly submit either.

I actually very much agree with Dmitry in term of his take on Yanukovich (although see the interesting discussion in the comments section of his post as to whether ijt will be Yanukovich or his advisers calling the shots) and Ukraine, but this does raise a larger point worth discussing. By definition, these “intelligence companies” produce proprietary information that is usually sold at a very high price and, consequently, out of the view of academics and other country experts not associated with corporation that can pay for these sorts of reports. Indeed, the Expanding Russian Influence series is only available to subscribers, and Dmitry was only able to quote from it because it is being reprinted in Johnson’s Russia List.

Now of course these reports are written in many cases by academics or other country experts hired as consultants. I’m not sure how Stratfor produces these reports, but I’m guessing that this is decidedly not a peer review process. And once the reports are written, they are often out of view of the people who study these countries for a living.

I want to set aside the question of whether companies like Stratfor have the right to sell proprietary analysis - of course they do. But much like my earlier criticism of polling companies that don’t release cross-tabs, I think serious questions need to be asked about the quality of these reports. Do they merely reflect one person’s opinion? Would they be more insightful is they were subjected to a wider degree of scrutiny? Perhaps Stratfor could provide a better product of they released their reports to a subset of country experts (like Dmitry) and allowed them to add commentary and assessment of the analysis. Maybe this would even produce a product more valuable to their clients.

Moreover, if Dmitry is correct and the content of this series is laughable, ought we as academics to be concerned about this? As someone who studies Russia for a living, should I be concerned that commercial organizations are releasing poor analyses of Russian foreign policy that will be read by people paying big bucks to see these analyses? I’m not really sure - perhaps it is just none of my business. But if so, is there anything we can do about it? In a sense, this is exactly what led me to write this post: I wanted to give a broader airing to Dmitry’s critique of the series. Whether there is much overlap between people who read Stratfor’s reports and The Monkey Cage, I suppose, is another matter.

Click here to read Dmitry’s full post, which is well worth reading.