Samuel Charap

@scharap on Twitter

Senior Political Scientist

Washington Office

Education

Ph.D. in political science, University of Oxford; M.Phil. in Russian and East European studies, University of Oxford; B.A. in political science and Russian, Amherst College

One Page Bio

Media Resources

This researcher is available for interviews.

To arrange an interview, contact the RAND Office of Media Relations at (310) 451-6913, or email media@rand.org.

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Overview

Samuel Charap is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. His research interests include the foreign policies of Russia and the former Soviet states; European and Eurasian regional security; and U.S.-Russia deterrence, strategic stability, and arms control.

From November 2012 until April 2017, Charap was the senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Prior to joining the IISS, he served at the U.S. Department of State as senior advisor to the undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security and on the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff, covering Russia and Eurasia. From 2009 to 2011, Charap was director for Russia and Eurasia at the Center for American Progress.

Charap's book on the Ukraine crisis, Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia (coauthored with Timothy Colton), was published in January 2017. His articles have appeared in The Washington Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, Survival, Current History and several other journals.

Charap was a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center and the International Center for Policy Studies (Kyiv), and a Fulbright Scholar at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He is fluent in Russian and proficient in Ukrainian. Charap holds a Ph.D. in political science and an M.Phil. in Russian and East European studies from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He received his B.A. in Russian and political science from Amherst College. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Research Focus

Previous Positions

Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia, IISS; Senior Advisor, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security; Member, Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff

Selected Publications

Samuel Charap and Timothy J. Colton, Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia, Routledge, 2017

Honors & Awards

Marshall Scholarship, Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission
Fulbright Scholarship, U.S. Department of State

Languages

Russian

Recent Media Appearances

Interviews: NPR News

Commentary

Speaking Aloud What NATO Has Left Unsaid Could Help Ease Ukraine-Russia Impasse
A statement that NATO has no intention to offer Ukraine membership at present should only be made in return for a tangible drawdown of Russian forces on the border. It concedes nothing to declare that NATO is not planning to do something it has no intention of doing anyway.
Jan 13, 2022 Financial Times
How Could the United States React to Russia's Latest Posturing on Ukraine?
Russia's military buildup along its border with Ukraine has been accompanied by dramatically tougher rhetoric in recent months. Russian President Vladimir Putin may believe Ukraine is at an inflection point and that it's time to up the ante. The risk of a major war seems real enough to justify a new U.S. approach.
Nov 19, 2021 Politico
Why We Must Talk to Russia
Compromise is the essence of diplomacy, the only way short of coercion, violence, and war of settling international disputes. Before we accept that no compromise with Russia is possible, we should first understand the cost of a new Cold War with Russia that would result.
Jan 2, 2020 Atlantic Council
Can Washington and Moscow Agree to Limit Political Interference?
After his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in May, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia had proposed a mutual non-interference pledge. The concept of elaborating norms of non-interference on a mutual basis might be the best way to stabilize U.S.-Russian relations and prevent the damaging episodes of recent years from happening again.
Jun 13, 2019 War on the Rocks
Book Review: Ukraine and the Art of Strategy by Lawrence Freedman
The crisis in Ukraine has proved a watershed moment for Russia's relations with the West. In Ukraine and the Art of Strategy, Lawrence Freedman presents a brief history of the conflict and analyzes it in the context of strategic theory.
Apr 16, 2019 Foreign Affairs
Time to Make a Deal on Syria
U.S. leverage is much diminished by the Assad regime's recent gains but there are still opportunities for Washington and Russia to achieve a settlement that preserves some U.S. interests. These include maintaining the gains made against the Islamic State and constraining Iranian influence in Syria.
Jul 10, 2018 Foreign Policy
The Ukraine Crisis: Why Everyone Loses
The Ukraine conflict has left every major actor involved worse off than it was before, and a resolution seems as elusive as ever. An inclusive dialogue on the regional order could be the first step toward defusing the conflict.
Apr 19, 2017 Russia Matters

Publications

Report
Stabilizing Great-Power Rivalries
Leveraging theory and historical cases, the authors identify the factors that keep great-power rivalries stable and those that lead to conflictual outcomes and use that framework to assess the current U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China competitions.
Nov 29, 2021
Report
Anticipating Adversary Military Interventions
The authors explore where, how, and how often U.S. adversaries (specifically, Russia, China, and Iran) have intervened militarily since 1946 and identify why these adversaries initiated military interventions and why they might do so in the future.
Sep 27, 2021
Report
Russia's Military Interventions: Patterns, Drivers, and Signposts
Despite Russia's relatively small global economic footprint, it has engaged in more interventions than any other U.S. competitor since 1991. In this report, the authors assess when, where, and why Russia conducts military interventions.
Sep 27, 2021
Report
Russian Grand Strategy: Rhetoric and Reality
What is Russia's declared grand strategy? How do its actions and resource decisions match its declarations? The authors of this report offer answers to these questions and suggest implications for U.S. policymakers.
Aug 16, 2021
Journal Article
Expanding the Scope for Statecraft in U.S. Russia Policy
In the run-up to a summit between the United States and Russia, is it time to revisit core assumptions, and expand the scope for statecraft in U.S. Russia policy?
May 18, 2021
Journal Article
Moscow's Calibrated Coercion in Ukraine and Russian Strategic Culture
This paper analyzes Russia's use of force in Ukraine since the end of major combat operations in February 2015.
Sep 16, 2020
Journal Article
Strategic Sderzhivanie: Understanding Contemporary Russian Approaches to "Deterrence"
This paper argues that viewing Russia's actions through the lens of the concept "sderzhivanie" can help Western analysts and decision-makers better understand the drivers of Moscow's behavior.
Sep 16, 2020
Research Brief
Meeting Europe's 21st Century Security Challenges: Reimagining Conventional Arms Control
The authors of this report outline new conventional arms control measures to lower the risk of conflict in Europe and replace existing, outdated measures.
Apr 29, 2020
Report
A New Approach to Conventional Arms Control in Europe: Addressing the Security Challenges of the 21st Century
Through a combination of interviews, workshops, and structured analysis on the causes of potential conflict, the authors of this report outline new conventional arms control measures to lower the risk of conflict in Europe.
Apr 27, 2020
Report
Understanding Russia's Intervention in Syria
Russia's 2015 military intervention in Syria's civil war took many by surprise. The authors of this report assess where and under what conditions Moscow could intervene again by analyzing the factors that drive Russian decisionmaking on intervention.
Oct 31, 2019
Report
A Consensus Proposal for a Revised Regional Order in Post-Soviet Europe and Eurasia
The authors of this volume offer a proposal for a revised regional order in post-Soviet Europe and Eurasia that would boost security, facilitate prosperity, and address conflicts in the region, and thus reduce tensions in Russia-West relations.
Oct 8, 2019
Report
The Future of the Russian Military: Russia's Ground Combat Capabilities and Implications for U.S.-Russia Competition
Researchers analyze societal, political, economic, and demographic factors that undergird Russian military power. They also make projections about how Russian ground combat capabilities will evolve in the future and how the U.S. Army can respond.
Jun 18, 2019
Research Brief
What Will Russian Military Capabilities Look Like in the Future?
RAND researchers analyzed the development of Russia's military capabilities over the next 20 years -- with a focus on ground combat -- and the implications of that development for U.S.-Russian competition and for the U.S. Army.
Jun 18, 2019
Testimony
The Demise of the INF: Implications for Russia-China Relations
Document submitted on April 9, 2019, to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission as a statement for the record for the hearing on March 21, 2019.
Apr 10, 2019
Report
Rethinking the Regional Order for Post-Soviet Europe and Eurasia
This Perspective proposes a new approach to the regional order in post-Soviet Europe and Eurasia that would foster greater stability in the region and reduce dangerous tensions in Russia-West relations.
Jun 13, 2018
Report
Getting Out from "In-Between": Perspectives on the Regional Order in Post-Soviet Europe and Eurasia
The perspectives collected in these conference proceedings explore alternatives to the current approaches to the regional order for the states "in between" the West and Russia -- Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
Mar 8, 2018

Multimedia

36:59
RAND Experts Discuss the Biden-Putin Summit
Jun 10, 2021
55:20
The Future of U.S.-Russia Relations
Oct 9, 2018