February 27, 2023

An End to the War Doesn’t Mean the End of Putin

Featuring: Andrea Kendall-Taylor

Source: Foreign Policy

Journalist: Amy MacKinnon

Wars, won or lost, rarely unseat strongmen like Putin. A 2016 study by scholars Sarah Croco and Jessica Weeks found that since 1919, authoritarian leaders atop highly personalized regimes largely weathered the wars they fought—no matter how badly.

Wars can even offer protection against elite coups, reinforcing a “hang together or hang separately” mentality, said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who studied the political dynamics of authoritarian regimes as a senior analyst at the CIA.

Read the full story and more from Foreign Policy.

Author

  • Andrea Kendall-Taylor

    Senior Fellow and Director, Transatlantic Security Program

    Andrea Kendall-Taylor is a senior fellow and director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). She works on national security ch...