Research that Informs Practice

"These rapidly evolving technologies are likely to challenge how firms and governments collect, protect, use, and reuse various types of data."

Susan Ariel Aaronson, Director, Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub

"Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It’s going to be both."

Susan Ariel Aaronson, Director, Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub

Diligent researchers with piles of data that is allegedly anonymized can find out a great deal about individuals.

"These companies have way too much data that they can’t protect, but they control the use and reuse of it. That is really worrisome."

Susan Ariel Aaronson, Director, Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub

The war has transformed the field of Russian Studies and post-Soviet/Eurasian Studies, and more broadly impacted the way we look at the international (dis)order and the future of Europe. It has also highlighted the gap between the perceptions of the war by the West and by the Global South, those countries outside of Europe and North America, predominantly low- and middle-income, which refused to follow the United States and Europe in their sanction strategy.

The war has also highlighted how much labels matter: the images of destruction of civilians in Ukraine and the incredible courage of Ukrainians, on one side, has generated waves of international support. On the other side, the Russian army’s violence and preposterous narratives on Ukraine’s illegitimacy as a state and a nation have resulted in the rise of analogies of Putin being Hitler, and of Russia being fascist.

“Labels produce a smokescreen that reduces our analytical tools and create a false causality"

But such emotional labels tend to obscure more than they help to explain the current geopolitical crisis. Labels produce a smokescreen that reduces our analytical tools and create a false causality, as if the dangerous ideology of the Russian regime could be explained by simply labeling Russian President Putin an irrational fascist.

The obsession with labeling Russia fascist obfuscates many other crucial components. First, even if Russia is obviously solely responsible for launching the war, the strategic deadlock that preceded the invasion was co-created by the West and Russia together: we had three decades of mutual misunderstanding about the security architecture of Europe; of mixed signals sent by the West about the eastern borders of NATO; and Russia’s own revanchist vision on its neighbors’ search for strategic independence. Second, the Russian regime has evolved over the years.

We shouldn’t retroactively project Moscow's attack as inevitable; several futures were possible until very recently. Third, Russian society remains a divided and complex society, which cannot accurately be defined as fascist.

The regime has been able to secure only passive support from the majority of its citizens. To obtain this tepid support it has to hide the war, the casualties, and cannot mobilize men for fear of generating mass dissatisfaction. Young people are particularly opposed to the war. The regime did become more authoritarian, personalistic, isolationist, and repressive—but it isn’t fascist, because it lacks a totalitarian party or youth organization, the utopian idea of a rebirth of the nation through war and violence, and an authentic mass grassroots fascist dynamic.

We train students to use critical thinking, in particular during highly emotional and complex moments such as the current war, in order for them to develop the ability to exercise independent judgment even under strong media and political pressure.

Classifying Russia as fascist is not only an academic debate about the use and misuse of terminology. There are policy consequences. Drawing comparisons with Nazi Germany is convenient because we know how the history ends and who was on the right side of it.

But it leads us down a hall of distorted historical metaphors that mirror Russia’s own obsessive narrative about the war. It is not necessary to reproduce Putin’s own rhetorical extremism with charges of “fascism,” or to get caught up in circular narratives in order to be on the right side of history in the war against Ukraine.

We train students to use critical thinking, in particular during highly emotional and complex moments such as the current war, in order for them to develop the ability to exercise independent judgment even under strong media and political pressure.

We interpret and explain the multidimensionality of any war, the need to look at historical patterns, missing windows of opportunities, sociocultural background that explain gaps in perceptions, and not only at reductionist depictions of the leader’s personality.

Through this process, students at the Elliott School are better prepared, both intellectually and as future policy makers, to analyze the current international scene as a complex, holistic whole.

History—or interpretations thereof—is regularly in the headlines. Just as the Black Lives Matter movement of recent years in the U.S. and elsewhere has made clear that centuries-old history can still impact the present, there are many ways that history and the lessons people draw from it (or the narratives global leaders legislate about it) matter in our world now.

World leaders and private citizens alike feel compelled to vocalize their views on history, and in the case of some world leaders they have even created historical commissions and backed legislation that prescribes certain historical narratives.

Students need to be prepared to assess the validity and motivation behind historical claims made at home and around the world, and we at the Elliott School of International Affairs are dedicated to providing our students with the necessary skills to do this.

We train the next generation to ask essential questions about historical claims and about what politicians and others may call “lessons of history.”

Understanding the role of history in international affairs and how leaders seek to manipulate historical narratives are key parts of critical thinking for future leaders. We train the next generation to ask essential questions about historical claims and about what politicians and others may call “lessons of history.”

Whose lessons? How do historical narratives relate to power structures in various countries? What evidence is given when historical claims are made? How can you fact check the evidence given? All students in our MA program in International Affairs are required to take History 6030, a course that examines the uses and abuses of history in international affairs. Professors from the History Department teach sections of the class, as does the official Historian of the United States at the Department of State.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping, former president Donald Trump, and many others have attempted to control views of the past, all in an effort to preserve or bolster their own power in the present. Indeed, Putin has insisted that Russian and Ukrainian history is the same and that Ukraine has no separate history. He has gone to war in part to try to force his view on the Ukrainians.

Students benefit from the close ties Elliott School faculty have to the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program and to the National Security Archive (located at GW).

Elliott School students have the option of taking courses on the Cold War and on the history of the Soviet Union, courses that are now essential background to understanding Putin’s war on Ukraine—both to highlight the similarities to these earlier periods but also some key differences.

In addition, students benefit from the close ties Elliott School faculty have to the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program and to the National Security Archive (located at GW), both of which of which have large collections of primary source documents related to the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. Through courses, seminars, guest lectures, and conferences, we also help train graduate students to conduct their own archival research on contemporary history.

In all of these ways, Elliott School students have multiple options to enable them to make sense of the ongoing “history wars” in the U.S. and around the world.