RUSSIAN MILITARY
In the early 2000s, Putin agreed to reinstate the Soviet-era Red Star as the symbol of military in Russia and brought back the Soviet-ea red banner as the military flag. Russian military strategy has traditionally been determined by: 1) the belief that all war is total war, and everything must be done to win; 2) the willingness of take make more casualties than would be tolerated in the West: and 3) where the enemy is concerned, shoot first and ask questions later.
The main branches of Russia’s armed forces are the ground forces, navy, air forces, and strategic deterrent forces. In 2005 Russia had 1,027,000 active military personnel and about 20 million reservists. Of the active-duty personnel, about 250,000 were conscripts. The number of women has increased since contract service was introduced; estimates of their numbers varied from 115,000 to 160,000. Some 395,000 personnel were in the army, 142,000 in the navy (including 35,000 in naval aviation), 160,000 in the air forces, and 80,000 in the strategic deterrent forces, whose total manpower of 129,000 also included 38,000 air force and 11,000 navy personnel. About 40,000 of the strategic deterrent forces were classified as strategic missile force troops. Another 250,000 active personnel were designated for command and support duties. [Source: Library of Congress, October 2006 **]
Russia has an ongoing military reform program that is to include streamlining and professionalization of all units—goals widely recognized as necessary to meet Russia’s post- Soviet military needs at a time when the military manpower pool is diminishing. However, troop dissatisfaction and low funding have hampered expansion of this program beyond individual units. Reforms also may rearrange the military districts and the status of the main branches. The Chechnya conflict, which decreased in intensity in 2006, damaged morale throughout the military and exposed planners’ inability to adapt existing doctrine to nonconventional combat. **
Domestic ground forces are divided into six military districts: Moscow, Leningrad, Volga, North Caucasus, Siberian, and Far Eastern. The navy is divided into four fleets (Northern, Black Sea, Pacific, and Baltic) and the Caspian Sea Flotilla. A new military doctrine was scheduled to replace the existing (2002) doctrine in 2007, enumerating more precisely Russia’s national security position and the threats to it. **
Books and Sources: Richard F. Staar's “The New Military in Russia” from the 1990s evaluates recent policy shifts and prospective changes of doctrine. Jane's Defence Weekly and Jane's Intelligence Review provide articles on specific issues of military policy. The annual The Military Balance contains detailed listings of force strength, weaponry, and deployment, and the annual World Defence Almanac addresses the same information with background on treaties such as START I and START II. The journals Military Technology and Defense News articles on the Russian defense industry and arms trade.
Defense Spending in Russia
Military expenditures: 3.49 percent of GDP (2014); 3.18 percent of GDP (2013) 2.92 percent of GDP (2012); 2.71 percent of GDP (2011); country comparison to the world: 16. [Source: CIA World Factbook =]
Russia’s military outlays, particularly allocations among defense subcategories, are difficult to assess. Reportedly, the 2005 budget increased direct military spending by 28 percent over the 2004 total. Overall, between 2002 and 2005 estimated defense budgets increased from US$8.4 billion to US$17.7 billion. However, experts see drastic increases in the early 2000s as compensation for the substantial underfunding of the military in the late 1990s. Russia’s high inflation also plays a role in the nominal increases. The military budget for 2006, calling for US$22.3 billion, was 25 percent larger than its predecessor, with a stronger emphasis on research and development and acquisition of arms and equipment. The 1997 defense budget was about US$19 billion. [Source: Library of Congress, October 2006 **]
However, reorganization of national budget classifications in 2005 added some new types of expenditures to the traditional national defense categories. Among the latter, another US$4.5 billion was budgeted in 2006 for support functions such as military housing, health, and education. The draft budget for 2007 called for an increase of 23 percent in military spending, to US$30.4 billion. Increases targeted arms purchases, research and development, and a 10 percent pay raise for military personnel. **
In 1999, Russia spent $4 billion on defense, compared to $260 billion in the United States. The Russian budget works out to $4,000 per member compared to $180,000 per member in the United States. In 2005, with government flush with oil money, Russia increased it defense budget 27.6 percent on $19 billion, still small compared to the U.S. military budget of $417.5 billion the same year. In Russia, maintenance and salaries are far below required levels. Anti-inflationary budget restraints has caused dissension among ministries and continued military morale decline.
Of the 1996 defense budget of about US$19 billion (the amount is higher than 1999 in part because of the collapse of the ruble in 1998), about 16 percent, or about US$3.0 billio), was allocated to acquisitions, and 7.3 percent, or about US$1.4 billio), was earmarked for research and development (R&D). Russia's 1995 budget had allocated 10.2 percent to R&D and 21.2 percent to acquisitions. By comparison, the 1996 United States budget for the Department of Defense totaled US$249 billion, of which US$39 billion (15.7 percent) was designated for acquisitions and US$34 billion (13.7 percent) for R&D. In February 1996, the Security Council allocated between US$10 to US$11 billion to fund additional state orders from the MIC, including money for accelerated R&D and production of advanced weapons systems. This supplementary, targeted allocation represented a significant increase over the allocations for 1994 (US$2 billion) and 1995 (about US$3.4 billion), indicating a possible redirection of resources to R&D even as the military operating budget remained flat. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
Soviet-Era Military
The Soviet military earned society's gratitude by its performance in the Great Patriotic War (as World War II is commonly called in Russia), a costly but unified and heroic defense of the homeland against invading Nazi armies. In the postwar era, the Soviet military maintained its positive image and budgetary support in good part because of incessant government propaganda about the need to defend the country against the capitalist West. Soldiers often engaged in non-military duties such as harvesting potatoes. [Source: Glenn E. Curtis, Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
Young men generally had to serve a year or more in the armed forces when they were 18 or 19 after they finished their secondary education. Young men were required to serve two years in the Soviet Army. Many managed to bribe their way out or never reported. In some cases the military service lasted from 3½ to 5 years College students receive deferments until they graduated. Engineers and scientist were exempt from military service. University graduates were trained as officers.
In the Communist era, a military career was highly sought after. Soldiers were relatively highly paid and officers were given special privileges. There were special military schools for boys that prepared them for careers as officers. The slabs of medals pinned onto the uniforms of Soviet military men are called "icon screens" by cynics. Thompson observed one high ranking man with 18 rows of medals. World War II era soldiers display their medals in public when ever they get the chance.
The Soviet military presence was very large. By some estimates 90 percent of Soviet industry had ties with the military. But soldiers in the Soviet army often led a pretty grim life and were treated with indifference or disgust by the locals, especially in eastern Europe. Soldiers often didn't wear their uniforms when they are off duty because people look down on the military.
Post-Soviet Russian Military
In the 1990s, the direction of change in the Russian armed forces is toward a smaller and more defense-oriented force almost entirely deployed within the borders of Russia. As of mid-1996, that change was occurring faster than military or civilian leaders could manage. The result was a large armed force with too many officers and not enough enlisted personnel, one unable to provide adequate training, and, according to Russian and Western experts, deficient in purpose and direction. The military leadership remained in the hands of holdovers from the Soviet regime who had failed to adjust to new political and military realities. The force's one strength lay in the sheer numbers of its personnel and the size of its equipment inventory. The performance of Russia's armed forces in the Chechnya conflict provided a glimpse of the capabilities of Russian ground and air forces. The image is not an impressive one, particularly if evidence on training and force morale is considered. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
Although by 1996 Russia's armed forces were less than one-third the size they reached at their Cold War peak in the mid-1980s, there still was a need for large numbers of personnel who were appropriately matched to their assigned duties and who could be motivated to serve conscientiously. The issue of gradually replacing Russia's ineffectual conscription system with a volunteer force has brought heated discussion in the defense establishment. The semiannual draft, which has set about 200,000 as its regular quota, has been an abysmal failure in the post-Soviet era because of evasion and desertion. In May 1996 Yeltsin unexpectedly proposed the filling of all personnel slots in the armed forces with contract personnel by 2000. In 1996 some units already were more than half staffed by contract personnel, and an estimated 300,000 individuals, about 20 percent of the total nominal active force, were serving under contract. At that time, more than half of new contractees were women. *
But the main obstacle to achieving goal of an all-volunteer armed forces is funding. To attract competent contract volunteers, pay and benefits must be higher than those offered to conscripts. Already in early 1996, a reported 50,000 contract personnel had broken their contracts because of low pay and poor housing, and many commanders expressed dissatisfaction with the work of those who remained. In mid-1996 a final decision on the use of volunteers awaited discussion in the State Duma and a possible challenge in the Constitutional Court. *
Soviet Military Doctrine
In the Soviet era, the Ministry of Defense and its General Staff officers played a central role in the formation of national security policy because of their monopoly of defense information. The Soviet Union's first military doctrine was based on the teachings of Vladimir I. Lenin about defense of the socialist homeland and on the military theories of Civil War general Mikhail Frunze. Starting in the early 1920s, doctrine underwent a series of changes in response to geopolitical and economic conditions. After World War II, Stalin introduced the concept of two mutually irreconcilable international coalitions — the capitalist and the socialist — that inevitably would come into armed conflict. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
In the 1950s, the Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons added a new dimension to Stalin's postwar concept of a massive, combined-arms struggle on the fields of Europe. Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev (in office 1953-64) saw adequate nuclear deterrence as a guarantee that socialism would be able to advance in peace toward its inevitable triumph. Based on that theory, he shifted support from conventional forces to a new military group, the nuclear-armed strategic rocket forces. However, in this period the Soviet military establishment argued for the use of nuclear weapons in fighting, rather than preventing, a war — including the initiation of nuclear attack. In the 1960s, that idea was refined with the addition of small-scale nuclear strikes and a renewed emphasis on conventional warfare. By 1970 the doctrine envisioned two major possibilities: an entirely conventional war or a nuclear war fought between the Soviet Union and the United States solely in Western and Central Europe. *
In the 1970s and the 1980s, military thinkers continued to question the military efficacy of nuclear weapons, although official doctrine assumed that the Soviet Union could win a nuclear war. In this period, the concept of a nonnuclear, high-technology global war, advanced by Chief of the General Staff Marshal Nikolay Ogarkov, attracted substantial support. By the late 1980s, military doctrine had begun to evolve toward a defensive concept of "reasonable sufficiency" of military force to ensure national security but not to initiate offensive operations. At the behest of the Soviet Union, in 1987 the Warsaw Pact officially adopted a defense-oriented military doctrine and called for reductions in conventional arms in Europe. *
Post-Soviet Russian Military Doctrine
In Russia military doctrine is the official formulation of concepts on the nature of present and future war and the nation's potential role, given existing or anticipated geopolitical conditions. In the late 1980s, the military doctrine of the Soviet Union underwent a dramatic change toward defensive readiness before the dissolution of the union. After inheriting the unfinished transition of that period, Russia struggled to develop a suitable new set of concepts in the 1990s. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
After 1991 many senior officers in the armed forces continued to view military coercion as the main instrument for preventing the other side from gaining in foreign policy disputes. In the early 1990s, most of the military establishment appeared to back both an assertive stance in the near abroad, where the Soviet military had exercised substantial influence through its military districts and played a role in local politics, and a less conciliatory relationship with the West. Some reformist elements of the military, mainly junior officers, rejected these views, and local military leaders sometimes seemed to act independently of their ministry in such areas of the near abroad as Moldova and Abkhazia, Georgia's breakaway autonomous republic. More often, the military leadership was united on actions having foreign policy repercussions, such as their advocacy of violating CFE Treaty limitations on military equipment deployed in the Caucasus region.
Although it is verbose and highly theoretical, the 1993 military doctrine contains important indicators of policy under various scenarios. The official Russian definition of military doctrine is "a nation's officially accepted system of scientifically founded views on the nature of modern wars and the use of armed forces in them, and also on the requirement arising from these views regarding the country and its armed forces being made ready for war." Military doctrine answers these five basic questions for the Russian armed forces: Who is the enemy in a probable war? What is the probable character of a war, and what will be its aims and tasks? What forces will be necessary to fulfill these tasks, and what direction will military development follow? How should preparation for war be carried out? What will be the means of warfare? *
The demise of the Soviet Union made the formulation of a new military doctrine to replace that of the Gorbachev regime an obvious necessity. However, urgent political questions delayed the onset of deliberation on a new doctrine until May 1992. From that time, completion of the doctrine required seventeen months, much of which was filled with acrimonious debate. In November 1993, the final version was approved by the Russian Federation's Security Council and signed by President Boris N. Yeltsin as Decree Number 1833. *
The full doctrine includes three main sections, entitled political principles, military principles, and military-technical and economic principles. From 1993 until 1996, the primary goal was to restructure and reduce the armed forces as units were withdrawn from locations outside Russia. The remaining four years would be devoted to conversion from a purely conscript personnel base to a mixed (conscript and voluntary) system, together with the creation of a new military infrastructure. *
Political Principles of the Russian Military
The first main section of the doctrine describes the Russian Federation's attitude toward armed conflicts, and how the armed forces and security troops are to be used in them. It defines what the Russian Federation perceives as the military danger to it, the sociopolitical principles supporting military security, and national policy for ensuring military security. The underlying goal of the principles is to maintain domestic and international political stability on the borders while the Russian Federation is consolidating itself. In describing this goal, the doctrine makes no reference to defending an ideology or the gains of previous years, as was standard practice in all Soviet military doctrines. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
Peace on the borders, especially in and among the newly independent republics of the former Soviet Union, is part of the defensive strategy. The only departure from this self-interested approach is a stated willingness to participate in international peacekeeping efforts. In 1996 Russian participation in the Bosnian Peace Implementation Force (IFOR) was justified by this clause in the military doctrine. *
The military doctrine retains no vestige of the international activism that pervaded its Marxist-Leninist antecedents. Resolution of internal Russian economic, political, and social problems is the principal order of business. The only formal international obligations that are recognized are formal treaty obligations of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS); the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), since 1995 known as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE); and those resulting from membership in the United Nations (UN). The document does not refer to the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE Treaty), which in the 1990s is a key constraint on Russia's deployment of military forces in certain areas. *
The paramount goal of this interim doctrine is to protect Russia from attack in the weakened condition in which it has found itself in the 1990s. The principal threats to the Russian Federation are defined as wars and armed conflicts on the Russian borders, the potential employment of weapons of mass destruction against the Russian Federation or on its borders, the buildup of armed forces along Russian borders, or physical attacks on Russian installations or territories. The term "installations" refers to Soviet-era bases in the newly independent former Soviet republics that continue to be garrisoned by Russian troops. (The last Russian troops in Central Europe left Germany in August 1994.)
Russian Military, Technical and Economic Principles
The interim Russian military doctrine sets the primary objective for the armed forces as the prevention, early termination, and containment of military conflict through employment of peacetime standing forces. The principal areas of concern are the territory and property of the Russian Federation, the areas contiguous to its borders, and the threat of nuclear attack by a foreign power. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
Military operations in Chechnya are justified under the paragraph on protection of the territory and property of the Russian Federation. Justification for a continued Russian military presence in the former Central Asian republics derives from the paragraph on protection of areas contiguous to Russian borders, as well as provisions of the CIS treaty. *
Russia reserves the right of first use of weapons of mass destruction, which remain a primary concern of policy makers in the age of nuclear disarmament. This reservation, which is in apparent violation of the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), has been retained nevertheless in response to Russia's uncertainty as to the intentions of the three neighboring states — Belarus, Kazakstan, and Ukraine — that were left with nuclear weapons after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. However, the last nuclear weapons in Kazakstan were destroyed in 1995, the last nuclear weapons left Ukraine in mid-1996, and the last nuclear weapons were scheduled to leave Belarus by the end of 1996 — seemingly eliminating this rationale. Suspicion of the nuclear intentions of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the remaining foundation for the first-use provision of the doctrine. *
The military doctrine's treatment of the military-technical and economic foundations of the armed forces — the process of providing and maintaining modern military hardware — is the aspect that shows the greatest gap between policy and reality. The doctrine describes a policy of preserving a military-industrial base capable of manufacturing modern military equipment in quantity. It also describes a ten- to fifteen-year research, development, testing, and evaluation cycle for new weapons. In the mid-1990s, only a very fragmentary commitment to those goals was visible in Russia's assignment of spending priorities. At the very least, defense policy has delayed until after the turn of the century a large share of the acquisition costs and demands on the national industrial base that such a commitment would involve. At that point, a new military doctrine probably will address the issue of technological and economic support. *
Addressing Threats to Russian National Security
The 1996 report lists four major threats to Russia's national security: interference in its internal affairs by the United States and its allies; political and economic penetration of Azerbaijan by Turkey and its Western allies; expansion of NATO into Central Europe, the Baltic states, and ultimately Ukraine; and unilateral disarmament of Russia through forced treaties, modification of the existing Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty), degradation of existing Russian strategic weapons systems and research and development centers, or obstructions to the integration of the CIS. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
Among "recommended strategies" to neutralize such threats, the report lists refusing to work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, preventing Western access to Caspian Sea oil, establishing a military alliance of CIS members to block NATO expansion (and invading the Baltic states if they try to join NATO), and deploying tactical nuclear weapons in the Caucasus, Baltic, or Far North regions. The report also recommends enlarging Russia's stockpile of strategic nuclear weapons when the limits of phase one of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) end in 2009. The particular concern with NATO expansion drives several of these proposals, and comments made in 1996 by top military officials confirm that a set of active responses has been prepared for such an eventuality. However, experts see both the Institute for Defense Studies report and supporting statements by military authorities as part of a pattern of pressure applied to potential new NATO states to discourage them from pursuing membership. *
In June 1996, the office of the president's national security adviser, Yuriy Baturin, released a draft statement on national security policy goals for the period 1996-2000 that indicated a less aggressive approach to the next military doctrine. The document's authors recognized that Russia faces no external threat, stressing instead that Russia's chief national security need is to strengthen the Russian state economically and politically rather than to maintain military parity with the West. Because the United States no longer is interested in manipulating European geopolitics, according to the document, it is now safe to make concessions — including arms reduction treaties — in the search for balanced and cooperative relations. The NATO expansion issue was recognized as the chief obstacle to achieving such relations in 1996. Although the draft policy statement was generally pro-Western, it assigned the highest value to relations with the CIS rather than the West. Experts saw the draft as an attempt to counter the nationalist faction that continues to emphasize military power as the most important element of national security and whose position was forcefully stated in the report of the Institute for Defense Studies. *
Efforts to Reform the Russian Military
In 1996 Aleksey Arbatov, deputy chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, stated that the armed forces must be reduced by at least 500,000 personnel, a force reduction of one-third, with a simultaneous increase in the annual military budget of about US$20 billion — more than twice its level at the time. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
The official plan for armed forces reorganization was put forth in a presidential decree of August 1995. Reforms would occur in two stages, which were outlined only vaguely. The first stage, to last from 1996 to 2000, would include reorganization of the civilian economy to provide better overall budgetary support, stabilize the defense industry, and revamp the territorial divisions of the national defense system to match a new concept of strategic deployment. The second stage, 2001 to 2005, would address the international role of the Russian armed forces, ending with the creation of the "army of the year 2005." *
The first phase was defined by five goals. First, a "rational" level of strategic nuclear forces would remain in place on land, sea, and air to defend against a global nuclear or conventional war. The level of such forces would be influenced by whether other powers had developed ABM defenses. Second, further downsizing was possible, depending on the leadership's estimation of optimal size given world conditions. Third, organizational structure would be changed only after comprehensive research, with numerous ground forces units to be combined and maintained at cadre strength. Fourth, procurement would be centralized, spending priorities strictly observed, and expenditures carefully monitored. Fifth, the command and control system would be improved in all operational-strategic groupings, optimizing control to ensure maximum combat readiness. There would be a clear definition of the respective functions of the Ministry of Defense, the General Staff, and the main directorates. The newly created State Commission for Military Organization and Development and the General Staff were to direct the fifth phase. *
Military service became particularly unpopular in Russia in the mid-1990s. Under conditions of intense political and social uncertainty, the traditional appeal to Russian patriotism no longer resonated among Russia's youth. The percentage of draft-age youth who entered the armed forces dropped from 32 percent in 1994 to 20 percent in 1995. The Law on Military Service stipulates twenty-one grounds for draft exemption, but in many cases eligible individuals simply refuse to report; in July 1996, a report in the daily Pravda referred to a "daily boycott of the draft." In the first half of 1995, about 3,000 conscripts deserted, and in all of 1995 between 50,000 and 70,000 inductees refused to report. According to a 1996 Russian report, such personnel deficiencies meant that only about ten of Russia's sixty-nine ground forces divisions were prepared for combat. The armed forces responded to manpower shortages by extending the normal two-year period of active-duty service of those already in uniform; only about 19,000 of the approximately 230,000 troops scheduled for discharge in December 1994 were released on time. *
The two most compelling reasons for the failure of conscription are the unfavorable living conditions and pay of soldiers (less than US$1 per month at 1995 exchange rates) and the well-publicized and extremely unpopular Chechnya operation. The Russian tradition of hazing in the ranks, which became more violent and was much more widely reported in the 1990s, also has contributed to society's antipathy toward military service (see Crime in the Military). By 1996 the approval rating of the military as a social institution had slipped to as little as 20 percent, far below the approval ratings achieved in the Soviet era. *
Prospects for the Military
In the mid-1990s, Russia's military establishment included a number of influential holdovers from the Soviet era, together with incomplete plans for reform. That inauspicious combination of elements was not reconciled because there was little agreement among military or civilian policy makers on the appropriate speed and direction of change, and because economic conditions offered no flexibility for experimentation. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
To the extent that the Chechnya conflict of 1994-96 was a fair test of combat capability, Russia's armed forces were far from fighting form, even by their own evaluation. As they received pessimistic assessments of the current and future situation, Russian policy makers faced a complex of other adjustments. In 1996 the shapers of policy on international relations and national security could not agree on Russia's status in the post-Soviet world. . Utilization of the military's very limited financial resources would require a consensus on the areas of the world most vital to national security. For example, would a second Chechnya-type uprising within the Russian Federation merit the kind of effort expended on the first one? What sort of response should the seemingly inevitable expansion of NATO elicit? Should Russia seek a permanent military presence in other CIS nations, to bolster national security? In answering such questions, military policy makers confront a national psyche still damaged by the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself. They also are tempted to divert attention from fundamental problems by renewing campaigns against old enemies. *
No redirection of national security priorities could have meaning without a strong commitment to reorganize the military establishment that was inherited from the Soviet era. Only a leaner force could recapture the Soviet-era reservoir of skill, pride, and dedication that was dissipated in the first half of the 1990s. Through 1996 the budgetary strategy was to finance selected high-technology R&D projects and MIC enterprises capable of satisfying foreign arms customers (together with internal security "armies" such as that of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), while literally starving conventional troops and neglecting maintenance budgets. With the formation of a new government in mid-1996, the voices of reform became louder, but consensus on the basic requirements had grown no closer. *
Future of the Russian Military
The concluding section of the military doctrine contains an assurance of the defensive and peaceful intentions of the Russian Federation and of its intention to adhere strictly to the UN Charter and the tenets of international law. However, the conclusion also states that this document will be supplemented, adjusted, and improved as Russian statehood is established and as a new system of international relations is formed. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
Assumedly, the nature of such changes would depend on Russia's success in achieving another primary goal: preserving the basis of military power inherited from the Soviet Union and setting the stage for making the Russian Federation a major military power after the turn of the century. The view of the future contained in the doctrine is projected against specific time lines. The new Russian armed forces and the basis for their military power are projected to be in place by 2000, when a new, and presumably more assertive, military doctrine is promised. Serious consideration of the content of a more permanent doctrine was not expected to begin until a new government was in place after the 1996 presidential election. *
Meanwhile, early in 1996 the government-supported Institute for Defense Studies produced a set of "conceptual theses" on Russia's national security against external threats. Although not a formal outline for a new military doctrine, experts saw the theses as an important indication of current military thought. *
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Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, U.S. government, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated May 2016