Russia: Looking Back and Looking Ahead
Wednesday, December 14, 20162:00 PM - 3:30 PM (Pacific)
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About the Event: The state of affairs between the U.S. and Russia has worsened in recent years, due to conflicts in the Ukraine and Syria, and elsewhere. A panel of four top Russia experts will discuss the U.S.-Russia relationship at a time when it seems the bleakest since the end of the Cold War and will be addressing the following questions
- Looking back: Based on your own experience, what were the greatest challenges of the post-Soviet era, 1991 to present? What were the greatest accomplishments? What were the greatest disappointments?
- Looking ahead: What are the greatest challenges? What is America's role in that future? What parts of this experience are reusable in the event of a new crisis?
About the panel:
- William J. Perry is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at Stanford University. He is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Hoover Institution, and serves as director of the Preventive Defense Project. He is an expert in U.S. foreign policy, national security and arms control. He was the co-director of CISAC from 1988 to 1993, during which time he was also a part-time professor at Stanford. Dr. Perry was the 19th secretary of defense for the United States, serving from February 1994 to January 1997. He previously served as deputy secretary of defense (1993-1994) and as under secretary of defense for research and engineering (1977-1981). Dr. Perry currently serves on the Defense Policy Board (DPB). His latest book is My Journey at the Nuclear Brink.
- Michael McFaul is Professor of Political Science, Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. He is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. Dr. McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).
- David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
- Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security. His current research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, and the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy. Over the past 20 years, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. This event is a celebration of the publication of his book, Doomed to Cooperate, which chronicles the remarkable story of nuclear scientists from two former enemy nations, Russia and the United States, who reached across political, geographic, and cultural divides to confront, together, the new nuclear threats that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
- Moderating the panel is David E. Hoffman. David Hoffman is a contributing editor to The Washington Post. He joined the newspaper in 1982, and covered the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He was later diplomatic correspondent, and the newspaper’s bureau chief in Jerusalem (1992-1994) and Moscow (1995-2001.) On returning to Washington, he was Foreign editor and then Assistant Managing Editor for Foreign News until 2009. He now serves on the paper’s Editorial Board. He is the author of The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia (PublicAffairs, 2002), The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy (Doubleday, 2009) which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, and The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (Doubleday, 2015.) He attended the University of Delaware and St Antony’s College, Oxford.