In his remarks, Zelenskyy drew inspiration from Steve Jobs’ famous "How to Live Before You Die" commencement address given at Stanford in 2005.

"This is one of the most famous speeches ever given at Stanford,” he said. “It's about believing in dreams and overcoming the impossible. This is the same as my story. I am just a common guy from a common family from a common industrial town in Eastern Ukraine. Yet here I am today at Stanford, because everything is possible."

He continued, “It is the same for Ukraine. Many people look at us and think that it will be impossible to achieve the goals we hope for. But we know that our critics are wrong. The people of our country love democracy and freedom and will not let threats take those things away. We know that anything is possible."

Looking to the future, Zelenskyy outlined the steps his administration is undertaking to bring increased digitization to Ukraine. These efforts include launching fully electronic passports, moving business and legal services online and expanding the scope of e-goverance. The hope is that this meld of new technology will help curb corruption while simultaneously creating more equitable opportunities and better access to public services for more Ukranians.

Speaking on the ambitious scope of these plans, the president acknowledged, “There will be resistance to the changes and innovations that we are going to make.” Nonetheless, he remains committed to the work ahead of strengthening democratic institutions in Ukraine and building on the progress that has already been made.  “We do not have a ‘Ukrainian Dream,’ yet,” he said. “But we have a ‘Ukrainian Goal’ and a ‘Ukrainian Mission’ to make the future we want for our country.” An edited recording of his remarks is below.

Keeping with Stanford tradition, Zelenskyy took questions from the audience after his prepared remarks. A variety of students and Stanford community members from Russia, Burma, Belarus and beyond had the opportunity to engage the president on a range of issues including U.S.-Ukraine relations, armament sales abroad and concerns over Russian aggression in Crimea and influence Eastern Ukraine. Of particular meaning was Zelensky’s affirmation and support for the democratic movement in Belarus led by Svaitlana Tsikhanouskaya, whom FSI hosted earlier this summer at a faculty roundtable.

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Students and faculty alike were appreciative of the president’s candor and good nature in addressing difficult topics.

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Following the formal remarks, President Zelenskyy and First Lady Zelenska had an opportunity to meet with Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne in the Memorial Church Courtyard. Prior to leaving, the First Lady also sat down with leaders and students from Stanford's Office of Accessible Education (OAE), an area of interest she would like to support and better develop in Ukraine.

For FSI, the president’s visit was another affirmation of the special connection between Ukraine and the Stanford community. Since 2016, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law has hosted the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program, which provides a 10-month academic training fellowship in support of mid-career practitioners working actively as policy-makers, legal professionals, entrepreneurs and leaders of civil society organizations in Ukraine.

Speaking to this shared history in his opening introductions, FSI Director Michael McFaul emphasized the crucial need for ongoing support and intellectual investment into Ukraine. “The fight for democracy and independence in Ukraine is one of the most important causes in the world today,” he affirmed. “Not just for Ukrainians, but for all who cherish the ideals of democracy, liberty and sovereignty.”

To President Zelenskyy, McFaul extended a future invitation: “You are always welcome back, either as president or in retirement as a professor.”

“With the classes you offer, I will think about it,” Zelenskyy replied with a smile.

This story was originally reported by Melissa De Witte for Stanford News.

For those who remember Sept. 11, 2001, details of the day – the confusion, chaos and collective grief – are as clear now as they were 20 years ago when the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history occurred.

But many college students today have no memories of 19 al-Qaida operatives hijacking four commercial airplanes and killing nearly 3,000 people in a terrorist attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Teaching this next generation about the passion and the intensity that defined that pivotal moment is difficult, says Condoleezza Rice, who was the U.S. National Security Advisor at the time of the attacks.

For the new generation of students, 9/11 is now a part of history. “It would be like people trying to convey the intensity of World War II to me,” said Rice, who went on to serve as the 66th secretary of state of the United States under President George W. Bush before returning to her professorship at Stanford in 2009.

Rice, now the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution, was in the White House on that Tuesday morning of Sept 11. When she discusses the attacks with her students, her experiences on that day inevitably come up.

She is candid in her recounting. “That helps to vivify it because it’s a personal story,” Rice said.

Rice shares how, when the first plane hit the North Tower at the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., she and others were uncertain about the cause of the crash. She remembers wondering whether it could have been an accident. But when the second hijacked plane hit the remaining South Tower 17 minutes later, Rice knew it had to be a terrorist attack on the United States.

Then there was the short period when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could not be reached because the Pentagon was also hit that morning, Rice said. She, along with other senior government leaders, were ushered into the White House bunker. She tells students that around noon that day, oxygen levels started to drop because too many people were crammed into the fortified space. “So the Secret Service was going around saying, ‘You have to leave, you are not essential; you have to leave, you are not essential.’ You would never plan for such a thing as that,” she said.

Inevitably, a student will ask her if she was afraid. Rice was so taken aback the first time she faced that question that she actually paused to think about it – and then concluded that she wasn’t. “I didn’t have time to be scared,” Rice recalled. “You can fear for your loved ones, but you are not allowed to feel personal fear. You don’t think about that in the moment.”

Rice also emphasized the importance of talking to students about how 9/11 transformed the world and that what seems routine today – such as additional airport screenings and the formation of new government institutions – didn’t even exist before the attacks.

“I try to help them understand how we are still living the effects of 9/11,” said Rice. “It isn’t an event that happened one day and then was over, but everything from the way that you go through an airport to something called ‘homeland security,’ which you didn’t have before 9/11.”

Teaching 9/11 Since 9/11

The attacks also introduced into the wider vernacular new places – like Afghanistan – and people – like Osama bin Laden – that students 20 years ago knew very little or nothing about.

Stanford scholars Amy Zegart and Martha Crenshaw experienced this firsthand on the day of the attacks when they found themselves in the surreal situation of teaching about 9/11 on 9/11. Both were so shocked by the unfolding events that they were unable to do anything except the one thing they were supposed to do that day, which was teach.

When they showed up to their respective classrooms – at the time, Crenshaw was at Wesleyan University teaching a course on decision making and foreign policy; Zegart at UCLA – they found them packed. There were more students in the lecture hall for Crenshaw’s course than were enrolled.

Students – horrified and trying to make sense of what was happening – sought clarity and comfort from their teachers, who just happened to be experts on the issues that would come to define the next two decades of U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

“When something that shocking happens, our natural inclination is to make sense of what’s going on together, right now,” said Zegart, who is a leading scholar on national security and the Central Intelligence Agency and is now a senior scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Students wanted to know more about the terms and names they were hearing for the first time that day, like jihadism and the Taliban. Over the months that followed came more complex challenges to explain: the global war on terror, torture, rendition, Guantanamo Bay, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is the world that today’s students have inherited. Even the current generation’s media, as Zegart’s research has shown, has become increasingly saturated with a proliferation of “spytainment”: movies and TV shows depicting, often inaccurately, the clandestine world of intelligence and counterterrorism operations.

Like Rice, Crenshaw has also found herself having to explain that none of this was normal before 9/11.

“I have to go back and say, ‘All this wasn’t always here before 9/11.’ I have to trace the trajectory of policy changes,” said Crenshaw, a senior fellow at FSI and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Shifts in Emotion

In the first decade after the attacks, Zegart said her students were incredibly emotional about 9/11 and its aftermath, including the expansion of U.S. conflict abroad. A few years after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq broke out, Zegart remembers one of her students, a recently returned veteran, telling her that he was taking her intelligence class because he wanted to learn more about why he had gone to Iraq, and what his friend who had deployed with him had died fighting for.

“It was a really raw, personal experience for students studying foreign policy in the first decade after 9/11 because they were living with war and uncertainty,” said Zegart. She had to push them be more analytical and objective in their class discussions of what a post 9/11 world entailed.

As the years progressed, though, 9/11 increasingly became less personal for the next generation of students. Perceptions began to shift. So much so that Zegart now finds herself in the opposite predicament: How to insert those feelings back in.

“Because they didn’t live through it, they look at it distantly and dispassionately,” Zegart said. “The challenge is, how do you help students better understand the context in which decisions were made and the raw emotion that unavoidably affects how we perceive threats and how we deal with policy responses.”

Teaching the Emotions of the Day

To evoke a visceral response to 9/11, Zegart shows a 4-minute montage of news clips. Students get a sense of how the day unfolded, from the breaking reports of the first tower being struck to a reporter’s on-air reaction as the second plane crashes live into the remaining tower. There are also scenes of people fleeing lower Manhattan amid dust, smoke and debris.

“You just cannot convey that day in a normal lecture or a book,” Zegart said. The video is effective; her students are often left with a sense of the sadness, horror and anguish that defined 9/11.

Zegart then asks her students to imagine they are policymakers at the White House and have to decide what to do next. “We often teach U.S. foreign policymaking as a sterile, Spock-like process where people weigh the pros and cons of options and make dispassionate decisions,” Zegart said. “But human emotion and searing national experiences are important and hard to convey. A key part of understanding history is empathy, and thinking about what it was like to live through something rather than only looking at an event through the distance of time. 9/11 looks inevitable in hindsight, but it was unimaginable on September 10.”

Through the exercise, students get a sense of the urgency that policymakers, like Rice, have to grapple with while making decisions amid a national emergency.

“In retrospect, everything looks quite orderly,” said Rice, who co-taught a class on global risk with Zegart at the Graduate School Business. “It looks like ‘of course that decision led to that decision.’ Political scientists are always talking about the options that were put before the president. That’s not how crisis decision making unfolds. You are dealing with really incomplete information, you are dealing with the need to act now, and you are often reacting from instinct because you don’t have time to think through things.”

Viewing the Attacks from All Sides

When political scientist Lisa Blaydes teaches 9/11 to her students, she tries to give an international perspective of the issues, particularly on how grievances can arise – both legitimately or falsely constructed – in countries abroad and how that can lead to extremism and political violence. For example, in her course Political Science 149: Middle Eastern Politics, several classes are dedicated to examining anti-American attitudes in the Islamic world and the conditions under which individuals become radicalized.

“I try to make sure that students understand both the individual motivations associated with the radicalization of political thought as well as the global context that empowers radicalized individuals to undertake violent action,” said Blaydes, a professor of political science in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a senior fellow at FSI. She asks students to read Lawrence Wright’s book The Looming Tower, which picks up on themes Blaydes covers in the course, particularly those dealing with how authoritarian regimes in the Arab world provided a backdrop for the rise of al-Qaida.

In recent years, Blaydes has found her students showing an increased interest in learning more about radical groups like ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and how they have terrorized communities across the Middle East. “While Sept. 11 made terrorism a salient threat for Americans living in U.S. cities, both terrorism and state-sponsored violence are unfortunately a trauma shared by people around the world,” she said.

Similarly, Crenshaw said, it is important to explain to students the conditions that lead to such extremist views. But, she added, explaining motives should not be mistaken as justifying them. “We are not trying to excuse it; we are trying to understand why something happened,” she said.

With her students, Crenshaw has also looked at how terrorism has been used across history. In the aftermath of 9/11, terrorism almost exclusively became associated with a particular ideology and religion. But there are other examples throughout history of how it has been used as a form of political violence, she said.

“As an instructor, one of my goals was always to show students that 9/11 was something extraordinary, but there are other instances of terrorism and it can be associated with any ideology,” Crenshaw said.

Given its elasticity, terrorism is a confusing and contentious term with no standard definition, Crenshaw said. Thus, as both the term and the acts associated with terrorism have evolved over the past two decades, so has her teaching of it. “The phenomenon that you are trying to teach is changing over time as well, so it’s really a very dynamic subject requiring constant adjustment to take into account the vast outpouring of writing on terrorism but changing terrorism and counterterrorism as well,” she said.

In addition to situating 9/11 against a global and historical backdrop, teaching the attacks also requires a critical look at the domestic challenges that led up to it, including the shortcomings in U.S. intelligence. Zegart assigns students an article she wrote about the failures within the U.S. intelligence communities to adapt to the threat of terrorism, as well as a critique against her piece. “There’s no one perfect view, and if students can realize that their professor is part of an argument and people can disagree, that’s really important,” she said.

Zegart and Crenshaw have also assigned students the 9/11 Commission Report, the official report of the events that led up to the attacks and detailed account of the circumstances surrounding it.

‘Still Hard’

Even though 20 years have passed since 9/11, it does not mean that teaching about the attacks has gotten easier.

“I still have a hard time,” Zegart said. “For years, my screensaver was a picture of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. It was important to me not to forget. I’ve spent my career researching why our intelligence agencies failed to stop 9/11 and how they can better meet threats in the future. I think about that day every day.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky visits Washington next week, with the highlight being a White House call on President Joe Biden. That offers the opportunity to reinvigorate the U.S.-Ukraine relationship at the highest level, following four years of Donald Trump.

This can be a very good meeting for the Ukrainian president. He should, however, take care in what he seeks. If he wants to return home with a clear success and having boosted U.S.-Ukraine relations, he should not ask for things he knows—or should know—he cannot get. Moreover, the more convincing the message that he brings regarding Kyiv’s commitment to domestic reform, the better will be his time in Washington.

Aug. 31 will be Mr. Zelensky’s first time to the White House, even though Trump offered him such a visit more than two years ago. Sadly, the former president showed no understanding of the import of Ukraine for American national interests and instead sought to extort Kyiv into interfering in U.S. politics.

When it comes to Ukraine, Biden gets it. The discussions between the presidents will undoubtedly focus on the two central challenges facing Kyiv. First, the conflict that Russia has inflicted on Ukraine since 2014, which has claimed some 14,000 lives. Zelensky can expect a strong reiteration of American support for Ukraine, including for non-recognition of Moscow’s illegal seizure of Crimea and for a settlement in Donbas that restores Ukrainian sovereignty.

The tricky part for Zelensky will turn on the specific asks he makes.

In the past, the Ukrainian president has called for a NATO membership action plan (MAP). In one sense, that is not unreasonable. Ukraine has made as much progress as many other new alliance members had made when they received MAPs.

NATO members, however, remain reluctant to put Ukraine, when it is engaged in a low-intensity war with Russia, on a membership track—despite the fact that NATO has stated that the question of membership is between the alliance and the prospective member, not any third party, i.e., not the Kremlin. That may seem unfair in Kyiv, but it is the reality.

So Zelensky should not seek a MAP. He could ask for an intensified and continuing discussion on the practical steps that Kyiv should take now so that, when a window opens for progress toward membership, Ukraine is fully ready to seize it. Mr. Zelensky can, in effect, have a MAP … if he accepts that it will not be called a MAP.

Ukraine—the biggest potential loser when Nord Stream 2 begins operation—understandably opposes it. Biden opposes it as well but remains unready to sanction German or European companies and risk a rift with Berlin and Brussels. (Kyiv should not want such a rift, which would erode U.S.-European Union unity on supporting Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.)

Zelensky thus should not urge sanctioning European companies to block the pipeline. He should instead ask how Washington, working with Berlin, intends to build with specifics on the July U.S.-German statement on supporting Ukraine, Europe’s energy security and climate goals and ensure that Russia will not use the pipeline against Kyiv. He could also propose continuing the discussion begun on Aug. 23 by the Ukrainian, German and American energy ministers about steps to strengthen Ukraine’s energy security.

Many in Kyiv have expressed frustration with the lack of progress toward settling the Donbas conflict in the “Normandy process” led by the Germans and French, and some even suggest alternative formats. Washington does not want to displace Berlin and Paris, and it benefits Kyiv to keep those key European Union members engaged. Still, Zelensky can and should press Biden to engage U.S. diplomacy more forcefully in support of the Germans and French.

He also may have an opening to ask for more. Washington reportedly has considered contingency military assistance for Ukraine. Given the Russian build-up last April, which was only partially drawn down, and the prospect that the September Zapad exercise will bring even more Russian troops close to Ukraine’s border, new U.S. military assistance would send a powerful signal of U.S. commitment to Ukraine as well as bolster its defensive capabilities.

The second central challenge facing Kyiv is putting in place the critical mass of reforms that will allow Ukraine’s economy to accelerate growth and realize its full potential, including encouraging open competition, strengthening the rule of law, curbing the outsized political and economic influence of the oligarchs, and beating back corruption. Kyiv’s record over the past two years has been mixed. These questions concerned  Biden when he had the senior lead on Ukraine in the Obama administration. If  Zelensky brings a credible, compelling message of his commitment to reform accompanied by specific ideas, he will find a receptive audience.

Zelensky’s U.S. visit can produce a major success for him and for U.S.-Ukraine relations. He should position himself to achieve such an outcome. That requires not overreaching by setting the bar impossibly high. And it means bringing a persuasive vision for how Kyiv will realize the ambitions of the Ukrainian people to become a prosperous democracy and a “normal” European state.

Steven Pifer is an affiliate of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

Originally for Kyiv Post

How will US-Russia relations develop within the next few years? Are we on the verge of a new cold war? What is needed to maintain strategic stability after the New START expires in 2026? What should be the format and aspects of the follow-on treaty? Do we really need depoliticization of negotiations? Is the elimination of all nuclear weapons is a realistic goal today? Can a nuclear-weapons-free world be really achieved? What will be the US policy on China within the next few years?

Pifer addresses these key international security questions.

Watch with LuxembourgForum

This interview with CISAC Affiliate Christopher Painter was originally produced by Jen Kirby. The complete article is available at Vox.

The frequency, scope and scale of ransomware attacks against public and private systems is accelerating. In the latest incident, the ransomware group REvil has demanded $70 million to unlock the systems of the software company Kaseya, an attack that affects not only Kaseya, but simultaneously exploits all of the company’s clients.

The REvil, JBS meatpacking and Colonial Pipeline attacks have abruptly raised the profile of ransomware from a malicious strand of criminality to a national security priority. These are issues that Christopher Painter, an affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has worked on at length during his tenures as a senior official at the Department of Justice, the FBI, the National Security Council and as the world's first top cyber diplomat at the State Department.

Jen Kirby, a reporter for Vox, interviewed Painter to discuss how cybercrimes are evolving and what governments should do to keep ransomware attacks from escalating geopolitical tensions online and off.

Jen Kirby:
I think a good place to start would be: What are “ransomware attacks”?

Christopher Painter:
It is largely criminal groups who are getting into computers through any number of potential vulnerabilities, and then they essentially lock the systems — they encrypt the data in a way that makes it impossible for you to see your files. And they demand ransom, they demand payment. In exchange for that payment, they will give you — or they claim, they don’t always do it — they claim they’ll give you the decryption keys, or the codes, that allow you to unlock your own files and have access to them again.

That is what traditionally we say is “ransomware.” That’s been going on for some time, but it’s gotten much more acute recently.

There is another half of that, which is that groups don’t just hold your files for ransom, they either leak or threaten to leak or expose your files and your information — your secrets and your emails, whatever you have — publicly, either in an attempt to embarrass you or to extort more money out of you, because you don’t want those things to happen. So it’s split now into two tracks, but they’re a combined method of getting money.

Jen Kirby:
We’ve recently had some high-profile ransomware attacks, including this recent REvil incident. Is it that we’re seeing a lot more of them, or they’re just bigger and bolder? How do you assess that ransomware attacks are becoming more acute?

Christopher Painter:
We’ve seen this going on for some time. I was one of the co-chairs of this Ransomware Task Force that issued a report recently. One of the reasons we did this report was we’re trying to call greater attention to this issue. Although governments and law enforcement were taking it seriously, it wasn’t being given the kind of national-level priority it deserved.

It was being treated as more of an ordinary cybercrime issue. Most governments’ attention is focused on big nation-state activity — like the SolarWinds hack [where suspected Russian government hackers breached US government departments], which are important, and we need to care about those. But we’re very worried about this, too.

It’s especially become more of an issue during the pandemic, when some of the ransomware actors were going after health care systems and health care providers.That combined with these big infrastructure attacks — the Colonial Pipeline clearly was one of them. Another one was the meat processing plants. Another one was hospital systems in Ireland. You also had the DC Police Department being victimized by ransomware. These things are very high-profile. When you’re lining up for gas because of a ransomware attack, and you can’t get your food because of a ransomware attack, that brings it home as a priority. And then, of course, you have what happened this past weekend. So ransomware has not abated, and it continues to get more serious and hit more organizations.

This interview by Melissa De Witte originally appeared in Stanford News.

The upcoming summit between President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin is not rewarding the Russian leader for his bad behavior: It’s opening negotiations and delivering a warning to him instead, says Stanford scholar Kathryn Stoner.

Here, Stoner is joined by Stanford political scientist and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, Payne Distinguished Lecturer at CISAC and former Deputy Secretary General of NATO Rose Gottemoeller and Russia historian Norman Naimark to discuss what to expect at the summit in Geneva on Wednesday.

The meeting, the scholars say, could reset U.S.-Russia relations, signal deterrence on certain issues – including cybersecurity in light of attacks like the SolarWinds breach that the U.S. has blamed on the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service – and launch strategic stability talks related to nuclear weapons.

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. For more information on what to expect about the Biden-Putin summit from FSI scholars, visit the FSI website.

Where does diplomacy now stand between the U.S. and Russia?

Naimark: Russian-American relations are at their lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, perhaps even since the last years of Gorbachev’s rule. When relations are fraying between the world’s two most powerful nuclear powers, the coming of the summit on June 16 between President Biden and President Putin should be welcomed. It’s worth recalling the heightened military tensions just three months ago between Moscow and Washington, when Moscow moved tens of thousands of troops to the Ukrainian border and mobilized its air and sea power in the region. Both leaders have emphasized that they seek stability, reliability and predictability in their bilateral relations; at the same time, their respective administrations have warned that expectations should be kept at the minimum for any kind of serious breakthrough at the summit.

Stoner: We’ve lost a lot of leverage because of the withdrawal from global politics that started under the latter part of the Obama administration and continued with Trump with his America First platform, which meant America alone. There is some leverage, it’s just how much. We don’t necessarily want to destabilize Russia because it’s a big, complicated country with nuclear weapons, but all signs point to Putin staying in office until 2036. He’s not going away. I think we have to try to signal deterrence on certain issues, like trying to move into another former Soviet republic as he is doing with Ukraine, Georgia and potentially Belarus, but then cooperate in other areas where it is productive to do so.

What do you think about some of the criticisms toward Biden meeting with Putin? For example, that Biden meeting with Putin is only rewarding him for his bad behavior.

Stoner: There is a reasonable question about why Biden and Putin are meeting and if it is somehow rewarding Putin for bad behavior by having a summit with the President of the United States. Rather than rewarding Putin, however, I think this meeting could be Biden’s warning to him that if hacking and other cyberattacks continue, we have a menu of things we could do as well.

Naimark: There is no reason that the American president cannot talk about difficult subjects like cybersecurity, ransomware attacks, human rights, the release of Alexei Navalny, the protection of Ukrainian sovereignty and other important items on the American agenda while focusing on issues of mutual interest: the future of arms control, global warming and the regulation of the Arctic, and outer space. One can always hope that, like the last summit on Lake Geneva between Russian and American leaders [Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan] in November 1985, this one can lay the groundwork for serious improvements in relations in the near future.

Is this meeting a reset of diplomatic relations between the two nations?

Stoner: I know in Washington it is popular to say that Biden is not having a reset of relations with Russia when past presidents all have tried that. I think that’s wrong. I do think it is a reset in the relationship in that there should be more clarity and stability, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be friendly and universally cooperative, given that we still see many differences in perspectives and some antagonism too. Still, Russia and the U.S. need to talk because there are a lot of issues in common where it would be helpful to coordinate with Russia. After all, even in the depths of the Cold War, the leaders of both countries still talked. Russia has reestablished itself as the most formidable power in Europe and it looks like Biden is acknowledging that and the fact that the U.S. can no longer afford to ignore Russia.

Is there anything the two leaders will be able to agree upon?

McFaul: I used to organize these kinds of meetings when I worked in the government and back when President Medvedev was there. We would have these meetings as a way to force our governments to produce what is called in State Department-speak “deliverables.” We didn’t have meetings to have them, we wanted to get things done. In the first Obama-Medvedev meeting we had a long list of deliverables when they met in July of 2009.

But there is no way that will happen with Putin today because he doesn’t really want to cooperate, he doesn’t really want deliverables. That’s challenging for President Biden, I think, because he has said that he wants a stable, predictable relationship with Putin. I think that’s fine to aspire to, but I don’t think Putin is that interested in that kind of relationship, so that creates a challenge of substance for summits like this.

Gottemoeller: With such different threat perceptions, the two presidents are not going to agree in Geneva about what should go into the next nuclear treaty. They can agree, though, to put their experts together to hammer it out. They can also agree to put the two sides together to tackle the different threat perceptions and the question of what stability means. Finally, they can agree to a deadline, so the talks don’t stall. It won’t be a headline-grabbing outcome, but at least Moscow and Washington will get moving again on the nuclear agenda.

Where can Biden make progress?

McFaul: I think the most likely place to make progress is to launch strategic stability talks, which is an abstract phrase for beginning the process of negotiations about nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles that would be a follow-on to the New START treaty. Biden and Putin rightfully extended the New START treaty early in his term for five years, and I think that was very smart. I personally worked on that treaty, so I think it’s a good treaty and deserves to be extended. But it’s going to run out really fast because the next set of negotiations are going to be much more complicated. I hope they would start some process to begin those negotiations now.

Gottemoeller: Maybe the only place where President Biden can make progress with Vladimir Putin in Geneva is the nuclear agenda with Russia. Since the two men agreed, in February, to extend the New START treaty by five years, they have put out a clear public message that they intend to pursue a deal to replace New START and to launch strategic stability talks. They are not going to have identical ideas, however, about what those two goals mean.

Biden wants a new arms control deal that will control all nuclear warheads, whether launched on intercontinental strategic-range missiles or on shorter-range systems. He also wants to get a handle on some of the new types of nuclear weapons that the Russians have been developing. One new system, for example, uses nuclear propulsion to ensure that it can fly for many hours at great speed over long distances, earning it the moniker “weapon of vengeance.” These exotic weapons did not exist when New START was negotiated; now, they need to be controlled.

Putin, by contrast, focuses on U.S. long-range conventional missiles that he worries are capable of the accuracy and destructive power of nuclear weapons. The United States, in his view, could use these conventional weapons to destroy hard targets such as the Moscow nuclear command center. He also worries that the United States is producing ever more capable ways to intercept his nuclear missiles and destroy them before they reach their targets. In his worst nightmare, the United States undermines his nuclear deterrent forces without ever resorting to nuclear weapons.

What advice do you have for Biden?

McFaul: One, do not have a one-on-one meeting – just have a normal meeting. Two, I would recommend not having a joint press conference that just gives Putin a podium for the world to say his “whataboutism” stuff; it’s better to have separate press conferences because most of the world will be more interested in what Biden says compared to what Putin says.

Third, I think it’s important to cooperate when you can but also be clear about your differences and don’t pull punches on that. In particular, I want Biden to talk about Alexei Navalny, the Americans who are wrongly detained in Russia today, Crimea still being occupied, Russian proxies in eastern Ukraine, and parts of Georgia that are under occupation. They have been attacking us relentlessly with these cyberattacks, these Russian criminals who in my view have to have some association with the Russian government.

That’s a tough list, but I think it’s really important for President Biden to say those things directly to Putin. I have confidence that he can. I was at their last meeting. I traveled with the vice president in 2011 when he met with then Prime Minister Putin. Biden is capable of delivering tough messages and I hope he uses this occasion to do so again.

What would be a sign that their meeting was productive?

Stoner: One sign the meeting was productive would be if Biden and Putin could agree to establish a joint committee or council on some rules surrounding cybersecurity. Another would be if they make plans to talk again about either replacing or reviving the Minsk-2 agreement [that sought to bring an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine]. And three, a positive sign would be if they plan to do some negotiation on further reducing tactical nuclear weapons or strategic nuclear weapons. An agreement to disagree on some issues, but to continue talking on others would be indicative of at least some small progress.

The New START Treaty

The New START Treaty, which was formalized in 2010, and builds on prior agreements put in place through the 1970s and 80s to actively reduce and limit the number of strategic nuclear weapons. The first START treaty in 1994 reduced the number of deployed nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia from 12,000 to 6,000 each. In 2002, that number was reduced further to around 2,200 weapons each through agreements in the Moscow Treaty. The New START Treaty Gottemoeller negotiated dropped that number again to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads.

This 30 percent overall reduction in nuclear armaments has brought deployed Russian and U.S. warheads to their smallest numbers since the nuclear age began.

“It’s really a challenge to actually do things in government,” emphasizes McFaul. “It’s easy to be something or someone, but to do anything, you have to be able to engage with another partner somewhere in the world. In Rose’s case, she had to engage with one of the toughest partners in the world: the Russian Federation.”

Doing vs. Being

How was Gottemoeller able to accomplish what she and her team did? Coming as an outsider to the Obama campaign and government, the initial months of contacting relevant people in the Department of State and working through the confirmation process were grueling, particularly with the added pressure of the looming deadline for the end of the first START treaty.

“That early pressure was absolutely vital for the ultimate success of the New START treaty,” says Gottemoeller. “These kinds of treaties usually take years to negotiate, but we only had from April to December of that year.”

With such a tight schedule, focus and drive were vital for moving the negotiations forward on time. Based on a clear directive from Presidents Obama and Medvedev, Gottemoeller knew the negotiations were to focus only on reducing strategic offensive armaments. The drive came from the perseverance and professionalism between her team and their Russian counterparts.

“When any negotiation starts, there’s a dance that goes on as the chief negotiators and the heads of the working groups establish their rhythm and get to know each others’ style. There were definitely rough patches, but overall we were able to establish good working relationships with everyone we needed to.”

In establishing this rapport, Gottemoeller’s prior affiliations with the Russian head negotiator, Anatoly Antonov, and her ability to speak directly with him in the Russian language were invaluable, particularly given Gottemoeller’s unique position as the first woman ever to negotiate a nuclear arms deal with the Russian Federation.    

“By the time [Antonov] and I got to the endgame negotiations, we’d developed this motto of ‘мы исправим это,’ or, ‘We’ll fix it.’ By having that mindset, we were able to figure it out, even with our personal differences,” Gottemoeller explains.

Ultimately, she and her team delivered a crucial piece of diplomacy in record time despite the setbacks. “I handed over the final papers on my birthday,” she remembers. “So, it was a personal day of celebration as well as a professional one.”

Advice for Future Negotiators

For upcoming graduates and young people looking to Gottemoeller and her incredible diplomatic career as an inspiration, she gives this encouragement:

“Negotiating about nuclear weapons is not rocket science. You become a good negotiator through your everyday living. It’s part of our natural life and natural living. Don’t let it overwhelm you just because you happen to be dealing with nuclear weapons. It’s still just about meeting interests and crafting compromises in order to achieve your goals.”

It’s a sentiment Director Michael McFaul quickly echoed as he reaffirmed the invaluable work Rose Gottemoeller has contributed both diplomatically and to the future of foreign policy.

“In academia, the literature is thin on the actual practice of diplomacy,” admits McFaul. “But Rose has done a great service to educating future diplomats and future negotiators. We need to be able to learn from case studies like this from the past so we can continue to achieve these kinds of things in the future.”

This interview by Bruce Goldman was originally published by the Stanford School of Medicine.

On May 13, the journal Science published a letter, signed by 18 scientists, stating that it was still unclear whether the virus that causes COVID-19 emerged naturally or was the result of a laboratory accident, but that neither cause could be ruled out. David Relman, MD, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor and professor of microbiology and immunology, spearheaded the effort.

Relman is no stranger to complicated microbial threat scenarios and illness of unclear origin. He has advised the U.S. government on emerging infectious diseases and potential biological threats. He served as vice chair of a National Academy of Sciences committee reviewing the FBI investigation of letters containing anthrax that were sent in 2001. Recently, he chaired another academy committee that assessed a cluster of poorly explained illnesses in U.S. embassy employees. He is a past president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Stanford Medicine science writer Bruce Goldman asked Relman to explain what remains unknown about the coronavirus’s emergence, what we may learn and what’s at stake.

1. How might SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, have first infected humans?

Relman: We know very little about its origins. The virus’s closest known relatives were discovered in bats in Yunnan Province, China, yet the first known cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan, about 1,000 miles away.

There are two general scenarios by which this virus could have made the jump to humans. First, the jump, or “spillover,” might have happened directly from an animal to a human, by means of an encounter that took place within, say, a bat-inhabited cave or mine, or closer to human dwellings — say, at an animal market. Or it could have happened indirectly, through a human encounter with some other animal to which the primary host, presumably a bat, had transmitted the virus.

Bats and other potential SARS-CoV-2 hosts are known to be shipped across China, including to Wuhan. But if there were any infected animals near or in Wuhan, they haven’t been publicly identified.

Maybe someone became infected after contact with an infected animal in or near Yunnan, and moved on to Wuhan. But then, because of the high transmissibility of this virus, you’d have expected to see other infected people at or near the site of this initial encounter, whether through similar animal exposure or because of transmission from this person.

2. What’s the other scenario?

Relman: SARS-CoV-2 could have spent some time in a laboratory before encountering humans. We know that some of the largest collections of bat coronaviruses in the world — and a vigorous research program involving the creation of “chimeric” bat coronaviruses by integrating unfamiliar coronavirus genomic sequences into other, known coronaviruses — are located in downtown Wuhan. And we know that laboratory accidents happen everywhere there are laboratories.

All scientists need to acknowledge a simple fact: Humans are fallible, and laboratory accidents happen — far more often than we care to admit. Several years ago, an investigative reporter uncovered evidence of hundreds of lab accidents across the United States involving dangerous, disease-causing microbes in academic institutions and government centers of excellence alike — including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

SARS-CoV-2 might have been lurking in a sample collected from a bat or other infected animal, brought to a laboratory, perhaps stored in a freezer, then propagated in the laboratory as part of an effort to resurrect and study bat-associated viruses. The materials might have been discarded as a failed experiment. Or SARS-CoV-2 could have been created through commonly used laboratory techniques to study novel viruses, starting with closely related coronaviruses that have not yet been revealed to the public. Either way, SARS-CoV-2 could have easily infected an unsuspecting lab worker and then caused a mild or asymptomatic infection that was carried out of the laboratory.

3. Why is it important to understand SARS-CoV-2’s origins?

Relman: Some argue that we would be best served by focusing on countering the dire impacts of the pandemic and not diverting resources to ascertaining its origins. I agree that addressing the pandemic’s calamitous effects deserves high priority. But it’s possible and important for us to pursue both. Greater clarity about the origins will help guide efforts to prevent a next pandemic. Such prevention efforts would look very different depending on which of these scenarios proves to be the most likely.

Evidence favoring a natural spillover should prompt a wide variety of measures to minimize human contact with high-risk animal hosts. Evidence favoring a laboratory spillover should prompt intensified review and oversight of high-risk laboratory work and should strengthen efforts to improve laboratory safety. Both kinds of risk-mitigation efforts will be resource intensive, so it’s worth knowing which scenario is most likely.

4. What attempts at investigating SARS-CoV-2’s origin have been made so far, with what outcomes?

Relman: There’s a glaring paucity of data. The SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence, and those of a handful of not-so-closely-related bat coronaviruses, have been analyzed ad nauseam. But the near ancestors of SARS-CoV-2 remain missing in action. Absent that knowledge, it’s impossible to discern the origins of this virus from its genome sequence alone. SARS-CoV-2 hasn’t been reliably detected anywhere prior to the first reported cases of disease in humans in Wuhan at the end of 2019. The whole enterprise has been made even more difficult by the Chinese national authorities’ efforts to control and limit the release of public health records and data pertaining to laboratory research on coronaviruses.

In mid-2020, the World Health Organization organized an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, resulting in a fact-finding trip to Wuhan in January 2021. But the terms of reference laying out the purposes and structure of the visit made no mention of a possible laboratory-based scenario. Each investigating team member had to be individually approved by the Chinese government. And much of the data the investigators got to see was selected prior to the visit and aggregated and presented to the team by their hosts.

The recently released final report from the WHO concluded — despite the absence of dispositive evidence for either scenario — that a natural origin was “likely to very likely” and a laboratory accident “extremely unlikely.” The report dedicated only 4 of its 313 pages to the possibility of a laboratory scenario, much of it under a header entitled “conspiracy theories.” Multiple statements by one of the investigators lambasted any discussion of a laboratory origin as the work of dark conspiracy theorists. (Notably, that investigator — the only American selected to be on the team — has a pronounced conflict of interest.)

Given all this, it’s tough to give this WHO report much credibility. Its lack of objectivity and its failure to follow basic principles of scientific investigation are troubling. Fortunately, WHO’s director-general recognizes some of the shortcomings of the WHO effort and has called for a more robust investigation, as have the governments of the United States, 13 other countries and the European Union.

5. What’s key to an effective investigation of the virus’s origins?

Relman: A credible investigation should address all plausible scenarios in a deliberate manner, involve a wide variety of expertise and disciplines and follow the evidence. In order to critically evaluate other scientists’ conclusions, we must demand their original primary data and the exact methods they used — regardless of how we feel about the topic or about those whose conclusions we seek to assess. Prior assumptions or beliefs, in the absence of supporting evidence, must be set aside.

Investigators should not have any significant conflicts of interest in the outcome of the investigation, such as standing to gain or lose anything of value should the evidence point to any particular scenario.

There are myriad possible sources of valuable data and information, some of them still preserved and protected, that could make greater clarity about the origins feasible. For all of these forms of data and information, one needs proof of place and time of origin, and proof of provenance.

To understand the place and time of the first human cases, we need original records from clinical care facilities and public health institutions as well as archived clinical laboratory data and leftover clinical samples on which new analyses can be performed. One might expect to find samples of wildlife, records of animal die-offs and supply-chain documents.

Efforts to explore possible laboratory origins will require that all laboratories known to be working on coronaviruses, or collecting relevant animal or clinical samples, provide original records of experimental work, internal communications, all forms of data — especially all genetic-sequence data — and all viruses, both natural and recombinant. One might expect to find archived sequence databases and laboratory records.

Needless to say, the politicized nature of the origins issue will make a proper investigation very difficult to pull off. But this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try our best. Scientists are inquisitive, capable, clever, determined when motivated, and inclined to share their insights and findings. This should not be a finger-pointing exercise, nor an indictment of one country or an abdication of the important mission to discover biological threats in nature before they cause harm. Scientists are also committed to the pursuit of truth and knowledge. If we have the will, we can and will learn much more about where and how this pandemic arose.  

President Joe Biden is the first president since the Cold War to begin his term not seeking closer relations with Russia; there will be no “reset.” He has indicated instead that he will push back against Russian misbehavior while seeking to cooperate where doing so advances U.S. interests. In his first 100 days Mr. Biden has sought to distinguish his policy from that of Donald Trump, who seemed incapable of criticizing Vladimir Putin or Russian transgressions.

The first full day of his administration illustrated Mr. Biden’s approach. The White House said he would extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) for five years, essentially accepting an offer Mr. Putin had made more than a year earlier—but something that was very much in the interest of U.S. national security. White House officials also announced that Mr. Biden had asked for assessments of Russian actions such as interference in the 2020 presidential election and the Solar Winds cyber hack, promising that the administration would “hold Russia to account for its reckless and adversarial actions.”

Mr. Biden described his policy directly to Mr. Putin in a January 26 phone call. He discussed New START and strategic stability but also raised issues of concern, including Ukraine, election interference and Kremlin-opponent Alexey Navalny’s poisoning. The White House read-out of the call (there were several important Trump-Putin calls with no read-outs) noted that the president had also said that the United States would “act firmly in defense of its national interests in response to actions by Russia” that caused harm to America or its allies.

Anticipating relations with the Kremlin that will have major adversarial elements, the Biden administration has moved to shore up the trans-Atlantic relationship and repair the damage done during his predecessor’s four years. In a February 19 virtual appearance at the Munich Security Conference, the president reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to NATO and Article 5 (an attack against one shall be considered an attack against all), stressed the importance of collective efforts to meet the “threat from Russia,” and reached out to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who often found herself the target of Mr. Trump’s ire. (The Biden administration also halted, and then reversed, Mr. Trump’s order to withdraw some 10,000 troops from Germany.)

As the intelligence community completed its assessment of election interference and other Russian actions, and with tensions rising due to the Russian military build-up around Ukraine, the Biden administration calibrated its response. It sanctioned a number of Russian entities and individuals on April 15. As a warning of what could come, the president issued an executive order authorizing sanctions for a broad range of potential Russian misdeeds, and the Treasury Department placed limits on purchasing Russian sovereign debt, though in a restrained manner that could later be ratcheted up and made considerably more painful.

The president foreshadowed the coming sanctions to Mr. Putin in an April 13 call in which he also reiterated the U.S. commitment to support Ukraine, a commitment that the administration has stressed publicly (if Mr. Putin was bothered by Mr. Biden’s “killer” comment in a mid-March press interview, he apparently said nothing during the call). In remarks to the press two days later, Mr. Biden noted that Washington could have imposed harsher penalties, but he had chosen proportionate measures. He added that he did not want an escalatory cycle with Moscow but sought “a stable, predictable relationship.”

Stable and predictable may be as good as it can get in the near term. In both of his calls with his Russian counterpart, Mr. Biden has raised areas—such as arms control and strategic stability—where U.S. and Russian interests should coincide. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have echoed these points. While virtually all Trump political appointees were let go when Mr. Biden took office, one notable exception was John Sullivan, the ambassador in Moscow. And the president proposed that he and Putin meet this summer.

The Biden administration believes that, even with U.S.-Russian relations at a post-Cold War nadir, the two countries can do business on certain questions where they have mutual interests. In addition to using arms control to manage their nuclear competition, the sides presumably share an interest in blunting the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea. As U.S. and NATO military forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, neither Washington nor Moscow has anything to gain from chaos or a return of the Taliban to power.

The president thus has correctly laid out the possibility of some positive engagement along with measures holding Russia to account for misbehavior. His ability to pursue both of those tracks, however, will depend in part on Kremlin actions.

Arrested immediately on his return to Moscow in January, Mr. Navalny now is in dire health in a Russian prison. His death would spark an uproar in the West. More critically, while the menacing Russian military movements around Ukraine likely aim just to unnerve Kyiv and, at the same time, test Mr. Biden’s reaction (as well as that of the West more broadly), a Russian military incursion remains a distinct possibility.

Such an attack would provoke a deep crisis in relations between the West and Russia. Washington and its European partners almost certainly would respond with new and more punishing sanctions. And should that happen, a summer summit, as well as real effort to work together on selected issues where the countries’ interests converge, could get booted a long way down the road.

Originally for Brookings