FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.
FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.
Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.
The Project on Russian Power and Purpose convenes faculty seminars and open events in which speakers and experts discuss the context and drivers of Kremlin strategy. The Project’s analyses and recommendations will be compiled for publication and circulation among policy makers.
Abstract: We have learned a great deal about Iraq since the fateful decision to invade the country in 2003. Given academic research on Iraqi society and politics over the past 16 years and hard won lessons from U.S. intervention in Iraq, what what are the lessons learned for contemporary U.S. policymakers? And, crucially, what role should Iraq play in current U.S. foreign policy and its regional strategy toward the Middle East?
Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/4OBQOshr-gs
Speakers:
Colin H. Kahl Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the inaugural Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a Professor, by courtesy, in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University.
Brett McGurk Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Center for Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.
With moderator: Lisa Blaydes
Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Speaker's Biography:
From October 2014 to January 2017, he was Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President. In that position, he served as a senior advisor to President Obama and Vice President Biden on all matters related to U.S. foreign policy and national security affairs, and represented the Office of the Vice President as a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee. From February 2009 to December 2011, Dr. Kahl was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East at the Pentagon. In this capacity, he served as the senior policy advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, and six other countries in the Levant and Persian Gulf region. In June 2011, he was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service by Secretary Robert Gates.
From 2007 to 2017 (when not serving in the U.S. government), Dr. Kahl was an assistant and associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. From 2007 to 2009 and 2012 to 2014, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a nonpartisan Washington, DC-based think tank. From 2000 to 2007, he was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. In 2005-2006, Dr. Kahl took leave from the University of Minnesota to serve as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he worked on issues related to counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and responses to failed states. In 1997-1998, he was a National Security Fellow at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.
Current research projects include a book analyzing American grand strategy in the Middle East in the post-9/11 era. A second research project focuses on the implications of emerging technologies on strategic stability.
He has published numerous articles on international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, the Los Angeles Times, Middle East Policy, the National Interest, the New Republic, the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post, and the Washington Quarterly, as well as several reports for CNAS.
His previous research analyzed the causes and consequences of violent civil and ethnic conflict in developing countries, focusing particular attention on the demographic and natural resource dimensions of these conflicts. His book on the subject, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World, was published by Princeton University Press in 2006, and related articles and chapters have appeared in International Security, the Journal of International Affairs, and various edited volumes.
Dr. Kahl received his B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan (1993) and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University (2000).
Brett McGurk is the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Center for Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.Image
McGurk’s research interests center on national security strategy, diplomacy, and decision-making in wartime. He is particularly interested in the lessons learned over the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump regarding the importance of process in informing presidential decisions and the alignment of ends and means in national security doctrine and strategy. At Stanford, he will be working on a book project incorporating these themes and teaching a graduate level seminar on presidential decision-making beginning in the fall of 2019. He is also a frequent commentator on national security events in leading publications and as an NBC News Senior Foreign Affairs Analyst.
Before coming to Stanford, McGurk served as Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS at the U.S. Department of State, helping to build and then lead the coalition of seventy-five countries and four international organizations in the global campaign against the ISIS terrorist network. McGurk was also responsible for coordinating all aspects of U.S. policy in the campaign against ISIS in Iraq, Syria, and globally.
McGurk previously served in senior positions in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, including as Special Assistant to President Bush and Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan, and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran and Special Presidential Envoy for the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State under Obama.
McGurk has led some of the most sensitive diplomatic missions in the Middle East over the last decade. His most recent assignment established one of the largest coalitions in history to prosecute the counter-ISIS campaign. He was a frequent visitor to the battlefields in both Iraq and Syria to help integrate military and civilian components of the war plan. He also led talks with Russia over the Syria conflict under both the Trump and Obama administrations, initiated back-channel diplomacy to reopen ties between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and facilitated the formation of the last two Iraqi governments following contested elections in 2014 and 2018.
In 2015 and 2016, McGurk led fourteen months of secret negotiations with Iran to secure the release of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezain, U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, and Pastor Saad Abadini, as well as three other American citizens.
During his time at the State Department, McGurk received multiple awards, including the Distinguished Honor Award and the Distinguished Service Award, the highest department awards for exceptional service in Washington and overseas assignments.
McGurk is also a nonresident senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
McGurk received his JD from Columbia University and his BA from the University of Connecticut Honors Program. He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Denis Jacobs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit, and Judge Gerard E. Lynch on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Abstract: Russia’s challenge to the West includes information operations (e.g., disinformation, political propaganda, and other forms of online manipulation) aimed at destabilizing the common ground that democratic societies in Europe and the United States need in order to govern themselves. Kate Starbird will describe two case studies of online information operations connected to Russia’s media/intelligence apparatus: interference in the 2016 U.S. election and the campaign against the “White Helmets” in Syria. She argues that defending against Russian online information operations will require a more nuanced understanding of the problem, in particular, moving beyond focusing on “bots” and “trolls” to looking at the collaborative nature of disinformation campaigns that target, infiltrate, shape, and leverage online communities—communities which may not recognize their role in these campaigns.
Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/lF4M11FkEKY
Speaker's Biography:
Seminar recording: https://youtu.be/fYUK-ALGqAE
Abstract: Russian influence operations during the 2016 US elections, and the investigations that followed, revealed the broad scope of Russian political warfare against Western democracies. Since then, Russian operations have targeted the UK, France, Germany, Ukraine, and others. Other state and non-state actors, motivated by politics or profit, have also learned and adapted the Kremlin’s tool-kit. With the 2020 elections a year away, what have we learned about foreign information operations? How has the transatlantic community responded and what are the threats we are likely to face? Drawing on extensive research on transatlantic relations, disinformation, and Russian foreign policy, Dr. Polyakova will discuss the state of policy options to address disinformation, analyze Russian intentions, and highlight emerging threats.
Speaker’s Biography:
Twice in the past 14 years, a dispute between Ukraine and Russia has led Russia to cut off natural gas flows to Ukraine and Europe. The stage is being set for another cut-off in January. The European Union wants to ensure that gas continues to flow, so EU officials will attempt at a mid-September meeting to broker an agreement. But they face a difficult slog.
THE LOOMING CONFLICT
Gazprom, a large Russian parastatal, now transits a significant amount of gas to European destinations via Ukrainian pipelines. The volume totaled 87 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2018, one-third of Russian gas exports to Europe.
However, the contract that governs this gas transit expires at the end of 2019. Kyiv wants to replace the current agreement with another long-term contract, preferably for 10 years. Moscow, on the other hand, wants just one year.
Russia hopes to bring Nord Stream 2 — which runs from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea — online in 2020. (The U.S. government has raised the possibility of sanctions against companies involved with Nord Stream 2, but the pipeline is already 75% complete.) Moscow also hopes that Turk Stream — two pipelines running under the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey — will reach full capacity next year. Nord Stream 2 will have a capacity of 55 bcm of gas per year. Turk Stream consists of two pipelines, each with an annual capacity of 15.75 bcm. The Turks plan to use half of the gas domestically and export the rest to southeastern Europe. If Gazprom can move an additional 70.75 BCM of gas to Europe via Nord Stream 2 and the Turk Stream pipelines after 2020, its need for the Ukrainian pipelines will drastically decline.
Gas fights between Kyiv and Moscow are nothing new. In January 2006, as a result of a price dispute, Gazprom reduced gas flows to Ukraine, charged that Kyiv was siphoning off transit gas intended for Europe, and further cut gas supplies. Fortunately, the sides reached agreement after a few days, and gas flows resumed.
A second fight broke out in January 2009. Moscow again reduced and then ended all gas flows to Ukraine, including transit gas. This time, the dispute lasted three weeks. During a bitterly cold stretch of weather, the cut-off caused particular hardships for Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece.
A CHANGING GAS RELATIONSHIP
The gas relationship between Ukraine and Russia has been complex, and it has changed dramatically over the past three decades. After regaining independence in 1991, Kyiv depended hugely on gas imports from Russia or from Central Asia via Russia — 50-60 bcm per year — as its domestic production met only one-fourth of Ukraine’s needs. That dependence gave Moscow leverage over Ukraine.
Kyiv nevertheless had leverage over Russia, which needed Ukraine’s pipelines to move gas to Europe. The European market mattered greatly for Gazprom. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Russian energy giant sold one-third of the gas it produced to Europe. Most of Gazprom’s gas was sold inside Russia at artificially low prices, so European sales were key to the company’s financial health.
The 2006 and 2009 gas fights led both sides to reconsider their dependency on the other. Gazprom began to develop plans for and build undersea pipelines to Germany and Turkey to circumvent Ukraine. By 2021, Gazprom will need Ukrainian pipelines to move, at most, relatively marginal amounts of gas.
For their part, Ukrainians began taking steps to substantially reduce gas consumption and their energy dependency on Russia. Rising prices for Russian gas motivated companies to install energy-efficient equipment. Ukraine now consumes about 30 bcm of gas per year (it no longer provides gas for Crimea, which Russia illegally seized in 2014, or for that part of the Donbas region occupied by Russian and Russian proxy forces). Less than one-third of the 30 bcm is imported, and since 2015, Ukraine no longer imports gas directly from Russia, getting gas instead from Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia (ironically, much of this gas is Russian gas exported to Central Europe, from where it is exported back to Ukraine).
JANUARY IS COMING
Seeking to avoid another gas fight, the European Union hopes to broker a new agreement between Kyiv and Moscow. EU Commission officials have suggested a 10-year contract providing for a minimum transit volume of 60 bcm per year through Ukrainian pipes. Such an arrangement would win support from key EU members such as Germany; Chancellor Merkel favors completion of Nord Stream 2 but has also said that substantial flows of gas should continue to move via Ukraine.
This would be a good arrangement for Kyiv, though Russian agreement appears unlikely. Moscow’s decisions to build undersea pipelines to Germany and Turkey were not motivated solely — and perhaps not mainly — by commercial considerations. The Ukrainian pipeline system could have been upgraded at a fraction of the cost of building the new pipelines. The Kremlin, however, sought to gain a position in which it could pressure Kyiv by cutting off gas without affecting flows to elsewhere in Europe.
Moscow wants to bring Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit, and it sees gas as a possible tool. If it has no gas sales to Ukraine, it can still end transit through the country, cutting off the substantial transit fees (about $3 billion per year) that it now pays Kyiv. Russia has proposed a one-year agreement, apparently to bridge from the end of 2019 to the beginning of 2021 when it hopes to have Nord Stream 2 and Turk Stream operating at full capacity. At that point, Gazprom could all but end gas transit via Ukraine.
If Kyiv rejects a one-year agreement, which looks quite possible, negotiations could quickly hit an impasse, and the possibility of another disruption in gas flows to Europe will arise. Finding a solution to avert such an outcome confronts EU negotiators with a tough challenge.
Michal Smetana is an Associate Professor at the Institute of International Studies of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Director of the Peace Research Center Prague (PRCP), and Head Researcher at the Experimental Lab for International Security Studies (ELISS). Previously, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). His main research interests lie at the intersection of security studies, international relations, and political psychology, with a specific focus on nuclear weapons in world politics, arms control and disarmament, contestation of international norms, and the use of experimental survey methodology to study public and elite attitudes towards foreign policy. His articles have been published in International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Affairs, Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Review, Contemporary Security Policy, Survival, Conflict Management and Peace Science, and many other scholarly and policy journals. He is the author of Nuclear Deviance. In addition to his academic work, he is frequently invited to talk about international security matters in the media and conducts policy analyses for NATO, the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Czech Ministry of Interior.
Selected publications:
Michal Smetana. 2023. Microfoundations of Domestic Audience Costs in Nondemocratic Regimes: Experimental Evidence from Putin’s Russia. Journal of Peace Research. Forthcoming in 2023.
Ondrej Rosendorf, Michal Smetana, and Marek Vranka. 2023. “Algorithmic Aversion? Experimental Evidence on the Elasticity of Public Attitudes to ‘Killer Robots’” Security Studies. Forthcoming in 2023.
Michal Smetana, Marek Vranka, and Ondrej Rosendorf. 2023. “The “Commitment Trap” Revisited: Experimental Evidence on Ambiguous Nuclear Threats.” Journal of Experimental Political Science. First view: March 2023, 1–14.
Michal Smetana and Michal Onderco. 2023. “From Moscow with a Mushroom Cloud? Russian Public Attitudes to the Use of Nuclear Weapons in a Conflict with NATO.” Journal of Conflict Resolution. 67(2–3), 183–209.
Michal Smetana, Marek Vranka, and Ondrej Rosendorf. 2023. “The Lesser Evil? Experimental Evidence on the Strength of Nuclear and Chemical Weapon “Taboos.” Conflict Management and Peace Science. 40(1), 3–21.
Michal Onderco, Michal Smetana, and Tom Etienne. 2023. “Hawks in the making? European public views on nuclear weapons post-Ukraine.” Global Policy. 14(2), 305–317.
Michal Smetana and Michal Onderco. 2022. “Elite-Public Gaps in Attitudes to Nuclear Weapons: New Evidence from a Survey of German Citizens and Parliamentarians.” International Studies Quarterly. 66(2), 1–10.
Michal Smetana and Joseph O’Mahoney. 2022. “NPT as an Antifragile System: How Contestation Improves the Nonproliferation Regime.” Contemporary Security Policy. 43(1), 24–49.
Michal Onderco, Tom Etienne, and Michal Smetana. 2022. “Ideology and the Red Button: How Ideology Shapes Nuclear Weapons Use Preferences in Europe.” Foreign Policy Analysis. 18(4), 1–20.
Ondrej Rosendorf, Michal Smetana, and Marek Vranka. 2022. “Autonomous Weapons and Ethical Judgments: Experimental Evidence on Attitudes towards the Military Use of ‘Killer Robots.’” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. 28(2), 177–183.
Ondrej Rosendorf, Michal Smetana, and Marek Vranka. 2021. “Disarming Arguments: Public Opinion and Nuclear Abolition.” Survival. 63(6), 183–200.
Michal Smetana and Carmen Wunderlich. 2021. “Forum: Nonuse of Nuclear Weapons in World Politics: Toward the Third Generation of ‘Nuclear Taboo’ Research.” International Studies Review. 23(3), 1072–1099.
Kamil Klosek, Vojtech Bahensky, Michal Smetana, and Jan Ludvik. 2021. “Frozen Conflicts in World Politics: A New Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research. 58(4), 849–858.
Michal Smetana, Michal Onderco, and Tom Etienne. 2021. “Do Germany and the Netherlands Want to Say Goodbye to US Nuclear Weapons?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 77(4), 215–221.
Michal Onderco and Michal Smetana. 2021. “German Views on US Nuclear Weapons in Europe: Public and Elite Perspectives.” European Security. 30(4), 630–648.
Michal Smetana and Marek Vranka. 2021. “How Moral Foundations Shape Public Approval of Nuclear, Chemical, and Conventional Strikes: New Evidence from Experimental Surveys.” International Interactions. 47(2), 374–390.
Michal Onderco, Michal Smetana, Sico van der Meer, and Tom Etienne. 2021. “When do the Dutch Want to Join the Nuclear Ban Treaty? Findings of a Public Opinion Survey.” The Nonproliferation Review. 28(1–3), 149–163.
Hana Martinkova and Michal Smetana. 2020. “Dynamics of Norm Contestation in the Chemical Weapons Convention: The Case of ‘Non-lethal Agents.’” Politics. 40(4), 428–443.
Michal Smetana. 2020. “(De-)stigmatising the outsider: nuclear-armed India, United States, and the global nonproliferation order.” Journal of International Relations and Development. 23, 535–558.
Michal Smetana and Jan Ludvík. 2019. “Theorising Indirect Coercion: The Logic of Triangular Strategies.” International Relations. 33(3), 455–474.
Michal Smetana and Jan Ludvík. 2019. “Between War and Peace: A Dynamic Reconceptualization of ‘Frozen Conflicts.’” Asia-Europe Journal. 17(1), 1–14.
Sumit Ganguly, Michal Smetana, Sannia Abdullah, and Ales Karmazin. 2019. “India, Pakistan, and the Kashmir Dispute: Unpacking the Dynamics of South Asian Frozen Conflict.” Asia-Europe Journal. 17(1), 129–143.
Michal Smetana and Michal Onderco. 2018. “Bringing the Outsiders in: An Interactionist Perspective on Deviance and Normative Change.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs. 31(6), 516–536.
Michal Smetana. 2018. “A Nuclear Posture Review for the Third Nuclear Age.” The Washington Quarterly. 41(3), 137–157.
Michal Smetana. 2018. “The Prague Agenda: An Obituary?” New Perspectives: Interdisciplinary Journal of Central & East European Politics and International Relations. 26(1), 16–22.
Michal Smetana and Jan Ludvík. 2017. “Correspondence – Nuclear Proliferation, Preventive Strikes, and the Optimist-Pessimist Divide.” The Nonproliferation Review. 23(5–6), 535–536.
Michal Smetana. 2016. “Stuck on Disarmament: The European Union and the 2015 NPT Review Conference.” International Affairs. 92(1), 137–152.
Michal Smetana and Ondrej Ditrych. 2015. “The More the Merrier: Time for a Multilateral Turn in Nuclear Disarmament.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 71(3), 30–37.
Reid Pauly is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brown University and the Dean’s Assistant Professor of Nuclear Security and Policy at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs. He studies nuclear proliferation and nuclear strategy, coercion, secrecy in international politics, and wargaming. Pauly is the author of The Art of Coercion: Credible Threats and the Assurance Dilemma (Cornell University Press, 2025). His scholarship has also been published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, the European Journal of International Relations, and Foreign Affairs. Pauly earned his Ph.D. from MIT and has held fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Schmidt Futures International Strategy Forum, and Dartmouth College’s Dickey Center for International Understanding.
Xinru Ma’s research focuses on nationalism, great power politics, and East Asian security with a methodological focus on formal and computational methods. More broadly, Xinru’s research encompasses three main objectives: Substantively, she aims to better theorize and enhance cross-country perspectives on critical phenomena such as nationalism and its impact on international security; Methodologically, she strives to improve measurement and causal inference based on careful methodologies, including formal modeling and computational methods like natural language processing; Empirically, she challenges prevailing assumptions that inflate the perceived risk of militarized conflicts in East Asia, by providing original data and analysis rooted in local knowledge and regional perceptions.
She is the co-author of Beyond Power Transitions: The Lessons of East Asian History and the Future of U.S.-China Relations (Columbia University Press, 2024). Her work has been published in the Journal of East Asian Studies, The Washington Quarterly, the Journal of Global Security Studies, and the Journal of European Public Policy, and in edited volumes via Palgrave.
At SNAPL, Xinru will lead the research group in collaborative projects that focus on US-Asia relations. One of the projects will contrast the rhetoric and debates in US politics surrounding the historical phenomenon of "Japan bashing" and the current perception of a "China threat.” By applying automated text analysis and qualitative analysis to public opinion data and textual data from various sources, such as congressional hearings and presidential speeches, this project uncovers the similarities, differences, and underlying factors driving the narratives and public discourse surrounding US-Asia relations. She will also provide mentorship to student research assistants and research associates.
Before joining SNAPL, Xinru was an assistant professor at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University, where she led the Political Science Research Lab, a lab committed to closing the gender gap in computational methods and political science research by offering big-data methods training and professionalization workshops to students. Before that, Xinru was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University (2019-2020) and a pre-doctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University (2018-2019). In 2023, Xinru was selected as an International Strategy Forum fellow by Schmidt Futures, an initiative that recognizes the next generation of problem solvers with extraordinary potential in geopolitics, innovation, and public leadership.
Dr. Melissa K. Griffith is a Lecturer in Technology and National Security at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) as well as affiliated faculty with the Alperovitch Institute and a senior advisor to the Emerging Technologies Initiative. From cybersecurity to tech security, she works at the intersection between technology, national security, and economic statecraft with a specialization in cybersecurity, semiconductors, and machine learning/artificial intelligence. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins SAIS, Griffith was the Director of Emerging Technology and National Security and a Senior Program Associate with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Science and Technology Innovation Program (STIP); a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC); a Visiting Scholar at George Washington University's Institute for International Science and Technology Policy (IISTP); a Visiting Research Fellow at the Research Institute on the Finnish Economy (ETLA) in Helsinki, Finland; and a Visiting Researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Brussels, Belgium. Griffith holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. in International Relations from Agnes Scott College.
For additional information (including a comprehensive list of publications, prior positions and affiliations, presentations and public appearances, and teaching experience) please visit www.melissakgriffith.com.
This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
Seminar recording: https://youtu.be/WWP-FueMOJ8
Abstract: Russia’s ability to challenge Europe and the West will depend in no small measure on the performance of its economy. Dr. Anders Åslund will discuss his book, Russia’s Crony Capitalism. The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy. The book explores how Vladimir Putin has consolidated his rule over Russia, including by appointing close associates as heads of state enterprises and securing control of the Federal Security Service and judiciary, enriching his business friends from Saint Petersburg in the process with preferential government deals. Thus, Putin has created a super wealthy and loyal plutocracy that owes its existence to his brand of authoritarianism. Dr. Åslund assesses Putin’s personal wealth and discusses what this system means for Russia and Russian power.
Speaker's Biography:
Anders Åslund is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He is a leading specialist on East European and post-Soviet economies and the author of 15 books, most recently Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy. Dr. Åslund has worked as an economic adviser to several governments, including the Russian and Ukrainian governments. He has also been a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and was the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford.Image
