 Thank you very much. I mentioned the Strategic Chess Board earlier this morning, so let me now give the floor to one of the longest serving grandmasters, Zbigniew Przezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor and Senior Counselor here at the Center for Strategic International Studies. Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you, Janusz. First of all, let me say how pleased I am to be here with so many friends, friends from Central Europe, people I very much admire, and I'm delighted to see them here today. Second, let me say that I'm going to try to be relatively brief. We only have about 25 minutes. I would like to leave some time for discussion, while the subject I have been given is a relatively large one, its strategic overview. As my point of departure, let me just make one historical observation. It's now 20 years since Central Europe has come into its own. That's exactly how long the inter-war period lasted between the end of World War I, the emergence of Central Europe, and its disappearance 20 years later. And think of some contrasts. Internal political stability, infinitely better now. Security, despite some anxieties, incomparably better. Democracy, uniform, confident. And last but not least, something entirely new, increasing unity in the region. This is a much better context specifically, and does affect the strategic perspective. Nonetheless, I'm aware of the fact that there's some strategic uncertainty in Central Europe, particularly regarding Russia. Concern about Russia's imperial aspirations, the contradictions in the post-Soviet space, the potential threat to Ukraine, the recent manifestation of a serious threat to Georgia, the quest for a sphere of privileged interest. All of that gives rise to some strategic anxieties. So let me say a few words, first of all, more specifically on the subject of Russia. As I look at Russia, I perceive essentially two Russia's competing for the future. There are two Russia's, in my view, that are trying to determine what Russia might be in the year to come. The first Russia is the Russia dominated by nostalgia. Nostalgia for the past. Nostalgia rooted in the notion that the greatest calamity of the 20th century was the disintegration of the Soviet Union. A curious statement of one things that the 20th century was punctuated by World War I, which caused millions to be killed, by World War II, which caused many more millions to be killed, and in addition to it the horrors of the Holocaust, it tells you something about the outlook of the people who articulate that notion. There is obviously in their mind a desire to reestablish Russia in some new form as an imperial world power. How to define it is also a source of contention within that nostalgic camp. There are the people who advocate the Eurasian concept for Russia. Eurasianism as an ism, sometimes extremely intolerant in some of its forms of expression. There is the quest perhaps for a Slavic union with ice cast in the direction of Ukraine and Belarus as the essential elements. This nostalgic camp, very much rooted in the past, is preoccupied with the world status and it focuses essentially on issues associated with it and it had a certain impetus following the removal of the sources of anarchy in the early 90s, following the consolidation of power, following the massive inflow of external capital because of the benefits of high price of energy. It felt itself rising and riding the crest of history. But there is also another camp in Russia. There is also another perspective about the future of Russia. A perspective brought to the surface most dramatically in the course of a year ago and particularly in the course of a year ago this fall, the financial economic crisis. That crisis was welcomed by the nostalgic camp as testifying to the proposition that the Western in the final analysis is rotten and that America is a big house of cards. I remember the triumphant notes sounded by Putin and others regarding the nature of this crisis and its historical implications. All implicitly suggesting that Russia was immune to this malaise. And then lo and behold, within a few weeks the Russian stock market collapses, outflow of capital becomes a flood, inflow of capital becomes a trickle, and a significant portion of the Russian elite feels endangered. Of the Russian elite, the oligarchs who are in close cahoots with the power brokers and the Kremlin, they are part of the political elite. And that was something entirely new. In fact, entirely new in Russian as well as Soviet history. Russia never before has been economically and financially interdependent with the rest of the world. That never happened in the Soviet days, neither towards the end and certainly not even in the net. It didn't happen in the Saras days. The Stolypin reforms were not dependent on the conditions of the financial markets in London and elsewhere. This was a novel experience and a shocking experience. And an experience which brought home a sense of vulnerability. Vulnerability, but also realization of interdependence. And that has been followed more recently by an attempt to begin to articulate the implications of this for the future of Russia. Re-read, if you haven't read it carefully, re-read it again, the September 10th statement, article, manifesto, whatever you wish to call it, by Medvedev. If I were to publish something like this in the Russian press, since they often ask me for comments or for contributions, if I were to publish a scorching and indictment of Russian reality using the words in that article, as Medvedev did, it would be viewed by many as confirmation of my status as a Russophobe. It was a destruction of the notion that Russia is a great power. It was finger-pointing at numerous vulnerabilities, social, political, constitutional, educational, scientific, demographic. I probably missed some elements talking from memory. But it was across the board, together with a reform program, based principally on the notion of constitutional democracy, and with 2012 not a far away, explicitly even saying that the selection of the president should be based on the competition not on of two candidates, but two political parties. One wonders what's behind these suggestions, but the next case, they are a serious statement of a different view of Russia, namely that Russia's principal task is to undo its delayed development. It is to accelerate its modernization and can only do so in a democratic domestic context and an interdependent global reality. That is an important statement. I don't want to exaggerate what I'm not going to mention, but indicative of it, and perhaps also in the elaboration of it, and as an attempt to create a foreign policy component of it, is a recent article in Foreign Affairs by Dmitry Trenin, which obviously leans in that direction and read what he prescribes as a foreign policy for Russia that is realistic, that is not based on illusions, on self-deception or on nostalgia. So we do see two camps in Russia. As someone recently said, I thought rather wittly, there is the Medvedev camp, there is the Putin camp, the only question is in which camp is Medvedev himself? But that in many respects may be not a very important question, because the question is not really the future of Medvedev. It's the fact that Russia is undergoing a rather difficult process of rethinking what it is and where it ought to head. And it is doing so in a context which in the final analysis is neither historically nor objectively congenial to the First School of Thought, the School of Imperial Nostalgia, because the fact is that the larger context in which Russia finds itself is a context now very much shaped by the fact of national diversity, national diversity in the space of the Foreign Soviet Union, of the commitment to independence, of almost all of the elites of the new post-Soviet state, including even the most supine or the most unpleasant, be it Belarus or even Tajikistan. The fact is that the reality of national independence in the Soviet Union, in the former Soviet Union, stands in the way of the nostalgic aspirations of the First School of Thought that have dominated the political dialogue and defined what Russia is and have been perceived as a threat correctly but in a limited sense in Central Europe. Moreover, if the nostalgic School of Thought were to attempt to undo the past by more than threats or economic boycotts but by use of force, I think the likelihood is that Russia would get itself into a crisis of prolonged, enduring, and large-scale proportions. I do not believe that it is now possible anymore to re-digest Ukraine, for example. Yes, there is a Russian threat to Ukraine. Yes, there is definitely the likelihood of significant Russian manipulation of the elections in Ukraine. There is, in the short run, a cause for some concern about the nature of the Russian-Ukrainian relationship. But if the Russians play it clumsily, in the end it will be infinitely more costly for Russia because Russia can no longer subdue nor integrate Ukraine and hence if it provokes something that it can then cannot control, it could embroil itself in a venture which could be very counterproductive. Of course, the Russians do have the energy tool and I don't deny its significance. It is important. But again, it is quite different from what was the case in the past. There is a difference between shutting off the oil tax towards, let's say, Kiev or sending tanks into Prague. There is a fundamental difference because the latter creates for a while irrevocable consequences. The former creates a crisis. Bargaining eventually reactions, then at some point reciprocal costs. I do not dismiss the importance of that threat, but I think it is a qualitatively different character and one of which can be then managed, particularly by a West and not just Central Europe, but by the West, which in many respects is in so much a stronger position than Russia, that it can in fact bargain and deal and compete with Russia in a complicated and prolonged historical gain. So while I do believe that the strategic setting in which Central Europe finds itself is complex, some of the recent alarms that I have read, including that letter, addressed an anonymous entity called Obama Administration, was somewhat overly alarming. We have a serious problem in our hands, but it is a problem which I believe is manageable. But there is a further aspect to the strategic setting in which Central Europe finds itself, and that is America. For West European confidence, Europe's overall confidence, Central European confidence, America is critical. And here the question is where is America heading and what is America's likely role in relationship to these issues. And my concern, quite frankly, is that we are still facing, and perhaps increasingly so, a growing risk of being engaged in a prolonged conflict in a huge swath of Southwestern Asia from which we may not be able to extricate ourselves for quite a few years to come. We tend to forget with the rapid of change that we have now been involved in Afghanistan for eight years. This is now the third longest war that the United States has fought in its entire history, only the Vietnamese war and the war of independence. In three months from now, the Afghan war will be longer than the Vietnamese war. In six months from now, the Afghan war will be longer than the war of independence, our longest war. And it could last a long time. I do not know how the situation of Afghanistan will unfold. I hope will avoid the extreme version of Americanizing it, because it will repeat and also experience what the Soviets faced in Afghanistan, namely an Afghan war of national resistance against a foreign invader. But I am also opposed to precipitous disengagement, the consequences of which for Afghanistan and for Pakistan would be probably worse than unpredictable. And hence we have to be there, but we have to pursue an intelligent policy. We can only do that well if at the same time we pursue intelligent policies vis-à-vis Iran and vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which again threatens to inflame the Middle East. If we do not, and if in some fashion all three situations were to deteriorate, the United States would be faced with an engagement that could be paralyzing, totally absorbing, and probably reducing our capacity to influence in constructive fashion the processes of political change, strategic change in Europe. This is a concern, and a serious concern of mine, because I see some forces at the work in America which are making a bipartisan policy on this critical issue more difficult. Our body politic is being increasingly polarized. There are not yet two Americas the way there are two Russias, but there is the making of that, particularly in the event of some unexpected, extreme event occurring in the United States which again opens the flood doors to rampant demagogy and to a wave of public fear. We do see increasingly difficulties between the executive branch and Congress, not on a domestic policy, but on foreign policy, with massive petitions signed by congressmen designed to limit executive freedom of action or to impose legislative limits on freedom of action, and that could diminish America's capacity to act in a constructive and productive way. I hope it will not come to pass, but that to me means one final conclusion as far as Central Europe is concerned. The relationship with America is critical and important, but that relationship can only be with Europe as a whole. There is no point in Central Europeans coming to America to vent their anxieties and indirectly to imply that the West Europeans are somehow or other not very liable and not very responsive. We can only deal with Europe, we can only respond to Europe, and ultimately we'll only listen to Europe if there is a Europe that it's worth listening to, which means a Europe that speaks increasingly with a single voice, even if not a single executive officer who speaks for Europe, then a Europe that speaks with a single strategic perspective, which in the first instance whether one lives or not has to be shaped by the three most important European states with something which approximates a global vocation. That is Great Britain, Germany and France, and perhaps increasingly in the following order, Germany, Great Britain and France. And of course, beyond Germany and Great Britain and France, there are other important European countries, perhaps the six if they can get together, or the five perhaps more or a cluster of them if they can represent common perspectives and find a powerful voice to speak on their behalf. But to such a Europe, we'll have to listen. With such a Europe, we can work. And with such a Europe, we can fashion, I think, a constructive policy that deals responsibly with Russia. The United States does have common interests with Russia. We are going to get a start agreement. That's going to be better. I'm fairly confident of that. The Russians are being marginally helpful to us in Afghanistan. With whatever strategic calculus they may have in their minds, nonetheless, but still objective, they're being helpful. They are being somewhat helpful to us in Iran. Other than that, I entertain some serious doubts. But nonetheless, they're still a party to a very complicated process which should be going forward, namely the negotiating process. So we have a whole agenda, a bilateral agenda with Russia, which we can notice regarding. But we obviously have a very major stake in Europe becoming viable, in Europe becoming secure, and in the new geopolitical realities post-1989 not being undone in the space of the former Soviet Union. I do not think that Russia alone can undo them. But if the West were to move into paralysis and crisis, obviously the temptation, the temptation that the first Russia is strong to could become very strong. So an American-European relationship and a single Europe with which we can relate, and a central Europe which asserts itself within Europe is something very much in our joint strategic interest. Thank you. Thank you very much, Spig. I think we have time for maybe two or three questions before Phil Gordon's here. Let me take the liberty of asking you the first question. Russia's struggle for modernization. In your view, can it be accomplished through some kind of a Chinese model, or does that not apply to Russia? Or in the Russia's case, does it require political pluralism, opening of society, closer links with the West in all its aspects? Well, a Chinese model for Russia would not only work if the Russians became Chinese. Quite seriously. I mean, just, you look at how the Chinese did it. You look at the concentration of intelligence, effort, but also personal initiative within it. I don't see Russia being able to replicate the Chinese model. I think they'll get bogged down in statism, which will not work well in the Russian conditions, as we already know, whereas the Chinese have been able to combine statism with private initiative in large measure because of their cultural traditions, and really high level intelligence of the leadership. I have dealt with the Chinese leadership now for 30 years repeatedly. I know personally every top Chinese leader. This is an impressive group of people and we are very serious, very serious about understanding the world. The Politburo has regular sessions once a month for a whole day devoted to some complex international issue, such as, for example, the first session they ever had was, on why do empires rise and fall? The whole Politburo spent the whole day studying that. Sessions on economic crises, on Keynesianism, and so forth. This is a leadership that is really alert to the world and very strategic in its outlook, not prone to extreme shift of moods. No, I think if the Russians are to become modern, they'll have to move gradually the way Central Europe has been moving, actually the way Poland has been moving. And I think this is why the Polish case is so pertinent to Russia. Yesterday at the World Bank there was an event dedicated specifically to an examination of the Polish experience over the last 20 years, including its extraordinary success in the last year, the only sort of mid-sized, large economy that's been actually successful, and continue to grow, and had low inflation, growth rate, no growth in unemployment in the course of the last year. And what was clear to me from listening to Gaidar and his reactions was the extent to which a lot of what the Poles have done can still be replicated in Russia, but it'll take a longer time. Yes, I have a question. Russia is aspiring to become one of the new Polars of Ukraine. It's a contemporary world. For me, the problem is that Russia lacks magnetism somehow. Is it possible for the Russians to restore its magnets, to be more attractive for neighbors? Well, to be attractive, you either have to have some extraordinary capacity for mass deception, appealing to the subjective instincts of those who are attracted, by which I mean ideology. Russia was terribly attractive as a pool of attraction when it was seemingly building a new society. People went there, looked at Russia, came out and said, I've seen the future and it works. Well, we know that it wasn't working then, and eventually it stopped working altogether. But ideology, mass deception, self-deception can be a very powerful force of attraction. There's nothing like that in Russia today. Russian nationalism is not going to attract the non-Russian. Russian imperial traditions are not going to attract the Russians. There's no idea around which Russia can become a pool of attraction. Russian orthodoxy is not going to attract non-Russians. So the alternative is performance. That is what makes China attractive. You go to China and you see the performance. You see the new cities. You see an interstate highway system increasing like ours. I wonder how many people in this room know that China, which has roughly the same land space as the United States, had no roads of any significance until about a decade ago. And a decade ago they started building them. We built our interstate system in the 50s and 40s, 50s and 60s, under General Eisenhower's inspiration. 65,000 miles of superhighways. The Chinese already have 42,000 miles of superhighways, like the best of ours. The Russians are building their first, right now, their first, from Moscow to St. Petersburg. More or less trying to build a superhighway on the road that was built by Peter the Great. So, you know, that's rather long period of time. You cannot drive from Moscow to Berlin except on a two-lane highway moving in opposite directions, clogged with trucks. You cannot drive from Moscow to Vladivostok except on gravel and mud. And so, you know, the capacity of the Chinese in a determined fashion to set goals and to achieve them is demonstrable. And it is impressive to outsiders. No one is attracted by China because of Chinese talk of, you know, new Chinese socialism and so forth. They are attracted by Chinese performance. Maybe China can rebuild Russia. But the Russians are hoping for it, except they don't want the Chinese to do it. Any other questions? We have just a couple of minutes before our lunch panel. Bratnain speaker. Please. Thank you very much, Michael Baranowski from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Mr. Brzezinski, I wanted to ask you about the perception of threat assessment in Washington regarding the threat of any sort to Central Eastern Europe and the perception of threat assessment in Central Eastern Europe and our abilities to deal with it. Do you see a large gap between those two? And how do we best manage this gap that if there is one could create some, well, friction? Well, I thought that was a subject I was trying to address, namely that this so-called threat or the threat assessment is somewhat less dramatic here than one census occasion in Central Europe. For reasons that I tried to explain, I have, broadly speaking, a relatively optimistic view of the prospects for Central Europe for the continuation of the success that it has enjoyed over the last 20 years. And I have a somewhat more pessimistic view as to the prospects of Russia emerging as a major power capable of really threatening Central Europe in the foreseeable future. Since Professor Brzezinski said everything there was to be said, I just can't keep myself from telling you a joke that I've heard from a Russian politician and that illustrates perfectly well, I believe, the first of Russia, the nostalgic Russia. And the joke is about these two hunters who were brought by a small plane somewhere into Siberia. And when the plane was leaving, he said, gentlemen, I'll come back in two days. But it's to pick you up. But it's a small plane, so no big animals, because it's a very small plane. And indeed he came back up to two days and there they were, two hunters, and an enormous bear. He said, gentlemen, I said no big animals. They said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know from experience, if we give you 200 bucks, you will load the bear and take off with us. So indeed the money changed hands, they loaded the bear onto the plane, and they joined. And after about, they took off and after about five miles they collapsed. And one of the hunters wakes up and says, what did happen? Yeah, he says, we crushed. So we're about two, two miles from the place we crushed last year. Should we finish on a joke or is there any other? Last minute question. Please go ahead. Hi, I'm Susan Cornwell with Reuters. Can you hear me? Yeah. I hope so. Can you hear me now? Yeah, I'm Susan Cornwell with Reuters. He was just saying you didn't think that Russia was really capable of threatening Central Europe in the near future. But we just heard from the Polish Foreign Minister, he was rather concerned by this recent Russian military exercise near the borders of NATO. And he talked about how the Russians, I think he said they had 900 tanks and there were just six American soldiers in Poland. And I wondered whether you think, do you see a vacuum in Central Europe in terms of U.S. and NATO military installations? Do you think that it would be a good idea to put some U.S. or NATO more military installations there? Well, I know about that exercise, the sub-Zapad exercise. And I think it's provocative. It's also stupid. It's very reflective of Russia number one, the nostalgic Russia. Because what does it really accomplish for Russia? I mean, what does it accomplish for Russia? What it makes more likely, in fact, is something that presumably the people who sort of organize these maneuvers don't want to see, which is a gradual increase in NATO's capacities and presence in Central Europe. Because obviously its effect is to cause, very sensibly so, in the authorities in Poland or in the Baltic Republics to say, well, how about having now an exercise not called the West, but an exercise called the East? And I think there's going to be something like this, in fact, in the Baltic area. And there will probably be more emphasis in NATO contingency planning, although some of it has taken place. But as a political judgment, as a historical judgment, I don't see those Russian forces that exercised in Belarus with the Belarusian army really sweeping westward in the foreseeable future. And by foreseeable future, I mean a number, X number of years. So it's a kind of empty political gesture, which I think convinces me even more that a significant portion of the Russian political elite has lost touch with strategic reality, to the point that it's almost ridiculous. Take, for example, the great celebration in the Russian press, in particular the military press, of its most recent great military victory. Now, you would think that if they talked that way, they were talking about World War II, and they deserve it, because that was a great Russian, Soviet military victory. No, they're celebrating their victory over Georgian forces a year ago, which were two brigades, two brigades trained by the United States for counterterrorism activity, and which somewhat unwisely were sent into Asetia, and then were overpowered by Russian army of about 50,000 to 60,000 men that swept southward and into Georgia, and in fact threatened to be leasing. But which otherwise, from every study we have made of their military operation, performed surprisingly badly. It was an incompetent, messy, costly, disorganized victory, won largely by superiority numbers, and perhaps not as quite a determined Georgian resistance as one would have wished for. But that kind of reinforcement of foreign policy with military demonstrations is, if anything, counterproductive. I hate to think what might happen, for example, if the Russians, encouraged by this kind of stuff, started to try to intimidate Ukraine. They have begun to do some of that in Crimea. They're likely to produce a massive Ukrainian nationalist reaction, because if there is anything the Ukrainians are united about, it's not the state, it's not common policy, it's land, it's territory. This really gets the Ukrainians going. I remind you of an incident several years ago called Tulsla. There was a little island in the Sea of Azov, which on the map was part of Ukraine, but close to it was Russian territory. So the Russians got the bright idea of sending out a lot of ships, construction ships, which started digging up stones and rocks to link the island to that territory so that on the map it would then appear as Russia, which would give them a better access to the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainians became absolutely outraged. Kuchma, a relatively pro-Russian president, was in Brazil. He canceled his trip, flew to Ukraine, took a small plane to Tulsla, stood on the shores and proclaimed that every Ukrainian is determined to protect Ukraine's sacred soil, at which moment Ukrainian MiGs appeared and fired symbolically with machine guns into the sea. Kind of a message to somebody, obviously. Then Ukrainian ships appeared. This is actually why I'm telling you this is true, even though it sounds comical. Ukrainian ships appeared, pulled up to the side of the Russian ships. So as the Russian ships would dig up rocks and sand and dump it to connect Russia with this island, the Ukrainian ships would dig in, pick up the same rocks and sand and throw it back into the sea. And this operation lasted a few hours until both sides came to their senses. In the meantime, the Ukrainian Rada held a special session. You know, the Ukrainian Rada cannot legislate anything for weeks right now because they are so divided. The whole special session unanimous vote everybody, the party of the regents, the communist party and so forth, that the sacred soil of Ukraine must not be touched. Now there could be something in Crimea, but even a year ago when the Russians sent some of their Marines into Sevastopol on some sort of a task which wasn't coordinated with the Ukrainians, the Ukrainian commanding officer in Simferopol, when there is an armored Ukrainian division station, phoned up the Russian naval commander and said, if your Marines are not backing your ship by 6 p.m. tonight, our tanks would be entering Sevastopol. And they were backing their ship by 6 p.m. So, you know, the Russian military demonstrations are reminiscent of the past, and I can understand the Central Europeans, remembering Budapest, remembering Prague to be concerned. But I think we have to have a sense of how history has changed, how the strategic realities of Russia have changed. Okay, very, very last question, Charles, I'll give to Charles, and please be brief. I'll be very brief indeed that the response to the Russian military exercise, thanks to my blackberry here, is right here. The United States will hold first military exercises with Baltic states in 2010, either September or October or 2010. I don't know if this is in direct response, but you can draw your own conclusion. Well, even if they're not in direct response, they'll be seen as in direct response. And what benefit do the Russians are getting out of that? Okay, on that, we will rest. Thank you very much, Spig, and another round of applause.