 Good morning, everyone. On behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding, we welcome you to our second conference that we've held on the strategic implications of an improving Polish-Russian relationship. My name is Heather Conley. I'm Senior Fellow and Director of the Europe Program. And together with my colleague Janusz Bukajski, we could not be more delighted to see so many of you here this morning on such an important topic. As I was reflecting on today's conference, I thought, you know, Washington focuses on crises. And unfortunately, the international community is providing quite a bit of activity on the crisis front from Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, tensions in the South China Sea, North Korea. I would add the euro crisis to this list, but I fear Washington isn't paying enough attention to the consequences of that particular crisis. But I would say that all too infrequently, Washington does not closely observe those international issues that are having a positive, albeit still challenging trajectory in all aspects of an improving relationship. So that is where we place today's conference in some context, understanding the regional implications of an improving relationship between Russia and Poland. In the May-June edition of Foreign Affairs, editor Gideon Rose interviewed Polish Foreign Minister Rodik Szakorski, who of course is here in Washington today. He was also here yesterday. And in that interview, he specifically raised the issue of Polish-Russian relations. And I just would like to pull a few excerpts from that conversation. Minister Szakorski noted, quote, our relations with Russia, like yours, meaning the US, are pragmatic but brittle. We started our reset with Russia before you. When our government was formed in 2007, we made a cooperative move, lifting our objections to Russia joining the OECD and waiting for the move of the other side. Russia responded by lifting the embargo on our agricultural exports. We have an intensive dialogue with Russia on security issues. And I hope we will manage to mediate our differences. And then Minister Szakorski noting that the fourth phase of the US Missile Defense Program will not be built in Poland. He remarked, we hope that Russia will keep its word and refrain from hostile missile deployments on the NATO border. Pragmatic, brittle, intensive, hope. These are the words that one could describe the evolving relationship between Poland and Russia. And we look forward to hearing from our good friend and former foreign minister, Daniel Rotfeld, now co-chairman of the working group on Polish-Russian, I always get this, it's such a big title, co-chairman of the board of the Polish-Russian group on difficult matters, who will give us a clearer sense of the current dynamics of the Polish-Russian relationship. Why is this relationship improving? What have been the most significant challenges thus far and how have they been addressed? What institutional and historical reconciliation processes have been instrumental to this relationship? What could derail this improvement? And certainly one could argue the dramatic erosion of Russian civil society and democratic processes could be one factor. So today we hope to explore this relationship more fully through the lens of regional actors from Western Europe and the United States, Central Europe and the Baltics, and finally the common neighborhood of Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus. The ripple effects of the Polish-Russian relationship can be felt across Europe and transatlantically. What are their implications? Needless to say, we are looking forward to a very rich discussion. This conversation could not have been possible without my co-chairman of interesting and important conferences. That's my new title. Sławak Dęski is the director of the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding and he has been our partner in crime in developing this series of conversations. And my colleague Janusz Bukajski and I have had just a great privilege of working with you in the center and your staff on this topic. And so thanks to their generosity, we are able to hold today's conversation. So with that, Sławak, I'll invite you to the floor and we'll begin and again, welcome. Thank you very much for your welcome and excellent introduction. I'm very pleased that for the second time I can open, join CSIS and Polish Center for Dialogue and Understanding with Russia Conference here in these venues. And I'm very happy that the links we established some years ago, at the time when I was director of the Polish Institute of the National Affairs still work and provide very solid ground for our today's cooperation. I emphasize this new role, this new head I'm holding today because some of our best friends didn't recognize the change in my position. So now I speak on behalf of the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding. This particular conference we decided to shape in a little bit different way than we did last year. As you can probably see read in the agenda, we almost do not have today speakers neither from Poland nor from Russia. The purpose is to give the floor experts on international relations that follow different subjects but from time to time are interested in what's going on between Poland and Russia and we'd like to hear their comments what are pros and cons of these Polish-Russian attempts to improve relationship. And we'd like to hear the recommendations, what we can do better, how we can shape this dialogue in the future. And what are the consequences on impact, what is the impact of this dialogue for a more wider area in Europe or transatlantic relations? Now I would like to welcome and introduce to you car chairman of the Polish-Russian group for the difficult matters, Professor Adam Daniel Rothfeld who kindly agreed to deliver an opening keynote for us. As we all know, the role of the opening keynote is to give the conference a good start. So usually we invite for such an occasion wise men and ask him to share his thoughts on the subject of the conference. And now we arrived to the problem of how we defined wise men. And there are two tactics in this regard. One we can follow the example. And here I have to turn your attention that Professor Adam Daniel Rothfeld has been already elected or appointed to the various groups of wise men by various international authorities including General Secretary of United Nations, General Secretary of NATO, Council of Europe, European Union, Polish, Russian and other international authorities. So we following this criteria are on the safe side having him as a wise men and keynote speaker opening our conference. And there is a second, also very important criteria or second tactics we can imply. One may call it Chinese one. Chinese say that you can distinguish wise men it is a man who live long enough and survive a lot. So I would like to turn your attention that Professor Adam Daniel Rothfeld born in 1938, survived World War II, survived Holocaust, survived communism in Poland, survived as a director of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, survived as an advisor to Polish presidents, survived as a Polish minister of foreign affairs and survived as a co-chairman of Polish-Russian group for difficult matters. So indeed he survived a lot and I think he deserves our gratitude that he kindly agreed to speak at the beginning of our conference. Professor Adam Daniel Rothfeld, the floor is yours. Thank you very much for invitation and as a preliminary remark I would like to say that now you have to survive my presentation. And one additional comment namely since Dr. Demsky mentioned different groups of wise men group and I would like to say that my experience is that people are wise not because they are nominated. As a rule I noticed that within wise men group there are very few people who are wise. Having said that and I do belong to them by the way. I would like to say that my intention is to speak about dialogue and reconciliation in the context of the Polish-Russian relations. An experience of the Polish-Russian dialogue within the group on difficult matters brought me to the conclusions that the strategy for reconciliation is as a rule very specific and has to take under consideration the following factors. First, there is neither one universal nor regional model for the reconciliation. It is mainly a bilateral, not multilateral process. Second, it is as a rule deeply rooted in history but oriented into the future. Third, civil societies and non-governmental academic and confessional institutions, media and schools as well as public diplomacy and independent intellectuals are playing more instrumental roles for reconciliation than traditional inter-governmental diplomacy. Fifth, reconciliation has to be depoliticized multi-dimensional process. It required in Polish-Russian relations a need to seek not so much for compromise but for removing obstacles of the past in the mutual relationship. The truth cannot be the victim of the process but a point of departure in search of mutual respect. The next point is that only strong and self-confident partners can reconcile. The joint work of an independent group of intellectuals, academicians and experts can achieve more than traditional negotiators. And the last point is that the involvement of the broader public and the dialogue among societies accompanied by symbolic gestures and crafted statements by officials are decisive for reconciliation which has to be seen not as a single act or a series of such acts but as permanent historical and political future-oriented efforts. I would like to say that these are the main points. Now my presentation will be divided in four following elements. Concept, process, experience and protected conflicts. Concept. I would like to say that in his book, How Enemies Become Friends, The Sources of a Stable Peace published by Prince of the University Press two years ago, Charles Captain raised two principal questions. First, through what pathway the states succeed in setting aside their grievances, escape geopolitical competition and construct a relationship that precludes the prospect of armed conflict. And second, under what circumstances do zones of stable peace form and under what circumstances do they fail? In short, Captain's question is how, when and why do enemies become friends? The working group on historical reconciliation and protected conflicts established within the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative offered an approach that goes beyond traditional diplomacy to get at the root causes of the problem and urges a broader strategy for engaging society at large, the level at which solutions must be found. The point of departure for the EISI report finding is, I quote, one of the fundamental impediments to molding the Euro-Atlantic nation into a more unified and workable security community is the lingering distress that poisons too many of the region's key relationships. End of quotation. The report's proposal addressed to the European Union, Russia and the United States is to declared formally at the OSCE Council that they accept the responsibility to develop a joint stewardship plan for the 21st century designed to produce functioning Euro-Atlantic Security Cooperation. End of quotation. Overcoming historical grievances requires a broad-based, comprehensive, multi-level process. Such a process has to transcend official diplomatic efforts and engage many different sectors of society in an active dialogue with counterparts from the other side. Now a few words about process. The concept of reconciliation is, in my view, taken from the language of religion. The leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches at the Royal Castle in Warsaw last year, 17th August 2012, called for, I quote, forgiveness for the offenses, injustice and evil we have caused each other and noted. To forgive, of course, does not mean that we can forget. Memory is an important part of our identity. To forgive means to renounce vigience and hatred to participate in the building up of accord and fraternity between peoples, our nations and countries, which is the foundation of a peaceful future. End of quotation. It is not by chance that almost a half century ago, Polish Catholic bishops set in motion the process of reconciliation with Germany. It was preceded by the French-German reconciliation and more than 20 years ago, followed by a similar process initiated in Polish-Lithuanian and Polish-Ukrainian relations. For the process of reconciliation to be effective, it has to be institutionalized and, as I said already, depoliticized. Quarrels, disputes and conflicts between European states are not a new phenomenon. European history is marked by persistent armed conflicts occasionally interrupted by longer or shorter periods of peace. International political efforts after World War II to ensure that in-depth social dialogue leads to a lasting elimination of historic animosities between traditional enemies constitute a welcome new phenomenon. The relevant dialogue has been augmented by broad educational programs and youth contacts and relations between France and Germany can serve as a model here. They were not only reinforced by the authority of President De Gaulle and Chancellor Adenauer, but also gained from institutional forms. I have in mind, for example, so-called Jugendwerk. To some extent, that experience proved useful in Polish-German relations as well. The role of the churches in the two countries is especially praiseworthy in this context. On the German side, this particular price to the Protestant churches, not so much to the Catholic. Polish-German relations have improved over the past 40 years, not only due to the international law instruments that have been put in place, the operation of newly established numerous joint institutions and the involvement of tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border, but most importantly, thanks to the emergence of a new community of interests, prominently including the role played by the first non-communist cabinet of Tadeusz Mazowiecki in Poland and the activity of his foreign minister, Professor Krzysztof Skubiszewski, in promoting the cause of German reconciliation and reunification. And on the German side, the work initiated by Social Democratic Chancellor Willi Brandt and continued by Christian Democrats, I have especially Helmut Kohl, Angela Merkel and many others, and many other German politicians in paving the way for Poland's accession to NATO and the European Union. The process of reconciliation has many dimensions. Political, social and spiritual, especially psychological. It would be hard to overestimate the input of the political elite in both countries and that of the churches, media and intellectuals, writers, artists, film makers. The psychological dimension is also crucial in the process of reconciliation, for it is a process, the ultimate success of which depends on the attitudes of individuals. Reconciliation cannot be decreed. Still governments do have at their disposal certain instruments that can facilitate a change in attitudes. This includes, for example, the convening of joint panels for the revision of textbooks on common history and schools curricula so that new generation can gradually discard nationalist prejudices and stereotypes. Now a few words about experience, especially in the context of a relation between Poland and two neighbors in the West with Germany and in the East with Russia. The process of reconciliation between Poland and Germany was primarily made possible by the changes that took place in Germany and among Germans. Poland and Poles also changed radically. It has been a qualitative transformation. Yes, yet in order to make these changes irreversible it is essential to institutionalize the whole process and keep making persistent efforts in all possible spheres. During his visit to Gdańsk on the 70th anniversary of World War II, 1st September 2009, Russian Prime Minister, at that time Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, made the following remarks. The historic post-war reconciliation between France and Germany paved the way for the establishment of the European Union. In turn, the wisdom and magnanimity of the Russian and German peoples and the foresight of state leaders in both countries made it possible to move decisively in the direction of building a great Europe. The partnership of Russia and Germany has become an example of meeting halfway and looking to the future while carrying the preserving memory of the past. I'm sure that sooner or later Russian-Polish relations, said Putin, will reach the same high standard of true partnership. This is in the matters, in the interest of our people and the whole of Europe. The end of quotation. The frequent references to the processes of Germany's reconciliation with France, Russia, and Poland might lead to the erroneous conclusion that these countries and Germany have elaborated a certain common model of reconciliation, a kind of a universal European model. That is not so. The character of Germany's relations with France, Russia, and Poland is different in each instance. These relations are the product of different histories of the states involved, different mentalities of their peoples, and totally different interdependence in its relations with France, Germany, and Germans have had an inferiority complex. The Germans impressed by French civilization and with French history and culture that was connected with the dominance of the French language in high society and diplomacy, and with an admiration for the French lifestyle, literature, and even the high French cuisine. So Germany was superior in other spheres, in science and technology, labor efficiency, social discipline, and legal culture. Both the German elite and society at large had an inferiority complex towards France. That differed from Germany's relations with its eastern neighbors, particularly Poland. Negative, habitual stereotypes of Poles were reflected by such phrases as Polish wirtschaft, denoting mismanagement, or Polish reichstag, meaning anarchy and tendency to quarrel. After the Second World War, a persistent irritant in Polish-German relations was the use by German mass media of the term Polish death camps with reference to the Nazi death camps located during World War II on the territory of occupied Poland. Camps that were located in Austria and Germany are described as Nazi concentration slugger. Without the geographic adjective, denoting their location. In effect, new generations of German readers were being misled to believe that Polish death camps existed during the Second World War. There are various other minor problems of this kind that irritate Polish public opinion. However, they have never hindered Polish-German reconciliation because the guilt and responsibility of Germany for crimes committed by the Nazi regime has not been questioned. The Third Reich lost the war and its occupying powers imposed the process of denazification of public life. Responsible political forces in Germany worked together to overcome the Nazi past, bring the criminals to justice and establish good relations with all the neighbors in the East and West. As a result, Poland has never had such good relations with Germany as it did after Germany unification of the Atlantic security structures and within the European Union. The point of departure and criteria are quite different in the case of building good neighbor relations between Poland and Russia. The Soviet Union did not lose the war. On the contrary, it was one of the great victors. For millions of Russians, that victory is inseparably linked to the name of Joseph Stalin. Yet he was a dictator responsible for countless crimes before the war, during the war, and immediately after its conclusion. It was the Russians and many people of other nationalities inhabiting the Soviet Union who were the main victims of mass-scale Stalinist crimes. Though the citizens of many other states were also targeted. In other words, the Russian people have a deep sense of having been a victim rather than perpetrators. From a psychological point of view, there is no analogy between the attitude of Germans to Hitler and the NSDAP and the attitude of Russians to Stalin and the Bolshevik Party. It is not worthy, however, that the dialogue on difficult matters initiated between Poles and Russians has made it easier for the present Russian leadership to pass judgment on other crimes of the Stalinist regime. Poles, by the way, had long been known who had murdered in cutting forests the 22,000 Polish officers interned in the Soviet Union after the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939 in an attack coordinated with Nazi Germany. The deliberations of the Polish-Russian group on difficult matters did not concern mainly facts and events. The facts had been known for years. However, it was important to juxtapose Polish and Russian perceptions and different historical memories on the same facts. A remarkable result was that the Polish and Russian experts had surprisingly convergent views on the most sensitive and difficult issues. For example, the cutting crime, the origin of the mold of ribbon-tropact, the Red Army's invasion and the incorporation of Eastern Poland, etc. It proved a much tougher task to ensure that the truth brought to light after 70 years reached millions of Russians, making that happen was beyond the power of the group. Decisions had to be made at the top level by the Russian president and prime minister. The attitudes of present-day Russians were deeply affected by Andrei Weida's film Cutting, broadcast on the Channel 1 of Russian television and watched by millions of people. The conclusion here is that the process of reconciliation between Poles and Germans has followed quite a different course than the ongoing dialogue between Poles and Russians. However, recognition of universal moral and political values and truthfulness in addressing the future was pivotal in both cases. Finding a peaceful political solution to the bloody conflicts that erupted within the former Soviet Empire, for example, in the Caucasus in Transnistria, requires a completely different approach than the process of reconciliation with Poland. And in the former case, it is the present day rather than history that is the cause of confrontation who are witnessing here friction between ethnic, national, religious and language groups. Past animosities have come to life, coupled with the aftermath of political decisions by the Bolsheviks, repressions and persecution of minorities and the uprooting of whole nations, Crimean Tatars, Chechen, Volga Germans, etc. condemned by Stalin to a collective responsibility and blamed for their lack of loyalty to the Soviet Union during the German occupation. The communist authorities use similar arguments when justifying mass deportation to Siberia and Central Asia of citizens of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, following the Baltic States incorporation into the Soviet Union. The findings of American historian Timothy Snyder of Yale University are helpful in better understanding the deep and tragic sources of conflict in Central Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In his book, Bloodlands, Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, published three years ago in New York by Basic Books, Timothy Snyder described the fate of the 14 million non-combatants who lost their lives being exterminated for political reasons. He writes, I quote, in the middle of Europe, in the middle of the 20th century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered some 14 million people, the place where all the victims died, the bloodlands extends from Central Poland to Western Russia, through Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic States. The 14 million were murdered over the course of only 12 years between 1933 and 1945, while both Hitler and Stalin were in power. Often what happened to one group is intelligible only in light of what had happened to another, but that is just the beginning of the connections. The Nazi and Soviet regimes, too, have to be understood in light of how their leaders strove to master those lands and so these groups and their relationship to one another. The end of quotation. In the process of reconciliation, history matters. In search of an answer to the question how enemies become friends, Captain came to the following conclusion, valuable for the wider Europe. Regional groupings of the states that enjoy cultural affinity are more likely to cohere as zones of peace than those that cut across ethnic, racial and religious dividing lines. His most important statement is, stable peace is possible. Enemies do become friends. No single regime type. It was the end of quotation by Captain. Now I would like to say that no single regime type, cultural origin, has a monopoly on stable peace, meaning that the lessons of his study have potentially universal application. The presented brief analysis leads me to the following conclusions. First, each and every conflict has its specificity. Conflict prevention and conflict management require a holistic approach. There is a need to take into account the complexity of the situation with its different layers and dynamics. There is a need to find specific forms of institutionalization of the reconciliation process. Second, one has to avoid what Thorsten Wiblen has called trained in capacities. I have in mind applying the means and mindsets of the Cold War to the qualitatively new political environments, circumstances and requirements. In short, inherited historical distrust has to be replaced by a confidence base on shared interests, transparency and predictability. Third, the institutionalization of the dialogue and understanding in the form of functioning newly established centers for dialogue and understanding in Warsaw and Moscow could be seen as an innovative and creative instrument in search for reconciliation among the nations. In this process, the role of Catholic and Orthodox churches is difficult to overestimate. The fifth, there is a need for more timely and more determined efforts to control an emerging crisis situations. In such situations, the more sustained engagement of the international community is needed. The main challenge is now how to prevent in different forms and ways the development of political populism based on aggressive nationalism and chauvinism as the glue consolidating newly established states in a search for their national identity. A political culture of cooperativeness developed, for example, within the OSCE Council of Europe and the European Union can and has to be promoted in the Euro-Atlantic security community. Multilateral security institutions have to be seen as instruments of national strategies but should not be inclined to use them in an instrumental way in implementing their own national goals. Thank you very much for your attention. Mr. Raffa, thank you for that incredible tour de force and I think it sets the stage beautifully for the conversation we're about to have and Mr. I hope we can call upon you throughout our discussions to glean some of your insights so I hope you'll be available to us as we have questions.