 Good morning and welcome to Carnegie, everyone. I'm Eugene Rumor. And it is my privilege, really, to introduce Professor Robert Leggold to Carnegie. And usually, I don't do these things with a cheat sheet, but Professor Leggold is such a long and distinguished resume that it truly is intimidating to introduce someone of his stature in the field. So I wrote a little few notes for myself. He's currently Professor Emeritus at Columbia, Marshall Shulman Professor Emeritus at Columbia, but that really doesn't begin to describe his many occupations and his many incarnations, I should say. To us in the Russian Eurasia program here at Carnegie, he's been a longtime friend, partner in many projects, a mentor, and I should say a longtime former Carnegie Endowment trustee. He has been a leading light in the field of Soviet, Russian, and post-Soviet studies for many decades. When I was in graduate school 30 years ago, Columbia and Professor Leggold were the destination where graduate students went to study to really learn about the Soviet Union. He's been a very prolific contributor to the policy academic writings. His writings are way too many to list here. He's been a regular contributor to Foreign Affairs as a book reviewer, as a very thoughtful and concise and to many of us extremely useful reviewer of the books that appear in the field of Soviet and post-Soviet studies. I don't know how you do this, Bob, when you find time to read. And I should say that unlike many people whose formal title ends in Emeritus, he's probably busier now than when he was, when he was teaching full time at Columbia. I know that he's involved in a variety of projects on both sides of the Atlantic, in Russia. And he continues to advise. He has advised a long line of secretaries of state and other senior US government officials. And also for many, many years, he's been very active as a citizen diplomat, carrying on a very important conversation between Moscow and Washington, engaging people from different walks of life and political persuasions. And now, 25 years after the end of the First Cold War, he has written a very important book, which, by the way, is available for sale. Outside, and Bob will be signing these after our conversation about the return to the Cold War. I don't think anybody in this room thought 25 years ago when the First Cold War ended that 25 years hence will be in this position. But here we are. So Bob, I'm delighted to welcome you here. It really is a pleasure to welcome you to Carnegie. And over to you. I think you'll speak for about 20, 25 minutes about the key points of your book. And then we'll open the floor for discussion. And I should also say that we're being live-streamed. I think their audience is across country. I know there's one in Los Angeles. There's a class of students who are studying American foreign policy. And they're learning from you right as you speak. So welcome. Thank you very much, Jean. That's extraordinarily generous, and not the least, because I think it's heartfelt. Often when people do that kind of an introduction, it's perfunctory. It's excessive, but a number of you, as I, our former students of Marshall, Marshall Schumann, he used to say, after an introduction like that, that my father would have liked it and my mother would have believed it. It's truly a pleasure to be at Carnegie. It always has been. But for you to give me this opportunity to come in and as a push cart peddler, schlepped some of the ideas in this new manuscript back to Cold War. The publisher came to me and asked if I would do it. It wasn't an idea that I had at the outset, but it was prompted on the publisher's part by an article I had in Foreign Affairs that I wrote in April of 2014 after the Ukrainian crisis exploded. And it was called Managing a New Cold War, Managing the New Cold War. And the publisher wanted to know whether I would be willing to develop that argument at greater length. I said I would after thinking for a moment because there were really three factors that were an impulse, in my case. And they start with a sense then that has only grown in the interim that the way we're framing the issue of US, Russia, Russia-West relations is vastly too narrow on the part of all parties in Russia, in the United States, in Europe. Because the overwhelming emphasis is on the nature that challenge the other side poses. And what's been left out in this context is what has happened to the relationship itself. That has a second implication that's of concern to me. It means that we end up focusing primarily on the challenge the other side faces or poses in a way in which we think about essentially what we have to do in order to counter it or deter it. And this is going on in Moscow as it is in the United States. And we're not thinking about the consequences of a relationship that's in as bad disrepair as the US-Russia relationship is today. The large consequences and the longer term consequences of a hostility or an adversarial relationship, if it's durable, as I think it is now potentially so. And the third thing is if we're not focused on the relationship and the consequences of a badly damaged relationship over a longer period of time, then we almost certainly are not going to think about with the right framework, analytical framework, how one begins to move out of it. It also means that almost certainly we will continue doing what I think has been at the root of the problem since 1991. And that is on both sides, Russia and the United States and much of Europe as well, that is Russia and the West, has been to underestimate the stakes that we have in this relationship. That's been as true in Washington from Bush Sr. through the Clinton administration as it has been on the Russian side from Yeltsin through Putin, mid-Vit of Putin. So then in order to get at this underlying problem, too narrowly framed, underestimating its consequences and jeopardizing a framework by which we should think, both in Russia and in the United States and in Europe, about how we move beyond this. If we think about the stakes in the right way, that then leads me to finding some characterization of it, some conceptualization of it that captures what I think everyone in this room would recognize, even if you reject the notion of Cold War. And that is that this is a qualitatively different relationship today from what it was four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. So what's your conceptual framework for thinking about something that's qualitatively different from before? Mine is Cold War. First of all, in the book, you'll notice it doesn't have an article. It doesn't say return to the Cold War because only an idiot would think there's anything fundamentally comparable to what we have today with the original Cold War. And in the many audiences that I've spoken to about this, this book appeared first in Europe a month ago. It came out last week here. I spoke at Chatham House. I spoke at the European Council for Foreign Relations. I spoke at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels at the Stiftung Wiesenschau in Politik in Berlin at Ifri in Paris, everywhere where I speak. The first thing is, no, it's not a Cold War. It's not a Cold War, A, because it's not coterminous with the international system. It doesn't shape or define the international system. It's only an aspect of international politics today. It's not driven by the same ideological animus of the original Cold War with the contest between political and economic systems. And at least to this point, it doesn't unfold under the shadow of nuclear Armageddon as before. And in the book, I add three or four more reasons why. It's not like the original Cold War and then address those. But in five respects, it is like the original Cold War. And it's one of the ways by which I'm, as a result, able to capture why this is a qualitatively different period in US, Russia, Russia-West relations than anything we've seen with very large consequences. And to last, those five characteristics were most typical or most representative of the original Cold War at the beginning, what I call the model period of the Cold War, from the Berlin blockade in 1948 to six, eight months after Stalin died in 1953 when foreign ministers began meeting. The first of those was that each side at that time believed that the responsibility for what was happening, post-Berlin, post-Korean war, was the responsibility of the other side. Each side had that basic understanding. But what was important, it wasn't just that each side blamed the other almost exclusively for what was happening. It was the reason they blamed the other side. And it was in the nature of the other side system. I, in the book, refer to this as the essence of the problem was seen in the essence of the other side. That's at the heart of Kenan sources of Soviet conduct, the article that laid out containment in 1947. It was at the heart of the way Stalin and Zhdanov, at the time they formed the common form, laid out what the challenge was and the way they argued about it. Secondly, at that time, well, I should finish the thought, same thing's true today. Same thing has been true particularly since we went over the cliff in the context of the Ukrainian crisis. Because I do think that the qualitative change is the result of the Ukrainian crisis. Parenthetically, I believe that's the responsibility of Russia that we went over the cliff at that point. But that same first point, I think, marks the relationship continues to market even today. In some ways, it's hardened in the interim. Secondly, each side then believed that the problem wasn't just a conflict of interests. They believed that it was a conflict of purpose. And the same thing is true today. The same thing has been true since summer of 2014, fall of 2015. The third characteristic that was true in that earlier period of time was that this couldn't change fundamentally until there was some kind of fundamental change in the other side. Again, sources of Soviet conduct in the Kenan peace, but that underlay the way we thought about NSC 68 and a whole host of other things at the time. And the same thing was true on the Russian side. And in the present period, the assumption in this town is that it isn't going to change soon on the other side. Putin's going to be in place for some time. On the Russian side, I spent, and in general terms, Jean alluded to it at the beginning, I spent a good part of the fall in Moscow because I was teaching a joint course between M.G. Mo on the Fletcher School. And in the meantime, I've been constantly in contact, as all of us are. I think Jean, you, the others in the room that I see that know this feel well would agree that the Russian perspective is things are not going to get better after this presidential election. If anything, they're going to get worse, whatever the outcome is. So the assumption is that nothing fundamental is going to change. And the expectation, as I said, in this third parallel to the original Cold War is that only when it does will things then move in a different direction. The fourth is then, for those years, until probably 19, I would argue, until 1964, maybe even until Test Ban Treaty in 6770, the assumption was, yes, we could do some business. That began with the Geneva meetings, the summits, the foreign ministers meetings, but there'll be one off. The phrase today is transactional. But the notion is not that we can reach agreements in a number of areas. Yes, we've done business on the Iran nuclear weapons program, the Iran nuclear program. Maybe we will make further progress. We've made progress on the Syrian diplomacy and then perhaps cooperation on ISIS. But none of this will be cumulative. And if there are synergies in the relationship today, both from the Russian perspective and the US perspective and the European, they're negative synergies. In this circumstance, you don't get positive synergy. You get negative synergy. That was 48 to 52. And finally, where any element of cooperation or engagement was highly compartmentalized in that earlier period, the effects of it metastasized very easily and one problem infected another problem very quickly. From the Czech coup d'etat on 48 through Berlin blockade, Korean War, all the rest of it, it all went together. And the same thing is happening today. Again, the point about negative synergies and connections rather than positive synergies. So that's the reason why I say it is a new Cold War. But then I get to, I've got two other basic points I'll make, then we'll talk. In that case, it's designed in order to underscore, as I said, what the consequences of this are. The formulas that we're using when I speak of the narrow framework that is focusing principally on the other side rather than on the relationship where it is, what its condition is and what the implications are in those circumstances is we do end up recognizing the dangers in this context. And rightly so, those are the more immediate concern. And they were higher in 2014 at the height of the Ukrainian crisis. But they haven't gone away. All I have to say to you is a Turkish F-16 shooting down a Suhoi 24, and suddenly these things aren't abstractions. They're real again. Or even the dust up between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis over Nagorno-Karabakh over the last two weeks. The Baltics. Or the Baltics and the concern. Or above all else, if you're referring to the dangerous incidents, including the strafing exercise over the American destroyer and the Baltic, all of that, that's no longer abstraction. So the dangers are real. And the frameworks we're using, they help to focus on that as they should. But what they don't in this narrow framework is focus on what I call the opportunity costs. What's being lost over now for the next 10 years. What are they? And I preface this by not saying we were doing swimmingly well in Russia-West relations beforehand in these areas. But the first of those is the chance to manage what is an increasingly complex and potentially dangerous multipolar nuclear world. That is among the states that have nuclear weapons. Not just the urgent and imminent problem of nuclear proliferation, but the weapons-possessing states. And instead, rather than focusing on this problem, which I think national leadership in no place is even beginning to articulate for itself, let alone focus on it, we're in the process of dismantling the piecemeal, patchwork, arms control regime that we created over 40 years. We long ago lost the ABM agreement. We never got the adapted CFE agreement, the INF agreements under major pressure now. What we have at the moment, the NTI, I mean the non-Lugar thing on the Russian side has been lost. The Russians didn't attend the Nuclear Security Summit in the last round. What we've got is new start. And we've got a cling to that. But rather than moving to this new agenda, what we're likely to end up in this consequence over the longer run is mismanaging it, at a minimum by ignoring it, but certainly mismanaging it. Secondly, we have throughout the Cold War period been struggling with this issue of regional conflict. Now comes home in the Middle East and around Syria, the consequences of Arab Spring, the end of Afghanistan. If there ever was a need for the United States and Russia to be able to cooperate in dealing with regional instability, it is in our period because most of that's in and around the Eurasian core, where what Russia does is we know today because of Syria. We're not trying to mobilize China in order to deal with Syria. We're concerned about Russia when we deal with Syria. When we think about the next stages in Afghanistan, China's relevant, but Russia even more so. And the chance that we could make any progress in that area, as I said, we weren't doing terribly well even before in each of the areas I'm listing. But now we simply slam the door shut with no chance of making progress in those areas in the future. In terms of what government said they wanted to create from the charter of Paris for a new Europe in 1990, all the way through the heads of states meetings of the OSCE at Austin in 2010, the mantra was what? A Euro Atlantic security community from Vancouver to Vladivostok, where we were cooperating in order to secure an agenda that should be a common security agenda. Jessica's in the room. She was one of the moving forces. She was the moving force behind the Euro Atlantic security initiative. We're a set of very serious people wrestled with this question reported in 2012. That report, that final act and the hopes that are expressed in that, that's dead. Nobody would even think in those terms at this point ought not one to think about that as a price that we're paying in this context. Finally, even as a part of that, one of the thinking of that group was that the Arctic is a new frontier virgin territory, not merely where you want to continue the cooperation that we've had on ecology, legal rights, the technology of dealing with oil spills in that very difficult environment, the technology and the economics of developing those resources and so on. That has been relatively cooperative at this point, but the Euro Atlantic security initiative argued that ought to be a building block or territory and example where we could actually use that to create a Euro Atlantic security community. What we're doing is the opposite. We're now in the process, particularly the Russians of securitizing the Arctic region, not in the way in which it started where you were protecting the passageways, whether you're Canadians or Norwegians or Russians and protecting your economic interests in this area, but the Russians now with military planning and with the military exercises they're running are in fact coordinating that now with the way in which they're preparing for conflict on the new central European front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. And the exercises they run these days integrate what they're beginning to build and they're building, I don't want to exaggerate it, they're building within the Arctic in a way they had not before in these circumstances. So yes, the opportunity costs from my point of view are very substantial and that gets lost in the way in which we're framing the problem. So final point, what then to do about it? My argument, and I've said to you as I've said to other audiences, is ever there was an idea whose time has not come, this is it. This will have no traction in Moscow, it'll have no traction in Washington, it'll have very little traction in much of Europe. Polite reception, people will say he means well, but it's really not relevant to the way in which the politics of this is working out in all of the places that I've just described and that certainly applies to the first part of what I would say about what to do. I think the tough problem is how both Moscow and Washington and Berlin and Brussels and Paris and the others do a critical task that's very hard for governments to do, how you integrate short-term policy with long-term objectives. I've been told when I make the point, and I'll explain in a moment, that Legvol, again, that's a nice idea, but governments can't do it. I'm not sure that's true, it certainly shouldn't be true, but even if that is true, there's no reason why it can't be done elsewhere, why it can't be done in this building, why it can't be done in other research centers. What do I mean by that? How would you start, and the way I would start it is at the other end from the way we normally do this. The way we normally do it is deal with a problem, Ukraine or Syria or ISIS. We develop a tactical response, which was the initial response on all sides in March, April, 2014. Then we begin thinking, as people in Washington were telling me by April and May last year, we've been tactical to this point. We've got to begin thinking about longer game. That was the phrase they would use for me in government. And then a policy review began in this government, which they finished only last fall here, but it was essentially developing a strategy by extrapolating from or extending the tactics. And it wasn't driven by strategic vision. I would argue, I'll start the other way around. Start with a strategic vision, not in an impractical way, not as little fantasy as the Russians would say, pie in the sky, but with something that's practical. Where would you want the U.S.-Russia relationship to be Washington? Where would you want the U.S.-Russia relationship to be Russia? Eight years from now, 10 years from now, again, as I say, in practical terms. Then the next step would be to think about intermediate objectives, say four or five years out, or within some range that fits electoral terms, that drive governments, of things that would lead you in that direction that would be practical and more specific in the areas that you've identified. Then you come back to what you must do, you must respond to the immediate problems you have in the relationship, whether you're Moscow or whether you're Washington, that is Syria, that is INF, that is Ukraine, certainly, above all else. But how do you go about that, and this is the tough part, how do you go about that in a way that's effective in terms of what you see as your national interest in those contexts, in a way that don't completely screw up that long-term objective, that don't undermine that long objective, and that pay attention to that long-term objective of where you want the relationship to be? So how would I do that at this point? And again, I said to you at the outset an idea definitely whose time has not come. Strategic vision, my strategic vision would be basically four things. For both Russia and for the United States, and this book is written for both sides, that's gonna trouble some people. I hope it doesn't look as though I've cut corners or that I've tailored my argument this is meant to be as honest as I can in writing to both sides. I had a long conversation, a three-hour lunch with Grushko and the Russian ambassador to NATO when I was in Brussels that tells you a little bit about how pressed his schedule is. And I gave him a copy, I gave a copy to Rob Koff in Moscow who's known about the argument for some time. But in any event, as I say, it's addressed to both sides. And the first thing would be, I should think both sides would want, a circumstance where rather than competing, we were more or less cooperating in addressing the questions of order and security in the Euro-Atlantic region. That is where our approaches, let me put it even more modestly, not as ambitiously as the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative in creating a Euro-Atlantic Security community, where US and Russian approaches to the broad Euro-Atlantic space from Vancouver to Vladivostok were more compatible than competitive. Eight years from now, isn't that what we would want in that context? Secondly, would we, in the second critical area, would we not want a relationship where the relationship was more one of cooperation than rivalry in dealing with the power transition in Asia-Pacific, the rise of China and the transformation that will be central to US foreign policy, the US-China relationship? Third, and back to something I said earlier about the opportunity costs, we would want US and Russia again exercising leadership and one would hope very soon with Chinese participation in beginning to address the challenges, the very difficult challenges, and complexities of this emerging multipolar nuclear age, that is among the nine that have the nuclear weapons. And finally, and this may be the most difficult, but it's the most central, because it's been at the heart of the problem and the way in which we've neglected the problem over 20 years, and that is one would hope that US and Russian policy were working toward and even better yet together in order to promote stable change and mutual security in and around the Eurasian core. That has been the heart of the problem where we've ended up essentially in competition and rivalry over that. It comes to a head now in what I've long called the new lands in between Belarus, Ukraine, at the center of it, Moldova, and by extension into the Caucasus, but that's not the only part of it. Gene knows well, has thought about it, and others in the room that I see, what can happen at the Central Asian side of it. We certainly know within the context of the Caucasus and so on, and shouldn't it be eight years, 10 years from now, in the interest of both Moscow and the United States to be, as I said, conducting a policy that moves toward and one hopes together in promoting peaceful change, stable change, I should say, may not be peaceful, but as stable as possible, and mutual security, and it has to be mutual, so it's not over the heads of these other states. It has to be mutual security, not just Russia along the way. They're intermediate objectivists, but they're laid out in the book. I won't, that second step, I won't go take your time with that. Then on the short range stuff, how would you do that? Because we have to deal with Ukraine, we have to deal with Syria, we have to deal with ISIS, we have to deal with INF. I would change the framework, maybe contentious within the room it normally is, in the following way. I would start by, on both sides, both Russia, it has to be reciprocal. If it isn't, then everything I'm saying is it doesn't fly at all. Start with the assumption that we wanna find areas where we should, and one can assume that we may have common interests rather than common rivalry or mutual rivalry. And I would give you three illustrations because they're at the heart of the agenda today and in ascending difficulty, and therefore in plausibility that we can get there. The first one would be Syria-ISIS, what I call the linked wars, the Syrian Civil War and the war against ISIS. They're connected, I think Syrian Civil War is prerequisite for making real progress on the other in terms of Russia and the United States. I believe, I would be prepared to start with the assumption that it is a U.S. and a Russia common interest to destroy ISIS as a territorial state and even beyond that cooperating, dealing with what will remain an ISIS-Al-Qaeda global threat that may not have a territorial base or it may have moved elsewhere to Yemen or whatever, or to Libya for that matter these days. On the other war, the Syrian War, I would argue this begins to be more contentious, that I should think there is a common interest, it'll require compromising on both sides in attempting to promote a secular minority regime in Syria that has opened in some fashion, legitimate fashion to Sunni opposition. I think that ought to be, I think that could be a common interest, it would require compromises on both sides. I think on the Russian side the issue is Assad obviously, and I think there is a thinkable path by which the Russians aren't going to insist that at the end of the day he remains as leader, as long as it is this secular minority regime, and I think they would tolerate some opening that would make it possible. Now, I believe that is critical in the U.S.-Russia relationship. I don't believe that guarantees you success in Syria. In fact, I'm very skeptical that we can achieve success in Syria, but I think it can be the basis for this issue in the U.S.-Russia relationship. That's the way I would start to frame it. That's not the way it's framed in town. The way it's framed in town right now, matter of fact, the people I talked to this week, the perception is that what Kerry and Lavrov have achieved is in fact coming unglued, the partial cessation of hostility agreement, whatever the hopes are for the proximity talks in Geneva, right now the mood in the administration is very negative. And that's a change from the last three weeks where there were hopes after it looked as though it was beginning to work. So the mood is not what I'm describing. Going up the ladder, slightly more difficult INF. Here I think it's more difficult because I believe there is a part of the Russian side that doesn't share a common interest on INF. That is, I think the Russian military and much of the national security establishment didn't give a damn if the INF agreement fails. They haven't liked it from the beginning and even someone like Sergei Ivanov never will like the INF agreement. But I believe, I may be wrong, I believe that if he's faced Putin and those around him with a complete failure of the INF, they would not want that to happen. And it's clear that Washington doesn't wanna lose the INF agreement along the way. So it's a little more difficult. I'm not sure that we can find the work around that Rose has been trying to achieve since September 2014. We haven't made progress in it up to this point. Rose Gada-Mueller. Rose, I'm sorry, Rose Gada-Mueller. The third and hardest, but at the center, is Ukraine. And here I know there are people that would find all kinds of problems with this. But shouldn't there be potentially a common interest between us on Ukraine in a Ukraine-Russia relationship that's been normalized in which Russia's economic interests have been protected, at least to the extent that anybody on the outside has a basis for doing so. Meaning both, what's already underway, EU and Russia talking about implications of the source of the problem, the association agreement. But beyond that, especially within eastern Ukraine, if Russia, by whatever means, I'm not quite sure, could satisfy itself that Ukraine was not coming into NATO, would not come into NATO. Now, I characterize potential common ground in the other two areas as actual, that's my view. What I've just said is purely theoretical, because no one would think in those terms today, but shouldn't they think in those terms on both sides? And unless they both think in those terms, that is, Russia moves away from the notion that it is going to subsidize, what I believe is emerging as Europe's latest and most dangerous protracted conflict, we're never gonna get the political settlement in Minsk too. We may get a tattered ceasefire some period of time. That in this context, that Russia calculates the value of continuing to subsidize a protracted conflict, the other part of which is white hot hostility from the bulk of 52 million of your most immediate neighbors. And on the US side, where the task is somehow to save a Ukraine that's in deep trouble economically and politically, wouldn't we want to move in that direction? Then I have some specific ideas of what would be necessary to change in US policy to move in that direction, but I've already taken too much of your time, so let's talk. Thank you very much, Bob. You have not taken up too much of our time. This has been a very fascinating expose of your ideas, and I'm sure we wanna hear more. I want to say, especially after last night's results in New York, that you sound a little bit like Bernie Sanders of the US-Russian relations, that you alluded to this yourself in that in Washington and in Moscow, a lot of people, as well as in Brussels, a lot of people you've spoken to really think that these ideas are premature or don't have a lot of traction. And I hate to say it, but the trajectory is that we see the foreign policy establishments in Washington and in Moscow to the extent that we can tell in Moscow to be on are really diverging rather than converging. And the political campaign in this country, the onset of the dual political campaign in Russia, in Duma later this year, and then the presidential contest to the extent it's going to be a contest in 2018. None of this really creates a fertile ground for the kind of serious, dispassionate conversation about the real cost, the opportunity costs are real, the dangers of the situation that we're in that you're describing. So I'd like to push you some more on how do you specifically, what can we do in the next several months? Because I think the next several months are really going to be crucial, and the next two years perhaps are going to be crucial because I fear nothing will happen, two years is a long time, but nothing will happen in this time to really remedy the situation. And the state that you describe is going to be, it's like concrete will set in even more. No, you're absolutely right. And let me be a little more specific about where I started, and that is the attitude on both sides, as I've said, in parallel to the original Cold War is the essence of the problem is the essence of the other side. That has not softened. Some of you in the room were at the Valdai Conference in November. They'd asked me to chair that last session where himself speaks Putin. They had three other speakers, Larry Johnny for the speaker of the Iranian parliament. Toby, were you at the, yeah. And in Vatslav Klaus, the Czech president and Jack Matlock to talk rather wistfully about how well Gorbachev and Reagan had ended the last Cold War and how sad it was to see where we are now. And when I began the discussion, I won't repeat all of it, but at a certain point, I said the problem we have now, he's sitting where you're sitting, maybe one other chair over, I said as the stories we're telling one another about the other side are badly distorted. Narratives that are bad. And now in order to hear or underscore just how deep the hole is, what the obstacles are, never mind what you add onto it, the politics you refer to it at the moment. I said on the Russian side, I think a broader view in the outside, it's my view, is that you believe, I didn't read it for him personally, you believe that US policy is not merely and has not merely been misguided over the years from the Iraq War through Libya to Syria and now Ukraine, you believe that it's genuinely malevolent, that it has a strategic purpose, you're using regime change in order to serve your strategic objectives and when it gets to Ukraine, those strategic objectives are to cage Russia and limit its strategic position within its own neighborhood and so on, but it's not only that, regime change applied here means it doesn't stop only with Ukraine and drawing Ukraine toward NATO, it's direct against Russia itself, so it's an existential threat. I said, I think that's wrong, I think that's a misunderstanding of the impulse behind US policy in any of these specific instances. You can criticize the Obama administration for a number of things, but not that. I said on the US side, within the administration, maybe with the exception of the Secretary of State and on days of the President, the view is that, yes, this is the way Russia, the Russian side sees things, that this administration has come to that conclusion since early last year, January 2015 when I was down here and they still believe it, they believe it even more strongly today because of what they don't see as success in the Vienna and Geneva negotiations and the like and on INF and the rest of it, but I said the larger problem is broader, it's within the media, it's within the Congress, it's even within much of the expert community and that is not merely that you blame the other side, the Russians for everything they've done, Crimea, Donbass and so on, but the reason you blame, it's not because in their minds, in much of this country, because of Russia's interaction with the outside world with the US, NATO, the rest of it, it's the requirements of the regime itself. It needs an external enemy, hence the anti-Americanism, can't afford to have democracy creeping toward Russian borders, infectious. And third, when the original source of legitimacy, economic success that reaches the average Russian begins to falter in the context of a current economic crisis, you substitute Krimnache and accrued nationalism along the way. I said I disagree with that. That's not the way in which you explain Russian behavior. First of all, that summary is my view of just how deep the hole is for both sides because both of those sets of stories, from my point of view, are not only very unhelpful, not only wrong, but very, very fundamentally unhelpful. I then said I have two questions. The first question is, is this a misrepresentation of how it looks from the Russian side? And secondly, if in general, what I've just said is accurate, then it creates a very fundamental obstacle to what you said you wanted in your speech a few moments ago when he talked about potential cooperation on Syria, and maybe he alluded to nuclear weapons without being specific about anything. But I said you can't get cooperation at that level. It's very difficult if this is the underlying reality. So what would you do about it? Well, those who were there remember his reaction was, first of all, first he had some things to say to Jack, Jack Matlock, and then he said, you're an experienced person, which I knew was a Russian adnaka and what followed was not gonna be praise. He said, what do you mean democracy creeping toward Russian borders? The only thing creeping toward Russian borders is NATO. What kind of democracy is that? And he didn't even bother to address the other question. So afterwards, some people, some Russians, some of the other international participants came to me and they said, what'd you make of that? And I said, well, maybe he didn't understand the point about democracy creeping toward borders because it clearly is not my view, but maybe he just wanted to attack that idea in general, so whatever. I said on the other point, I don't think he was begging the question or ducking it. I think the fundamental problem is he doesn't think in those terms. Doesn't think in those terms. And that's another way of describing the depth of the problem at this point. Now you say what to do in these circumstances because it's not gonna get better in the context of this election. And I wouldn't, even if I thought Sanders had a chance to win the election, I wouldn't be terribly consoled by that other than on grounds elsewhere because I don't think Bernie knows very much about the outside world. But in terms of the results of the election, my view, I've been saying it to people that have wanted to do things, both on the Russian side and here. And here I would second an argument that your colleague, your variable colleague, Dmitri Trenin, has been making an argument now that it's tough, but the most important thing is Hippocratic oath, do no harm, as to the degree you can in this interim period. Maybe try to make something of areas where there could be. I talked about the short run in the three areas where one would try to make progress. But my basic proposition would be the chances of this thing turning around will be a function of the events and the climate in the relationship. If there are small signs that things are slightly better and people can put a positive twist on it, I was interested in the way in which Hillary answered the question, Hillary Clinton answered the question in the first debate, the foreign policy debate, for those of you who watched it maybe six, seven months ago. And she was asked the question of how she evaluated the reset and I thought, ah, here we go. She's gonna dump all over it in order to demonstrate how tough she is in Russia. She didn't, she defended the reset and it was at the point in which the Vienna stuff looked as though it may be moving forward on Syria and it looked as though she was prepared. I mean, she's had very harsh things to say about Putin and the Russians think she's poison because of all of that, but nonetheless it looked to me as though she was prepared to say, depending on where things go, fine. When I talked to people in the administration who were at the table with Kerry and Lovrov and Putin and those most recent encounters, the question I asked was, were there any signs that Putin in these conversations would like to see things begin to change in some way, getting any sense of that? And the response was yes, but it's gotta be on his terms and therefore there's no moving in the area. But if for some reason there's a bit of positive adjustment in the climate, then you might be able to make a little progress here and there. On the other hand, again, it's all a function of climate because I believe an awful lot of what's happened up to this point is not the result of agency and pre-planning, including Ukraine, Crimea and the rest. I believe almost everything that's happened is event-driven for the last, certainly for much of the time, but in the last two years. Here I would argue it's climate-driven. We're gonna have to get through the fog and misery and ugliness of this presidential election. All of you who are Russia hands know that the electoral season has already begun in Russia, not just parliamentary, but presidential, almost everything that's being done in Russia is being done in terms of their own electoral calculations as well at this point. So this is scarcely a favorable moment. If I may, just one more question that touches on something. And I promise to be briefer. Question that touches on something that you said earlier in describing your many activities in the past several months and years. You said you now have been teaching a course at the Higher School of Economics and Moscow. No, I'm Gimo. I'm Gimo, sorry. We hear often from some of our colleagues who have had the same opportunity to teach and interact with younger Russians. I'm Gimo clearly. It's the State University for International Relations. For those of you who don't know, it's very much an elite school. But what they report is that the attitudes among the younger Russians, the rising generation of Russians, are even more hard-line than those of their parents, certainly those of the Gorbachev-Europe-Pitestroika generation. Is that something that you have observed too, or is this just an inaccurate impression? Yes and no, but now with a broad brush. As I didn't say, but this was meant to be an innovative course, something that was invented, tried, and then handed off. So I taught it a year ago and then I taught it again and now have handed it off to Fletcher and to him, Gimo, and they're planning to go forward with it. It's taught in real time. So the first half of the year when I was in Moscow, I taught, in Moscow I taught from there and the Fletcher students were in an audio-video classroom at Fletcher, so it was real time when they were interacting and then I came back, taught the next segment of it from Fletcher and the Gimo students were part of it. First thing I would say is, for underscore, that the Gimo students are basically privileged students and a number of them are, you know, Zalatoy-Opakalina with a lot of money. More BMWs in that parking lot than you'll see in most corporations in the US. But they have to get in too. And so they're able. There was a slight change from fall 2014 to 2015 and in the direction you're describing, but that's characteristic of what was happening within the faculty as well. And they were beginning to get a different kind of a message from their faculty. It wasn't as crude as Russian television or as crude as Potrashiv or even as crude as Putin. That's right, that's the point, that's a low bar. But it was there, you know, it is the US, what the US is up to. In short, the other side of what I've been describing in the comparison of the original Cold War, we don't normally use this idea in academic political science. I don't think even in think tanks you use the idea, but one of the fundamental problems is the absence of introspection on the two sides. There's no introspection on the two sides and essentially the way this faculty was beginning many on the faculty, not all, but the ones that weren't moving in this direction were frustrated by the fact that it was, is no introspection, what does Russia have to do with where we are at this point? It is in a more sophisticated way than Potrashiv or the media, what the US is doing. I mean, they're not ready to blame the United States for assassinating Yemsov, which is what the media is prepared to do and the equivalent of that kind of thing. Now, on a broader question of younger generation, again, there may be a slight change in the fall of 2014, number of you were there during that period of time, you walked down the Autobot and there were a number of young people that were wearing these T-shirts, Nashkrim. I didn't see so many of those T-shirts now, but I don't think that has gone away. Second thing I would say is that, before getting to the main point, is that there's obvious variation and there are two phenomena of which I only have anecdotal evidence. There is a father-son problem in this, in a positive sense. Some of the fathers are part of this general furor over what's going on and the US responsibility for it. And some of the sons, in this case daughters, are saying, we made a big mistake in Crimea, we're doing, we're making a big mistake along these lines, and it is creating rifts. That happened with a very close friend of mine who's a faculty member at M.Gimo, who was unloading on me on, we normally would agree, on what's happening in the relationship, and yeah, Russia's made mistakes, but you guys are so much more powerful, so much more in your, you had so much more ability to make this thing better than what you've done along the way. And then I talked about this Crimea business, and I said, Kareem Nash, and this person looked at me for a moment, she said, yes, Kareem Nash. And I said, she said, but, she said, my son doesn't agree with me, we can't talk about Crimea. He thinks it's a fundamental, mistake along the line, leads to the larger question, not just where the younger generation is, because I would argue that outside these elite circles where you do, among the students I had, there were many that didn't buy this at all, many of them were very concerned with what's happening, many of them prepared to look honestly at the Russian side, at the US side, many of them wanting to think about ways by which you can work around it. The other thing that I've been involved with as a follow on to Easy, Jessica, I haven't had a chance to tell you this, but we worried about another generation, all of us that were involved with this thing, including the senior people, we're all gray-haired. And so what we have now done is create a six-university consortium to continue working the issue and bring along a new generation that'll think about Russia West, Russia and Euro-Atlantic, and it is now Columbia and Harvard, Oxford and the Free University, and Visca, the Higher School of Economics, and Imgimo, they're underway for a year, they've been doing very good things, and the Russians that are participating in this are completely, we'd have no problem in this conversation now, they would be very constructive participants in what we're talking about and along the way. But it leads to the large question, I don't know how much we want to get into it, because I know those of you that are following this are deeply involved, and that is, what's happening to Russia at this point? It is the stupid oversimplification. How much of Russia is Putin, and how much of Putin is Russia? And the question is, you know, whatever Putin was at the outset in 2000 talking about being part of Europe, European cultural values, he's now sounding like Sam Huntington in Clash of Civilization, the social values and all the rest of it, and so what we're all wrestling with is how deep that is. How much of is it simply instrumental, where the regime is making use of it for their own purposes, and even to the extent the regime is making use of it instrumentally, how much of it is, because they actually also believe it, and I don't think, Gene, I don't know where you are, or others in the room that work this issue, Wayne, where you are on this kind of thing. I don't quite know how to sort it out, but I believe it's much deeper than simply instrumental. It's obvious that the media could change its tune fairly quickly if they were told to do so. What would the effect of that be more broadly is a more difficult question. I've, in talking to Russians about this, beginning in 14, but continuing in 15, there was a minority, but it was a minority that argued that this is largely trumped up and it could be changed fairly rapidly, but the majority, including people who are sharply critical of what's happened and critical of Putin said no. No, this is not gonna be turned over quickly, but that's a broader issue, but one that obviously affects the younger generation. Yeah, I agree with you. I don't think it's purely an instrumental issue. I think it does reflect something that's happening in Russian society, in Russian political thought. Yeah, there's more to it than just a bunch of slogans on Russian television and Russian media. And that's adding to the problems, when you start talking about headwinds. Yeah, yeah, and I think even if people who initially in the Russian leadership perhaps used it for instrumental purposes, I think they've come to internalize this because I suppose they've convinced themselves that this is true. But let's open this to all of you to the audience questions. When you ask a question, please wait for the microphone, introduce yourself, and please make sure there's a question mark at the end of what you say. Okay, Jessica. Jessica Matthews, Carnegie. Bob, if you think in 10 year terms, I think you have to at least, I certainly do, assume that the imperative of dealing with climate change is going to mean that at the end of that period, oil in real terms will be perhaps lower than $30 a barrel. So what does that mean? That poses a choice for Putin that he either does real reform that means the death of his regime or that Russia is going to be a very poor country. And I mean, what choices is he going to make and what are the other opportunities? Well, before getting to your question on the issue of climate change itself, in the book I've argued that among the opportunity costs when I listed multi-polar nuclear world and Euro-Atlantic security and dealing with the power transition Asia-Pacific, I think you do have to include climate change on that. This is not your question because I mean, this is your field, you know this. Russia's one of the four largest greenhouse gas emitters who have made progress bilaterally with the Chinese in the November agreement a year ago. And whatever you make of Paris in December, but in the long run leadership is going to have to be, even if they're good citizens, others are good citizens, it's going to have to come from US, Russia, China, India in this area in my view. This not to say the end all be all is US Russia, but US Russia needs to be a piece of that. And again, that's another opportunity cost along the way and particularly in a specific context, which is the Arctic. One of the most polluted places in the world is the Russian Arctic and the likelihood that we will cooperate in addressing that problem is again gone in this context. On your question, it's been interesting how the Russians have dealt with the perfect storm, the sanctions in combination with oil prices that have slipped down to the $30, $35 a barrel range. I think in 2014 when this began taking shape by the fall and into 2015, which was the real period and into the fall, their basic calculation was that A, we've got the reserve funds in the stabilization areas, that we can weather this storm if the storm begins to ease within 18 months, maybe even three years. By fall when I arrived in September, there had been a peace and bitimesty with unnamed people from the Ministry of Economic Development that had been interviewed. And at that point, they had said, we're beginning to adjust our worst case scenario. This is September 2015. And that is, we're beginning to think about the possibility of $40 of barrel oil because it wasn't down to that yet and 70 to the dollar ruble. And the implications of that will either be very major budget cuts, spending cuts, or we will exhaust the stabilization funds by the end of 2017. That was September of 2015. But at that point, Ulyukaev and some of the others who've been misleading them, the Minister of Economic Development all along the line were predicting that they would begin to see positive growth by the end of 2015 and at the latest by early 2016. They would be very small. They knew they were gonna have three plus percent negative growth that year. But that would have been, we can tough it out in these circumstance. They, at that point, began adjusting the budget and the next budget they worked on was $50 of barrel oil. This last year, they've been further adjusting the budget. Julie, I don't know whether you've been following it. I think where they are now is somewhere in the 40s on their budget. I think they still, I think the attitude is still we can tough it out. And therefore, would they like to see the sanctions lifted? Sure, but do they feel that it's imperative creating that kind of pressure that's gonna transform behavior in order to get it? No, I don't think that's where they are. But your question is longer run. And in the fall of 2015, a little bit since then when I've talked to people, people like Juergens or Kudrin or others, their attitude was, yeah, maybe they're right. Maybe they can tough it out in this near term. That's fall 2015. We're now almost, we're half a year beyond that at this point. But unless things change fundamentally, and that also means the way in which they're going about the domestic agenda, then we are going to face some very fundamental deep, if you will, structural problems. And it's the areas where they need to make real change. In the interim, what's happened is, back to this business of they're in electoral season, I don't talk to any Russian that believes that they're gonna do what they need to do. They believe that they're gonna try to maintain the status quo. No banking reform, no pension reform, none of the other stuff that they need to do in this context. The joke in Moscow was that, well, you say Putin's not a strategist, Putin's got a strategy. You know what his strategy is? It's to wait for oil prices to go up. And you're telling me what you think is or isn't gonna happen on this front. I don't think they're facing that fact. Therefore, I have no way of answering that question because I don't think they have answers. Although I think there is a broad realization that something's gotta give, yet the flip side is that it's not going to give in the next two years, and possibly in the next eight years as long as Putin is there. And that's really at the center of a very active conversation in Moscow these days. It is, but Moscow, not only is there a Moscow rumor mill, but there's what I call the Moscow Hope Field Mill. And it's an ever-receding horizon, but you mark 2018, even if he's reelected, maybe then he'll feel he can begin reform or maybe he'll say he's had enough, he's reelected, he's selected a replacement, he'll step down. That's Hope Field stuff, I don't know. I can't answer, I can't answer Jessica. I can't resist. Putin's coming up on 17 years. Everybody describes the present stage as the period of stagnation. And this is somewhat reminiscent to those of you who remember of the early 1980s when there was also a deep realization that something's gotta give, this can't continue like this, yet it seemed like it would continue indefinitely as long as there was a supply of nitrogen areas in the Politburo. Yes, and if that happens, okay, then you'll get an answer to Jessica's question, but I don't even know how to attach the odds to that. And more importantly, from an analytical point, people talk about that as what should be a logical possibility, but no one who talks about that as a logical possibility tells me how you get there. Right, right. It's a gentleman over here. Wayne was, had been waiting, I don't want to interfere. Wayne is next, okay, but please, the gentleman here. I'm Mark Tokola from the Korea Economic Institute, and I'm wondering if one of those perceived mismatches in essence exists between Russia's assertion that it has a natural right to ensure the countries that border Russia are friendly and progressive, and the US government's assertion that it will not accept regional spheres of influence, either in Russia or China, period. Can we get past that in dealing with the practicalities, or is that actually a perceptual problem that's hard to get past? Well, if in terms, remember, well, no reason why you need remember, when I was laying out a strategic vision eight to 10 years from now, the fourth point, which I say gets to the heart of the matter, is where each side is working toward and one hopes together in order to promote peaceful, stable change and mutual security in and around the Eurasian core. If that's what we're doing, then we would be wrestling with that problem, and we'd be trying to find essentially a modus vivendi on those issues. But the problem that you point to, I think is even larger. I'm struck by a fundamental gap. The West at this point believes that what Russia's doing and in the context of Ukraine, and there's certainly a legitimate basis for that, is challenging the post-Cold War European order, violating its norms and the rest of it. It's not simply a question of what our preferred forms are in that area domestically. It is how we're going about our agenda. And the notion is that Russia is challenging, endangering, threatening and would continue if we don't stand up to them, the European order. Trenin, your colleague, Dmitry Trenin, has a, he doesn't disagree with that. He understands why the West sees it in those terms. But he's saying from the Russian point of view, what Putin is doing is challenging the post-Cold War political order, which was an order where the United States was dictating with its allies how things are gonna work out with NATO enlargement and with everything else that we were doing, our unilateral military interventions and the rest of it. And now in Syria, he is beginning to stand up and say, you're not going to continue with regime change and military interventions and I'm here to prevent it. Trenin regards that or treats that as Putin now saying, I don't accept the post-Cold War political order and that's where you've got the juxtaposition. The West view is you're challenging the European order. The Russian perspective is we're challenging the post-Cold War political order the United States thought it had created and was directing. Wayne. Wayne Mary, the American Foreign Policy Council. Bob, I'm very glad to see that emeritus status does not equate to nostalgia for the good old days of the Cold War, which is so prevalent in this city. But your framework of looking at the founding period of the old Cold War and today, one big difference is today there is a West which is not entirely Washington-centric. And up through Stalin's death, basically Western Europe and Japan were effectively protectorates of the United States. Today they may be free riders, but they definitely have their own policy views and interests. And I find in many of my discussions that I detect a good deal more, shall we say, tension often between the perspectives toward Russia of Washington and Tokyo, Washington and a number of European capitals than there may be between those capitals and Moscow itself. So I'd like you to expand this. You've referred initially a little bit to America and the West. But I'd like you now to talk not about America but about Russia and this other West. Fair question. And I think to anticipate my response that over the next two or three years, not this year, but over the next two or three years, what you sense is going to become far more prominent and evident. I don't think it's there yet. At this stage, first of all, your point that a West today looks different from the way in which a NATO and European West looked in the original Cold War, that's right. The long list of why this is not the Cold War, why the article is not in the title of that book, as I said at the outset, you can put it in among the list. But on your specific question of how this is likely to work out, for the moment the West, there's more cohesion and solidarity on Russia and the problem that it poses than we've had for a very long time and what you might have expected, I think even than the Obama administration expected at the outset, what Merkel said, not merely that he lives Putin in another world, but the transformation of German policy into recognizing a version of what I've just described, Russia's a threat to the European order and the German-Russian relationship has changed basically as a result. A number of Russians have awakened to that fact as well as true and then Europe has held together not withstanding the Cypriots and the Slovaks and at times parts of the Italian government. In the end, Merkel's been able to hold the line on sanctions. Then there is even a difference in the way in which they've gone about to engage or not engage. In Paris, when I was doing IFRI, I was also seeing people in government and at the K, they made the point, they weren't criticizing the Germans, but they were stressing a basic difference that the French have engaged the Russians all along at all levels, at ministerial level. They've been continuing that level. The Germans have not. It's been Steinmeier and Merkel that interact and the rest of the German government doesn't interact with their counterparts in Russian, so they're more like the US on that. Different parts of Europe behave differently and as you know, there's a big difference between Rumsfeld's old Europe and new Europe on these issues though, it's not perfect along those lines. But I'll bring it down to something that's practical in the context of short run in Ukraine. I've begun arguing again, there'll be you in the room that will wanna disagree. The sanctions are gonna hold in June when they have to be renewed in Europe, therefore the Americans and the Europeans will still more or less be in tandem. There was a little nervousness about what all this Lavrov-Carrie diplomacy was that reminds you of the other side of the Cold War, are the Americans beginning to double deal behind us even when they're making us be hardline on the issue? I don't, that I don't think is likely to surface, but it's potentially there. On the sanctions, as I said, they'll hold, I believe in June, but I also believe that by early 17, unless the lid blows up off in Ukraine, the pressures are then going to mount in a way where they won't be able to keep their cohesion. And as you know, the way it's all set up, it is 100%, anyone can begin undoing it. Therefore, I think where the US position will be is struggling to keep the Europeans in line. That's been a concern in this government from the beginning, 2014. How do we make sure that the Europeans stay in line? And I think that'll continue to be the policy. It certainly will be on the part of Treasury, which is hardline defense, one part of the White House, not commerce, but there are not players in it, and key players in state, as you know. And therefore, we'll be behind the curve. Our task will be to keep the Europeans in line and what we'll be doing is inviting increased tensions in the relationship, implicit in what you're saying along the lines. Therefore, I'm arguing for rethinking conditionality and turning it around and saying, as we go through this process that we would otherwise be forced to adjust to, how do we think about raising sanctions in a way where we can lever the Russians into doing something that would help in Ukraine? There's a little bit of this stirring in Brussels I was seeing people in the Council of Europe and in the Commission. It's very faint and it's not mainline and it doesn't contradict the basic thrust which is Russia's off their table, by and large, in the Commission. But there is a little bit of thinking. And I was struck, I wasn't the only one making this argument, begin rethinking conditionality. But the way they're doing it, and a little bit in the German government too, at least within the foreign ministry, I didn't see anybody in the Chancellor's office, is still tying it to Minsk, to Minsk too. And I think that's wrong, because you're not gonna get fundamental breakthrough on political settlement. So what other kinds of things can you get from Russia in this context that would be helpful in dealing with the broader Ukrainian crisis, including the crisis of the Ukrainian government, the state itself economically and politically. And I've begun thinking a little bit about that. And then when I raised it, I raised it at the European Council on Foreign Relations and that was a smaller group, but a lot of really good people. And they said, you know, what would you do? And I said, I'm just beginning to think about it. I said, but you think about it. And they said they were willing to sort of think in those terms. But that's where I think chickens come home to roost. I don't think they're there yet along the lines that you're describing. But I see no reason, in fact, I believe they will get there and it'll begin in 2017 if I'm not wrong. Again, event driven. Things go really bad, badly. Lid blows off in Ukraine, and no, then it all holds. It'll continue to hold. The gentleman here, Edward. Thank you. My name is Samuel Raklin. I'm a Danish journalist. I worked in Moscow as a correspondent in the 70s and 80s and also in the beginning of the Putin period. Mr. Lekvold, I may have missed a point or two in the many nuances in your presentation. So I wanted to ask if it's wrong or correct to make the assumption that, or is it over simplification, that Putin and Russia need permanent crisis or at least conflict and confrontation much more than we do. If we do it at all in the West, in Europe and the US, to justify and legitimize what they do and how they do it in those 15 or 16 years he has been in office and considering what you have been talking, and others have been talking about, considering the dire straits that the Russian economy is in and functions much more as it's popular to say like a gasoline station than a normal economy. And in that respect, at least to me, it seems that we are looking at one other similarity with the old Cold War or the Cold War rather, not the old Cold War, than what we have otherwise been looking at. Sam, there are a number of Russians that would agree with what you just said, and I hear it from them. They argue that's basically what's going on. They're not friendly to Putin's policy and the circumstance, but they would argue yes, he uses these external events in the way he plays his hand in Ukraine or Syria particularly, as a way of compensating for areas where things aren't going well. It is, the way you frame the issue, it is an illustration of what I described as a part of the problem in this exchange with Putin himself that I said was US media, Congress, and elsewhere. The first of those is that the explanation for his behavior is not interaction with others, it is he needs an external enemy and therefore the anti-Americanism and so on, which you've just described as a version of that. And I said, I disagree with that. Let me refine it. The way I would put it, maybe incorrectly, is not that he goes out hunting for occasions where he can kick up dust and create problems and look aggressive and create crisis in order to distract public or his political clans or otherwise, but I think when events generate a basis for this and we begin to get into it, including Syria, but Ukraine, he is happy to use it in ways that serve that purpose. So I don't think it is initiate. I think it is characteristic of the way he handles it and I think the danger of that is the extent to which it's not unwelcome, some parts of it may be unwelcome, but the fact that it's not thought through that you then begin to lose those effects and you get something that's much worse along the way. That would have been the consequence of not Crimea because he did that as a feta-complee, but it could have been the consequence of the Donbass War if the Novorossiya project, he had pursued it, if he continued to delude himself into what might be possible within Ukraine and it would have been useful to continue down that path. Then this notion that you can make use of crises and he certainly has made use of Syria, that's not to say that's the whole explanation for his behavior. I think there were strategic calculations in terms of the problem itself, not the sort of external stake that he has in it, the instrumental stake in it. We have time for maybe one question, but if I may, could I ask you to combine two questions into one? The gentleman here in gray suit, yes, yes, gotcha. And perhaps you can ask questions together after this and then Bob, you can handle them together and I think that'll be it. My name is Zhang Jian. I'm a visiting scholar in Zhenheopin Science. I come from China Foreign Affairs University. I met you in the Mogimoor last winter and I visited a lot of Russian scholars in Moscow. From their view, the next five to 10 years, the US-Russian relation may be getting worse indeed. And I want to ask, what role do you think China can and should play between US and Russia? Do you think Beijing can play a role as a bridge between Washington and Moscow? Great, thank you. The gentleman here, maybe you can, over here, over here. Yeah, thank you. Georgie Khella-Schule from Embassy of Georgia. How useful is the concept of the sphere of influence in understanding the dynamics of Russian behavior? And especially in the context of the Cold War and the return of Cold War. Thank you. On the China question, Gene referred to and then I said a word about this joint M-Gimo flexure course. One of the interesting things for me this fall was that the M-Gimo side of it was quite international, eight of the 15 students. I limited it to 15 graduate students. Eight of the 15 graduate students were foreign students and one of them was a young man from Shanghai who was there, his English was better than his Russian but he was there in order to do his degree and he would continually ask the same question. What is China's role? The focus of the seminar was US and Russia's the two major powers in a troubled Euro-Atlantic region and a rising Asia-Pacific. His concern was a rising Asia-Pacific and the role of China in this now triangular relationship. My own view is probably the way in which China will play what is a triangular relationship will be parsed. It'll depend in part at its base on what's happening in the bilateral relationship with Russia and there the two now have a closer relationship than they have had in 150 years but it's not one where it'll end up in a perfect strategic alignment let alone a strategic alignment that's directed against the US. But with enormous parallelism and foreign policy and enormous camaraderie between Xi Jinping and Putin they genuinely identify with one another and there's a lot of resonance between the two of them and a fair amount of what Xi Jinping is doing in China today is not unlike what Putin has been doing in Russia so it's not a Yeltsin, Deng Xiaoping period any longer at that level in terms of domestic stuff but there's a limit to how far you go and secondly part of that limit is that the relationship junior-senior partner has been reversed. The Russians are prepared to live with junior-senior partner as it's been reversed for now and there are some that worry about what it'll be in the long run but for the most part they're satisfied with the quality of the relationship right now. The other part of it is the US-China relationship and that'll be decisive. If that gets mishandled, if we're not able to continue on this nice edge of whether we can continue to cooperate and think about constructive integration of China into international politics and we now shift over to genuine strategic rivalry with China and there are always these glimpses of it look at Ash Carter's visit in the region this last week or two. And cancellation of visit to China. That's right. If that's not where we are yet but if it tilts in that direction then it'll all be quite negative. Think about a US-China strategic rivalry. We can't get there I don't think in the next year or two but down the road. A US-China strategic rivalry in the context of an ongoing US-Russia Cold War. That's not a world I wanna live in. That's not a world I wanna live in. Now along the way given the fact that I think China divides these two things would they be prepared to begin thinking trilaterally? In the area for example that I talked about of this complex and dangerous multipolar nuclear world if we were to get back to a point where key players are taking a lead beginning with the two that have 92% of the weapons but now that has to include China is China prepared to accept to begin exercising trilateral leadership and dealing with nuclear weapons possessing states and a number of other areas. China has been indicating that it wants to accept first a broader regional responsibility and then a global responsibility but every time we begin talking about what would be necessary to really affect trilateral cooperation the Chinese don't deliver yet. I don't think they're thinking clearly enough about that yet. I don't think that basic China policy at this point is to make things worse in US-China relations so that when there are these clashes over Ukraine and so on I don't think the Chinese tried to use Ukraine, Crimea or otherwise, in fact I think it created problems for China. On the one hand they clearly don't like what Russia did. On the other hand they also don't like color revolutions and so they ended up sort of straddling the middle on the issue but it means that I don't think Beijing knows its own mind on this clearly yet but I don't think at this point they're playing a negative game in it. On the question of sphere of influence particularly from a Georgian perspective I don't know, you remember Medvedev's speech about privileged interests which most of us on the outside said that's just another way of talking about sphere of influence and what they're essentially asking is for the West to accept it and that even goes back to Kosovo in 1993 when after originally talking about cooperating with the West on regional conflict he and Yeltsin began talking about the UN deputizing them to assume responsibility for security in the post-Soviet space so that's been there a long time that's not just Putin or Putin and Medvedev exactly what they believe should be their right in that part of the world is not clear to me. I don't think it is as a number of people arguing here in the oversimplified argument that it's neo-imperial and they wanna in some form reconstitute as much of the former Soviet Union as they can maybe tattered in the form of Kazakhstan and Belarus and Eurasian Economic Union maybe Armenia from a security point of view because that isn't on I don't think they think in those terms I think they are thinking in more modern terms not of imperium I think they are thinking of dominant influence in as many of these areas as possible and I think the other side of it is a duvada riga over what countries do a duvada riga with respect to Georgia is making sure you guys don't join NATO that is an objective how they go about it I'm not sure that's the full explanation for the 2008 war but I think it was an element before that war was over or in calculations so my view is that they haven't quite yet and this is part of the problem it's back to my fourth point US and Russia moving toward and one hopes together for stable change and mutual security not Russian national security but mutual security in and around the Eurasian core they're gonna have to move away from carrots and sticks where sticks are what they use in dealing with Bolts or with Georgians or with Azerbaijanis and begin thinking about not a policy of coercion but a policy of reassurance they're gonna have to think about we've got all kinds of problems not merely with Mexico but with Canada but they're gonna need a policy that looks more like the way we deal with our regional problems and the way they have dealt with them Bob, we've run out of time you've given us a lot to think about and to read and we look forward to the next occasion to re-engage and I'm sure there'll be lots to talk about then be my pleasure thank you very much thank you thank you