 It's my pleasure to introduce the next conversation about Russia and Ukraine. One of the things I wanted to say before we start this conversation is that one of the things that makes New America so particularly unique among think tanks and policy institutes is our relationship with media. The people who work for us and our fellows write for large popular audiences, I think even if you look at people like our board member Atul Gawande, taking really complicated ideas and communicating them in ways that are accessible and open up discourse that otherwise wouldn't be possible. Beyond the writing that our staff and fellows do, that we have great relationships with media. We're a trusted source of ideas and policy and research and analysis. And as I go through introducing each of the panelists who can come up here while I'm talking, Susan and Peter and Romesh, I want to say a little bit about that. I'm going to start with Romesh. Romesh was a fellow at New America. I guess he's still a future tense fellow. He's currently at a deputy editor at Bloomberg Business Week. Romesh played a really key role back when he was at Time Magazine in helping us with another Ten Big Ideas event. And that was a New America actually put together a set of 10 ideas for Time Magazine a couple of years ago. And it obviously had the kind of impact that you would want out of something like that. Susan Glasser is like a member of our family. Susan, Foreign Policy Magazine, where she was editor, lived with us for a while. We had space on our fifth floor and they co-habitated with us. And together with Foreign Policy and our space, we were able to craft something very exciting that has been long-standing, which is the AFPAC channel, which is a really powerful daily roundup of news and blog about the region and had an incredible following. Susan is the editor at Politico. Now, Peter, I don't really know what to say. You're the White House correspondent at the New York Times and I'm not sure you're really doing anything for us right now. But we're going to count on this being the beginning of a very long-standing relationship with the New York Times. But the real purpose, the way this came about, I was with Susan not too long ago at a different kind of conference, the North American Think Tank Summit. And Susan mentioned, and I had forgotten, that she and Peter were co-authors of Kremlin Rising, Vladimir Putin's Russia and the end of the revolution. And we so much wanted to have a conversation about that on the stage and we're delighted to have them here today. We don't get a lot of husband-wife teams on the stage either. So please welcome them and enjoy the conversation. Well, thank you for that introduction, Rachel. And it's a great privilege for me to be here and sharing the stage with these two distinguished journalists who know as much as anyone about both Washington and the Kremlin. And in Peter's case, as we learned yesterday, he works for one. But I do want to start with Susan, and I'll give you the easy question. What is Putin thinking? I mean, what do we know right now about sort of what his calculations are? And it does seem as if in the last weeks, 10 days, he's at least rhetorically backed away a little bit. He hasn't embraced these separatists and the results of the referendum. He's pulled his forces back. Do you think he's looking for an off-ramp here, or is this a kind of tactical faint? Does he have something else up his sleeve? Well, thanks for starting with the easy question. I appreciate that. So let me dispense with that question. Thanks for starting with her. First of all, thank you to Rachel and to Anne-Rae. I really, I knew America is like home, and I'll be talking with you later about how to move my new magazine back to New America. I do think it's appropriate to start a conversation about the crisis that we're having with Russia and Ukraine today by talking about what Vladimir Putin is thinking. Because in many ways, I think this has been a crisis that's been very much about one man, and Kremlinology in many ways has come down to Putinology, in effect, over the last few years. And this is a really striking example of that. And so to the extent it seems opaque, or if you read a lot of the play-by-play commentary each day, really, what are we having? We're having a debate about what is Putin thinking? Has Putin changed or not? Is he crazy or not? Is he sort of rational, calculating steward of Russia's interests? Has he become a different kind of nationalist than he was before? Did we read him wrong? Basically, it's just 15 million different iterations of what is Vladimir Putin thinking. My own view is that you can learn a lot by actually paying attention to what Vladimir Putin has said over time and that it would be a mistake to think that this marks a radical break in his thinking or some new personality that suddenly emerged. But in fact, you know, Putin was always an aggressive, muscular nationalist. He came to power through the waging of a war in late 1999. Inside Russia's own borders, he's willing to level cities and use extreme tactics. So why, of course, would he not be willing to do that outside of Russia's borders? He has increased his ability to move and to have leverage and to obtain some of the goals that he wants to obtain over the last decade because Russia is in a very different place economically, financially, and in other ways than it was before. So I think if you were seeing a more muscular and assertive Putin on the world stage that reflects Russia's change in position much more than it reflects Putin's change in position, first of all. Second of all, there was a surprise here. I mean, I want to be clear on that, you know, although it had been talked about for years and certainly was a scenario that anyone inside the US government for the last two decades was more than familiar with, you know, the gripe about the loss of Crimea has been a longstanding Russian complaint. So the complaint about Crimea wasn't a surprise. The actual move against it clearly was in every possible way, but what I'm struck by is actually how predictable events have moved since then. Putin correctly, it seems to me, read the relatively muted nature of the response that that action would receive by the United States and by European partners. I think Putin correctly viewed that if he was able to then change the subject to would he or wouldn't he invade Eastern Ukraine, as we're now still discussing, that in effect he would get people to accept his takeover of Crimea, which it seems to me more or less we've done. If you notice, that's the conversation that we're having is about will he go any farther, not what should we do about the territory that he's already taken. So I'll leave it at that just to start off with. But it seems to me that there's not been a lot of surprise or inconsistency in Putin's remarks, but that doesn't necessarily mean we understand him. What in your view is an outcome that he would deem acceptable now in Ukraine? I mean, if we're assuming that essentially he's an ex Crimea, that that's kind of a fate of complete, is the goal basically a return his view to the situation before the ouster of Yanukovych, where he basically has a more or less, you know, a compliant government in Kiev, I mean, or could he live with a government that has some of the opposition figures in it and that has continued to have a relationship with the West that's maybe a little closer than the previous government. I mean, where does he kind of see this all ending up in Russia's view? What's the optimal outcome in Ukraine? That one's for Peter, right? You're doing so well. I'll look backwards. You look at the crystal ball for it. Yeah. The problem for our hopes of a carpal Madeleine-like TV show are going to be dispelled here because I think we largely agree. I think that his hopes in the short term are to create a Ukraine that doesn't work. You know, a dysfunctional state that cannot, in fact, get its act together, which quite honestly might not have been able to get its act together, which Russia had absolutely nothing to do with what's going on there because, in fact, we saw that after the Orange Revolution. And as long as you have a dysfunctional state, there's no way the EU's going to want it. There's no way NATO's going to want it. And it becomes sort of a basket case in effect on his border. That's not, you know, optimal. Optimal would be, you know, there is a subservient member of the Eurasian Union that he wants to form. But in the short term, I think, given that that doesn't seem immediately likely, he's in a situation in which Ukraine, the new government in Ukraine cannot succeed and cannot, therefore, find a way to integrate with the West. Yeah, no, I agree with that. And I think that it's also a way of being communicating as clearly as possible that this is Russia's sphere of influence. That, you know, to the extent we were ever contemplating real NATO or EU expansion, that the line has to be drawn here. And, you know, clearly the Russians view their complaints about the expansion of NATO as having been unheard over the last couple decades. And I think they believe they made a mistake in not more aggressively opposing the expansion into the Baltics and other countries on the former Soviet periphery. And so I think this is really a strong statement about that as much as anything. You know, does he need to, is he out to create a new Soviet Union? I don't necessarily think so. I think it's about what he views as being in Russia's interest at this point. I mean, given how much support there seems to be, at least, I mean, it's hard to tell, obviously, from here, but it does seem as if that, you know, he's been able to kind of rally his base and maybe broaden it to some extent. And there does seem to be a consensus in Russia, more or less, behind what he's done in Crimea. But does that become a kind of something that you can't walk back from? I mean, once you've kind of raised these expectations, is it going to be harder for Russia to now essentially just kind of return to where it was before they embarked on this adventure? Yeah. I mean, I think, look, you know, the great thing is if you're Vladimir Putin or Kremlin and you decide to retreat on some level, if you were to do that, a strategic retreat, tactical retreat, domestically you'll be fine because you control TV stations and you control the way it's framed, and you will be able to portray whatever decision you make in the most favorable light. So I don't think he has too much to worry about in that sense, and I think there's such a consternation in the power elite around him to the extent that they're nervous about it, they probably would find a lessening of tensions that would be like this backlash, I don't think, from the hawk side of his circle, because I don't think he's going to do anything that would be so drastically peacenik suddenly that would offend them, and I think they recognize that there's a danger and there's a real cost to what they're doing, and they are trying to find a way to have their cake and eat it too. Well, I also do think, though, that it's in many ways it is about shoring up Putin's position at home. We tend to want to use the language of American politics when talking about, you know, that's really not applicable when talking about the artificial and not real politics in authoritarian state like Russia, and I think that that's part of sometimes how we get fooled into thinking that they're going to do things that they don't end up doing, because in reality Putin controls the information space and has moved very aggressively into the internet and to the remaining sort of small spaces for free discourse in the society. His popularity has been eroding over time up until this. The economy is increasingly beleaguered, and in all of the period of his long tenure, he's made few real moves to do anything other than continue to extract natural resources as fast a clip as possible. They haven't modernized their oil and gas industry, so they're at severe risk with the rise of fracking and unconventional gas sources, you know, as the price of that arose. They could be facing real instability at home, and I think that that's where I took your question to be, so this tactic once unleashed may prove to be addictive to Putin as he faces further troubles at home that he has increasingly few tools to deal with. Gosh, look at how your popularity spikes up even more, especially if you are able to have a short and bloodless war or takeover of territory that makes you feel good about what a big nationalist power you are in the world. So in that sense, I could see them saying, well, maybe next time we have a crisis, we should move on down the road to Trans-Denisia and take that back for Russia. You know, maybe there are other techniques of this sort. Maybe, you know, there's always the Georgians to go after again. Russia still is the predominant military power in the region, and it does have the ability to throw an increasingly big swagger around in the neighborhood. So I wouldn't rule that out at all. Well, let's turn to the White House and how they've handled this crisis, Peter. You know, obviously they've come under a fair amount of criticism on the Sunday talk shows and on the Hill for not doing enough, not being strong enough in standing up to Putin. Based on what people tell you, do folks at the White House feel as if some of the stuff they've taken, the sanctions that they've imposed or threatened to impose, have actually had some impact here in changing the dynamics of the situation or do they feel that they've been, basically, they're still being kind of outmaneuvered? Well, they would never concede that they're being outmaneuvered. I think that they feel like their sanctions have had some impact and they make some arguments that that has contributed to this broader economic problem that actually has preceded this particular crisis. I mean, Russia was in trouble economically before Yanukovych was pushed out before the Russians went into power. In fact, that goes back to your point about revving up domestic support. They're already in trouble in terms of the rule. They're in trouble in terms of the markets. But they have also been punished by the markets since this has happened. The volatility is clearly scared away, some foreign investment clearly scared away or scared people who are currently in Russia who are thinking about whether to expand or not. And the Obama administration would like to take credit for that and say that's because of the sanctions. You know, I think that plays into it, obviously. It's the fear of sanctions at the very least that is certainly preying on the minds of a lot of corporate compliance officers who are trying to figure out a scratch their head saying, well, can we have a conversation with this person or can we not have a conversation with this person? Should our CEO go to St. Petersburg for the economic forum there or not? And this is what has more or less successfully stopped most American CEOs from going to St. Petersburg. Having said that, I think that there are people inside the administration who are frustrated with the administration's approach and think it hasn't been robust enough that even the things that they have to haven't been applied in a way to extract the maximum pain without even necessarily escalation that folks like Senator McCain, who I believe spoke here earlier would favor. So there's a struggle inside the administration as to how much to make this the dominant issue you have on the one hand Jack Lew, the Secretary of State. He looks around the world and says hey, we're just getting this economy thing in a more or less decent place here. Let's not screw it up, right? So that's his perspective. Doesn't mean he doesn't want there to be tough action. He definitely does. I don't mean to mischaracterize him in any way. But he looks at the tradeoffs that you have if you were to go to, say, sectoral sanctions. So there's a real debate going on. Well, I think I totally agree with that. And I think the reason there's a real debate going on is because of the people we talked to who've been paying attention to Russia and really invested in a policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that more or less is now over. And so, you know, this is a major period of readjustment for these people here in Washington trying to figure out about Russia. The goal of our policy ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union could be broadly defined as engagement. The idea was to basically enmesh Russia in the sort of rules and obligations and the family of western institutions. Integration wherever possible. Certainly engagement where it wasn't possible to have outright integration. And that was, you know, there was a whole fabric of things that went along with that. That's now over. I think that there's a real sense, not just in the Obama administration, but in Europe as well, that that policy has not succeeded. That despite our big hopes at the end of the Cold War for our ability to overcome that legacy and to do what Europe was able to do by the way with itself in western Europe and to overcome those old hostilities, that that just hasn't proven to be doable with Russia, at least as it's been reconstituted under Putin. So what's going to come next? And I think that's where, you know, when sanctions default policy at this point, but they don't represent a new strategic vision of how to think about Russia and Putin. They represent sort of something we can do right now while we're figuring that out. Well, I guess that is a question that, you know, I wonder if you guys can shed some light on. I mean, how much how much when you think about all the issues that are in the kind of foreign policy inbox, you know, I don't it doesn't seem that this was probably, you know, a priority number one before, you know, February. To what extent is it now kind of crowding out other priorities? I mean, how is the administration managing the Russia situation in the context of, you know, sort of other global challenges? Yeah, that's a good question. I think this is a challenge that Obama would just as soon not be dealing with. I think he finds this aggravating and frustrating because he doesn't want to be absorbed by this, doesn't want to spend his time on this. Because the White House don't find him sitting there dwelling on it and talking about it in conversation. He'd rather talk about healthcare, he'd rather talk about all sorts of other issues, minimum wage and so on. So the White House thinking about this is can they prevent Putin from actually overtly sending in troops, overtly invading and sort of push it off to make it basically what they expect to be a long term irritant that needs to be managed but not something that's going to consume or get other things they'd rather do. And as you say, it does crowd out other things even on the foreign policy thing for getting the domestic agenda they've got. Well, and I think it's also I think it's a good example actually of how foreign policy not only is not really the front burner issue of this presidency but you know, events happen and they crowd out the best lay of plans and history really hasn't ended. I mean, I remember that we mocked Mitt Romney in 2012 for saying that you know, Russia remains the U.S.'s geopolitical enemy number one and now you can still argue the point about whether you think that's the case or not but you know, really there there weren't a lot of serious foreign policy analysts in the Democratic Party or in the Obama White House who were saying that Russia was going to be a major crisis of 2013 and 2014 and that has certainly proven to be the case. I think there's probably a lot of people who want to ask questions of these two so I'm happy to throw it open now if anyone has any questions. Yes, just hold on wait for the mic here comes. Thank you. Two questions one hears from many Europeans that we are largely responsible for what has happened by putting a choke around Russia and NATO expansion etc. You credit that and the second is that while the Obama administration might be seen as a government that was elected to withdraw somewhat from foreign engagements at some point there will be triggers that will cause U.S. policy to turn around and feel too embarrassed. Senator McCain tried to say at that point is this such a trigger mechanism that could change that generally thought of Obama's foreign policy? On your first question I think that's a big debate by the way and it's one thing for Europe to blame the United States they were part and parcel of the strategy and in fact particularly in Eastern Europe assertive in the idea that Europe should move east following 1991 so if that's a mistake certainly a joint mistake not just an American one but I think it's a debatable point did NATO expansion cause Russia to be revanchist or was Russia always going to be revanchist and therefore NATO expansion was a hedge against that and I think you can make two good arguments there there's no question though to understand Russia's point of view that you do need to understand this idea of encirclement fairly or not when we were there you would see them have these maps and they just showed all the different places American troops were as they viewed all around their border and you can understand how that feeds in to suspicion and paranoia and hostility even though of course we don't have a policy intending to encircle them we don't view them or didn't view them anyway as the threat that they once were but they look at the world through very different lenses than we do and at the very least we have to understand how they look at the world just one quick point about the current crisis which is to say it's very hard to blame the proximate events in Ukraine on the United States considering that it was in fact the EU itself and it's failed accession talks with the Ukrainians which were responsible really for triggering the protests in the Maidan that then spiraled into this revolution that toppled Yanukovych in fact it's not even a question of the United States standing back and letting Europe take the lead in talks to belong to a customs union of Europe that we ourselves are not members of and I think there was a lot of bad feeling memorably summed up by Toria Nulins unfortunately leaked cell phone call about the Europeans and whether they were to blame for this current crisis I think there's one more question over here Thank you very much Hi, Afshin Malavi Bernard Schwartz fellow alum nice to see you Susan, nice to see you Ramesh you mentioned foreign policy bandwidth well obviously foreign policy bandwidth when you talk about the Obama administration Iran is taking up a lot of foreign policy bandwidth so I'd like to ask both Peter and Susan do you think that as a result of this conflict between the Obama administration and Vladimir Putin and understanding that Putinology is an art not a science but do you think that this is going to make it more complicated do you think this is Vladimir Putin is going to be less interested in working closely with the United States and trying to secure a deal in the context of the P5 plus 1 that's a great question and in fact it's very relevant this week of course as they all return to Vienna to try to work out exactly such a deal so far what you hear from the Americans and the Europeans is that Russians have managed to compartmentalize this it was aware of the tension obviously and it certainly comes up from time to time in terms of well you really want to help but the truth is what the people who are involved in negotiations say is the Russians have been constructive partners at this point in those talks now again that could change but the rationale is that they have their own interests in making this happen and that they might see this as a way of keeping membership in effect in the international community at a time when they've been kicked out of the G8 and they're being isolated in other ways so that this could in fact survive that tension there are ways we cooperate that haven't been curtailed just the other day they brought down five astronauts from the international space station we didn't we don't have a capacity to anymore but two of them were American so we haven't stopped that despite the tension and the same is true with cooperative threat reduction and other programs so it is interesting to see that there has been sort of compartmentalization on some things so far but that might change if things really escalate okay stop we are done thank you very much