Although Russian president Vladimir Putin was the first foreign leader to offer President George W. Bush unqualified support in the War on Terror in the wake of the September 11 attacks, U.S.-Russian relations have deteriorated badly in the past five years. With disagreements on Iran, the Middle East, the democratic “color revolutions” in the former Soviet states, NATO expansion into the former Soviet territory, and the decline of political liberties in Russia, Washington and Moscow continue to drift apart. President Putin has declared his country an “energy superpower.” Increasingly, however, the European Union and the White House are concerned with Russia’s unabashed use of energy as a means of diplomatic pressure.
What accounts for this alarming parting of ways? What are the objectives of Russian foreign policy and how are they linked to the policies of economic and political recentralization inside the country? What can we expect in the next two years as both Russia and the United States enter critical periods of presidential transition?
On October 31, AEI will bring together a group of leading scholars and policymakers from the United States and Russia to discuss these and other questions. Speakers include Thomas Graham Jr., special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian affairs at the U.S. National Security Council; Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs; Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the committee on foreign affairs of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation; Angela Stent; professor of government and director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University; and Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center.
