U.S. and NATO Relations with Russia and Security in Europe

This event is being recorded and may be posted to our YouTube channel. If you choose to participate in discussion, you are presumed to consent to the use of your comments and potentially your image in these recordings. If you do not wish to be recorded, please contact Kelly Whitaker (whitaker.285@osu.edu).

If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, please contact Kyle McCray, mccray.44@osu.edu. Requests made two weeks before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.

Conference Schedule 

*All times are eastern standard time

9:00 – 10:50 a.m. | The Post-Cold War in Europe

The trends in thinking about security in Europe. What have the world views and plans for foreign policy been? What has driven these? How have they interacted across countries and time?

Speakers: Pascal Vennesson, Fyodor Lukyanov, and Peter Roberts

11:00 a.m. – 12:40 p.m. | Domestic Political Landscapes

What are the beliefs about other countries, the sentiments people feel (fears and aspirations), and the preferences they have for foreign policy and security? What does the information landscape look like and what are the prospects for popular mobilization? 

Speakers: Marlene Laruelle, Mary Sarotte, and Matthias Mader

1:00 – 2:45 p.m. | Power and Grand Strategies

Are broader plans evident? If so, what do these strategies look like and what is driving them? How do they interact with the strategies of other countries? Are they realistic and sustainable given relative capabilities? Given interests both normative and material along with the distribution of power across its multiple dimensions, what strategies are both desirable and likely to be successful?

Speakers: Kathryn Stoner, Andrei Tsygankov, and Olga Kamenchuk

3:00 – 4:30 p.m. | Liberal Values, Institutions, and Security in Europe

Can we defend values and preserve peace? What are the prospects for managing conflict through international institutions? Can we sort out the clash of values from the competing geopolitical interests that often motivate arguments that evoke values but often in self-serving hypocritical ways? What are the threats to liberal values and how can they best be met? What role might scholars and scholarship play in contributing to security in Europe?

Speakers: Thomas Risse, Dorothy Noyes, and Richard Herrmann 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: A watershed for European public opinion? 

By: Matthias Mader
Associate Professor for International Politics at the University of Konstanz. 

European Cold War Presumptions About Conflict – And Why Russia Doesn’t Care 

By: Peter Roberts
Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a non-resident professor of modern war at the Ecole de Guerre in Paris 

Russia's Power and Strategic Alternatives 

By: Andrei P Tsygankov
Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University.

France, Russia and European Security: The Rise and Fall of Emmanuel Macron’s Grand Strategy 

By: Pascal Vennesson  

Senior Fellow and Head of Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. 

Mary Sarotte is the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies in the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.  She is also a research associate at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University.  She is the author of five books, the most recent of which is Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate published by Yale University Press in 2021.  Two of her earlier books are The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall (Basic Books, 2014) and 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (Princeton University Press, 2011); both were selected as Financial Times Books of the Year.  Her first book was Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, détente, and Ostpolitik, 1969-1973 published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2001.  She also is the co-editor of German Reunification: A Multinational History, (Routledge, 2017).

Fyodor Lukyanov is Professor of International Relations on the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.  He is the Editor-in-Chief of Russia in Global Affairs, and the research director of the Valdai International Discussion Club.  In addition, he is Chairman of the Presidium of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy and a member of the Russian International Affairs Council.  He has authored many articles.  A few of those available in English are “The Modern World Order: Structural Realities and Great Power Rivalries in Polis 2021, “Prefabricated World Order and Its Decline in Twenty-First Century” in Diesen & Lukin eds. Russia in a Changing World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), and “Putin’s Foreign Policy: The Quest to Restore Russia’s Rightful Place, Foreign Affairs (2016).

Peter Roberts is a former Senior Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.  He served as Director of Military Sciences at RUSI from January 2014 through November 2021.  He is also a non-resident professor of modern warfare at the Ecole de Guerre in Paris.  His work centers around how contemporary military conflicts are fought, paying special attention to norms and behaviors.  He has been a regular commentator for global media outlets, provided evidence to parliaments around the world on military matters, and advised UK and foreign ministers, military chiefs and governments on conflict, force design, and the future risks from warfare.  He is also the former host of the Western Way of War podcast, with more than 200 thousand followers, streamed in 184 countries. Prior to joining RUSI, Peter spent twenty-three years in the Royal Navy.

Olga Kamenchuk is an associate research professor in the Institute for Policy Research in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. She is a Co-Principal Investigator on the Comparative National Elections Project for Russian, Ukrainian, and Serbian electoral studies. Prior to joining Northwestern University, she was co-director of the Eurasian Security & Governance Program at the Ohio State University Mershon Center for International Security Studies. Before joining Ohio State, Dr Kamenchuk worked as a director of international research and communications for the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM), the largest research and polling organization in the former Soviet Union region and as a chair of Sociology of Mass Communication in the Department of International Journalism at MIGIMO University, Russia. She is an author of a number of reports and studies, including “Don’t call It a Cold War: Findings from the Russian-American Relations Survey” (with Henry Hale) for the Working Group on the future of Russia-U.S. Relations. Dr Kamenchuk’s research has been published in Social Science Quarterly, Hague Journal of Diplomacy, and in various Russian academic outlets.

Matthias Mader is Associate Professor for International Politics at the University of Konstanz.  In his current research, he collaborates with researchers from nine European countries to examine the dynamic relationship between elites and masses in policymaking about common defense in the multi-level European system. This project Fighting together, moving apart? European common defence and shared security in an age of Brexit and Trump is funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung.  He is the author of three books and numerous articles, several of his recent articles in English include “Conceptions of national identity, turnout, and party preference: Evidence from Germany,” Nations and Nationalism (2020), “Public Opinion Towards European Defence Policy and NATO: Still Wanting it Both Ways?” Public Opinion Quarterly (2020), “The globalisation divide in the public mind: belief systems on globalisation and their electoral consequences,” Journal of European Public Policy,” (2020), and “Conceptions of National Identity and Ambivalence towards Immigration.” British Journal of Political Science (2019).

Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and a Senior Fellow at CDDRL and the Center on International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.  From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director and prior to moving to Stanford in 2004, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years.  Her most recent book is entitled Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a new Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2021).  In addition to numerous articles, Dr. Stoner has authored or co-edited five other books including Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (Johns Hopkins 2013);  Autocracy and Democracy in the Post-Communist World," (Cambridge, 2010);  Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge, 2006); After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions" (Cambridge, 2004), and Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton, 1997).

Andrei Tsygankov is Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University. Among his many publications are Russian Realism: Defending “Derzhava” in International Relations (Routledge 2022), Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National identity (6^Th ed.) (Rowman & Littlefield 2022), Russia and America: The Asymmetric Rivalry (Polity: 2019), The Dark Double: U.S. Media, Russia, and the Politics of Values (Oxford University Press, 2019), The Routledge Handbook of Russian Foreign Policy (Editor, Routledge, 2018), The Strong State in Russia (Oxford University Press, 2014), and Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin (Cambridge University Press, 2012). 

Pascal Vennesson is Senior Fellow and Head of Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is also Professor of Political Science at Paris-Pantheon-Assas University (on leave). His research and teaching lie at the intersection of the fields of international relations and strategic studies. He recently published “Military Power and Grand Strategy” in the Oxford Handbook of Grand Strategy (2021). Before joining RSIS, he held the Chair “Security in Europe”, at the European University Institute, Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies. He also taught “Strategy and Policy” for ten years at The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)-Bologna Center. He is the author, co-author and editor of six books and his refereed articles have been notably published in Armed Forces and Society, International Relations, Journal of Strategic Studies, Journal of Global Security Studies, Review of International Studies, Revue Française de Science Politique and Security Studies. He is a member of the editorial boards of Revue Française de Science Politique (French Political Science Review), Armed Forces and Society and the European Journal of International Security.

Thomas Risse has been professor of international politics at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin and is now senior professor at the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script” (SCRIPTS) at Freie Universität Berlin. His is chair of the scientific advisory board of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and member of the Senate and the Joint Committee of the German Research Foundation (DFG). His most recent book has been published by Cambridge University Press in 2021 (with Tanja A. Börzel), entitled Governance Under Anarchy. Institutions, Legitimacy, and Social Trust in Areas of Limited Statehood. A few of his previous books are Domestic Politics and Norm Diffusion in International Relations: Ideas Do Not Float Freely (Routledge, 2016) and A Community of Europeans? Transnational Identities and Public Spheres (Cornell University Press, 2010). He has co-edited the 75^th Anniversary Issue of International Organization “Challenges to the Liberal International Order” (with David Lake and Lisa Martin), the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism (with Tanja Börzel, 2016), The Persistent Power of Human Rights (with Kathryn Sikkink and Stephen Ropp, Cambridge University Press 2013), and many other volumes as well as peer-reviewed articles.

Marlene Laruelle is the Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and the Director of the Illiberalism Studies Program at the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University.  She is also the Director of the Central Asia Program at GWU and co-Director of PONARS-Eurasia.  She recently authored Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West (Cornell University Press, 2021).  She has previously authored or co-authored eight other books including   Memory Politics and the Russian Civil War. Reds versus Whites (Bloomsbury, 2020), Russian Nationalism. Imaginaries, Doctrines and Political Battlefields (Routledge, 2018); Russia’s Arctic Strategies and the Future of the Far North (M.E. Sharpe, 2014); The ‘Chinese Question’ in Central Asia. Domestic Order, Social Changes and the Chinese Factor (Oxford University Press, 2012); In the Name of the Nation. Nationalism and Politics in Contemporary Russia (Palgrave/MacMillan 2009), and Russian Eurasianism. An Ideology of Empire, (Woodrow Wilson Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).

Richard Herrmann is Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Political Science (emeritus) at the Ohio State University.  He was director of the Mershon Center from 2001-2011 and chair of the Department of Political Science from 2011-2019.  He is the author of numerous articles including “How attachments to the nation shape beliefs about the world: A theory of motivated reasoning,” International Organization, 2017, “Attachment to the Nation and International Relations: Probing the dimensions of identity and their relationship to war and peace,” Political Psychology, (2009), “Beliefs, Values and Strategic Choice:  U.S. Leaders’ Decisions to Engage, Contain and Use Force in an Era of Globalization,” Journal of Politics, (2004), and “Mass Public Decisions to Go to War: A Cognitive-Interactionist Framework” American Political Science Review (1999).  He also co-edited Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004) and authored Perceptions and Behavior in Soviet Foreign Policy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).

Dorothy Noyes is College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of English, with a joint appointment in the Department of Comparative Studies. Noyes studies political performance and the traditional public sphere in Europe, with an emphasis on how shared symbolic forms and indirect communication facilitate coexistence in situations of endemic social conflict. She also writes on folklore theory and the international policy careers of culture concepts. Among her books are Fire in the Plaça: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life (Indiana University Press, 2016); and Sustaining Interdisciplinary Collaboration: A Guide for the Academy, co-authored with Regina F. Bendix and Kilian Bizer (University of Illinois Press, 2017). Her current book projects are Exemplary Failures: Gesture and Emulation in Liberal Politics and, co-edited with Tobias Wille, The Global Politics of Exemplarity. In summer 2022 she will begin an appointment as Director of Ohio State’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies.