Space Nuclear Weapons And Us Russia Relations After The Cold War

TITLE: Space, Nuclear Weapons, and U.S.-Russia Relations After the Cold War CHANNEL: Carnegie Endowment DATE: 2026-05-28 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Can’t open this.

Can’t open up. There we go. Good morning everybody. It’s a pleasure to see so many people here in person and I know we have um others watching. So um it’s uh another I think it’s the 10th in a row day with rain, but we’re going to have a really positive conversation in the room here and try to put everybody in a better mood. Um, Rose was warning maybe that’s not going to be the case, but we’ll we’ll try. Um, it’s really a pleasure uh for me to be here. I’m Corey Hinderstein, vice president for studies here at the Carnegie Endowment. Um, and we are so pleased to have these two uh amazing experts uh to be part of our conversation today. It’s a pleasure to introduce of course Rose Godm uh one of the world’s most respected voices on nuclear policy, arms control, and international security. Rose has spent more than three decades at the forefront of efforts to reduce nuclear risks and strengthen global security. She served as de deputy secretary general of NATO from 2016 to 2019 and before that she served as the US under secretary of state for arms control and international security and I see we have some alums of that bureau in the room. Um she was also the in that role the chief negotiator chief US negotiator of the new start treaty with Russia which some would say um is the last USRussian strategic nuclear treaty I’ll say the most recent USRussian

the most recent yes um more prestigious frankly than any of those roles however she was director of the Carnegie Moscow center um and senior associate at the Carnegie endowment where she’s still a non-resident senior fellow she was also uh my one of my predecessor professors heading defense nuclear non-prololiferation programs at the department of energy and any of us who can walk in Rose’s shoes are um honored to do so. Um in addition to her current Carnegie affiliation, Rose is a lecturer at Stanford University’s Freeman Spoley Institute for International Studies and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Rose’s career has combined high level diplomacy, deep policy expertise, and she’s also been a friend and mentor to so many in our field. I think the Rose coaching tree is as significant as her many other diplomatic accomplishments.

Rose is here to discuss among other topics her new book, Security Through Cooperation: Space Nuclear Weapons and US-Russia Relations After the Cold War. Leading that discussion, we’re so pleased to have Michelle Kellerman, one of the most experienced and trusted journalists co covering American foreign policy and international affairs. And as I just learned in the back, uh, another alum of having lived in and studied and worked in Moscow. Um, Michelle has a voice as familiar as many of my family members voices to be honest. Um, she’s spent more than two decades reporting for NPR, beginning as the network’s Moscow bureau chief and later becoming its diplomatic correspondent. Her reporting is heard across NPR’s flagship news programs, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Her work has earned widespread recognition, including the 2023 Arthur Ross Media Award from the American Academy of Diplomacy for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis on Foreign Affairs. She was also part of the NPR team that received the Alfred I. Dupont Colombia University award for its coverage of the war in Iraq. Known for her cleareyed reporting and deep knowledge of international affairs, Michelle brings invaluable insight into the challenges and opportunities facing US diplomacy today. And I don’t know about um any of you, but it will be strange to sit here and hear Michelle’s voice while I’m not driving or walking my dog. Um with that, let me turn it over to Michelle to lead our discussion. Thank you both so much for being here.

So, I think before I dive into questions, I’m going to let Rose kind of introduce the book, but or maybe I just ask the first question, which is why why do you want people to know um what happened in those early years of the uh end of the cold war, the Gore Cherno Miran Commission,

mysterious process. Yes. Yeah. Why is it important for people to understand what happened at that time? Michelle, there are two main reasons uh why I wrote this book. The first is that I was becoming very fed up about the line coming out of the Kremlin that from the very opening of the postcold war period, President George HW Bush and President Bill Clinton were resolved to enlarge NATO to the very borders of the Russian Federation so as to pose an existential threat to Russia. And that line really got under my skin because I remember and the cover of the book says it all if you’ve seen the cover of the book. President Clinton was resolved to have a good economic, political, and security relationship with the Russian Federation because he was convinced that it was the only way to sustain stability in Eurasia going forward. He was right in my view. he remains right in my view. But we’ll come back to that when we talk about possibilities for the future. But then the second thing uh that drove me to write the book was the fact that there is so much out there that isn’t understood about that that period. We all know about NATO enlargement and some excellent books have been written about NATO enlargement. But the degree to which we were able to intertwine the US government with the Russian government in the interests again of developing this relationship and moving forward on things that we needed to move forward on like at the time we were wondering whether to proceed with manned space. It was too expensive. The Apollo missions had gotten too expensive. We were going to just go, it sounds familiar to some of the debates today. we were just going to go with our unmanned probes and forget about putting man in outer space or woman in outer space. Now, thank God we’re also putting women in outer space. But a long story short was it was a period at which we were on the cusp of some important technological decisions and it was actually working together with the Russian Federation that allowed us to go forward with what became some important objectives articulated and implemented in the end in the International Space Station which is still in orbit today and still bringing Russians and Americans together bizarrely in this period of profound crisis between our two nations. and also a platform for international cooperation on a much wider front. So it seemed to me that there was a positive message to be imparted about the value of science and innovation cooperation for the future of international security in general.

actually covered the beginning of the Zarya the first launch. Did you really? Yeah. Oh wow. I still have the bottle of vodka that they gave me. I don’t have drinkable anymore. probably still good. But that was an amazing event. Um, in the book you also talk about how it wasn’t necessarily going to be the case that that Russia was going to work with the US on, you know, on on the scientific things that it was also looking at China. So it was tempted. So talk a little bit about that about why it was in the US interest to kind of pull Russia at the time away from China. Well, the Russians were a bit frustrated with the Chinese because, and this sounds very typical again, we understand in in how the Chinese think about intellectual property and so forth, the Chinese wanted to buy things up. They wanted to buy up plans. They wanted to buy up technology. They wanted to buy up things and take them away and build them themselves. They did not want to cooperate with the Russians necessarily on any long-term projects. What the United States again was offering very much in our own interests was this deep technological cooperation that would enable us to move forward but also would enable the Russians to move forward. And don’t forget, many of you may have spent some time in Russia in the 1990s, but it was a desperate situation, chaotic economic and political situation, very uncertain on the security front. And so for them, I think it was attractive. Of course, quick money was attractive. They needed quick money. But the notion of this long-term cooperative relationship with the United States, I think was for them a better bet than selling things to China.

It in some parts it kind of seems, you know, you talk about kind of um Clinton getting advice from Nixon. You talk about this this um bipartisan really, you know, changing of administrations, but a bipartisan um foreign policy that seems quaint these days. It seems so foreign. Absolutely. I look back on that time and I can’t believe it. But believe it or not, it was a I did work on the transition for President Clinton from the George HW Bush administration to the Clinton administration. It was such a smooth transition transition because these goals were shared. The George HW Bush administration had started, for example, to try to develop what became cooperative threat reduction, the non-Lugar program to ensure that nuclear weapons and file material did not go astray, did not fall into the wrong hands. That was started before the end of his administration and Bill Clinton picked right up on it. So it was a remarkably smooth transition from one administration to the next with all these shared objectives. But again it was a period of crisis. We did not know what was going to happen with the break up of the Soviet Union and nuclear weapons ending up on territory not only of the Russian Federation but Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Bellarus. many many uncertainties of the period and worries and intelligence emerging that terrorist groups were trying to get their hands on some of this fizzile material or possibly even a nuclear weapon. So there were some burning worries I think that drove the process as well.

when you look back on it now and you know what’s happened in Ukraine since um was it a mistake for the US to kind of look at policy toward Ukraine and Kazakhstan for instance all through the prism of Russia?

I don’t believe that we did. I think we made an honest attempt to think about how to bolster their chances of becoming true independent and sovereign states and democracies. We we might argue at the at this moment that we are a bit naive to be thinking about democracies, but that was our goal at the time. And so I think about the experience I get asked a lot about whether the deal to get the nuclear weapons out of Ukraine was the wrong deal, the so-called Budapest memorandum. And I was on the negotiating team that took part in negotiating that deal. But the way I think about it is that these were fragile, very fragile states at the time. They were on the edge of collapse a number of them and they were on the edge of mutual conflict that they could have fallen into conflict over borders or resources or any number of things. And in from Washington our resolution was to try to prevent that from happening and to try to stabilize and give them a boost to becoming truly coherent and healthy. again democracies okay naive but it was the idea that that was made up not only of democratic practice but healthy economies and uh good security arrangements. So the way I look at the Budapest memorandum was uh if we had somehow left those nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory and yes there were some Ukrainians who thought they could guillotine the command and control from Moscow reestablish it in Kiev and go forward with a nuclear weapon capability. I think they would have ended up in early conflict with Russia. That transition would have been very very dangerous and in fact they would have ended up in early conflict between Russia and and Ukraine and it would have hampered both countries from becoming truly healthy and sovereign independent states. Instead, what we bought for the Ukrainians was 30 years in order to establish themselves as independent and sovereign. and they’ve proven, I think, the wisdom of that course by being able to defend themselves so admirably from the Russian onslaught over the last now nearly five years. So that’s my argument. It’s a flawed argument in some respects, but I I continue to believe it was the right decision to get those nuclear weapons out of Ukraine and Kazakhstan and Barus.

and and what you bring us into the room of when you were negotiating those things. What um what do you think the Ukrainians felt like they had real security guarantees out of this or not?

Let me speak to that in a moment. But a point I also want to stress is at the time the Ukrainians and Russians were working together very well. Don’t forget that Russia as late as 1997 confirmed reconfirmed the borders of the uh of the Ukrainian uh state according to the borders of the USSR republics and that was in their so-called cooperation agreement Russian and Ukrainian cooperation agreement. So legally binding arrangement there was no contest at that time over Crimea for example and where Crimea should be. Now, maybe Vladimir Putin was thinking about it from his job at that time uh as the Russian prime minister. I don’t know. No, that was earlier than that. Sorry, he was still back in St. Petersburg in those days. But, but in any event, uh it was not contested and they worked together very well in those negotiations and they shoved us out of the room when they needed to. One of the most important parts of that deal was the Ukrainians insisted that they monitor the uh removal of the the HU from the warheads and the dismantlement of the warheads to ensure that the Russians were not putting those warheads back into operational deployment. They neither of them wanted us in the room. It was too sensitive. They negotiated those monitoring arrangements and the Ukrainians confirmed the uh elimination of the warheads and they got compensated for the highlyenriched uranium coming out of them. Came back to them in cash, came back to them in power plant fuel. So they were actually working well together at the time.

you you talk about all these different um figures, some of whom are still there in Russia, you know, Curenko and and Midv. Um uh I mean obviously the idea for the Gorchamiran um commission was to kind of develop uh relations all the way down to the technical

Yes. level. Does any of that have an impact now? because some of these people are still around or are they all the ones who really worked with the US in exile? Well, in the space field it does. Uh Ross Cosmos and NASA, believe it or not, still work incredibly closely together and and have excellent and wide ranging from the highest down to the technical levels uh interactions going on. That was the model and it did not take hold in other areas I admit. But um it is interesting and I I wonder about the very uh extensive cooperation that we had with RossAdam over many many years where we had uh close working relationships and as late as 2015 were negotiating and had them at the table to talk with the Iranians as we put the JCPOA in place. talked to the Iranians about taking back highlyenriched uranium from the Iranians and storing it in Russia and talked to the Iranians about and it was actually the Chinese that came in and uh worked with the Iranians to dismantle their heavy water reactor. So there was a lot of cooperation going on even a decade ago that I wonder what remains. And so I talk in the book about where we could possibly move forward on cooperation if we get to that place. And I want to stress as I say in the book again and again, the war has to end on a fair basis for Ukraine and Russia must uh pay the price for the damage and death and destruction it has caused. It must help to rebuild Ukraine. And what other steps will be decided in course of negotiations, I don’t know. But it will essentially have to have to atone for the damage it’s caused in Ukraine. But at that point, all right, let’s think about it. Where would it be in our interest to cooperate? To me, nuclear power still seems like a natural area because our industry is still struggling to get on its feet. And uh so I think we could use some cooperation in that arena and the Russians continue to be world leaders on nuclear power. So, I wonder if that’s an area we can get back into. There’s politics there, too. I recognize that. And particularly the politics of uh uranium enrichment in this country and having been too long dependent on Russian enriched uranium. Okay, fine and good. Let’s figure out how we deal with that problem. But maybe there are other areas we can cooperate with in the nuclear energy arena.

I want to ask something a little more personal because I I just read um Julia Yafy’s terrific book about the feminist history of Russia.

I haven’t read it yet. That sounds interesting. It is interesting. Um so what was it like to because it sounds like you were like the only woman in the room in a lot of these places. So tell me what that was like. Well, I want to stress um and actually I’m here today uh because a dear friend uh is retiring from the Department of Energy, Cynthia Luren, and she was head of the DOE NNSA office in uh our Moscow embassy for a number of years, and I worked with her quite closely. So there were a number of very good women involved and I think the Russians were beused at first and I’ve heard stories from those and I recounted in the book those who have worked on the HU purchase agreement. We can get into that if somebody wants to talk about the details of that but that was a wonderful arrangement by which we and it’s frankly how we fell into some dependence on the Russians for enriched uranium. that uh when the Russians were eliminating warheads uh they down blended the HU to lowenriched uranium and then it was transferred to us to uh to fabricate into power plant fuels. So a lot of our nuclear energy was being generated out of former Soviet warheads for about the last decade plus. So that was a real swords to plowshares program. Pretty obscure now. People don’t remember it, but there was a transparency program that went along with that where we were actually present at the down blending facilities to watch what was going on. And there were some women involved in that who at first they said their Russian counterparts were not only beused but angry. You know, the Russians are famous misogynists. You know that, Michelle. And um they were angry that they’d sent a woman to do this job. But um my uh interlocutor said she just kept like working and being very professional and after a while uh they accepted her. And I actually found the same thing because I’ve been working in the field uh in Russia in the Soviet Union since the 1980s. And after a while once you’re a proven technical expert they become a bit genderblind. And so uh that can be uh helpful in getting things done with the Russians. less vodka drinking for women. Definitely they will open a bottle of sham Soviet champs for you. You don’t have to drink the vodka. Now the Soviet Champans I know many of you know is pretty much DR but uh it’s better than drinking vodka.

You talk a bit about your time at the at the Carnegie Moscow center and that and you mentioned that there were death threats and things. Bring us into that period and how things were changing. Yes, I was in Moscow from 2006 through 2008, three years uh from end to end. And during that period I arrived, it was 30 below zero in Moscow when I arrived. And the first Sunday I was there, I was watching Vesti, the evening news program. It came first image came up and the picture was of the Carnegie Moscow Center on Pushkin Square. Some of you may remember it. And the tagline was Carnegie Moscow Center, nest of spies. And I thought to myself, ah, welcome to Moscow, Rose. So, it did ensue that we had a period of, uh, pressure. I don’t know if they were testing me personally, uh, or if things were just going wrong in general in the USRussian relationship. So, they were testing the Carnegie Moscow center to see what kind of, uh, see what kind of fiber we were made of. But we in those first couple months I was there, we had death threats, we had uh bomb threats repeatedly. There’s an amusing vignette I recount in the book about how my Russians, you know, they’re so kind of laidback in some bizarre ways, but I had staff who got to really love the bomb sniffing dogs who were coming in and these gigantic, you know, Doberman pinsers and things. They’d come in. Oh, look, it’s it’s Boris again. And they’d be be wanting to pet the dog. And I’m like, but they, it just shows that they were taking in stride these threats against the center, including those academics and experts who had death threats directed at them. They had a certain sangua, which was to me quite remarkable.

Um, before I go on to more questions, I just want to remind the people online that you can put questions in the YouTube chat and then I’m going to have questions also from you all. start thinking about what you want to ask about. Um, President Trump often talks about, “Wouldn’t it be great if we just could get along with Russia and have talks? Um, given what you know and what the US has tried, is it that easy?” Definitely not. And it took a huge amount of um soulsearching and effort to get through the final um for me the final analysis in the book and it’s incomplete. I grant you that. But what what went wrong with Vladimir Putin? What went wrong with our cooperation with Russia? And people forget that when Vladimir Putin came in and George W. Bush came in at the turn of the century, George W. Bush reached out to Putin. They he made his best effort to have this good working relationship with Putin and Putin responded to begin with. Uh they uh there’s a again a tale recounted in the book that people don’t really remember how Bush was inviting him Putin to the Crawford ranch down in Texas and treating him to barbecue and treating him to taking him out with a chainsaw and you know cutting brush together. So Bush was really trying to have this relationship with Putin and Putin responded. To me it is remarkable that it was Putin who went to the Rome summit of NATO in 2002 and signed the agreement that launched the NATO Russia Council and launched 15 years of really deep pragmatic project work between NATO and Russia. things like well uh battling the uh flow of narcotics out of Afghanistan into Russia uh and then from there into Europe. Very intense project work with a lot of involvement and a lot of resources applied on both sides. So I had to really then think through what was going wrong and in the end of the day I conclude there’s a combination of uh political and domestic factors in Russia. Putin was deciding he was going to slowly set aside. Don’t don’t forget Medved came in there in the middle in 2007 2008 and that was when Putin decided not to change the constitution at that point because he was not going to stand for a third term as president and he brought in Medvier and we had this short period of the reset and so there was even in in that period only 20 years ago there was a period when we thought we could move forward again with cooperation with Russia. how wrong we were. And I do, you know, spend a lot of time soulsearching and trying to think this through in the book. But in the end of the day, I do think that uh the character and the objectives of Vladimir Putin have a lot to do with what went wrong, but it’s not the only he’s not the only one at fault.

Well, I mean, I remember he like after 911, he came he he did a talk show with NPR, took questions from from Yeah. Uh yeah, I mean there was there was an interesting moment where where I just wonder if there was I mean if if did the US miss anything any chance to work with him or not? Well, what I’ve argued and I did a um essay on this for the Munich Security Conference. Um, what I argued was that he was actually still a status quo power, a status quo figure in that period up until this the first uh first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. He was still, I think, trying to reach for some relationship, but it became nastier and nastier as time went on. and all the human rights abuses in Russia and the seizure of Kodarovski first in 2003 I think was a sign of what was going to come later and then uh we really ended up with serious and severe problems um later on in the first decade of the century so but it’s a complex story and it’s a complex story that I still believe we should take a good look at as we think about reopening cooperation with Russia but still take a good hard look at cooperation with Russia because in the end of the day I conclude in the book it’s better not to wall try to wall Russia off and defend against them at infin item that we should be thinking when the time is right about how to reopen some kind of cooperative arrangements with Russia as difficult and complicated as that will be.

Yeah. So, um I mean this administration doesn’t particularly listen to experts on things, but if you were advising, uh you know, Kushner and and Wickoff to make a proposal for kind of reviving some sort of relationship, what would it be? Well, first of all, and that was one of the problems I think after the end of the Cold War, they need to think hard about how to relieve the sanctions regime against Russia and how to rein uh incorporate Russia into the international banking and finance system. One of the the splinters under the thumbnail of of Russian politicians in general, not only Vladimir Putin, was the fact that it took us uh 20 plus years to forgive the sanctioned uh the Jackson Vanic uh sanctions against uh Russia, which were put in place first of all, as you will recollect because of the treatment of Soviet jewelry back in the 1970s. And they were justified at the time. they had a good effect in terms of opening up Jewish immigration from the USSR. Uh but it took us until 2013 to relieve those sanctions and at the same time again for justified reasons we were putting in new sanctions because of severe human rights abuses in Russia. So I think we need to consider very hard if this administration really does want to open up somehow to working with Russia. How we unwind the sanctions regime and how we get them back into the banking and finance system to my mind is the top question to to confront and that is going to be a very difficult question. And don’t forget it involves the European Union as well. And many European powers are going to be quite skeptical of moving fast in this direction. Certainly not with what Russia is doing this week in. But may I offer one more piece of advice as long as I have the floor? Yeah. I always say if there’s an easy door to go through, take it and start some momentum in the right direction. So I would say get back to the negotiating table sooner rather than later to talk about strategic stability and nuclear arms control with the Russian Federation. And I argue further. Many of you have heard me going on about this probably too much, but it’s a parallel track with China right now. We do not need to panic. The Chinese are still at 600 warheads. We have 4,000 warheads. We have a decade to work this problem with the Chinese. And we need to put the brakes and try to put the brakes on their nuclear modernization. No question about it. But let us not panic about them. and let us really focus on continuing to build predictability with the Russian Federation on the nuclear front. We don’t need that relationship spiraling out of control right now.

Good. Um, I want to turn it over to questions. So, we have plenty of time for that. Um, I have one here, but why don’t we start in the room way over there? I think there’s a microphone that we can bring around. Yeah. And please introduce yourself when you uh It’s way over there in the corner. Yeah. Yes, thank you. Um, my name is Roger Cochetti. I’m a former state department, but most of my career was high-tech executive, IBM, Comat, companies like that. And you spoken mostly about history because it’s so important to where we are today. um and commented briefly about the issue of eastward expansion which as you know better than anybody is highly controversial and the center of many many debates. Um but you you while you commented on the topic during the uh Clinton administration you haven’t spoken very much about what happened in eastward expansion of NATO after the Clinton administration. Could you expand your interpretation of the sort of history of of eastward expansion, why it happened, um what how significant it is and and how we address this issue sort of going forward. Thanks. Right. Yeah. Excellent question. Um and one of the points uh that I make by pointing to the fact that um first actually it was uh Yeltson who agreed to the NATO Russia founding act in 1997 and Putin who agreed to the Rome declaration in 2002 was that there was uh maybe they were holding their noses but there was a certain acquiescence to the enlargement of NATO that was going on during that period and a certain also desired to figure out if there was a relationship that NATO and Russia could develop. Again, they weren’t doing it out of the kindness of their heart. But Putin, particularly agreeing to the NATORussia Council and agreeing to this uh this fabric of cooperation, cooperative projects between NATO and Russia seemed in 2002 to be to be looking for uh an abiding relationship between NATO and Russia and not one of aggression and enmity. So I puzzled over that quite a bit because that was happening as NATO was enlarging and it uh was something that that went forward uh on a very steady steady track then for uh for those early years in in end of the 1990s and early years of the 2000s. So only later I think and of course the book uh the Bucharest um summit uh statement that NATO would enlarge to include uh not only Russia, sorry, not only Ukraine and Georgia but also some of the Balkan states uh seems to have been a big uh catalyst to some of the frustration and anger that developed in Moscow. But nevertheless, I continue to point to efforts at cooperation between the two uh institutions, between Russia and between NATO that were continuing even to unfold as I was under secretary of state in 2013. And I remember at the time as we were getting chemical weapons out of Syria and Tom Countryman, who’s here with us, was very involved in that effort as well. By the way, did you see the news this morning that the the uh OPCW has discovered a bunch of undeclared stocks in Syria? And I’m just delighted to see that happening. And I think it’s a very important step forward again in bolstering the work of the OPCW and the Chemical Weapons Convention overall. So, but at that time we were getting uh you know over a thousand metric tons of declared nuclear uh chemical weapon stocks out of out of Syria. And I went to the Russians and said, “Look, we’ve got some military um we’ve got some military escort going on. Would you like to join that effort?” And at the time, the Russians were trying to figure it out. In the end of the day, there was too much stress, too much strain over the military command relationships. uh to make it happen. But we were still talking to them is my only point. And there was still a scrap of hope that we could continue this relationship between NATO and Russia. As I said, all hope of that was lost at the time of the first u invasion in 2014 and the seizure of Crimea. But and again maybe we were naive but I I would say there were sincere efforts uh and in some ways sincere efforts on both sides to figure out how to make the relationship go u but it it toppled I think on the weight uh partially of of Putin’s ambitions and his already then developing desires to grab some Ukrainian territory uh but also uh probably toppled under the weight of how NATO was developing at that time also. So in any event, open questions, many of them, but I I do want to underscore that there were sincere efforts to make that cooperation happen.

There’s a question here that I’ll go to. It says, “Your book gives a lot of credit to the individual decision makers and heads of state driving and maintaining this peace through cooperation. Are the challenges to cooperative stability with Russia today innately political or due to the changed security environment? Well, we it’s a interesting question because we hear from the current president from President Trump that he would like to restore cooperation with Russia. In some ways, one of the great advantages was that we had three presidents during that period from George HW Bush through Clinton through George W. Bush who were all resolved to develop this cooperation and try to move forward in a stable way and a predictable way. Uh, President Trump being famously parapotetic and moving from one thing to another all the time, that kind of stability would seem to be absent. So I think it will be uh much more challenging if this administration somehow gets to yes uh with Russia and with Ukraine and wants to move forward in this area. They will have to put some time and attention to keeping their eyes on that prize because otherwise it’s not not going to happen. So it does have to do with political leadership but also I think it bears uh really intense thinking about the fact that the security situation has deteriorated. so significantly in uh uh this uh latter period and again the the China factor is at play here as well and so uh we are looking across the world now and wondering where the next crisis is going to emerge and how the United States is going to have to position itself. So in some ways we’re at a much different place where the United States had just emerged I would say victorious from the cold war and was premer Paris first among equals very clearly. It’s a much different situation today. So that complicates uh the the environment quite a bit.

There you go right behind you. Hi John Sur with the Washington Times. um recently discussing uh in Helsinki, Finland with some of our Nordic partners the shift of nuclear weapons to the Cola Peninsula and I wanted to ask in that context if you think that non-prololiferation and some of the conversation around nuclear weapons has actually decreased in importance when we talk about NATO and NATO partnerships with the United States. I actually think it’s increased in importance because we can see all the concern uh among the allies about US extended deterrence commitments and you mentioned the Nordic states. Some of the Nordic states have actually begun to talk among themselves about whether they should be considering a nuclear weapons program of their own. I’m not in any way a supporter of so-called friendly proliferation. I think it’s a recipe for instability and insecurity, not stability and and security. But there are US allies who are concerned about again the parapotetic nature of the president and his uh perhaps um well not perhaps his unpredictability and so therefore considering what to do to bolster extended nuclear deterrence on their own. I the way I talk about this is to bear in mind that we do have now the I would say the most modernized presence in Europe in terms of our extended deterrence capability with the recent modernization of the storage and handling facilities at the bases with the recent purchase of the F-35 by all the basing states and its certification as a dual capable aircraft and with the full deployment now of the B-6112 in Europe. our most modern warheads. So the physical plant, so to say, of extended deterrence is in excellent shape at the moment. And what the allies can do is to train and exercise that that physical capability in a way that conveys a clear deterrence message to Moscow. That’s why I’ve been really pleased the way that Steadfast Noon, the autumn exercise that was done last October was widely advertised by NATO. That’s a deterrence message that’s very very important at this moment of otherwise uncertainty. And I’ve been frankly I you know I’m glad to see Mcron step forward. I’m glad to see uh the British uh leadership step forward and say that they are willing to bolster the deterrent as well. How that works out I’m not sure. But I would look in that direction rather than in the direction of of friendly deterrence. I I’m sorry if deterrence is friendly. we hope um friendly uh proliferation. I don’t think it’s uh a good idea for the future of stability in Europe or in Asia to see the number of nuclear states possessing nuclear weapons increase.

There are more questions from here. Um are strategic um threat reduction or strategic stability talks still feasible options for the global community? And then I’m going to ask two from here. Um, the other one is, do you see current possibilities for cooperation with Russia on space traffic management as a tool for nuclear risk reduction? Oh, I wonder who asked that question. Um, actually, there’s no names attached to this, by the way. I’ve had some conversations about this recently. I I actually do think that space traffic management is both urgent and also, again, I talk about opening doors and doors we can go through with both the Russians and the Chinese for that matter. We both have uh a a clear all three of us have a clear interest in avoiding collisions in outer space as we put more and more assets in space. The US of course with our corporate interests here uh driving the pace and accelerating the pace. So I think the degree we can be talking to both the Russians and the Chinese about collision avoidance in space, space traffic management, provide even more sharing of information about uh orbital mechanics and that type of thing is is a really good way to go and an area where there should be the possibility of early cooperation with both Moscow and Beijing. Uh on the first in terms of uh the first question was about cooperative threat reduction. Yes. out. Yes. Um, strategic stability talks, strategic threat reduction talks. Yeah, strategic stability talks and threat reduction. I uh I think they’re they’re different uh in both settings. That’s why I keep talking about parallel talks with the Russians and the Chinese and not trying to mash them together. But with the Russians, I think we have a certain continuity. Don’t forget, we started I mentioned that, you know, I got in this game in 1972 when Salt One was signed. So we have a continuity there that’s that’s well over 50 years old and we can build on that and we should be thinking about ways to to uh again enhance mutual predictability and think but think about the implications of new technology for nuclear deterrence and I’ve been very concerned about the implications of artificial intelligence for uh our uh stability relationship with both the Russians and the Chinese. So let’s have some sophisticated discussions with the Russians about that matter and then also talk to them about what we can do to keep controls on nuclear weapons. I know many people are saying no more reductions. We can argue about that. I can see the potential for more reductions especially since we have some time to work the problem with the Chinese and I think we can get them to put the brakes on their modernization. That’s my opinion. perhaps again one that what’s opinion that needs to be tested but nevertheless I think it’s worth thinking about but in a min at a minimum we should talk about controls with the Russians again in the interest of mutual predictability and preventing a nuclear arms race at this moment with the Chinese we can focus more on nuclear risk reduction and again building some predictability into that relationship and we should start with things that should be in their interest things like missile launch notification uh agreement that that type of thing and actually when I think about uh areas where they may be willing to work I’ve been quite surprised recently that uh Chinese experts are interested in the nuclear risk reduction center we have one here in our state department there’s one in Moscow in the ministry of defense there it’s a communications mechanism but one that routinizes communication among the inter agency players as well you know the NERK exists here in in Washington in the state department. But when a notification comes in from the Russians, it goes out to all the inter agency in a way that everybody has the same information at the same time. And to have that, just think about to have that in Beijing right now when we’re never sure they’re not answering the phone, is the Ministry of Defense talking to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. To have that routinized so everybody gets the same notification at the same time, I think would be a valuable step forward.

Is the US does the US government still have experts in this area?

Yeah, a lot of them are sitting in this room. I know. But some of them have left. Some of them have. Some of them have. But I actually and here’s another thing people have and and my students are the same. They they ask about their future in Washington and whether there will be a future. And I hear this all the time from young people here in Washington. But they combine that question with a certain quiet confidence that yes, they can make a career here and they can make a career here working on nuclear policy. So I encourage it. You can imagine.

Hi. Uh I’m John Wolstall. I’m a policy fellow with PAC Sapiens and I’m part of the Rose mentor tree. Mente tree. Um I’m going to ask you to go to a kind of a darker place which is in the minds of some of our former Russian partners and um uh interlocators. Um we’ve seen from people under Putin, Medviev, Kerenko, people we could work with very effectively and we’ve seen them go to a very extreme place in terms of their rhetoric and behavior. Are they true believers of one or the other or are they just incredibly flexible is my is sort of the basis of my question because at some point Putin will leave the scene, right? And who knows who will replace him. But it raises a question about whether there truly is Putinism that has influenced the entire management government system or whether if you can create the right dynamics you can get additional flexibility from some of the people that do understand the history and do have access to the levers of power. So either you know turn off the lights or give us a little bit of hope is I guess what I’m asking. Yeah. I mean, Medv tweeted this week that he was that he was threatening you all Western embassies in Kev. Yeah, exactly. Pretty stark. Exactly. Um I’m sorry, John. I don’t know. But let me let me just say say a few things here. I think as there are um echoes of the cooperation that exists among uh experienced hands here in Washington and by the way in our national laboratory system as well. They were so important our national labs to implementing a lot of the nuclear threat reduction work uh as well as the defense threat reduction agency as well. So we had uh this whole cadre many of whom have retired but I think there are echoes. there are still some people in place in these organizations and there is a history there that is part of the DNA of the organizations. So I do feel like the that probably also exists in Russia. From time to time I see some echoes, tiny echoes in track two conversations that they have uh positive memories of the way we work together. Again on the on the space side is a completely different story. They’re to my mind 100% we have the means and and opportunity to to work together going forward. As to the top uh leadership today, I don’t know. My private theory is uh best for us would be uh next Russian regime. Uh and I’m not commenting at all on Mr. Putin’s departure. I don’t know when he’s going to leave the scene, but I’m just saying in terms of his successors, I think best for us would be a technocratic regime. You look at people like uh the longtime head of the central bank, Alvier Nabulina, who has managed to keep that economy afloat through all this dreadful crisis that her boss has imposed on the country. And so they’re really talented technocrats out there. And for us, if they are, you know, stepping forward or brought forward to political uh activity going forward, that would probably be the best for us if we want to restore cooperation. Um, as far as the, you know, people we see who are in the, you know, current running perhaps and and like many autocrats, Putin’s very careful not to signal any favored successor, and he’s probably wise to do so. But but there are a lot of people who come from the same stripe as he and so we may we may end up having to deal with more former KGB people more as we say. Uh so that’s not probably the best outcome for us but in the end of the day they will be desperate I think if there is peace in Ukraine they will be desperate to get back into the international economic uh community into the economic activity. And so perhaps they’ll be willing to make some concessions in that regard. I don’t know though is my bottom line.

Right over here. Thank you both so much. Uh Kathleen Brett, Secure World Foundation. So you touched on this a little bit, but I was hoping you could expand. So um as a Gen Z person, whenever we’re in history class, they always say the wall fell. Okay, take state testing. You know, we don’t get to talk about the ‘9s, um early 2000s. So I was wondering, you know, for the future generation of policy makers, what is the biggest lesson, you know, in this theme we’re talking about from that immediate postcold war period um that Gen Z beyond should keep in mind. Thank you. It it’s a comment. It’s a really good question and thank you for that. It’s my comment is also a comment on our own democracy and that is don’t take democracy and democratic practice uh for um uh as a given uh because we I think going in at least and maybe I’m reflecting on my own naive but going in I just had an assumption of course they were going to embrace a democratic system and democratic practice. We were the ones who won the cold war. Don’t they see? Obviously, it works so much better than the system that they were in. But I think watching what has happened since, including watching some of the crises that have been imposed on our own democracy in the last couple of years, I can just say we cannot take democratic practice, democratic governance uh for granted. We have to really work hard uh both to make sure that practically it’s implementable and that was part of the problem working in Russia. they they had a lot of crises to address in the period and I remember so vividly in that first year of the Clinton administration 1993 and um Yeltson himself firing on the on the Russian parliament during that period and causing some death because he was facing off with with the so-called red brown alliance the communists and and the the extreme nationalists banding together and he was trying to figure out how to get through that and when he couldn’t get through it he fired on him so I that should have been an early signal of the difficulty of establishing democratic practice in the Russian uh Federation, but we hope was springing eternal in that era and I think frankly that was that was our biggest uh that’s certainly my biggest lesson learned from the era and that was our biggest error. I think our economic advice also well yes I do talk about that in the book. I I’m luckily I I was on the I was on the side of the heavy metal benders. So I was doing, you know, the nuke stuff and the space stuff and I didn’t have to deal with trying to figure out how to bring the former Soviet economy into a modern more capitalist market system. But yeah, that was also extremely I was a student in 1992 and they like USAD needed some people to go out to the airplanes because the US was sending aid to Russia. All right. We went out there and there’s like boxes and boxes of Skittles and Starburst. Literally, it was like old MREs and things. I’m like, “This is what is this is this the best we can do?” So, I have a very different perspective on what we were doing back then. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. No, that’s that’s a very fair fair comment. And uh yes, I I also and there were lots of Americans there making a lot of money and and a lot of Russians who were not. And there the well it was it was definitely the wild west and many of you were working the threat reduction programs will remember you know vice president Gore had to write a letter to prime minister chernamiran because we were going during that October 1993 period I was going with with Dan Golden the head of NASA and Leon FTH who was the vice president’s national security adviser to Moscow in the midst of this crisis but the vice president wrote a letter to chair Miran and said you have got to let our aircraft take off. They are representing me, the vice president, and also President Clinton, and they are not going to hand the people on the ground a suitcase full of cash before they’re allowed to take off. Period. Because that was the the kind of normality of the day. You flew into some, you know, air base or airport and the ground staff would say, “Okay, you want your jet fuel? Hand us a satchel of cash.” And of course, a lot of it was extracting. They needed money too, but it was their only way of paying also for jet fuel. It was a very chaotic time.

All right. Any more questions in the room? Yeah, we’ll take both of them. So, yeah. Hi, thank you so much for sharing. My name is Louisa. I am an undergraduate student at University of Southern California and a junior fellow with the Pacific Council. So my question is given that um the US has been intervening in the Russian Ukraine war for the past few years and their potential concerns with the bricks um having future actions. What do you think the Russian war signals about the case of sovereignty for like future upcoming um infringement and sovereignty in the future and the US ability to maintain democracy if there are breaks threats in the future and how is the US able to step in if we’re not necessarily um demonstrating effectiveness in this current moment and how is that um showing counter effectiveness towards the bricks in let’s say the next decade to come. Yes. Um obviously there are pieces moving around on the chessboard now and again the United States having been first among equals for all those years practically 30 years from the end of the cold war. Now the United States is the United States is stepping back from that. So the premise of your question seems to be you know will the United States resume that role? Will it continue to try to um exercise uh both its political power as well as its military power going forward? And I have a big question about that. So I guess uh maybe a question back to you to think about uh can’t get into discourse about it right here is the bricks are made up of um a wide range of players some of whom are the lead geopolitical actors of the world going forward. China particularly in India I’m thinking of going forward um and so how are they going to be playing how are they going to um set themselves on the course of providing for the kind of predictability the United States I keep repeating that word but I I think it’s one to reflect on right now but the kind of predictability the United States provided by keeping sea lines of communication open all these years I’m not sure the Chinese Navy is going to be ready to be keeping sea lines of communication open beyond perhaps the Indo Pacific. And so what does that mean for the rest of the world? Do the EU countries, NATO countries take charge of the North Atlantic? I don’t know. So um I think that’s a main question for leaders around the world. Now if the United States is not going to play this role of providing for the common good, for the common good of the entire global community, who’s going to do it? So that’s the big question in in my mind at the moment.

All right, we’re about to wrap up, but I I did promise one more question here. And before he takes the mic, um just a reminder that Rose will be uh signing books out in the lobby after the event. So, go ahead. Hi, uh I’m Grant, some undergrad at George Washington University. Um thank you for your talk. It was really insightful. I was wondering, you were talking a lot about, you know, potential cooperation, nuclear cooperation with Russia right now, but given the recent events in Ukraine, such as, you know, Russia’s use of the Ardeshnik missile, which can be tipped with nuclear weapons, Lavrov uh telling Rubio to get all the people out of Kiev, which does have a nuclear component, I feel like, as well as Russian increase or an increase in Russian activity in Bellarus. How do how are these obstacles how do you think these obstacles obstacles are going to factor in in future USRussian nuclear um cooperation? Thank you. Yes. Well, I think those so-called exotic uh Russian missile systems of which the archnik is one uh will be a focus of it will be an objective of future US negotiations with the Russians to try to get some constraints and controls on them. So, we will see uh if we can get back to the negotiating table. But in the meantime, I think it’s also important to think about what moment we are at in this war. And I take seriously the commentary that I’m hearing out of Kiev and also out of some of the um the central and eastern Europeans and the Baltic states that they are beginning to detect a kind of moment of desperation in the way the the Russians are acting. And I think it was very important yesterday that when Lavough and the others on the Russian side went out with these threats against the embassies, ambassador after ambassador was called in uh Russian ambassadors around capitals around the world to say don’t mess with us. That was a really important message because part of what’s going on is Russian bullying behavior. and for all of these uh countries to be calling in the Russian ambassador and saying don’t mess with us. That was a necessary and very important message back to Moscow. I don’t know. They’re probably going to continue to pound uh Kev and other major uh cities and targets in in Ukraine. But as one of the Ukrainian commentators I read yesterday said, it wasn’t an official commentator. It was somebody on the street. They said, “Ah, we’re used to it at this point and we we will continue to stand our ground.” So, that was a great message coming out of Kiev. Well, thank you so much for your time and uh good luck with the book. Thank you, Michelle. I really APPRECIATE