Join Columbia's Harriman Institute and New York University’s Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia for a debate between Stephen F. Cohen and Michael McFaul. Register here.

This event is part of the Columbia-NYU New York Russia Public Policy Series. Support for this event is provided by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

U.S.-Russia relations are at their worst since the Soviet era. The two countries remain at odds over policy towards Syria, Ukraine and questions of global leadership. Rather than engage in a “reset” of U.S.-Russia relations during the Trump administration, relations have deteriorated as the U.S. has tightened its sanctions regimes and the current investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential elections has further inflamed tensions. News cycles in both countries are dominated by negative stories and images of the other side.

How did relations between the Untied States and Russia deteriorate to this point and who is to blame? Is the current “New Cold War” or “Hot Peace” the result of an aggressive and resurgent Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin, that has made confrontation with the West a central component of its foreign policy and attempts to garner domestic popular support? Or should the United States and its allies be blamed for not treating Russia as an important power in the post-Cold War era and instead continuing to push Westernizing organizations (such as NATO) and influences (Liberal democratic values) into Moscow's orbit? Are the two sides misunderstanding and misrepresenting one another or do they simply have incompatible national interests that can never be reconciled? And what should be done to ease tensions and find a new basis for normalizing relations? 

Copies of Professor McFaul’s latest book "From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) will be available on-site for purchase. 

Speakers:

Michael McFaul, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia

Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics at New York University and Princeton University