This event is co-hosted by Russia Matters and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.

In spring 2016, the Naval War College convened a daylong faculty meeting to discuss and debate the nature of the Russian strategic challenge. NWC faculty members may be uniquely positioned to make such an assessment since they are working at the junction of military policy and academic research. Most of the approximately 20 faculty involved either conduct research in or about Russia or have direct experience with Russia’s armed forces. The results are reported out both as a survey of the faculty experts and as a series of debates on key questions. Results of the surveys often cut against the grain of conventional wisdom: For example, NWC faculty experts overwhelmingly rejected the conclusion that contemporary Russia represents “a gravely serious threat” to U.S. national security. Nevertheless, the debates revealed major differences of opinion regarding Russia’s strategic intentions, its military power and the economic outlook. NWC faculty debated Russia’s intervention in Syria and the significance of Moscow’s ties to Beijing, as well as the security of the Baltics states. The experts were divided over the future of NATO, security in the Black Sea region and possible U.S. Navy responses to Russia’s modernization of its submarine-based nuclear forces. In a season when Russia has become one of the most salient foreign-policy issues on the table, this report may help to bring some clarity and objectivity regarding the multifaceted Russian strategic challenge.

Presenters:

Dr.  Nikolas K. Gvosdev is professor of national security studies and the Captain Jerome E. Levy Chair of economic geography and national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College. He is also a contributing editor at the National Interest and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the co-author of Russian Foreign Policy: Vectors, Sectors and Interests (2013) and a co-author of U.S. Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy: The Evolution of an Incidental Power (2015).

Dr. David R. Stone, professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College, received his PhD in history from Yale University. Until 2015, he was Pickett Professor of Military History at Kansas State University, where he also taught in the Security Studies program. He is the author of Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926-1933 (winner of the Shulman Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and the Best First Book Prize of the Historical Society), A Military History of Russia: From Ivan the Terrible to the War in Chechnya and The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917. He is also the editor of The Soviet Union at War, 1941-1945 and the author of several dozen articles and book chapters on Russian/Soviet military history and foreign policy.

Dr. Lyle J. Goldstein is associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute, where he was founding director, 2006-2011, receiving the Superior Civilian Service Medal in 2012. He has been consulting on the creation of NWC’s Russia Maritime Studies Institute. Goldstein speaks Chinese and Russian. In 2014, he chaired NWC’s Ukraine Crisis Group. In 2015-16, he led the Russia Futures Project, bringing together faculty Russia experts to exchange policy assessments. His current research is on the future of Russia-China relations and the strategic implications for U.S. national security. His China research has focused on Chinese maritime development and undersea warfare. He has also written extensively on strategic issues in U.S.-China relations, including the book Meeting China Halfway (Georgetown University Press, 2015).

Moderated by:

Brigadier General Kevin Ryan (U.S. Army, retired), Director, Defense and Intelligence Projects, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.