Categories
Event Summary: Russia Resurrected
May 17, 2021On Friday, May 14, 2021, the SETA Foundation at Washington, DC hosted a virtual panel to discuss ‘Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order.’ The discussion featured Kathryn Stoner, deputy director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and was moderated by Kadir Ustun, Executive Director at SETA DC.
On Friday, May 14, 2021, the SETA Foundation at Washington, DC hosted a virtual panel to discuss ‘Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order.’ The discussion featured Kathryn Stoner, deputy director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and was moderated by Kadir Ustun, Executive Director at SETA DC.
Stoner explained that the book goes through the ways in which Russia could be a global power. It addresses how this could happen only 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book is a reaction to the different perceptions of Russia in the international system. Within the US, there are different understandings of Russia as a global power. Some view it as a peer power, others view it as a regional power threatening neighbors out of weakness, and some consider Russia an existential threat to US security. Stoner then listed a number of developments that illustrate how Russia has returned to the global stage: the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the 2015 mobilization into Syria, the 2016 election interference in the US, the 2017 Le Pen financing, the 2018 and 2019 promotion of populism in Eastern Europe and beyond, and the 2020 SolarWinds software hack. As a result, Western relations with Russia are at an all-time low. In terms of whether Russia is punching above its weight, she insisted that many view power too narrowly and overlook Russia’s capabilities. People must think beyond traditional measures of power and realize that it is multidimensional, relative, and contextual. A country’s power tools can be good enough to be very disruptive depending on the context. Further, the characterization of Russia as weak is outdated. Russia has recovered and maintained some prior capacities more tha
Search on setadc.org
