What does the war in Ukraine mean for Russian foreign policy under President Vladimir Putin and how is it being leveraged to drive a wedge between “the West and the Rest”? How did the Cold War-era great power competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union influence Putin’s worldview and inform his foreign policy ambitions?
Dr. Angela Stent traces the underpinnings of contemporary Russian foreign policy under Putin to their origins in the Cold War and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union and dissects how Putin views Russia through the lens of its history of competition and confrontation with United States. Stent contends that the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union was never truly accepted as a result of its own weaknesses by some of those in its administration, and that ideations of its former glory fuel a desire to restore its great power status, pursued by means of war and frozen conflicts.
Dr. Angela Stent is a distinguished expert on Russian foreign policy and has published several award-winning books on the subject, including her latest book, Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest, for which she won the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy’s prize for the best book on U.S.-Russian Relations. Dr. Stent is senior adviser to the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and professor emerita of government and foreign service at Georgetown University. She is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-chairs its Hewett Forum on Post-Soviet Affairs. From 2004-2006 she served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. From 1999 to 2001 she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State.
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