These are some reflections provoked by the University Consortium 2nd Annual Conference in Washington on 5/6 October 2017. The conference embraced academics, policy experts and “institutniks”, and some former politicians and diplomats from the USA, Russia and Europe, with guest appearances by Dr. Henry Kissinger and Senator Sam Nunn.
It is common ground that we are living through a very dangerous period, with “world order” under threat or illusory; that relations between Russia and the USA, and between Russia and leading European members of NATO, have reached a level of hostility not seen for 35 years or more; and that, with new risks being added to old in an increasingly fragmented world, security and stability are vastly harder to achieve than during the bipolar age of the Cold War.
A three-cornered discussion of the kind we had in Washington illuminates, depressingly, how short-term politics are suffocating vital longer-term needs. To return to my starting point, some day the task of regenerating trust will need to begin.
The full article can be access via the Russian International Affairs Council website here: http://russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics-and-comments/analytics/russia-the-usa-europe-is-instability-immutable/
