Managing editor:
Andrzej Dąbrowski

Cover graphics:
Dominika Majewska

Proof reader:
Brien Barnett

Technical editor:
Dorota Dołęgowska

Copyright © 2019 by The Polish Institute of International Affairs
Copyright © 2019 by Transatlantic Leadership Network

All rights reserved.
For information pism@pism.pl

Warsaw: The Polish Institute of International Affairs
Washington, D.C.: Transatlantic Leadership Network

Distributed by Brookings Institution Press

ISBN 978-83-66091-40-5

The Polish Institute of International Affairs
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Konwersja: eLitera s.c.

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Praise for Europe Whole and Free: Vision and Reality

“The goal of a Europe whole, free and at peace remains as vital today as it did in 1989. This important book brings together policymakers and experts from both sides of the Atlantic for a timely discussion of how to achieve that goal for the 21st century.”

– Madeleine K. Albright
served as U.S. Secretary of State
between 1997–2001

“Europe is not yet Whole and Free as we dreamt it would be in the heady days of 1989. But Europe is wholer and freer than it has ever been in its history. Russia and Belarus are the only two countries whose people are denied the right to choose their own government. One day they will have that right which the rest of Europe now enjoys. This volume of essays is essential reading for those who wish to understand the last 30 years; three decades of European history which, whatever the setbacks and disappointments, have transformed our continent and the lives of those who are its citizens.”

– Sir Malcolm Rifkind
served as Foreign Minister and Minister of Defence
in the United Kingdom Government between 1992–1997

„A great book about Europe‘s finest years, a convincing but unfinished strategic architecture.“

– Volker Rühe
served as Federal Minister of Defence
in German Government between 1992–1998

Preface

In his May 1989 speech in Mainz, Germany, U.S. President George H.W. Bush announced that Europe and the world faced a great opportunity. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, there was a chance to end political and ideological rivalry, remove the Iron Curtain, unify Germany, and restore freedom to the peoples of Central Europe:

In Poland, at the end of World War II, the Soviet Army prevented the free elections promised by Stalin at Yalta. And today Poles are taking the first steps toward real elections, so long promised, so long deferred. (...) As President, I will continue to do all I can to help open the closed societies of the East. We seek self-determination for all of Germany and all of Eastern Europe. And we will not relax, and we must not waver. Again, the world has waited long enough.

Indeed, Europe had been waiting for this moment since the end of World War II. 1945 brought freedom and peace to the peoples of Western Europe. However, the eastern part of the continent was choked with the iciness of the Cold War, cut off from the free part of Europe by an Iron Curtain, and incorporated into the Soviet sphere of influence. As the Hungarian poet Sándor Márai wrote about Central Europe’s experience: Soviet soldiers freed our lands, but they could not give us freedom because they themselves did not have it.

Europe had been divided because of divisions about Germany; the Iron Curtain was built as an outcome of the German problem. Therefore, the future of Europe, the dreams of its unification, and the freedom of nations left in the Soviet sphere of influence after Yalta were all associated with the need to overcome the division of Germany.

On the 40th anniversary of the Yalta conference, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote:

Yalta is unfinished business (...) Thoughtful Europeans realize that the future of Europe is intertwined with the future of Germany and of Poland. Without spanning, in some non-threatening fashion, the division of Germany, there will not be a genuine Europe, but continuing Russian domination of Poland makes Russian control over East Germany geopolitically possible. Thus the relationship between Russia on the one hand and Germany and Poland on the other must be peacefully transformed if a larger Europe is ever to emerge.[1]

In May 1989, the president of the United States invited all political forces in Europe, including former rivals from across the Iron Curtain, to build a new community: Europe whole and free ... whose creation was to guarantee peace and optimal conditions for development.

Thirty years after presenting this vision, it is worth considering the significance of Bush’s vision for the history of transatlantic relations, for Europe and for the whole world. Only from the perspective of time can we assess how prophetic it was, what it really changed and to what extent it could be realised.

The reality is that 30 years on, despite tremendous progress, Europe as a continent is not entirely whole, free, or at peace. Some parts of the continent are more secure than at any time in the previous century. Others face conflict or are war zones. European borders have once again been changed by force. Vast parts of the continent are no longer under the thumb of domestic autocrats or foreign overseers, but Europe is not fully free. Europe is no longer divided as it had been, but new divisions have emerged, which means the continent is not entirely whole.

Is the vision of a united Europe still attractive? For whom? What else should be done to bring it closer to fruition? What does it depend on today? To address these questions, we turned to a group of several dozen outstanding American and European experts dealing with European issues, transatlantic relations, strategic problems and security. Some are practitioners, people who at various stages and in different capacities participated in attempts to implement the vision of Europe whole and free. Others constantly deal with issues that interest us and often face challenges associated with implementing Bush’s vision. Some authors are rising stars, experts who may in the future be responsible for the shape of the Old Continent, may influence the policy direction of their own countries and may participate in global debates on the nature and condition of peace and the means of its defence.

The authors we invited represent very different political perspectives and viewpoints. Everyone, however, is without exception bound by the conviction that overcoming divisions in Europe is a path toward the security of the continent and one worth seeking in the name of peace.

We thank our authors for their contributions and their insights. The views and opinions they express are their own and do not reflect or represent those of any institution or government.

To assist the reader, our authors’ answers have been grouped into three thematic sections: Roots, Institutions, and the Future. Citations are found in the endnotes, along with an index and short biographies of the authors. We also include as a key reference George H.W. Bush’s original Mainz speech.

This project was initiated and completed with the support of The Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) and the Transatlantic Leadership Network. Special thanks go to Andrzej Dąbrowski of PISM, who put a tremendous amount of work into coordinating this project. And a thank you to Dorota Dołęgowska, who heads the PISM publishing house, for watching over the publishing process.

We hope you enjoy the book.

Sławomir Dębski, Daniel S. Hamilton

CHAPTER ONE

ROOTS

SŁAWOMIR DĘBSKI

Peace without Victory

When Stalin broke the Yalta Accords and “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic” an Iron Curtain fell across Europe, the United States assumed responsibility for the fate of a free and democratic Europe. In March 1947, President Harry Truman proclaimed in Congress:

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.[1]

European security and prosperity demanded American engagement to create a community capable of collective defence, to raise the Old Continent from economic ruin, and to guarantee conditions for development. This conviction led to the Marshall Plan, the institutionalisation of mutual transatlantic defence, the creation of the North Atlantic Alliance, and initiated a process of European integration. Soon, NATO and the European community became institutional emanations of cooperation among the most developed nations of the world.

Truman borrowed the understanding of “free people” from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who, before a joint session of Congress on 26 December 1942 rhetorically asked: “What kind of people do they think we are?” Here, “they” referred to Hitler and Mussolini. By replying to his question, Churchill defined the identity of the Grand Coalition: “we” meant the free nations striving for the liberation of Europe from the bondage of German Nazism and Italian fascism.

Forty years later, President Ronald Reagan spoke before a sitting of both houses of parliament in London and intoned Churchill’s question to define “we” in the context of the Cold War. For him, it meant a community united over the goal of liberating Europe from communism: “Free people, worthy of freedom and determined to not only remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.” Here, Reagan proclaimed the crusade for freedom–a political strategy going beyond containment of the imperial aspirations of the Soviet Union. It was no longer just about publicly expressing solidarity with the nations to the east of the Iron Curtain (John F. Kennedy, Ich bin ein Berliner speech, 26 June 1963). Reagan mobilised European allies and increased political pressure on the civilisation of enslavement. On the one hand, the U.S. strove to weaken communist regimes and undermine their legitimacy. On the other, they offered to cooperate with the Soviet Union for global security and Europe.

The new period of technological rivalry initiated by Reagan, along with increased political pressure and economic sanctions that cut the USSR off from advanced Western technology, led to a situation in which Soviet communism was able neither to keep pace with the U.S. in technological development nor to offer its own society an alternative to the Western way of life. It was thanks to these politics that the U.S. succeeded in reaching a series of disarmament agreements with the Soviet Union, such as the limitation of strategic weapons (START 1) or the liquidation of intermediate-range rocket arsenals (INF); something that contributed to withdrawing them from Europe also.

Mikhail Gorbachev–as it turned out, the last leader of the Soviet Union–attempted to salvage the authority of the Communist Party and maintain its legitimacy to govern. However, the glasnost and perestroika policies he initiated led to the democratisation of social relations, first in the Soviet Union and, subsequently, with the satellite states. In this way, the communist parties in Central Europe gradually lost an important element that secured their power–the threat of Soviet intervention.

Standing before Reagan’s successor in the White House was the task of setting a new aim around which a pan-European community and their interests could be shaped. And here again, the U.S., just as 40 years earlier, assumed the responsibility for fashioning a new peaceful order and defining the political “we.”

In April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson presented to Congress his vision of order intended for Europe after World War I:

Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace or only a new balance of power? ... Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be not only a balance, but a community of power, not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace ... It must be peace without victory ... [as] only peace between equals can last; only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.[2]

In proposing an end to the Cold War, George H.W. Bush alluded to this American tradition of contemplating the European order and, in a certain sense, put forward his own vision of “peace without victory.” During his Europe Whole and Free speech, he avoided antagonising the now former Soviet adversaries by inviting them to join in commonly defining the understanding of “we” by creating a community joined in “the vision, concept of free people in North America and Europe working to protect their values.” The road to achieving this goal was through cooperation over the unification of Germany (which led to the 2+4 conference in 1990 and the ultimate reunification of the German Democratic Republic with the Federal Republic of Germany), accepting free, democratic elections as a pan-European systemic standard, and in cooperation in technological advancement and significant restrictions on military potential.

In response to this American vision, Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, announced an end to the Brezhnev Doctrine, which limited the sovereignty of Central European states, and invoked the image of “a common European home.” In his speech before the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, he accepted the American offer of “peace without victory.” He ruled out the eruption of armed conflict on the continent and “the very possibility of the use or threat of force, above all military force, by an alliance against another alliance, inside alliances, or wherever it may be.”[3] This vision provided the impetus for harmonising a continent-wide developmental model and, after several years, led to the gradual enlargement of NATO and the European Union. The combined nullification of the Brezhnev Doctrine and denunciation of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact by the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies in December 1989 were important Soviet contributions toward the newly formed European order. A new spectre was haunting Europe–the spectre of the collapse of communism, of peace without victory, without vanquished or victors but with a common triumph over the Cold War division of the continent.

Unintended Consequences of Systemic Transformations

One element of America’s policy toward dismantling the Yalta division of Europe was creating the conditions that would allow communist elites in Central Europe to peacefully relinquish and hand over power to democratic movements. Here too the notion of peace without victory was applied. The U.S. supported the democratic transformations in Central Europe and the new democratic authorities there supported American policies of overcoming the Cold War division of Europe and basing continental security on mutual cooperation. One example is Poland, whose neighbours all changed after the Cold War. To the west emerged a reunited Germany. To the south, the Czech and Slovak Republics replaced Czechoslovakia. To the east, instead of one neighbour–the Soviet Union–Poland shared its borders with four new states: Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. With all its new neighbours Poland signed treaties of friendship and cooperation and became the epicentre of political stability in the new post-Yalta Europe. Through this, Poland also became an important ally to Washington in realizing the vision of Europe whole and free.

New social, political, and economic elites were shaped under American patronage in Central Europe. In essence, these were a synthesis of former communist elites and dissidents. In many instances, the synthesis demanded America’s protection for former communist authorities or members of the communist security apparatus. This was a rather standard element of American politics toward systemic transformations, but for the idea of creating a united, free and democratic Europe, it had a few important negative, unintended consequences.

First, American protection of former communist elites was, in essence, a form of external intervention in the democratisation process. Democracy is a self-regulating system of government. Every form of external interference that favours a certain political side–for example, by guaranteeing political inviolability–always threatens the possibility of the oligarchisation of social relations, limiting democratic controls and, in the long term, social tensions. The repercussion of this sort of American intervention in all Central European states severely delayed the processes of de-communisation and lustration. Without any doubt, the delays negatively impacted the quality of democratic systems in Central Europe.

Second, the American umbrella over the systemic transformations in Central Europe was incorrectly interpreted in Russia as a geopolitical action intended to expand America’s sphere of influence. The misinterpretation stemmed from the old tendency to view the world in geopolitical terms. In turn, this old viewpoint often ignored the actual political aspirations of Central European societies toward integration in transatlantic and European structures. With the exception of Slovakia after 1989, no political power came to office in the other Central European states advocating an alternative to NATO and EU membership. Social aspirations were a major regional political power harmonising with the vision of Europe whole and free, which nevertheless broke with the paradigm of geopolitical rivalry.

During the Cold War, the free world proved the superiority of its development model. Russians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, and the other nations of Central and Eastern Europe who emerged from communism with aspirations of sovereignty did not feel that they had lost. Rather they rejected their developmental aberrations–communism and the Soviet command economy–and regarded this as their own success. In 1990, 90% of Russians correlated “normalcy” with accepting the Western lifestyle and 32% believed that state reformers should imitate the U.S. (32% said the same about imitating Japan). Only 17% named Germany as an example to follow, 11% cited Sweden, and 4% favoured the Chinese example.

The negative experiences associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s systemic transformation under President Boris Yeltsin contributed to a change in social attitudes. Vladimir Putin exploited this situation by transforming the weak, corrupt Russian democracy he inherited into an authoritarian system. In 2005, Putin announced that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Under the influence of this and similar assessments, over half of Russians began negatively evaluating the fall of the USSR and conveying a positive attitude toward totalitarian, Soviet symbols.

Gleb Pavlovsky, one of the ideologues responsible for transforming the Russian political system into an authoritarian one, once proposed the thesis that for Russia, the Cold War ended differently than for the Western world. According to him, Francis Fukuyama’s famous essay best conveyed the mood of the post-1989 era by claiming that after the end of the Cold War came “the end of history.” Liberal democracy was victorious over the communist ideology but, at the same time, the West lost its last ideological opponent. But the Russians did not consider themselves to be defeated. They saw the bankruptcy of communism as the beginning of a new era of nihilism in which no norms applied.[4]

Against this backdrop, social acceptance of the facade of democracy in Russia was born. New Russian elites convinced the society of how further democratisation threatened disintegration and how this process could only be stopped by imperialistic methods, which began re-emerging in foreign and domestic politics. At the same time, it became impossible to collectively create a new pan-European “we” with a Russia headed toward authoritarianism.

Here, it is worthwhile to remember that even during the Gorbachev period, the vision of Europe whole and free did not apply to the territory of the Soviet Union, for no one envisioned the possibility of its disintegration. Gorbachev’s attempts to forcefully contain the Soviet republics’ independence aspirations, for example in Vilnius and Tbilisi, ended in fiasco and contributed to the collapse and later decision to dissolve the Soviet Union.

Geopolitics Strikes Back

The vision of Europe “whole and free” was conditional. Achievement of the idea was based on the assumption that all peoples of the new community, including Russia, would fundamentally obey the norms of international law and political obligations stemming from membership in the UN or OSCE, including the 1990 Paris Charter. This meant, first and foremost, renouncing one-sided use or the threat of force in international relations, respecting the sovereign equality of states, the inviolability of state borders, and refraining from intervening in states’ internal affairs.

Only for a short period of time were Moscow’s elites forced to regard these principles as also applying to the former Soviet republics and their independence aspirations. The reason for this was quite prosaic. In order to speak of an end to the Cold War through the idea of peace without victory, Russia could not feel defeated. A defeat would mean the loss of global power status as well as its legal-international attributes, especially permanent-member status in the UN Security Council. From a formal perspective, the Russian state that emerged after the dissolution of the USSR was a new entity. Whether it would be recognised internationally as the legal successor of the Soviet Union was left to the goodwill of the members of the international community. In order to gain a positive decision, Russia had to accept the existing territorial order.

If in 1991, for example, Russia had announced territorial claims against Ukraine or any of its other neighbours, it would not have been recognized as the USSR’s legal successor and would have lost its place on the UN Security Council. For Russia to assume the rights associated with the USSR in the UN, all remaining members of the UN would have to consent, including Ukraine. All that would be needed was one dissenting vote to prevent Russia from having veto power in the Security Council. It is difficult to imagine Kyiv accepting Russia’s proposal while at the same time being under Russian pressure over territorial claims.

When Russia was recognised as the successor to the USSR, the imperialist tradition of viewing relations with former Soviet republics as internal Russian affairs was revived in Moscow. Consequently, the Western-supported emancipationist aspirations of new states within the post-Soviet space were seen in Russia as a violation of the principle of cooperation based on the Europe whole and free vision. Russia’s political about-face began in September 1993. During his visit to Poland in August of that year, Russian President Boris Yeltsin declared his recognition of Poland’s aspiration for NATO membership as understandable: “in perspective, the decision of sovereign Poland aiming for European integration is not contradictory with the interests of other states, including Russia.”[5]

Three weeks later, Yeltsin issued a letter to the leaders of the United States, France, the UK, and Germany in which he rescinded his Poland position. “In general, we prefer a situation where the relations between our country and NATO are by several degrees warmer than those between the Alliance and Eastern Europe.”[6] Russia proposed also that NATO and Russia jointly extend security guarantees to the countries of the region, instead of them joining NATO. This was a critical moment. Despite Western efforts, Russia rejected the principle of sovereign state equality. At the same time, it also rejected cooperation for European political democratisation in the spirit of the “peace without victory” idea offered in the Europe whole and free vision. Instead Russia, for the first time, demanded a return to the old geopolitical, imperial schemes, reintroducing the Concert of Europe and recognising the inequality of European states.

This is how Krzysztof Skubiszewski, former Polish foreign minister and a leading architect of the post-Cold War European order, read Russia’s intentions. On 4 October 1993, he commented on Russia’s new postulates as such:

Poland’s pursuit to join NATO is part of our policy ... It is a policy of linking with Western defence and security organisations, making them to a larger extent European through Poland’s participation, instead of–as thus far–maintaining only their Western character. The division of Europe will be different. This policy corresponds to the most vital interests of Poland, to maintaining its hard-won independence – we will not give up this policy. ... Just as we will be opposed to isolating Russia, we equally reject the placement of Poland in a buffer or grey zone between West and East. The idea of Russian guarantees leads to such a zone, one of imminent dependence. There is no mention of them in the Wałęsa-Yeltsin declaration. We already had bad experiences with such guarantees – in the 18th century before the partitions, and in the 20th century in Tehran and Yalta. Our policy is an independence policy within the framework of Euro-Atlantic security.[7]

From then on, Russia has made conscientious attempts to abate the integration processes of European states by demanding differentiated membership status for new members. It demanded that NATO refrain from deploying more serious forces in new member states. It attempted to gain “compensation” from the EU in exchange for eastern expansion. It opposed the pro-European aspiration of elites in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Finally, in order to halt the aspirations of former Soviet republics from gaining the full-fledged community status of a member building Europe whole and free, Russia used military strength against Moldova in 1992, Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014. By these actions, Russia broke fundamental European peace norms agreed upon in the Helsinki Final Act of the CSCE in 1975, the 1990 Paris Charter for the New Europe, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, and a whole series of bilateral understandings.

After the aggression against Ukraine in 2014, Putin openly declared that Russia finds itself in a war with the West. During his remarks at a 2014 conference in Valdai, he blamed the West for forcing upon Russians their values “instead of establishing a new balance of power, essential for maintaining order and stability, they took steps that threw the system into sharp and deep imbalance.”[8]

What Kind of People Do We Think We Are?

Politics based on the vision of Europe whole and free has proved to be one of history’s most effective instruments for spreading freedom and prosperity. Today, the states of Central Europe constitute the fastest-developing part of the continent. As long as Russia will continue to use its strength to contain democracy from expanding and curb freedom on the entire continent, however, European security and prosperity will remain in jeopardy. This is especially true today as Europe finds itself in a more difficult situation than in 1919 or 1989.

American leadership in the free world is not only weaker, it must also compete with autocratic developmental models in Europe–Russia–as well as in Asia. China, the largest autocratic power in the world, is competing with the democratic world not only economically but also ideologically. The West, which transgressed an ideological demobilisation after 1989, made a strategic error by accepting the Chinese developmental “one state, two systems” model as good enough to accept China into the WTO. Meanwhile, one of China’s systems is based on freedom, the other on unfreedom. A synthesis of both systems is not possible since authoritarianism, supported by the power of the state, will always dominate over freedom devoid of such support. In this way, China, by assuming to be a free market economy, gains an advantage over the free world. Moreover, they are exporting their developmental model abroad.

One of the most important lessons from the fall of communism was the empirical experience of millions that showed how democracy and the free market determine successful development and prosperity. By accepting the Chinese “one state, two systems” approach, the West seriously weakened the strength of its lesson. Today, the autocratic developmental model, supported by China and Russia, is becoming more and more popular not only among developing states but also among democratic elites in many countries. To successfully counter this trend, the West must once again reintegrate itself, redefine its political community and the term “we.” Paradoxically, this will be most easily achieved within Europe by utilising the aspirations of societies in Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans to actively take part in the Europe whole and free vision. By returning to the road of NATO and EU political enlargement, free nations can regain their identity.

NOTES

Notes to pages 9–11

[1] Z. Brzeziński, ”A Divided Europe: The Future of Yalta,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1984/1985.

Notes to pages 15–25

[1] H. Truman, Address before a joint session of Congress, 12 March 1947.

[2] W. Wilson, “Peace without Victory,” speech, 2 April 1917.

[3] Address given by Mikhail Gorbachev to the Council of Europe: Europe as a Common Home, Strasbourg, 6 July 1989.

[4] G. Pavlovsky, Sistiema RF. V voiinie 2014 goda. De Principatu Debili, 2014.

[5] Joint declaration of Poland and Russia, Warsaw, 25 August 1993.

[6] Letter from Russian President Boris Yeltsin to American President Bill Clinton, 15 September 1993.

[7] Poland’s Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski, public statement, 15 October 1993.

[8] V. Putin, speech: “The World Order: New Rules or a Game without Rules,” Valdai, 2014.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ian Bond is the Director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform since April 2013. Prior to that, he was a member of the British diplomatic service for 28 years.

His last appointment was as the Political Counsellor and joint Head of the foreign and security policy group in the British embassy, Washington (2007–2012), where he focused on U.S. foreign policy towards Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia, and Africa. He was British Ambassador to Latvia from 2005–2007. He was posted in Vienna as Deputy Head of the UK delegation to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from 2000 to 2004, working on human rights and democracy in the OSCE area, and on conflict prevention and resolution in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. His earlier career included postings in Moscow (1993–1996) and at NATO HQ (1987–1990), and working in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on issues related to the former Soviet Union, the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, and NATO and UK defence policy.

Like George H.W. Bush, he is an alumnus of Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts (U.S.).

Heinrich Brauss is the former Assistant Secretary General for Defence Policy and Planning on 4 October 2013, having joined the International Staff of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in September 2007 as Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Policy and Planning.

Prior to joining NATO, he served at the EU, first in the European Union Military Staff as Assistant Chief of Staff, Operations and Exercises Division, and then as the Director of the Civilian/Military Cell and the EU Operations Centre.

In 2001, he assumed command of an armoured brigade in Potsdam/Germany. He also deployed for operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina where he served as Chief of Staff in the headquarters of the stabilisation force (SFOR). Other appointments included Chief of Staff of a mechanised infantry brigade and Commander of an armoured artillery battalion.

He first gained international experience as a member of the Staff of the German Military Representative in the Military Committee of NATO and EU/WEU in Brussels, where his responsibilities covered NATO strategy, enlargement, and force planning. He also served as Branch Chief in the Planning and Advisory Staff to the former German Minister of Defence, Volker Rühe, in Bonn, Germany.

Heinrich Brauss retired on 31 July 2018, after 46 years of service in the German Armed Forces. He holds the rank of Lieutenant General (ret.).

James Jay Carafano is a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, an accomplished historian and teacher, as well as a prolific writer and researcher. He currently serves as The Heritage Foundation’s Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, assuming responsibility for Heritage’s entire defence and foreign policy team. He is also an E.W. Richardson Fellow and the Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies.

Carafano is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served 25 years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a Lt. Colonel. He served in Europe, Korea, and the United States. His assignments included head speechwriter for the Army Chief of Staff, the service’s highest-ranking officer. Before retiring, Carafano was executive editor of Joint Force Quarterly, the Defense Department’s premiere professional military journal.

From 2012 to 2014, he served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council convened by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He formerly was a senior fellow at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute. He also previously served on the congressionally-mandated Advisory Panel on Department of Defense Capabilities for Support of Civil Authorities, the National Academy’s Board on Army Science and Technology, and the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee.

His recent research has focused on developing the national security required to secure the long-term interests of the United States–protecting the public, providing for economic growth, and preserving civil liberties.

Michael Carpenter is Senior Director at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He also serves on the board of directors of the Jamestown Foundation and the advisory board of Lithuania’s National Defence Foundation. Dr. Carpenter served in the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense with responsibility for Russia, Eastern Europe, and Conventional Arms Control. He also served in the White House as a foreign policy advisor to Vice President Joe Biden as well as on the National Security Council as Director for Russia. Prior to his White House appointments, Dr. Carpenter was a career Foreign Service Officer with the State Department. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University. Carpenter received fellowships for his academic work from the MacArthur Foundation, IREX, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Fulbright Foundation. Dr. Carpenter regularly appears as a commentator on foreign affairs for BBC, MSNBC, CNN, Sky News, and Voice of America, among other media outlets.

Heather A. Conley is Senior Vice President for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic and Director of the Europe Program at CSIS. Prior to joining CSIS as a Senior Fellow and Director for Europe in 2009, Conley served four years as Executive Director of the Office of the Chairman of the Board at the American National Red Cross. From 2001 to 2005, she was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs with responsibilities for U.S. bilateral relations with the countries of Northern and Central Europe. From 1994 to 2001, she was a senior associate with an international consulting firm led by former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage.

Heather Conley began her career in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. She was selected to serve as Special Assistant to the Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union and she has received two State Department Meritorious Honor Awards. She is frequently featured as a foreign policy analyst and Europe expert on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, and PBS, among other prominent media outlets. She received her B.A. in International Studies from West Virginia Wesleyan College and her M.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Sławomir Dębski is the Director of PISM. He has a Ph.D. in History and is a foreign policy expert and has been an advisor to all of Poland’s governments since 2000, as well as a team leader, institution builder and interagency communication expert. He joined the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) in 2000 as a Russia foreign policy analyst, then served as the Eastern Europe research coordinator, followed by Head of the Research Office (2002–2007), Deputy Director, and then Director (2007–2010). In 2008, he was nominated to the Polish-Russian Group for Difficult Matters (2008–2016). In 2010, he became a special appointee of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage for the establishment of the Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding (CPRDiP), responsible for drafting an act of parliament and legislation procedures. In September 2011, he was appointed Director of CPRDiP. In February 2016 he was appointed Director od PISM for teh second time. In this capacity, he was the Head of the organisation team of the NATO Warsaw Summit Experts’ Forum 2017, combining different domestic and international stakeholders. He has been the Editor-in-Chief of Polski Przegląd Dyplomatyczny [Polish Diplomatic Review] (since 2016 and in 2007–2010) and Europe, the Russian language quarterly (2001–2010), and is the author of one of the most acclaimed monographs about the Soviet-German Alliance of 1939 to 1941, with two editions in Poland, and one in Russia (2018). He also has been the editor of a few volumes of diplomatic documents, dozens of foreign policy studies, and essays.

Stephen J. Flanagan is a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation in Washington. His research interests include U.S. defence strategy, alliance and partnership relations in Europe/Eurasia, strategic deterrence, and outer-space security. Flanagan served in several senior positions in the U.S. government over the past four decades including at the National Security Council staff as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Defense Policy (2013–2015) and for Central and Eastern Europe (1997–1999); National Intelligence Officer for Europe; Associate Director and Member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff; and Professional Staff Member, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He also held senior research and faculty positions at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, National Defense University, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He served as the lead advisor to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in her capacity as Chair of the Group of Experts that developed the foundation for NATO’s Strategic Concept. Flanagan has published six books and many reports and journal articles and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He earned an A.B. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School, Tufts Univ.

Justyna Gotkowska is the Coordinator of the Security and Defence in Northern Europe programme at the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), where she has worked since 2008. There, she focuses on regional and European security and defence issues with a focus on Northern and Central Europe. At OSW, she has been following security and defence policy and armed forces’ development in Germany and the Nordic and Baltic states. In recent years, she has also been writing about NATO’s defence and deterrence posture on the Eastern Flank and researched EU security and defence policy from a Central European perspective. She has conducted projects for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on bilateral and multilateral military cooperation in Central Europe, security and defence cooperation between Poland and Germany, and the implications of CSDP development for Polish security policy, among others. She also has been involved in projects with the Tallinn-based International Centre for Defence Studies (ICDS) focused on Polish-Baltic defence cooperation. In 2018, she took part in the International Visitor Leadership Program organised by the U.S. Department of State. Justyna Gotkowska has authored multiple publications and is a security policy commentator for Polish and foreign media.

Michael Haltzel is Chairman of the Transatlantic Leadership Network and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University SAIS. From 1994 to 2005, Dr. Haltzel served as Democratic Staff Director, Subcommittee on European Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and advisor to then-Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. In 2009–2010, he headed U.S. government delegations to three multi-week OSCE review conferences in Warsaw, Copenhagen, and Vienna.

His other previous positions include Chief of the European Division of the Library of Congress, Director of West European Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Vice President-Academic Affairs at Longwood University, and, Deputy Director of the Aspen Institute Berlin.

The author of Der Abbau der deutschen ständischen Selbstverwaltung in den Ostseeprovinzen Russlands 1855-1905 (Marburg, 1977), Dr. Haltzel has been the co-author or editor of nine other books and the author of dozens of refereed scholarly journal articles. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, POLITICO, Huffington Post, and U.S. News & World Report. Haltzel is a frequent commentator on U.S. and European electronic media.

He received a B.A. magna cum laude from Yale, and an M.A. and Ph.D., both from Harvard. Dr. Haltzel is the recipient of state decorations from seven EU members: Austria, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Sweden.

Daniel S. Hamilton is the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Professor and directs the Foreign Policy Institute’s “The United States, Europe, and World Order” programme at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He serves as President of the Transatlantic Leadership Network, a nonpartisan international network of practitioners, private sector leaders, and policy analysts dedicated to strengthening and reorienting transatlantic relations to the rapidly changing dynamics of a globalising world. He was the Founding Director of the SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations and served for 15 years as Executive Director of the American Consortium for EU Studies.

He has held a variety of senior diplomatic positions, including Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, U.S. Special Coordinator for Southeast European Stabilization, Associate Director of the Policy Planning Staff for two U.S. Secretaries of State, and Director for Policy in the Bureau of European Affairs. He testifies regularly before the U.S. Congress and European parliaments, is a regular commentator for European and U.S. media, has served on advisory boards for a dozen foundations, research institutes and business associations, and has authored more than 100 books and articles on contemporary international affairs, most recently Open Door: NATO and Euro-Atlantic Security After the Cold War, and Exiting the Cold War, Entering a New World (both with Kristina Spohr, eds., 2019)

He has been presented with Germany’s Cross of the Federal Order of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz); France’s Knighthood of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques; and Sweden’s Knighthood of the Royal Order of the Polar Star. He has a Ph.D. and M.A. with distinction from Johns Hopkins SAIS.

François Heisbourg is Senior Adviser for Europe of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and Special Advisor of the Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS).

He has served in government (foreign ministry’s Policy Planning Staff, International Security Advisor to the Minister of Defence), industry (Vice-President of Thomson-CSF, today’s Thales; Senior Vice President at Matra Défense Espace, now part of Airbus), and academia (Professor of the world politics course at Sciences-Po Paris, Director of the IISS). He is a member of the International Council of CNRS (the French Scientific Research Council), and has sat on national and international blue-ribbon bodies, notably the French government’s White Paper “La France face au terrorisme” (2006) and the Defence and national security White Papers (under President Sarkozy in 2007–2008 and President Hollande in 2012–2013); the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament; the International Commission on the Balkans; the EU Commission’s group of personalities on security research and development).

He was Chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies from 2002 to 2018, and from 1998 to 2018, he chaired the Foundation Council of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. In 2015–2017, he was a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Bosch Academy in Berlin.

François Heisbourg dealt with defence and national security issues as part of Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign.

He has written extensively on defence and security questions and is a frequent contributor to specialist and mainstream media. His latest book is Comment perdre la guerre contre le terrorisme (2016, Paris, éditions Stock).

Vladimir V. Kara-Murza is a Russian democracy activist, author, and filmmaker. He was a long-time colleague of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and chairs the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom. He is a former deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party and was a candidate for the Russian State Duma. He has testified before parliaments in Europe and North America and played a key role in the passage of Magnitsky legislation in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and several EU countries that imposed targeted sanctions on Russian human-rights violators. U.S. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) called Vladimir Kara-Murza “one of the most passionate and effective advocates” for the law; U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) commended him as “a courageous advocate for the democratic process and fundamental universal human rights”. Twice, in 2015 and 2017, he was poisoned with an unknown substance and left in a coma; the attempts on his life were widely viewed as politically motivated. He is a contributing writer to the Washington Post and has previously worked for the BBC, RTVi, Ekho Moskvy, Kommersant, and other media outlets. He directed two documentary films, They Chose Freedom and Nemtsov, and is the author of Reform or Revolution: The Quest for Responsible Government in the First Russian State Duma and a contributor to Russia’s Choices: The Duma Elections and After, Russian Liberalism: Ideas and People, Why Europe Needs a Magnitsky Law, and Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance.

Vladimir Kara-Murza led international efforts to commemorate Nemtsov, including with street designations in Washington D.C. and Vilnius. He is a co-founder of the Open Russia movement, a board member at the Free Russia Foundation, and a senior fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights; and has been a visiting fellow at the University of Chicago, leading a seminar course on contemporary Russia. He has been profiled on CBS’s 60 Minutes and NBC Nightly News and has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the BBC’s Newsnight. He is a recipient of the Magnitsky Human Rights Award, the Sakharov Prize for Journalism as an Act of Conscience, the Geneva Summit Courage Award, the Train Foundation’s Civil Courage Prize, and the Oxi Courage Award. He holds an M.A. (Cantab.) in History from Cambridge.

Jana Kobzova is a chief foreign policy expert in the Office of the President of Slovakia. Until summer 2019, she worked as the Policy Director at Rasmussen Global (RG), where she oversaw international policy and advocacy projects.

Before joining RG, she worked for the Brussels-based European Endowment for Democracy, where she developed and oversaw EED grant-making in the Eastern Partnership with a focus on Ukraine and Georgia. Prior to that, she was a policy fellow and coordinator of the Wider Europe programme at the London office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, writing analyses and managing ECFR advocacy efforts on Eastern Europe. Before that, Jana Kobzova led the Belarus democratisation programme at the Pontis Foundation in Slovakia. She has co-authored several books and reports on Eastern Europe, democratisation and the post-Soviet space.

Andrey Kortunov is the Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council. He graduated from Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in 1979 and completed his postgraduate studies at the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1982. He holds a Ph.D. in History. Dr. Kortunov completed internships at the Soviet embassies in London and Washington, and at the Permanent Delegation of the USSR to the UN.

In 1982–1995, Dr. Kortunov held various positions in the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies, including Deputy Director. He taught at universities around the world, including the University of California at Berkeley. In addition, he led several public organisations involved in higher education, social sciences, and social development.

Since 2011, Dr. Kortunov has been the Director General of RIAC. He is a member of expert and supervisory committees and boards of trustees of several Russian and international organisations. His academic interests include contemporary international relations and Russian foreign policy.

Robert Kupiecki is a career diplomat since 1993, as the former Undersecretary of National Defence (from 2012 until November 2015), Ambassador to the U.S., the Commonwealth of Bahamas, and observer to the Organisation of American States (2008-2012), Director of Security Policy Department, MFA (2004-2008), and Deputy Ambassador to NATO (1999-2004). He also held a number of other foreign service positions. In the 1990s, he participated in Poland’s accession process to NATO. In 2013–2014, he led an interagency strategy group tasked with drafting the National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland (adopted by the President in November 2014).

Ambassador Kupiecki graduated with distinction from the Faculty of History at the University of Warsaw (1991) and the National School of Public Administration (1994). He was a visiting scholar at the L.B.J. School of Public Administration (University of Texas, Austin), and an international fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. He holds a Ph.D. in international relations (University of Warsaw). In 2011, he received his habilitation from the Institute of Political Sciences, the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Warsaw (the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies).

Robert Kupiecki has authored or co-authored books and articles on contemporary history and international relations, including his most recent: Through the Eyes of a Strategist and Diplomat: The Polish-American Relations post-1918 (ed. 2019), Poland and NATO after the Cold War (2019), Organizacja Traktatu Północnoatlantyckiego [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] (2016), Siła i solidarność. Strategia NATO 1949–1989 [Power and Solidarity: NATO Strategy 1949–1989] (two editions, 2009; 2012), Transatlantic Relations in a Changing Security Environment (co-edited with A.A. Michta, 2015), Strategia Bezpieczeństwa Narodowego RP. Pierwsze 25 lat [The National Security Strategy of Poland: The First 25 Years] (2015), and Obrona przeciwrakietowa w polskiej perspektywie [Missile Defense: The Polish Perspective] (2015).

Hryhoriy Nemyria is a former Chairman of the Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities and Interethnic Relations of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and Deputy Chairman of the Batkivshchyna Party. In the previous Rada convocation, Dr. Nemyria chaired the Committee on European Integration. He served as Deputy Prime Minister responsible for European and international integration in the government of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (2007–2010). Prior to this, he was a BYuT Member of Parliament, where he chaired the Subcommittee on European and Euro-Atlantic Integration. He also assumed the position of the Deputy Head of the BYuT Faction. From 2006 to 2007, Dr. Nemyria was the Deputy Head of the Permanent Parliamentary Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the Ukrainian delegation to the Committee on Parliamentary Cooperation between Ukraine and the EU. In Tymoshenko’s first government (2005), he served as her Foreign Policy and European Integration Advisor. Dr. Nemyria comes from Donetsk, where he began his academic career. He has an M.A. in History from Donetsk State University and a Ph.D. from Kyiv Taras Shevchenko University. He became Vice-Rector of the National University of Kyiv’s Mohyla Academy and chaired the Board of the International Renaissance Foundation. He is also a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Robin Niblett CMG is the Director of Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) in 2007. From 2001 to 2006, he was the Executive Vice President and COO of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Dr. Niblett is an expert on UK foreign policy, European political and economic security, and transatlantic relations.

He is a Non-Executive Director of Fidelity European Values Investment Trust and a member of the World Economic Forum Europe Policy Group. He was a Special Adviser to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (2015–2017) and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on International Security (2016). He was Chairman of the Experts Group for the 2014 NATO Summit; Chairman of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Europe (2012–2013) and Chair of the British Academy Steering Committee of Languages for Security Project (2013).

Oana Popescu-Zamfir is a former State Secretary for EU Affairs and current Director of the GlobalFocus Center, an independent foreign policy think-tank. She served as a Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of the Romanian Senate, Programmes Director of the Aspen Institute Romania, and Senior Editor of the Romanian edition of Foreign Policy magazine, after being a foreign affairs reporter and editor. Her expertise covers mainly geopolitics and security in the EU/NATO neighbourhood, transatlantic relations, global political risk and strategic analysis, EU affairs, migration, development, democratisation and human rights, asymmetric threats (cyber, hybrid, stratcom, terrorism), and shifting models of governance. Oana is an international consultant and media commentator, as well as writer and lecturer. She coordinates international research, public and expert strategy events, and is Managing Editor of an international affairs quarterly with a regional focus. Oana was a Fulbright scholar at Yale University, with executive studies at Harvard and St Andrew’s.

Her most recent work has centred on internal and external threats to democracy, as well as the malign influence of third-party actors in Europe, as well as shifts in the global order and the impact of technology on society and politics. She has co-edited a widely acclaimed study, “Propaganda Made-to-Measure: How Our Vulnerabilities Facilitate Russian Influence”, assessing the permeability of propaganda and subversion in the Black Sea region based on an original methodology, also replicated by the GlobalFocus Center in the Western Balkans.

Adam Daniel Rotfeld is former Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs (2005) and former Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) (1991–2002); Member of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters in 2006–2011 (chaired the ABDM in 2008); and the NATO Group of Experts (Wisemen Group) on a new Strategic Concept of Alliance (2009-2010). Co-Chairman of the Polish-Russian Group on Difficult Matters (2008-2015) and member of the OSCE Panel of Eminent Persons on European Security as a Common Project who produced the report “Back to Diplomacy” (2015).

He is a Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences Committee of the Political Sciences and has published more than 20 monographs and about 450 articles and studies. He is a researcher focused on the theory and practice of international security and human rights, conflict resolution, arms control, and disarmament. His most recent books include the International Order (The Polish Guild of Gutenberg Knights, Warsaw 2017) and In Search of Strategy (in Polish, BOSZ, Olszanica 2018).

He is currently a Professor with the Warsaw University Faculty “Artes Liberales”.

Sven Sakkov is the Director of the ICDS International Centre for Defence and Security, a foreign affairs and defence think tank based in Tallinn, Estonia. Besides conducting wide-ranging research, ICDS also organises the Lennart Meri Conference and Annual Baltic Conference on Defence (ABCD), publishes the monthly Diplomaatia magazine, and runs the Estonian National Defence Course.

Before joining ICDS, he served for two years as the Director of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (NATO CCDCOOE), an international knowledge hub specialising in research, training and exercises in the areas of technology, strategy, operations, and law.

Between 2008 and 2015, he served as Undersecretary for Defence Policy (policy director) of the Ministry of Defence of Estonia. During his tenure as a policy director, he was responsible for policy planning, threat assessments, NATO and EU policy, international cooperation, and arms control. He was an Estonian representative to NATO’s Senior Officials’ Group and High Level Group.

Previously, Sven Sakkov served at the Estonian embassy in Washington and Estonian mission to NATO, as national security and defence advisor to the President of Estonia and as the Director of Policy Planning at MOD.

He studied at the Royal College of Defence Studies (course in 2011–2012), University of Cambridge (M.Phil. in international relations), and University of Tartu (B.A. cum laude in history).

He is a member of NATO’s CCDCOE Advisory Board.

Kori Schake is the Deputy Director-General of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. She is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, the author of Safe Passage: the Transition from British to American Hegemony (Harvard, 2017) and editor with Jim Mattis of Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military (Hoover Institution, 2016). She has worked as the Director for Defense strategy and requirements on the National Security Council staff, as Deputy Director of policy planning in the State Department, and in both the military and civilian staffs in the Pentagon. In 2008, she was senior policy advisor on the McCain-Palin presidential campaign. She teaches in War Studies at King’s College London and has previously taught at Stanford University, the United States Military Academy, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the University of Maryland.

Daniela  Schwarzer is the Director of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) since 2017, after leading its Research Institute (Nov. 2016 to June 2017). Until October 2016, she was Senior Director of Research and Director of the Europe Programme at the Berlin office of GMF. From 2005 to 2013, Schwarzer worked with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. She headed the European Integration Division as of 2008 and was a Senior Fellow from 2005 to 2008. From 1999 to 2005, she was editorialist and France correspondent of FT Deutschland.

Lilia Shevtsova is an Associate Fellow at the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, member of the boards of the Free Russia Foundation (U.S.), Finnish Centre for Excellence in Russian Studies, Andrei Sakharov Centre on Democratic Development (Lithuania), and Liberal Mission Foundation (Moscow); member of the Editorial Boards of the journals American Interest, Journal of Democracy, and New Eastern Europe; and, has an honorary doctorate from St. Gallen University (Switzerland). She was awarded the Estonian state order of the Cross Pro Terra Mariana for her participation in democracy promotion.

She was Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, founding Chair of the Davos World Economic Forum Council on Russia’s Future, and a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. She served as Chair of the Program on Eurasia and Eastern Europe, SSRC (Washington) and as a member of the Social Council for Central and Eastern European Studies.

Lilia Shevtsova is the author of Yeltsin’s Russia: Myths and Reality; Putin’s Russia; Russia – Lost in Transition: The Yeltsin and Putin Legacies; Lonely Power; We: Life in a Time of No Time (in Russian); and, Change and Decay. Russia’s Dilemma and the West’s Response (with Andrew Wood).

Julie Smith is Reader in European Politics and Director of the European Centre at the Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. She previously ran the European Programme at Chatham House. As Baroness Smith of Newnham, she sits in the House of Lords, where she is the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson on Defence. She has served on the House of Lords’ International Relations Committee since its creation in 2016.

Dr. Smith’s main research interests are in the history and politics of the EU. Her work focuses on the UK’s relations with the EU; democracy in Europe, including elections to the European Parliament, national parliaments, and the EU; and parliaments and budgetary politics. She is currently editing the Palgrave Handbook on European Referendums (due out in 2019). Recent publications include The UK’s Journeys Into and Out of the EU: Destinations Unknown (London: Routledge, 2017; paperback edition May 2018).

Ulrich Speck is a Senior Visiting Fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin. His work focuses on German foreign policy, the EU, transatlantic relations, and the global order. From 2015 to 2016, he was a Senior Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy at GMF in Washington, DC. He was previously a Visiting Scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, an Associate Fellow at the Spanish think tank FRIDE, and the Editor of the Global Europe Morning Brief, a subscriber-only newsletter on EU foreign policy. From 2007 to 2009, Speck worked in different positions for RFE/RL in Prague and Brussels. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Moscow Times, on CNN.com, in the American Interest, and the Berlin Policy Journal, in FAZ, SZ, Tagesspiegel and elsewhere. Speck is a foreign policy columnist for Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). He holds a Ph.D. in Modern History from the University of Frankfurt/Main.

Krzysztof Szczerski is the Chief of the Cabinet of the President of the Republic of Poland since April 2016. Has a master’s degree in political science from Jagiellonian University (1997) and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations of Jagiellonian University (2001). His 2010 postdoctoral dissertation, “The dynamics of the European system,” won a prize from the Prime Minister. Since 2013, he has been an Associate Professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow and became a Professor of Social Sciences in 2018.

He has worked with the Office of the Prime Minister (1998-2001) and served as an Advisor to the Minister of Health in the fields of European integration, regional health policy, and healthcare systems (1999-2000). In 2007-2008, he was Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the Office of the Committee for European Integration. He was a member of the Civil Service Council to the Prime Minister (2009-2010) and a Deputy to the Sejm (2011-2015). In January 2015, he became the representative of the Polish Parliament in PACE.

In August 2015, he became the Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, and since April 2016,  

He is also a lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy of Warsaw and a member of the Council of the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

Bruno Tertrais is a Deputy Director of the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (Foundation for Strategic Research, FRS), the main French think-tank on international security issues, since 2017.

His areas of expertise include geopolitics and international relations, strategic and military affairs, nuclear deterrence and non-proliferation, U.S. policy and transatlantic relations, and security in the Middle East and in Asia.

He was previously a Senior Research Fellow at FRS (2001–2016), a Special Assistant to the Director of Strategic Affairs at the Ministry of Defense (1993–2001), and Director of the Civilian Affairs Committee at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (1990–1993).

In 1995–1996, he was Visiting Fellow at the RAND Corporation. In 2007–2008, he was a member of the Commission on the White Paper on Defence and National Security appointed by President Sarkozy and of the Commission on Foreign and European Policy appointed by Minister Alain Juppé. In 2012-2013, he was a member of the new Commission on the White Paper on Defence and National Security appointed by President Hollande.

Bruno Tertrais is a member of the Group of Eminent Persons of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation Preparatory Commission; a member of the Group of Eminent Persons for the Substantive Advancement of Nuclear Disarmament; a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies; a member of the editorial board of The Washington Quarterly; a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Security and Strategic Analyses; a member the scientific advisory board of Champs de Mars; and, a member of the scientific advisory board of the Chaire Economie & Géopolitique of the Paris School of Business.

In 2010, he received the Vauban Prize for his distinguished career. In 2013, he was awarded the Grand Prix de l’impertinence et des bonnes nouvelles for an essay entitled “Un monde de catastrophes? Mythes et réalités du progress”. In 2014, he was awarded the Legion of Honour. In 2016, he was the co-recipient of the Brienne Prize for his book Le Président et la Bombe. In 2017, he was the co-recipient of the Georges Erhard Prize for his book L’Atlas des frontières. His latest book is La Revanche de l’Histoire. Quand le passé change le monde (Editions Odile Jacob, 2017).

Vygaudas Ušackas is he former Minister of Foreign Affairs (2008–2010). Between October 2017 and October 2018, Ambassador Vygaudas Ušackas led the Institute of Europe at Kaunas University of Technology. He served as Ambassador of the European Union to the Russian Federation from September 2013 to October 2017, and from 2010 to 2013, he was the European Union Special Representative and Head of the European Union Delegation in Afghanistan.

After obtaining his Law Degree from Vilnius University and completing his post-graduate education in Political Sciences in Denmark and Norway in 1991, he joined the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In a distinguished career in the Foreign Service, he served as Counsellor to the Lithuanian Mission to both the EU and NATO from 1992 to 1996; Political Director of the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 1999; Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania and Chief Negotiator for Lithuania’s Accession to the European Union from 1999 to 2001; Lithuanian Ambassador to the United States of America and United Mexican States from 2001 to 2006; Ambassador of Lithuania to the Court of St. James from 2006 to 2008.

During the course of his career, he has received numerous awards, including the Order of Merits to Lithuania, Commander’s Cross, state awards from Estonia, France, Georgia, Greece, Norway, Poland, Spain, and Ukraine, and an award of merits to the city of Utena, as well as the distinction as a member of honour of the Lithuanian Students’ Union. He was awarded honorary citizenship of his hometown, Skuodas, in 2010, and of Ukmergė, in 2013.

Sergey Utkin since 2016 is the Head of the Strategic Assessment Section at the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), Russian Academy of Sciences. From 2016 to June 2018, he also headed the Foreign and Security Policy Department at the Moscow-based Centre for Strategic Research. In 2012–2016, he worked at the Centre for Situation Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences, now merged with IMEMO. In 2006-2013, he worked at IMEMO, where his last position was Head of Section for Political Aspects of European Integration. He holds a PhD in political science (international relations), which he received at IMEMO in 2006 for his thesis on Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU. In 2002, he graduated from the Moscow Pedagogical State University, School of History. His research is focused on foreign and security policy of the EU, the EU’s relations with Russia and the U.S., Russia’s foreign policy in the Euro-Atlantic area.

Tomáš Valášek is the Director of Carnegie Europe, where his research focuses on security and defence, transatlantic relations, and Central Europe.

Previously, he served as the permanent representative of the Slovak Republic to NATO for nearly four years. Before that, he was President of the Central European Policy Institute in Bratislava (2012–2013), Director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform in London (2007–2012), and founder and Director of the Brussels office of the World Security Institute (2002–2006). In 2006–2007, he served as acting Political Director and Head of the security and defence policy division at the Slovak Ministry of Defence.

He is the author of numerous articles in newspapers and journals, including in the International New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times. He has advised Slovak defence and foreign ministers, the UK House of Lords, and the Group of Experts on the new NATO Strategic Concept.

Kurt Volker is Executive Director of The McCain Institute for International Leadership, a part of Arizona State University based in Washington, DC. Is a leading expert in U.S. foreign and national security policy with some 30 years of experience in a variety of government, academic, and private-sector capacities. He is also a Senior Advisor at the Atlantic Council, a Trustee of IAU College in Aix-en-Provence, France, and a member of the International Advisory Board of USIP. He is a consultant to international business, a member of the Board of Directors of CG Funds Trust, and has previously served as Managing Director, International, for the BGR Group. He has taught Transatlantic Relations at The George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs and is a member of the School’s Board of Advisors. In July 2017, Ambassador Volker served as U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations (2017–2019).

Anna Wieslander is Director for Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council and concurrently serves as Secretary General of the Swedish Defence Association. She is also the Chairman of the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP) in Stockholm. She was previously Deputy Director at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI). Anna Wieslander has held positions as Head of the Speaker’s Office in the Swedish Parliament, Secretary of the Swedish Defence Commission and Deputy Director of the Swedish Defence Ministry. She has also served as Communications Director in the private sector. She holds an I.B. exam from United World College of the American West (1987), a B.A. in journalism from Gothenburg University (1990), and an M.A. in political science from Lund University (1995). She is a Ph.D. candidate in international relations at Lund University and has pursued doctoral studies at the University of California at Berkeley. She is a 2015 alumna of the Georgetown University Leadership Seminar. Her expertise is in security and defence policy, Baltic sea security, NATO and partnerships, the transatlantic link, and issues affecting the defence industry.

Thomas Wright is Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a Senior Fellow in International Order and Strategy at The Brookings Institution. His book All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power was published by Yale University Press in 2017. Tom has a Ph.D. from Georgetown University, an M.Phil. from Cambridge University, and a B.A. and M.A. from University College Dublin. He currently writes on U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, strategic competition in the 21st century, transatlantic relations, and the future of European integration.

Ernest Wyciszkiewicz is a Director of the Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding since 2016 and political scientist. Before that, he was the Deputy Director of the Centre, Head of the International Economy and Energy Security Programme and Senior Research Fellow at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM), Managing Editor of Evropa, a Russian-language quarterly on European affairs (2003–2009). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the “Intersection Project.”

Dov S. Zakheim is a Senior Fellow at CNA Corp. and a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton. Dr. Zakheim served as Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and DoD Chief Financial Officer (2001–2004) and as DOD coordinator of civilian programmes in Afghanistan (2002–2004). From 1985 to 1987, he was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Planning and Resources. He is an Executive Advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations. He has served on Congressionally-mandated government commissions, the Defense Business Board, which he helped create, and chaired the National Intelligence Council’s International Business Practices Advisory Panel. He sits on several corporate boards and is Vice Chairman of both the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Center for the National Interest. He earned his B.A. from Columbia and his doctorate from Oxford. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Chatham House and is a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Military Sciences. He appears frequently in media and is a regular contributor to The Hill and the National Interest.