THE ASPEN STRATEGY GROUP ON THE OLD & NEW COLD WAR · Over thirty years, the Aspen Strategy Group has shied from no crisis or tense relationship troubling the world, from the Middle

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When members of the Aspen Strategy Group assembled this past August at Aspen Meadows, we returned to a familiar if troubling topic—America’s “long, twilight struggle,” as

President Kennedy so memorably called it, with the Kremlin. During four summer days of debate and discussion, our co-

chairs, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Harvard Professor Joe Nye, led us through an in-depth, spirited, and very frank conference on how the Obama administration should cope with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and destabilization of Eastern Ukraine.

Around the table was an extraordinarily interesting collection of Republicans, Democrats, and independents. The largely American group spent our time in meetings, over lunch and dinner, and on the hiking trails in pursuit of one overarching question: What are the vital American interests at stake with Moscow, and how can we best defend and advance them?

Brookings President and long-time Russia expert Strobe Talbott opened with a penetrating and insightful Ernest May Memorial Lecture on the roots of Russian policy under Putin. Russia watchers, such as Georgetown’s Angela Stent, provided insights into Putin’s mind-set and worldview. Current Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland presented the Obama administration’s policies and perspectives. Harvard’s Meghan O’Sullivan and former World Bank President Bob Zoellick delved into the energy and economic

THE ASPEN STRATEGY GROUP

ON THE OLD & NEW COLD WAR

Over thirty years, the Aspen Strategy Group has shied from no crisis or tense relationship troubling the world, from the Middle East to climate change to cyber theft. But Russia has never been far from its sights—and particularly not now.

By Nicholas Burns

consequences of a new time of tension with Moscow. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offered insights on Russia’s growing partnership with China. The United Kingdom’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander described European attitudes in a new era of competition with Russia. Senator Dianne Feinstein hosted the group for dinner and lent her long congressional experience to all these questions.

We also benefited from the unique experience of former Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates. In our only public forum at Aspen, I interviewed the three before an overflow audience in the Greenwald Pavilion about the extraordinary challenges the United States faces from Russia, the Middle East crises, and China. Behind closed doors, we had the benefit of their advice on how to cope with Putin and his “back to the future” outlook.

It is safe to say that all of us emerged from this year’s discussions with a palpable sense of just how complex these challenges will be for the United States and its NATO allies. Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine is, without doubt, the most serious crisis in Europe since the end of the Cold War. Having won a democratic peace in Europe a quarter-century ago with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact and the achievement of a unified Germany, dividing lines are once again reappearing to separate parts of Eastern Europe—Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia—from the West. I came away from the conference with the view that President Obama and

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MAY 1984:Soviet Olympic

Boycott

NOV 1985:Geneva Summit

DEC 1987:Mikhail Gorbachev Selected as TIME’s “Man of the Year”

APR 1986:Chernobyl

Disaster

1971: Paul Doty Begins a Series of Workshops on Arms Control

AUG 1984: Aspen Strategy Group Hosts Inaugural Summer Workshop on Strategy and Arms Control

AUG 1994:Final Withdrawal

of Russian Military Forces

from Estonia and Latvia

MAY 1995:President Clinton Visits Moscow for 50th Anniversary Commemoration of Allied Victory

in World War II

FEB 1994:First Joint US-Russia Space

Shuttle Mission

AUG 1993:ASG Examines “Security in the Former Soviet Union” at Summer Workshop

AUG 1995: First Aspen Strategy Group Meeting Focused on US-China Relationship

MAR 1990:Gorbachev Elected

President of the Soviet Union

SEPT–OCT 1990:German

Reunification

NOV 1989:Fall of Berlin Wall

AUG 1991: Aspen Strategy Group Broadens Focus and Hosts Workshop on the Gulf War

JUN 1988: Aspen Strategy Group Examines “The Gorbachev Challenge and European Security” with the European Strategy Group

MAR 2000:Vladimir

Putin Elected

President

MAY 2002:Creation of the

NATO-Russia Council

JANUARY 2002: Aspen Strategy Group Launches US-India Strategic Dialogue

DEC 2001: Aspen Strategy Group Meets for 10th US-Russia Dialogue

JAN 1996:US Senate Ratifies

START II Treaty

MAY 1997:NATO-Russia Founding Act

DEC 1999:Boris Yeltsin

Resigns

NOV 1998:Launch of

International Space Station

OCT 1995: Aspen Strategy Group Conducts a Track II Dialogue on “The Future of the US-Japanese Security Relationship”

MAY 1996: Aspen Strategy Group Begins Track II Dialogue with Russia

JUN 1986: Aspen Strategy Group Holds First Meeting with European Strategy Group on “Chemical Weapons & European Security”

MAY–JUN 1988:Moscow Summit;

Ratification of Intermediate-Range

Nuclear Forces Treaty

DEC 1991: Dissolution

of USSR

NATO leaders have been correct in placing stronger sanctions on Putin to drive up the costs of his actions and by strengthening the NATO alliance to defend its members, especially nearby Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

Over the last thirty years, the Aspen Strategy Group has taken on the most important global challenges facing America. We’ve examined the contours and complications of US grand strategy in the Middle East after the Arab revolutions, the national security implications of energy and climate change, US policy in Asia, and the dangers emanating from cyber war, cyber espionage, and cyber theft. But Russia has never

been far from the group’s minds and its origins three decades ago.The story of the Aspen Strategy Group begins in 1971 with the

American strategist Paul Doty, who initiated an annual meeting to discuss arms control at the Institute. By the early 1980s, the group had become a nonpartisan forum for discussion among university professors, think tank experts, and government officials. In 1984, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, Brent Scowcroft, and Joe Nye formally created the Aspen Strategy Group. The “founding three,” highly regarded in Washington and around the world for their thought leadership and public service, agreed

that the group would be resolutely nonpartisan. They set in place a framework of private, off-the-record discussions to which we still adhere today. We believe this is a key reason for our success and why we continue to attract to Aspen the most senior former government officials from both parties as well as top journalists, businesspeople, and academics.

During its first years, the Strategy Group focused principally on defense strategy, arms control, and the US-Soviet debate at the height of the Cold War. After the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact disintegrated, the Strategy Group took on a more global focus, looking, for instance, at the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War. We refocused on establishing close relations with a newly independent Russia in 1993 and again in 1996. In that year, the Strategy Group launched a five-year project known as the US-Russia Dialogue to promote an opportunity for Americans to sit down regularly

with Russian counterparts and to take on the toughest issues that separate the two countries.

This type of “Track-Two” dialogue is often most valuable when governments find it difficult to have honest and open conversations with each other. Finding a way to establish more direct personal contacts is one of the objectives. That occurred in June 2000, when American participants met for the first time a little-known Russian official with a seemingly innocuous title—deputy head of the presidential administration in Moscow. That man was Dmitry Medvedev, who later became Russian president and who, today, serves as Putin’s prime minister.

We would like to think that many of our members have also found the Aspen Strategy Group to be a training ground for leadership positions in the US government. Ash Carter and Michele Flournoy, who would later both serve as under secretary

Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine is, without doubt, the most serious crisis

in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

David Petraeus

Burns, Nye, Scowcroft

Nye and Rice at an early Strategy Group meeting

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JUL 2014:Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Shot Down Over Eastern Ukraine

AUG 2014: Aspen Strategy Group Examines “US-Russia Relationship” at Summer Workshop

AUG 2014:Russia Invades Southeastern Ukraine

SEPT 2005:Russia and Germany Sign

Major Gas Pipeline Agreement

MAR 2004:Putin Wins

Second Term

AUG 2004: Aspen Strategy Group Hosts Workshop on “The Challenge of Proliferation”

MAR 2009:US-Russia “Reset”

APR 2010:“New START”

Agreement Signed

MAR 2012:Putin Elected

PresidentNOV 2011:

Georgia and Russia Sign Deal Allowing

Russia to Join World Trade Organization

DEC 2010: Aspen Strategy Group Partners to Host the First China-Europe-US Trialogue in Beijing

SEPT 2009: Aspen Strategy Group Revisits Arms Control Dialogue for “2010: A Critical Year for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation”

JAN 2006:Russia Briefly

Cuts Gas Supply to

Ukraine

NOV 2007:Putin Suspends

Conventional Armed Forces

in Europe Treaty

AUG 2008:Russia Invades

Georgia

MAR 2008:Dmitri Medvedev Elected President

SEPT 2007: Aspen Strategy Group Convenes the 10th Annual US-India Dialogue in Washington, DC

NOV 2008: 16 Aspen Strategy Group Members Will Join the Obama Administration Over Course of Two Terms

AUG 2012:Russia Formally

Joins World Trade Organization

FEB 2014:Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych Flees

MAY 2014:Gazprom Signs Gas Deal with

China National Petroleum Corp.

MAR 2014:Russian Federation Annexes Crimea

APR 2014: Aspen Strategy Group Launches US-Brazil Strategic Dialogue in Sao Paulo

SUMMER 2012:Aspen Strategy Group Surpasses 100 Meetings

JUN 2013: Aspen Strategy Group Launches US-China Policy Dialogue

TO BE DETERMINED

of defense for policy, were young members of the group when we examined Russia policy in the 1990s. Steve Hadley, President George W. Bush’s national security advisor, and Condoleezza Rice, who went on to become secretary of state, both participated in Aspen Strategy Group meetings as far back as the 1980s. And we have always benefited from the participation of members of Congress, from former Senators Richard Lugar and Sam Nunn to currently serving members Senator Jack Reed and Senator Feinstein. Many of these same people were around the table with us this summer as we discussed the latest challenges with Russia.

Part of our mission is to identify young leaders who will play a role in the senior levels of our government a decade or two hence and to introduce them to our nonpartisan proceedings. We will publish a book in November on this summer’s conference

on Russia. We hope it will be of use to students, citizens, and policymakers alike for how the United States should work to shape America’s complicated relationship with Russia in the years ahead.

As the Aspen Strategy Group reflects on the last thirty years, we are more convinced than ever that it is our nonpartisanship that makes us unique and that is so badly needed in our national discourse, particularly in Washington. That is the mission we look forward to continuing for many years into the future.

Nicholas Burns is director of the Aspen Strategy Group and professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. aspeninstitute.org/asg

Feinstein

Nuland, Gates, Rice

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