While Russia poses one of the biggest foreign policy challenges facing the U.S., an opportunity for rapprochement may exist with the incoming administration, several Stanford scholars said Wednesday.

The panel event, “Russia Looking Back and Looking Ahead,” featured Russia experts William J. Perry, Michael McFaul, Siegfried Hecker, and David Holloway from Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute. The discussion came at a time when American-Russian relations are arguably at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. On top of this, the Central Intelligence Agency recently concluded that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election. Against this backdrop, the Stanford scholars examined both the past and the future of the U.S.-Russia relationship. (Click here to watch a video of the event.)

Amy Zegart, CISAC co-director, said in opening remarks that there is “no more timely moment to be looking at the state of U.S.-Russia affairs than today.”

Perry, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and director of the Preventive Defense Project at CISAC, said that he hopes Russia does not fall prey to its worst tendencies, the way the Weimar Republic of Germany succumbed to Nazism. Perry pointed out, however, that some bright spots in Russian cooperation have occurred.

“You could never have predicted that was going to work,” he said, referring to the post-Cold War cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in reducing and safeguarding the latter’s nuclear stockpile. There was also collaboration on solving the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s.

“The greatest disappointment is that we let all this slip away,” said Perry, citing the NATO expansion as one trigger effect. “Our greatest challenge is trying to avoid a war with Russia. We’ve gotten to a point where that is a real possibility.”

The Russians, Perry noted, realize they’re outgunned by the U.S. in conventional weapons, so they have made it known they may use tactical nuclear weapons in the event of a war with America.

Perry urges re-engaging with Russia on nuclear issues. The best approach, he said, may be to separate out some problems that may be too difficult so the focus is on nuclear cooperation. Still, he acknowledges he is "profoundly pessimistic,” but what is at stake is the survival of human civilization, so these two countries must find a way to work together. 

Protests and people

McFaul, the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute, recently penned a column urging a bipartisan examination of Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

McFaul explained the Obama Administration’s efforts to engage with Putin’s Russia. He served in the administration during that period that some refer to as an attempted “reset” of Washington’s relationship with Moscow. Some cooperation definitely occurred – the successful raid on Osama Bin Laden would not have happened without Russia’s collaboration, among other examples, he added. “It was an amazing achievement."

Why did the reset end? “It ended because protesting people got in the way of our policy,” he said, noting mass protests in Russia and in Middle Eastern countries that were allies of Putin’s regime.

“We were not imposing our values on the government when I was in office,” said McFaul about his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Russian from 2012 to 2014.

On Trump, McFaul expressed cautious optimism, but described him as exhibiting “mixed-up ends and means,” and Trump seems to suggest everyone “should just get along.” Putin, on the other hand, has very clear strategic priorities, McFaul said. 

“There’s a history of interference,” he said about Russia’s forays into elections here and abroad.

In addition, many issues have connections – such as the Iran nuclear deal and the Russian relationship – that are so complex that the new administration needs to truly understand the broader context, he said.

Prior nuclear agreements - such as Nunn-Lugar – were viewed in Moscow as American intelligence efforts, McFaul said. This reflects Russia’s wariness to talk about nuke issues.

‘A country coming apart’

Hecker, a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI, recently wrote an article about how the recent U.S. election may have opened a window of opportunity on U.S. Russia nuclear cooperation. The idea for the panel originated from the publication of Hecker’s recent book, Doomed to Cooperate.

Hecker recalled his career as the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where they were faced with helping strengthen the U.S. against Soviet nuclear capabilities, to the years of transition after the Cold War when he led U.S. efforts over a 20-year period to work with Russian scientists on safeguarding loose nukes.

“'They were Russia’s inheritance from Hell,'” he said, quoting a passage in a book by moderator David E. Hoffman, a contributing editor to The Washington Post and Russian expert as well.

The scientists in Russia, however, were heroically motivated to collaborate with American scientists like Hecker in protecting their country from a nuclear catastrophe. “It was like looking in a mirror,” Hecker said about their talents and conscientiousness.

Such scientific collaboration and support from both countries’ governments is a template for future relationships, he said. Unfortunately, that type of cooperation is “being held hostage” by political differences in both countries, said Hecker, who has visited Russia 52 times in 25 years.

“There is no reason we should be enemies,” he said.

Hecker suggests not “demonizing” the Russian people and avoiding imposing American values on those people. Staying out of internal affairs in Russia is critical, too, he said.

‘Not the Soviet Union’

Holloway, a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI, has analyzed the steps taken to shrink the world's nuclear stockpile.

“Russia’s not what people hoped it would become 25 years ago, but still something remains. This is still not the Soviet Union,” said Holloway, pointing out some limited freedoms exist in contemporary Russian society compared to the country’s Stalinist past.

“The failure to integrate Russia into the international system” has created a serious problem, he said. “We’ve had a real downward spiral” since the Obama administration’s attempted reset. “There is a debate about who is to blame,” but that is a complicated debate.

“What is to be done?” asked Holloway. This is the question to ask and answer in order to ascertain ways to improve the relationship. The liberal world order, created by the U.S. in the wake of WWII, may be coming to an end, he said. China and Russia feel they have not been accommodated by such a U.S.-led world order, such as in trade deals and military alliances.

Like Putin, who uses unpredictable tactics in world affairs, Trump, too, seems made from the same template.

“This is not good to have two unpredictable leaders facing each other” with many nuclear weapons at their commands, said Holloway, who recently visited Russia and observed many reactions there about the 2016 election outcome.

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Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Editor’s Note: The following article by CISAC's Siegfried S. Hecker is part of a multi-part symposium commissioned by the National Interest and Carnegie Corporation of New York. They asked some of the world’s leading experts about the future of U.S.-Russia relations under President-elect Donald Trump. You can find all of their answers here.

By Siegfried S. Hecker

Nuclear is different. Nuclear energy can electrify the world or destroy it. Cooperation is essential to maximize its benefits and to limit its dangers. President-elect Trump should move swiftly to reestablish U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation, which has been held hostage to political differences.

Whereas political relations between the United States and Russia have swung from confrontation during the Cold War, to cooperation in its aftermath, and now back to confrontation, combating nuclear risks has required dialogue and at least some modicum of cooperation. In spite of bitter ideological differences during the Cold War, U.S. and Russian leaders took cooperative measures to avoid nuclear confrontation, reduce nuclear stockpiles and limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The collapse of the Soviet Union transformed the global nuclear threat—from potential annihilation of humankind by the enormous nuclear arsenal in the hands of the Soviet government, to the possibility that the new Russian government may lose control of its tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, over one million kilograms of fissile materials, a huge nuclear infrastructure, and the several hundred thousand nuclear experts and workers it had inherited from the Soviet Union.

The safety and security of Russia’s nuclear assets posed an unprecedented challenge for the world as well as for Russia. An equally unprecedented cooperation between Russia and the United States during the past twenty-five years has greatly enhanced the safety and security of Russia’s nuclear complex and helped avoid a nuclear catastrophe.

Although President Putin has reemphasized the role of nuclear weapons in Russia’s security and has suspended or terminated most nuclear cooperation with the United States, President-elect Trump must work with Russia to jointly develop an acceptable path to avoid nuclear confrontation and combat global nuclear dangers. The first order of business must be to develop mutually agreed conditions to ensure strategic stability and avoid a new nuclear arms race.

Whereas nuclear safety and security in Russia’s nuclear complex has improved greatly, these are never-ending quests that require continued collaboration—sharing best practices and lessons learned, cooperating on training, and assisting other countries. Likewise, cooperation to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism is in the interest of both countries. The Iranian nuclear deal is a recent example of what the two countries can achieve by working hand in hand. North Korea is another case that warrants cooperation because interests converge.

The president-elect should also listen closely to Russia’s expressed desire to expand the benefits of the atom—particularly to collaborate on peaceful nuclear technologies and the safe global expansion of nuclear energy.

The U.S. election may have opened a window of opportunity to return U.S.-Russian relations to cooperation. There is no better place to start than with nuclear cooperation.

Siegfried S. Hecker is the author of Doomed to Cooperate, a two-volume compendium of articles on U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation. Follow him at @SiegfriedHecker. 

A hot springs summit between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin next week hopes to solve the 70-year-old dispute over an isolated string of islands that Russian and Japanese nationalists both claim as their own, according to Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Read the commentary piece in Foreign Policy here.

Australian Ambassador to the United States Joe Hockey delivered remarks at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) on Monday. Addressing a Stanford audience, he said shared values define the Australia-United States relationship, and upon that foundation, the two countries work together to confront challenges facing the Asia-Pacific region.

The public seminar, Australia-United States Relationship in the 21^st Century, co-sponsored by the Southeast Asia Program and U.S.-Asia Security Initiative, began with remarks from Hockey which were followed by a question and answer session moderated by Donald K. Emmerson, an emeritus senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

“America has somehow managed to build a global empire that the rest of the world wants to join,” said Hockey, who before becoming ambassador, served as treasurer of Australia and for 17 years as a parliamentarian.

“It’s the first empire in the history of humanity that hasn't had to invade a host of different nations in order to spread its values and increase its influence. The United States has managed to do it simply on the basis of values they believe in,” he added.

The United States, Hockey said, has underpinned its values through a sustained network of allies and strategic partners—Australia among them—that, similar to America, pledge to uphold human rights and freedoms.

Dissatisfaction, however, and voices demanding reform continue to spread inside and outside of the United States. Hockey said he sees a pattern in the populist movements happening around the world, each of them overlaid with an “anti-establishment mood.”

Two clear examples, Hockey cited, were Brexit and the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, and most recently, the resignation of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi resulting from a referendum on laws concerning the composition of the country’s legislature.

Parallels can be seen between anti-establishment views in democratic and non-democratic societies, he said. For example, terrorist groups like the Islamic State attract sympathizers who feel they lack the ability to influence change within current structures.

Hockey said, “It's a failure of the institutions to respond in part to the needs of the people. That has been the ‘oxygen’ that’s fed resistance.

“The question is how we respond and how we include people along the way—which is what they are demanding. And to that, there is no easy answer.”

Describing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as more than a trade deal, Hockey called it a “strategic partnership” and also an “immense disappointment” that President-elect Trump has said repeatedly that the United States will no longer be involved in it once the next administration takes office.

Bilateral trade agreements between the 11 other signatories could offer an alternative to the TPP, but domestic pressures in each country would slow the negotiation process and make it difficult to ratify anything. Those kinds of political realities would, however, encourage substitutes, he said.

“When one leader steps back, another steps in,” said Hockey, also a former chair of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors.

Hockey suggested that the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a proposed trade agreement linking 16 Asian countries, would be sought as a substitute in the absence of the TPP. The United States is not a part of RCEP, which by design is a “by Asia for Asia” trade agreement.

Following the seminar, Hockey participated in roundtable discussions with Stanford faculty, researchers and students. He held meetings with Karl Eikenberry, the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at Shorenstein APARC and former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, and George Shultz, the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution and former U.S. secretary of state, among others.

Shorenstein APARC will host the Australian American Leadership Dialogue at Stanford this January. The Dialogue is a gathering of scholars and practitioners from Australia and the United States that aims to promote exchange of views on foreign policy, innovation and health, and to deepen the bilateral relationship.

Stanford cybersecurity expert Herb Lin said America may be at a “tipping point” regarding the rewards and risks of the Internet, unless new cybersecurity policies are adopted by the incoming Trump Administration. He speaks Dec. 7 at Stanford on the issue.

The costs of using the Internet and computational devices due to inadequate security may soon outweigh the benefits unless dramatic cybersecurity measures are taken, a Stanford scholar said.

Herbert Lin, a senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), serves on the President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, which on Dec. 2 issued strong recommendations to upgrade the nation’s cybersecurity systems.

Lin will speak Dec. 7 at Stanford about the report – his talk will be featured live on video. The 100-page report aims to inform the incoming Trump Administration about how to approach escalating cybersecurity dangers. The effort follows significant hacking of U.S. government systems in and accusations by the White House that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election.

The commission suggested both short- and long-term measures, such as fixing problems from the weakly protected ‘internet-of-things’; creating an assistant to the president for cybersecurity; and re-organizing responsibility for the cybersecurity of federal agencies, among others.

The report also urged getting rid of traditional passwords, which could help reduce identity theft. It also advised that the new administration train 100,000 new cybersecurity workers by 2020.

A research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Lin was recently interviewed by CISAC about the report:

What is the reason to move the burden of cybersecurity away from the user to higher levels of companies, government?

Taking the necessary and appropriate measures for cybersecurity is, for practical purposes, too complex for average end-users. A successful effort to push cybersecurity measures farther from the user will result in better security because security decisions will be made by those who are security experts rather than users that are unfamiliar with security.

Why is the White House the best entity to lead cybersecurity efforts?

Enhancing national cybersecurity requires a whole-of-government effort, indeed a whole-of-society effort.  The task is making a meaningful dent in a problem that is so large. Only with high-level leadership does that effort have any chance of success.

Will the distrust of the U.S. government by the technology community in general hinder this approach to cybersecurity? How can the tech world's trust in the government on cybersecurity issues be improved?

Distrust harms both sides – the U.S. government and the technology community.  The U.S. government loses the ability to enlist the cooperation of the private sector, which has many capabilities that it does not have, capabilities that would be useful in fulfilling its responsibilities to the American people. The tech sector invites harsh legislation and suspicion that work against its interests. At the same time, the distrust is not entirely unfounded, as both sides have indulged in apocalyptic rhetoric that has raised the temperature of the debate without much productive result.  But what I’m saying here represents a personal perspective, and isn’t part of the commission’s report.

What happens if these recommendations are not enacted or adopted? What happens to the typical American computer user? In the long run, if we do little or nothing, how will this affect the Internet – as an economic driver or engine for the economy, place where people connect?

President Obama created the commission because he believed that cybersecurity was a high national priority, a sentiment with which both presidential candidates agreed. If the nation does too little to improve its cybersecurity posture, the gap between the security we have and the security we need will only grow because the cybersecurity threat we face is growing. And if that is the case, the costs of using the Internet and computational devices due to inadequate security will outweigh the benefits – indeed, there is evidence that we are near such a tipping point today. Even now, a large fraction of Americans are unwilling to use the Internet for certain purposes due to security concerns – and I can tell you that I personally refrain from conducting certain transactions online for just such reasons.

Any other issues?

One of the most surprising aspects of the report was the process that produced it.  The chair of the commission is known to be a Democrat. The vice-chair is known to be a Republican.  Other than that, you would be hard-pressed to identify the political affiliations of anyone else on the commission on the basis of what they said. So it was thoroughly a nonpartisan effort that produced the report.

Herb Lin will speak at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 7 in the NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building Room B3. More information and live video information is available at http://ee380.stanford.edu. The title of the talk is “Charting a Cybersecurity Path for the Next Administration: Report of the President's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.” In February, President Obama announced a Cybersecurity National Action Plan to take a series of short-term and long-term actions to improve our nation’s cybersecurity posture.  A central feature of that plan is the non-partisan Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.

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Herbert Lin, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 497-8600, herbert.s.lin@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia, will join Stanford University as a visiting fellow in January.

Ilves, whose title will be the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow, is set to work at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He served as the fourth president of Estonia from 2006 to 2016. During his career, he has been a diplomat and journalist, and was the leader of Estonia’s Social Democratic Party in the 1990s.

Ilves’ tentative start date at CISAC is Jan. 9, and his appointment will run through June 30. Afterwards, the Hoover Institution will extend his appointment for another full year. During his time on campus, Ilves said he plans to delve deeply into the intersections between information technology and security policy, areas that have long fascinated him during his career.

“Stanford has long been a place I enjoy visiting as one of the few if only universities to have top minds from both realms,” Ilves wrote in an email interview, noting how many Stanford scholars are studying these types of issues. He has some big projects in mind.

“After spending the past quarter of a century on digitizing Estonia, a country also faced with daunting security challenges, I plan to write a book on the foundations of a functioning digital society,” he said.

Ilves added, “Much of what we have seen in the past decade – massive hacks, data theft, privacy violations – come from fundamental weaknesses in the haphazard way our digital world has developed, where security is primarily an afterthought and a patch.”

He said that a secure and functional digital society has to be based on both legally and technically sound foundations. “I have argued and written for years that it’s the analog, legal basis of our digital world that determines if we are technologically secure.”

Parallel to this topic, Ilves said his most recent speeches and articles have examined the “challenges of an increasingly fissiparous and nationalist Europe.”

Michael McFaul, the director of FSI, said that Ilves’ interest in FSI and CISAC is a reflection of their scholarly reputations around the world.

"As president of Estonia, Toomas Ilves emerged as a world leader on issues related to cyber security, e-governance, and liberal ideas more generally. His intellectual and policy agenda fits perfectly with what we do at FSI,” McFaul said.

He noted, “We are very lucky to have him as the first Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow.”

Ilves also served in the Estonian government as the minister of foreign affairs from 1996 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2002. In that position, he was in charge of European Union enlargement and NATO issues. Later, he was a member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2006.

Ilves believes the challenge for all small European countries, Estonia included, is to maintain a functioning European Union as well as a strong NATO, the primary treaty basis of trans-Atlantic relations. Many significant political and security issues exist on the Continent, he noted.

“With elections across Europe increasingly demonstrating a turn toward nationalism and populism, the EU and NATO currently face their greatest challenge since their founding. As a small country that has consistently supported the EU and NATO as a matter of national security, for Estonia, this is a question of national survival,” said Ilves.

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MEDIA CONTACT

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu