Responding to Putin’s Russia

Is Putin's Russia a threat to the United States? And is current U.S. policy towards Russia effective in defending U.S. interests? From Ukraine to Syria, Russia and the United States are at odds, tensions are rising, and experts and policymakers debate what to do about Russia while Russia seems to do what it wants.

On May 6, join the World Affairs Council and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for a discussion with Dr. Evelyn Farkas, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia and current Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, on what Russia wants and what policy options the United States has.

This event is part of the 2015-2016 Community Programs Russia and the Surrounding Region Series.

About our speaker:

Dr. Evelyn N. Farkas is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative, Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, and Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. She served from 2012 to 2015 as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, responsible for policy toward Russia, the Black Sea, Balkans, and Caucasus regions and conventional arms control. From 2010 to 2012 she served as Senior Advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe/Commander, US European Command, and as Special Advisor for the Secretary of Defense for the NATO Summit. Prior to that she was a Senior Fellow at the American Security Project, where she focused on stability and special operations, counterproliferation, and US-Asia policy. In 2008 to 2009, she served as Executive Director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which published the report World at Risk (Random House, 2008). From April 2001 to April 2008, she served as a Professional Staff Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Her issue areas included foreign and defense policy in Asia Pacific, Western Hemisphere, Special Operations Command (policy and budget oversight), foreign military assistance, peace and stability operations, the military effort to combat terrorism, counternarcotics programs, homeland defense, and export control policy.

From 1997 to 2001 Farkas was a professor of international relations at the US Marine Corps Command and Staff College. She served in Bosnia with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 1996 to 1997, and was an election observer in Afghanistan in 2009. She has published numerous journal articles and opinion pieces and Fractured States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, Ethiopia, and Bosnia in the 1990s (Palgrave/St. Martin’s Press, 2003, 2008). She speaks Hungarian and German; has studied French, Spanish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Hindi; and appears as a commentator on major television networks, including NBC, CNN, and Fox. Dr. Farkas obtained her MA and PhD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Aspen Institute Socrates Seminar advisory board.

The World Affairs Council is proud to partner with the the Henry M. Jackson Foundation on this event and our ongoing series on Russia and the surrounding regions.