Former presidential adviser to speak at library
By Keith Loria, Special Writer
If you’re looking for someone who’s an expert on the history of the relationship between the United States and Russia, you won’t find anyone more qualified than Angela Stent.
Currently, Dr. Stent is director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and a professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University, but she is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-chairs its Hewett Forum on Post-Soviet Affairs.
More impressively, the scholar served as an adviser on Russia to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and from 2004 to 2006; and served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. From 1999 to 2001, Dr. Stent also served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State.
Dr. Stent will be the special guest of the Princeton Library and Princeton University Press in the library’s community room from 7-9 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 4, as part of the Thinking Allowed series.
Dr. Stent received her B.A. from Cambridge University, her MSc with distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.
”As an undergrad, I became very interested in Russian history and the Soviet Union and I took my first trip there,” Dr. Stent says. “I took a boat to Leningrad and visited Moscow and caught the bug. Since then I learned the language, went on to do my masters and Ph.D., and have remained fascinated by the subject, even when the Soviet Union collapsed.”
Her interest in foreign affairs came at an even younger age, as her family often spoke on the subject and Dr. Stent became very interested in politics and the world around her.
Over the years, she has written a number of books and papers about Russia and is considered the go-to source when people are interested in learning more.
”The wonderful thing about the American system, and I say that as someone who grew up in England and came here to do my graduate work, is that you can move between academia and government,” Dr. Stent says. “Even before I came to Washington, when I was a graduate student at Harvard, I started working for the State Department on a project they had. When I moved to D.C. and started working at Georgetown, I started working with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, so I’ve always had some connections with the government.”
In January, Dr. Stent’s latest book, “The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century,” was released, offering a unique perspective of an insider who is also recognized as a leading expert on this troubled relationship.
”The Limits of Partnership” calls for a fundamental reassessment of the principles and practices that drive U.S.-Russian relations, and offers a path forward to meet the urgent challenges facing both countries.
At the library event, the author will discuss and sign copies of her new book and offer her expert narrative on U.S.-Russian relations since the Soviet collapse and on the challenges ahead.
”What I’m going to do is talk about U.S.-Russian relations, but I will open it in the context of some of the immediate issues,” she says. “We have the Sochi Winter Olympics opening soon and a number of issues surrounding that.”
Other topics will include Syria, some of the events in the Ukraine, Edward Snowden and what has happened between the two countries since the 23 years that have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In her book, Dr. Stent, who still maintains close ties with key policymakers in both countries, argues that the same contentious issues— terrorism, missile defense, Iran, nuclear proliferation, Afghanistan, the former Soviet space, the greater Middle East — have been in every president’s inbox, Democrat and Republican alike, since the collapse of the USSR. She vividly describes how both Presidents Clinton and Bush sought inroads with Russia and staked much on their personal ties to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin—only to leave office with relations at a low point.
Furthermore, she talks about how President Obama managed to restore ties only to see them undermined by a Putin regime resentful of American dominance and determined to restore Russia’s great power status.
”I think anyone who is interested in U.S. foreign policy and international politics and read newspapers who deal with this, realize that U.S.-Russian relations have been on a rollercoaster since the Soviet collapse,” she says. “For someone who follows foreign policy in general, they may ask the question, ‘why has this been?’ and that’s the issue that I’ve sought to answer in the book.”