International Relations | Council on Foreign Relations

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United States

Academic Webinar: U.S. Relations With South America

Brian Winter, vice president of policy at Americas Society and Council of the Americas and editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, leads the conversation on U.S. relations with South America. CASA: Welcome to today’s session of the Winter/Spring 2023 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I’m Maria Casa, director of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Thank you all for joining us. Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic, if you would like to share it with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Brian Winter with us to discuss U.S. relations with South America. Mr. Winter is the vice president of policy for the America Society and Council of the Americas and editor in chief of Americas Quarterly. An influential political analyst, he has followed South America for more than twenty years and has served as a correspondent for Reuters in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. Mr. Winter is the author of several books including Why Soccer Matters, a New York Times bestseller he wrote with the Brazilian soccer legend Pelé. He is a regular contributor to television and radio and host of the Americas Quarterly podcast. Welcome, Brian. Thank you very much for being with us. WINTER: Thank you, Maria. Thanks for the invitation. CASA: Can you begin with a general overview of current U.S. relations with South American countries? WINTER: I can try and actually, as a matter of fact, today is an extremely fortuitous day to be doing this and let me tell you why. A couple of weeks ago on February 10, Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, made a one-day trip to Washington. He met with President Biden while he was here. He brought his foreign minister with him as well as his chief foreign policy adviser, his finance minister, a couple other members of his Cabinet. One of the biggest sort of concrete results of this trip that Lula made up here was a U.S. donation to the Amazon Fund of $50 million. That is million with an M. Well, today, Lula leaves for China with about half of his Cabinet and a delegation of approximately two hundred and thirty leaders from Brazil’s private sector in what Brazilian media are calling the biggest foreign delegation ever to leave Brazil for another country. They will be in China for six days and there is a whole roster of deals on the table ranging from financing to infrastructure to education, environmental, and so on. So the point I’m trying to get across here is one of clear asymmetry and it really reflects kind of the new moment for U.S. relations with South America overall. As Maria mentioned, I started my career in the region as a reporter a little more than twenty years ago. I was in Argentina for four years. I was in Mexico for one year and Brazil for five, and in the course of that relatively short period of time we’ve seen kind of the power balance in how we think about Latin America but specifically South America. We’ve seen a significant change in how we think about that region. Back the early 2000s, certainly, during the 1990s, these were the final years of the so-called Washington Consensus, a period characterized by kind of the unipolar moment that came with the end of the Cold War, a certain consensus not only around democracy but around a certain set of liberalizing economic policies as well, and that ran its course. But really, it was around 2003 when everything started to change for a variety of reasons. The biggest one is the one that I’ve already referenced, which is the growth of China as a trading partner for the region. China had always had a presence in Latin America. In fact, for the magazine that I run, Americas Quarterly, we ran a piece two years ago about the Chinese presence in Mexico going all the way back to the 1600s when they operated barber shops and other sort of forms of commerce. But what’s happened over the last twenty years is really remarkable. In numbers, Chinese trade with Latin America and the Caribbean overall went from 18 billion (dollars) in 2002 to a stunning 450 billion (dollars) in 2021. China is now the largest trading partner for Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, and for South America as a whole if you take all those countries in the aggregate China now outranks the United States. When you look at Latin America, by the way, that includes Mexico. If you take that grouping then the U.S. is still the number-one trading partner but, again, that’s almost entirely because of that relationship—that trading relationship as a result of the former NAFTA and now USMCA. Along with that big growth in Chinese trade have come other changes. We’ve had a lot of talk in the U.S. media in recent days about the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq war. That was something—and I was living in Argentina at the time and you could really feel how that even then carried a cost for the U.S. reputation in some of these countries. I think that with the failure of the—the failures of the war over time I think that that only accentuated the view that—not only a long-standing view that the U.S. was an unwelcome, meddling, and in many cases imperialist presence but it also accelerated this narrative that the United States was in relative decline. More recent years we’ve seen kind of other things contribute to this diminished reputation of the United States and throughout many countries in the region—everything ranging from not just the election of Donald Trump, who, of course, was not popular in most of the region; but also specific decisions that were made by his government, such as the withdrawal from the TPP—the Trans-Pacific Partnership—that, of course, is the trade deal that was negotiated under the Obama administration that included several Latin American countries, including Chile and Peru—but also the weaponization of tariffs; and, you know, Trump’s repeated threats to even cut off Mexican imports. They did—those threats did have the effect of kind of forcing, first, President Peña Nieto in Mexico and then his successor, Andrés Manuel Lόpez Obrador, to cooperate with initiatives like management of migration policy. So in the short term, they, quote/unquote, “worked” but in the longer term it showed Mexico as well as other countries in the region that the U.S. was not a particularly reliable partner. Some of you may be listening to all this and thinking, well, this sounds like the viewpoints espoused by governments in the region that are leftist and have never really cared for the United States in the first place. But another interesting thing about this latest trend and the way that things have changed over the last ten years is that this desire to forge a middle path between China and the United States as their strategic competition escalates is shared by leaders across the ideological spectrum. South American countries in particular are not unlike the United States when it seems like virtually everything is polarized, and yet in this area and specifically the need—the perceived need to have closer relations with—I’m sorry, closer relations with China while maintaining a civil relationship but not siding too much with United States, some of the most enthusiastic proponents of that view in recent years have actually been governments on the center right and right such as Sebastián Piñera, the former president of Chile, Iván Duque, the former president of Colombia, Guillermo Lasso, the current president of Ecuador, who has worked extensively with China, and even Jair Bolsonaro, who was until recently the right-wing president of Brazil, ended up essentially going along with Beijing and allowing Huawei to participate in the recent auction of 5G mobile communications technology there. And so what we end up with as a result is a policy in many countries across the region that some are calling active nonalignment, the idea that governments in the region, regardless of their ideological stripe, need to seek an equidistant or middle path between Washington and Beijing, essentially taking advantage of their relative distance from not only potential conflicts between the U.S. and China but also looking at what’s happening in Ukraine right now and saying, look, we need to maintain our independence, not side too strongly with either of these emerging blocs, and see if we can benefit from this by selling our commodities to everybody, keeping in mind that these are economies, especially in South America, that rely extremely heavily on the sale of commodities exports to drive their economic growth. So, you know, in conclusion for these initial remarks that is a huge change in the course of a generation. We’ve gone in a little more than twenty years from this assumption that most Latin American countries are in the U.S. sphere of influence, to use a very outdated term, which I detest, that they were part of our, quote/unquote, “backyard” to an increasing realization in DC, and I think people are still getting their heads around that, that automatic support, automatic alignment, can no longer be expected whether it is in Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, and then on down into South America, which I know is our focus today, governments like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, another country where we’ve seen a lot of change on this front even in the last couple years and, again, not just because there’s a leftist president in Colombia now because his predecessor, who I’ve already mentioned, Iván Duque, was one of the main people pushing this change. So that’s a lot to digest. I’m happy to take any questions and hear from you. So thank you. CASA: Thanks, Brian, for that comprehensive introduction. Now let’s open it up to questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) Our first question is a written question and it comes from Andrea Cuervo Prados, who is an adjunct instructor at Dickinson State University, and asks, what is your perspective regarding the new leftist president of Colombia and U.S. relations? What is the risk that Colombia could turn into another Venezuela? WINTER: Right. It’s a good question. I think that we are still figuring out exactly what Gustavo—not only who Gustavo Petro is but what his ambitions are for both Colombia and for his relationships with the rest of the region and the rest of the world. There is some distance between what he has said he wants to do and what he may be able to do. This is a president who, you know, talks in these grand sweeping terms but ultimately has to get things through congress, and to just cite a result or an example of this that doesn’t directly have to do with Colombia’s foreign relationships, he said—he gave a very dramatic speech at the UN General Assembly last September in which he talked about the need to legalize narcotics across the board, including cocaine. But then—it was a speech that generated a lot of attention in capitals all over the world and all over the region. But then in ensuing weeks when he was pressed on this he didn’t really have a lot of detail and admitted that it was not something that Colombia could do unilaterally, which is all to say that, again, there’s this gap where I think it’s important to pay careful attention to the gap between the rhetoric and what’s actually possible with Petro. I don’t personally—you know, the question of could X country become another Venezuela it’s a question that people have been asking all over Latin America for the last ten years. I think—I understand why people ask it because what happened in Venezuela was so awful and dramatic, not only with the country becoming a full-fledged dictatorship that represses political opposition but also the humanitarian crisis that has forced some 7 million people or about a quarter of the country’s population to leave the country. But, look, Petro is Colombia’s first president on the left and I don’t think it necessarily follows that—in fact, I’m certain that it doesn’t follow that every person on the left wants to go down the path of Venezuela. So I suppose I’m a little more optimistic not only that Petro is a pragmatist in areas like the economy—for example, his finance minister is a quite pragmatic figure, a Columbia University professor who is well respected by markets—and I’m also somewhat optimistic about Colombian institutions and their ability to stand in the way of any truly radical change. CASA: Thank you. Our next question comes from Morton Holbrook, who is an adjunct professor at Kentucky Wesleyan College. Morton? Q: Hello. Yes, I’m here. Morton Holbrook, Kentucky Wesleyan College. University of Louisville also. Thanks for your really interesting comments, especially about China’s relationship with Latin and South America. Can I turn north a little bit to Russia? Considering particularly the Brazilian president’s upcoming visit to China do you think he might want to go to Russia, too? Bearing in mind that the International Criminal Court just issued an arrest warrant for President Putin, how might that affect Latin American relations with Russia? Do you think some of them might now have second thoughts about Russia or inviting Putin to visit their countries? Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela have all signed the ICC statute promising to cooperate in the carrying out of arrest warrants. Thank you. WINTER: That’s a great question and one that is—I can tell you is very front of mind for Brazilian officials and I think others around the region right now. I was just in Brazil two weeks ago working on our—our next issue of Americas Quarterly will be on Brazil’s foreign policy and what it means for the rest of Latin America. This is a question that’s very front and center. Brazil’s foreign minister did say in the last couple of days—he did explicitly almost word for word repeat what you just said, which is that Brazil is a signatory to that treaty. That would seem to eliminate any possibility of Vladimir Putin visiting Brazil. I’m not sure that that was really on his list of things to do anyway. But it was not only a practical signal but a diplomatic one as well. Lula’s position on Russia and the Ukraine war has been inconsistent. He said during his campaign last year that Zelensky and Putin bear equal responsibility for the conflict. My understanding is that after that statement, you know, nobody wants to contradict the boss openly and sometimes not even in private. My sense personally based on conversations with others in Brasilia is that at the very least his foreign policy team regretted that he made that statement. Brazil has, in other form, condemned the Russian invasion. Other governments including Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and others have done the same. However, these are countries that, like most of the Global South, are firmly opposed to any sanctions and so their position, again, ends up being I suppose you could call it nuanced. They believe it’s important in part because of their own experience as nations to condemn invasions of one country by another. I, personally, think that it’s fair to think of what Putin is doing is a kind of imperialist aggression, which these are countries that have certainly objected to that when it’s the U.S. over the last, you know, 200-plus years and so you would think that it would be in their DNA to do so in the Ukrainian case as well, and in fairness most of them have. I would just add that, you know, the Brazilian position, I think, though, gets influenced also by two other things. One is, again, this notion of nonalignment. Most people talk about nonalignment in Brazil and Argentina, in Chile and Colombia, and they think about the U.S.-China relationship, as I noted during my introductory remarks. But they also think of it as a helpful guide to thinking about the conflict, the war in Ukraine, as well for reasons that are not firmly rooted in morals or values, let’s say, but in interests as, you know, foreign policy often is. To say it in a different way, I had a conversation a couple of years ago with former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who I helped him write his memoir in English back in 2006. He was president during the 1990s, and in talking with him about the China question he said, we have to take advantage of our greatest strategic asset, which is that Brazil is far. (Laughs.) And to just unpack that a little bit, I think the meaning of that is clear to all of you. But these are countries that really see an opportunity right now just by virtue of their geographic distance from these conflict zones to avoid being dragged in and also to potentially, at some level, benefit from it through strategic superpower competition for their support as well as through higher prices for some of the commodities that they produce. There’s one added element in the case of Brazil, which is that Lula, I’m told by people close to him, sees himself as almost a Nelson Mandela-type figure. He’s back now for his third term in the presidency twenty years after he was president the first time. Of course, I’m sure people on this call know that he went through some real struggles in the intervening years including nearly two years in prison over—on corruption charges that were later thrown out and, you know, he may see his presidency as an opportunity to kind of write the last chapter or two in his biography, and there’s talk that he wants a Nobel Peace Prize and that he sees potentially helping negotiate a peace deal for the Ukraine war as the best opportunity to do that. I actually think that that idea, which is—tends to be dismissed in Washington as well as in European capitals, I personally think that idea is not as crazy as some people here in Washington think. But maybe I can go into that a little bit later if anybody wants. CASA: Thank you. Next, we have two written questions from the same university that we can take together. They’re from Marisa Perez and Trevor Collier, who are undergraduate students at Lewis University. They would like to know what world leaders such as the United States can do to prevent deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and how they can do so without compromising Brazil’s sovereignty. WINTER: Well, it’s a really great question, in part because it mentions an issue that Americans don’t often think about, which is precisely the sensitivity on the sovereignty issue. Brazil, and specifically not only Brazil’s military but Brazil’s foreign policy establishment, have a long-standing concern that is part of their doctrine, I suppose you could say, that is concerned always about the possibility of territorial loss and about foreigners gaining influence or, in some cases, even control over the Amazon. And I have to say, you know, this is another one of those ideas that I think—I wish we were all together in a room. This Zoom is kind of the next best thing. I could see your faces that way. But sometimes when I talk about this I see people kind of roll their eyes as if it was some sort of imagined conspiracy. But the truth is that as recently as 2019 when the—the first year of Jair Bolsonaro’s government when the fires in the Amazon really became a huge controversy, driven in large part by social media and tweets from people like Justin Bieber and Cher, who, to be clear, were, I think, justifiably and quite heroically shining light on what was happening there. In the midst of all that Emmanuel Macron actually proposed that perhaps some sort of international force in the Amazon was necessary, that that deployment of that would be a good idea if Brazil was not capable of taking care of the Amazon itself. That proposal was disastrous because it just reinforced this long-standing fear that so much of the establishment in Brazil has always had, and it’s true that Bolsonaro was on the right but you, certainly, in conversations, I think, with people across the ideological spectrum this is something that people think about. So OK. So back to the original question, how can the U.S. help. Well, the U.S. could help by providing both logistical and financial resources beyond the $50 million, which is, you know, the equivalent of about seven seconds of what we’re spending in terms of supporting Ukraine right now. I don’t know—Norway is the biggest sponsor of the Amazon Fund. I don’t have that number in front of me but I think that their contribution is upwards of at least a billion dollars, probably more. Ultimately, though, I do believe that the Amazon is a local challenge and I know that can be unsatisfying to hear in forums like this where we’re sort of designed—you know, this is a CFR event. We’re supposed to be thinking of ways that the international community can get involved. But it’s going to be a big challenge. The good news is that Brazil has shown that it is capable of getting its hands around this problem before. During Lula’s first terms in office from 2003 to 2010 his government was able to reduce the level of deforestation by upwards of 75 percent. It was a very dramatic difference in a very short period of time. This was done through a variety of means, both things like satellite monitoring and new technology that let the authorities follow this in real time. They were also able to step up environmental enforcement agencies like IBAMA, whose inspectors are necessary. It’s necessary to have them on the ground in order to, you know, stop—actually stop illegal loggers from setting the fires that are the main driver of deforestation. They were also able to build political consensus around the need to reduce deforestation during those years. I don’t think it’s going to be—in fact, I’m certain it will not be as “easy,” quote/unquote, this time around. A lot has changed. The upwards of 60 percent increase that we saw in deforestation during the Bolsonaro years had the support, unfortunately, in my view, of local populations who believe essentially that slashing and burning will lead their day-to-day economic lives to improve. In the election that happened in October where Lula won and Bolsonaro lost but by a very small margin—the closest margin in Brazil’s modern democratic history—the strongest support nationally for Bolsonaro was in areas that have seen the most illegal deforestation over the last four years and what that tells you is that, again, these are local populations that believe that this will lead to greater wealth and greater well-being for all of them, this being deforestation. So that’s a big challenge for Lula with a—you know, at a time when resources are fairly scarce. It’s not like it was during his first presidency when all of this increase in Chinese trade was really boosting the amount of money in Brazil’s coffers. So he’s going to have to figure out a way to dedicate financial resources as well as convince local populations that this is in their interest to do it. It’s not going to be an easy road. CASA: Our next question comes from Mike Nelson, an affiliate adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Mike? Q: Thank you very much for an outstanding overview of what’s going on in U.S. relations to South America. I study international technology policy and data governance but my question is about corruption. You mentioned corruption in Brazil but it’s a problem throughout South America, and my three-part question, is it getting worse or better; are there any countries who have really done the right thing and have taken serious measures to address it; and how can the internet and some of the technologies for citizen journalism help expose corruption and make leaders less likely to dip into the public fund? WINTER: OK. Yeah. No, great questions, and reflective of if you look at opinion polling and remember that these are countries that many of them have been dealing with rising crime, rising homicide levels, economic stagnation, the pandemic, which hit Latin America by many measures harder than in any other region in the world at one point—I haven’t seen updated numbers on this but it was fairly consistently throughout the pandemic Latin America, which is about 8 percent of the world’s population, was accounting for about 30 percent of the world’s confirmed COVID deaths. Anyway, amid all of that, and the economic stagnation that has been such a problem over the last ten years, in a lot of countries and in public opinion surveys, the thing that people identified as the number-one problem in their country is corruption. That was not always true. If you look back at public polling twenty years ago, people tended to identify kind of more, what’s the word, basic needs—think, like, unemployment, hunger, misery, which often is kind of asked as a separate—that’s one of the boxes you can check. Twenty years ago, those were the issues. And as the region became more middle class, especially in the 2000s because of this China-driven economic growth that described during my introduction, a lot of people were able to move beyond their basic needs and focus on essentially what was happening to the money that they paid in taxes, keeping in mind that many people were paying taxes for the first time. Some of it surely was also driven by these things, as you mentioned, mobile phones that not only things like videos of people carrying suitcases of cash, but also the attention that was given to big corruption scandals. Previously in a lot of countries, governments were able to make pacts with newspapers and TV channels, and kind of tamp things down a little bit, and lower the temperature. In an era of Facebook and Twitter, that was no longer as easy for them to do. All of this culminated in several corruption scandals at once in the mid-2010s, the most emblematic of which was the so-called Lava Jato, or car wash, scandal, which originated in Brazil, but eventually had franchises, if you will, in almost a dozen countries throughout Latin America and the world. That story is complicated. Politicians all over the region went to jail. Business leaders did too. Lula was one of them. That was the case that put him in jail. In intervening years, we’ve discovered that there were abuses and procedural violations, both things on behalf of the prosecutors and the judge involved, who the Brazilian Supreme Court decided, I think in 2021, they ruled—maybe it was earlier than that—that the judge overseeing Lula’s conviction had not been—or, rather, it’s easier to say—had been partial in his rulings. And so that’s left us in a place today where populations are still angry about corruption, as I mentioned, but it is no longer driving conversation in most countries, like it did before. I still believe—and you can probably tell, this is something I’ve thought about a lot over the years and continue to watch. The first question you asked, in some ways, is the most important one. Is corruption getting worse or better? It’s impossible to know for sure. My hypothesis is actually corruption is about the same, and may in fact be getting better, which flies in the face of all of these headlines that we’ve seen. But to me, the operative question over these last ten years or so has been, you know, not why—I’ve heard people say, well, why are these—why are these countries so corrupt? And to me, the real question is, why are we suddenly seeing these cases of corruption? Because I think it speaks to not only the technological changes that I referenced, but also the improvement—(audio break)—these are countries many of which transitioned from dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s and early 1990s. And therefore, it really took a generation for independent prosecutors to show up, to have the training and political support that they needed to go after some very powerful people. So, in sum, I am a believer in the story of rule of law improving in many countries in Latin America. I would recognize, again, that it’s a very complex story, in part because of some of the problems around not just Lava Jato but in other countries, such as Peru and Guatemala. But progress is rarely linear. (Laughs.) And I still think that this is something that is likely to get better with time. CASA: Our next question is a written one from Mary Beth Altier at New York University. She asks: What role do you think misinformation and disinformation play in citizens’ perceptions of the U.S. versus China and Russia in Latin America? What could the U.S. do better from a strategic communications perspective, if anything? And then—I can repeat this other question later, which is kind of a follow up. So you think— WINTER: Yeah, maybe. Well, that first one—that first one is worthy of a book. All of these are—these are great questions. They’re difficult to answer in pithy fashion in three minutes. I am continually impressed by the quality of Russian propaganda in Latin America. Those guys are really good. You look at RT en Español—(changes pronunciation)—RT en Español—it has one of the biggest social media followings of any “media company,” quote/unquote, in the region. Even people who I know are—who I know to not be pro-Russia, let’s put it that way, I see sharing content and videos from RT, which, of course, is just as pure a propaganda arm as you can get of the Russian government. But also, you know, have a whole network of sites that are more subtle and that push very sophisticated and sometimes, you know, not particularly obvious narratives that are designed to undermine the United States or promote the views of China and Russia. I would recognize at the same time that—I referenced this during my introduction remarks, sometimes the United States does not need any help with it comes to undermining its reputation in the region. I mentioned some of the, quote/unquote “own goals” that we’ve seen over the last five to ten, even twenty years, going all the way back to the Iraq War. As far as actively pushing back, all I can say is this: You know, I think that they’re—on the one hand, I think there are concrete steps that are being used. We’re still trying to get our heads around this problem to fight misinformation. But I was just in a different forum this morning where I was asked, what—how can the U.S. help the cause of democracy in Latin America. And my answer to that is that the best thing the United States can do to help democracy in Latin America is to get its own house in order, to move past the polarization, the misinformation, and the scorched earth politics that have put our own democracy at risk over the last several years, and try to, you know, recapture some of the consensus, at least around basic democratic rules of the game and how we hold elections that characterized most of the previous two-hundred-plus years of our history. Because I do think that while—you know, look, I lived ten years in Latin America. I know that people roll their eyes at the notion of the United States as being kind of the shining city on the hill. And I understand why. And that was always true, in part because of the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America often showing, you know, some of our worst behaviors. On the other hand, as a Brazil specialist, I’ve seen how some of the tactics and even some of the same people that were behind our own democratic decay of the last five years, some of those same tactics were repackaged and exported to open arms in Brazil. So I do think that it makes a difference on the ground in places like Brazil, potentially, and other countries as well, when a strong democratic example is being set in the United States. And I think that’s the most powerful thing we can do. Some of the other stuff, like what’s happening on RT and Telesur and some of these other outlets is relatively outside our control. CASA: We have a complementary question from— WINTER: There was a second part of that question. CASA: Oh, no, you did end up answering, I think, what could the U.S. do better from a strategic communications perspective. I think you kind of covered that. We have another question from Gursimran Padda, a student at Stony Brook University, who asks: Does China’s strategy of gaining influence in Latin America differ from its tactics in Africa? And if so, why? WINTER: Gosh, all these great questions. China—I have to start from the beginning. I am not an African specialist. But I can tell you kind of the narrative of what happened in Africa through Latin American eyes, if that makes any sense, because this is a conversation I’ve had a lot over the years. The perception is that China went into some of these countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and engaged in infrastructure projects and other things that had abusive terms. In many cases, China imported its own labor to do some of these projects. They also engaged in some predatory lending practices. And that was all—essentially the takeaway from actions like that in places like Buenos Aires, Bogota, certainly Brasilia, was that the Chinese would not be allowed to come and engage in those same behaviors in Latin America. And I think, in practice, it seems that the Chinese have realized that. There have been examples, such as the construction of a dam in Ecuador, where the terms ended up being perceived as something of a debt trap. But my sense—again, and this is not so much my sense; it’s repeating what I’ve heard in numerous conversations about this subject with leaders across the ideological spectrum and throughout the region—is that they understand the risks involved in working with China, in part because of the experience throughout parts of sub-Saharan Africa. And they’re determined to not let those things happen in their home countries. You know, I know that that’s a view that, in places like where I am today—I’m on in the road in Washington, participated in this other conference this morning. That’s why my Zoom background is not quite as put together as it sometimes is, by the way. I know people roll their eyes at that notion here, and are constantly warning—you know, kind of wagging their finger a little bit at governments throughout South America, and saying that they need to be eyes wide open about the risks of engagement with the Chinese. The problem is that here in the U.S., I think they’re underestimating, in some cases, the sophistication of foreign ministries and trade ministries in places like Peru and Chile when they make those comments. Which is to say, I think that there’s something both visually and in terms of the context a bit paternalistic about it, that everybody picks up on and tends to make people in the region justifiably crazy. (Laughs.) And then, the other part is that the U.S. is not really offering much in the way of alternatives. We’re at a pretty unique moment in the history of the United States right now where we have both parties—the Republican and Democratic Parties—are pretty much closed to the idea of new free trade deals. That, in my lifetime, has never happened before. I mentioned the fact that Trump dropped out of TPP. Well, Joe Biden has not picked that back up. I think there are domestic political reasons that explain that, but what it means in practice for our relationships with governments in Latin America is that Washington doesn’t have a whole lot to offer. Because, unlike the Chinese, we can’t just order our companies to go invest someplace. That’s not how our economy works. It is very much how the Chinese economy works, where they can decide to make these decisions. They are not necessarily for a short-term economic payoff, but for medium-term reasons, or even decisions that have very little to do with dollars and cents or ROI, return on investment, and everything to do with geopolitics. So wanting to have beachheads in terms of, say, ports in places like El Salvador. So, you know, again, without that—without trade and without that ability to kind of dictate investment, there’s not a lot that’s left in Washington’s toolkit for counteracting this kind of influence. CASA: Our next question comes from Daniel Izquierdo, an undergraduate student at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Daniel. Q: Good afternoon, sir, ma’am. Thank you for taking the time. I just had a quick question on the increasing tensions between China and the U.S., and how that will kind of develop itself in Latin and South America. So given the strategic interests of Latin and South America, and the persistent political unrest, along with increasing tensions between China and the U.S., what do you believe the likelihood to be of proxy conflicts or foreign meddling, similar to what occurred during the Cold War, occurring in the region? And if not, how do you foresee the U.S. and China competing for influence in the region? WINTER: So another very good question. Thank you for that. Look, I think some of this ground we’ve covered already, but I would say that, you know, you’re the first to mention—I had not previously mentioned this idea of a new cold war. And this—you know, this is another reason why so many countries across the ideological spectrum are opting for this policy of nonalignment. Essentially because they believe that the first Cold War went badly, very badly, for Latin America. It resulted in all kinds of traumas, from the wars in Central America during the 1980s to U.S. support for coups in places like Chile, to, you know, Cuban meddling in places like Bolivia and elsewhere around the region during those years, which led to the rise of guerrilla movements like the FARC, that ended up killing very high numbers of people. And so essentially, you know, not to be glib about it, but the reaction that today’s generation has is: We want no part of this. Because it didn’t go well for us the first time. I think there are obvious differences between a conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union back in the 1950s and 1960s, and this strategic competition between Washington and Beijing, that thankfully has not quite reached those heights, at least not yet, here in the twenty-first century. But I have to tell you, and again this is based on conversations I’m having all the time, the fear is real. The perception is that the world may be headed back to that kind of conflict, being driven not only by what’s happening in the Ukraine but the increasing speculation of potential war over Taiwan. So this, again, as far as—as far as how it could play out in practice, I think it’s still early. I think it remains to be seen. Right now there is—you know, there are clear cases where I think the Chinese are, as I alluded to in my previous answer, making investments not for economic reasons but for strategic ones, with a long-term horizon I mind. Things like the, quote/unquote, “space base” that they’ve established in Argentina, which really is deserving of the full air quotes when we say the phrase “space base.” I think everyone senses that—you know, that that conflict—or, that competition, if you will, is likely to define the next twenty to thirty years. And I think there’s a determination in most countries, it makes a lot of sense to me personally, that they don’t want their countries used again as a chessboard amid that larger conflict. CASA: Our next question comes from Damien Odunze. He’s assistant professor at Delta State University who writes: Ideas in the long run change the world. Do you think a closer educational collaboration between U.S. universities and those in Latin and South America could help shape and strengthen liberal democratic values in those countries? WINTER: What an interesting question. Look, let me talk first about kind of the—that equation today. There’s already quite a lot of connectivity, especially at the—at, you know, not a word I love to use, but at the elite level, the elites in government and business and U.S. education systems. Which is an unnecessarily wordy way of saying that a large percentage of people in South America come from the elite classes and get educated at universities and sometimes even at high schools in the United States. That is one reason why, again, many of these governments are likely to at least forge a middle path between China and the United States, rather than going full-fledged in the direction of China. I think there’s a cultural affinity, family ties, cultural ties, educational ties, and other things that are probably kind of the strongest connection that the U.S. has with a lot of these countries right now. As to whether a strengthening of those educational ties would improve dedication and the strength of democracy, whew. It could, but I watched with dismay as poll after poll suggests that younger generations, not just in the United States but across the Western world, are less committed in theory to both democracy and democratic institutions than their predecessors. And so I wonder just—I don’t have an answer to this—but I wonder if even, quote/unquote, “even” within the United States, if we’re properly instilling an appreciation for democracy in today’s generations, which then raises the question of whether we’d be able to do so amongst the youth of other countries as well. I’m not sure. I think this is another area where, you know, in the U.S. we have some work to do at home before we start thinking about what’s possible in other countries. CASA: Our next question comes from Mary Meyer McAleese, who is a professor of political science at Eckerd College in Florida. Mary. Q: Yes. Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity. I have, well, two questions. I hope they’re quick. The first one is, what do you think the effect will be on Latin America or South America with regard to the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank? I read that a lot of Latin American businesses have had investments in that bank, so I wonder if you could say a bit more about the banking situation and the longer-term effects there. And also, gender violence, of course, is a horrible problem all around the world, but especially in Latin and South America. What do you think the United States and the Americas Society could do to support groups in the region that are fighting against gender violence? Thank you. WINTER: Well, thank you for both questions. Both very good questions. There’s been a lot of talk about SVB and possible effects in Latin America. What I’ve heard from people who are far more knowledgeable about the financial—excuse me—the financial system than I am, is that as long as it does not spread and become a more systemic risk, it should not pose much of an issue for Latin America. In part because—and this is another area where just like—where we were talking about the courts having, I think, been engaged in a thirty-year long process of improvement—I think the same can be said of banking and financial systems around most of Latin America. My first job was covering the financial crisis that Argentina went through back in 2001 and 2002. Which, for the uninitiated, that saw five presidents in two weeks, a freeze of bank deposits, and a 70 percent devaluation of the currency. It was quite a traumatic thing to be a part of. And during those years, we saw similar—well, not quite as bad—but at least thematically similar crises in Brazil, Colombia, and elsewhere, following other crises in the 1990s. Which is all to say, Latin America has been curiously quiet this time around in terms of financial contagion. The economies aren’t doing well, for the most part, but at least we’re not talking about a financial meltdown. And that is because of lessons learned. These are banking systems that now have stricter capital requirements than they did in the past. And the macroeconomic fundamentals, generally speaking, are better than they were twenty years ago. Argentina, of course, is kind of in trouble again with an inflation rate that just passed 100 percent. And that’s terrible. But again, the depth—(laughs)—everything’s relative. And the depth of just financial devastation is, thankfully, nothing compared to what it was when I was there twenty-plus years ago. So, you know, we’ll see. If the bank run spreads and we start seeing other banks come in trouble here in the U.S., then my sense is that, with the whole Credit Suisse thing, and we’re not out of the woods yet. But if it stays more or less contained, then the consensus, at least so far, is that Latin America should be fine. Your question about femicide is an excellent one. It has driven the political discussion in Brazil in recent years. It’s something that President Lula has spoken movingly about. It has also been, on the other end in Mexico, the feminist movement that has had femicides as one of the main areas of concern, has been one of the most effective opposition groups to President López Obrador, who has often been, sadly in my view, dismissive of the seriousness of that problem. As far as what the United States can do to help, or even what my own organization can do, I think that in a lot of cases these are—you know, like a lot of problems—there are things that the international community can do to help. And certainly, I see things from a journalist’s perspective, even though I’m more analyst than journalist these days. I think that shining light on these problems, using vehicles like—platforms like Americas Quarterly, which is the small publication about Latin American politics that I run, that’s, you know, my own insufficient contribution to looking at his problem. But it’s certainly one—I mean, we look at the numbers in places like Brazil. I don’t have those numbers on my fingertips, but it is just an incredibly serious problem, and one that deserves more attention. CASA: Thank you, Brian. We have so many other questions. I’m really sorry, though, we have to cut off now. We’re at the hour. But this has been a very interesting discussion. And you’ve covered an enormous amount of ground. Thank you to all of you participating for your great questions. I hope you will follow Brian on Twitter at @BrazilBrian. The next Academic Webinar will take place on Wednesday, March 29, at 1:00 Eastern Time. Renee Hobbs, professor of communication studies at the University of Rhode Island, will lead a conversation on media literacy and propaganda. In the meantime, I encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/Careers. Follow at @CFR_Academic on Twitter and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Thank you, again, for joining us today, and we look forward to you tuning in again for our webinar on March 29. Bye. WINTER: Bye. Thank you. (END)

Webinar by Brian Winter March 22, 2023 Academic and Higher Education Webinars

Experts in this Keyword

Richard Haass

President, Council on Foreign Relations

Charles A. Kupchan

Senior Fellow

Sheila A. Smith

John E. Merow Senior Fellow for Asia-Pacific Studies

United States

Higher Education Webinar: Disability Inclusion on Campus and in International Affairs

Ashley Holben, interim manager and project specialist with the National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange and executive specialist to the chief executive officer at Mobility International USA, leads the conversation on disability inclusion on campus and in international affairs. FASKIANOS: Welcome to CFR’s Higher Education Webinar Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today’s discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic if you’d like to share it with your colleagues. You can enable the closed captioning by clicking on the icon on your laptop or on your iPad in the “More” button. If you click on that you can show captions. So I encourage you to do that. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Ashley Holben with us today to discuss disability inclusion on campus and in international affairs. Ms. Holben is interim manager and project specialist with the National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange, and executive specialist to the CEO at Mobility International USA. In these roles, she develops initiatives and resources to increase participation and inclusion of students with disabilities in international exchange. So, Ashley, thanks very much for being with us. Let’s just get right to it. If you could discuss and share with us the importance of disability inclusion in higher education institutions and international affairs, and share what you have found to be some of the best practices to do so on college campuses. HOLBEN: Certainly. Well, thank you so much, Irina, and thanks so much to the entire CFR team for putting this topic on the agenda of this webinar series. It’s such a fantastic opportunity to discuss an often misunderstood topic but a very prominent community, which is people with disabilities in higher education. And so really appreciate all of those who are joining today to tune in, and welcome. And, you know, the CFR team shared with me the roster of folks who were planning to attend and one thing that really stood out to me is kind of the really wide breadth of expertise and departments represented and positions represented. So it’s really encouraging to see so many different types of leadership wanting to discuss this further and wanting to share practices. So I’m looking forward to doing that today and I really hope to hear from some of those who are tuning in with your expertise and observations and activities as well, and I am delighted to share some—just observations of my own in this role at the National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange (NCDE). As Irina said, this is a project that’s housed at Mobility International USA since 1995. But we’re sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, really, in order to promote the participation of people with disabilities in international exchange between the U.S. and other countries, and that is to say kind of to the end we provide tips and strategies for people with disabilities and international program staff on how to prepare for an inclusive international exchange. So, before I kind of dive in, I just wanted to define these terms a little bit because it’s not always clear what we mean by international exchange. But, basically, we’re talking about everything from study abroad, teach abroad, volunteering, research, professional visitor exchanges. Also, cultural like arts, sports programs. So try to picture a U.S. college student going abroad for a semester or an international student coming to the U.S., a Peace Corps volunteer, Fulbright scholars, and so on. And we’re—the genesis of this project is really because people with disabilities are taking advantage of these same opportunities as nondisabled people in order to advance their educational/career goals, their personal goals. And that kind of brings me to kind of another definition—a loose definition—that people often wonder, well, what do you mean by people with disabilities, and by that that includes people with physical or mobility disabilities, sensory disabilities, chronic health conditions, intellectual or developmental disabilities. That includes mental health disabilities, neurodiversity learning disabilities. And then keep in mind that disabilities can be apparent or nonapparent. And then also somebody’s disability might be apparent certain times and not others—for example, if they use assistive devices on some days but don’t need them on other days. So one topic that I really—is close to our hearts in our world is this theme of disability as diversity, and I saw on the roster—I was really excited to see that there were some folks who registered who are, for example, the director of diversity and inclusion, DEI specialists, and so on, and it’s so encouraging to see that higher education is really embracing this diversity, equity, and inclusion, implementing DEI strategies kind of throughout all areas of higher ed. And so, with this in mind it’s really vital to recognize that disability is part of diversity and not separate from it. Too often folks want to separate the two. Or, disability is an aspect of diversity that can get overlooked in diversity initiatives, we find, too often. So that inclusion of people with disabilities is really fundamental to be able to—and acting on that commitment to diversity at the institutional level. And then, for many, disability is an important facet of their identity, connecting someone to a larger disability community—for instance, disability pride, disability culture, history, and more. So it’s really important to keep that in mind in any discussion related to DEI. And just as important, many people with disabilities have identities in addition to their disability identity. So, for example, a person with a disability can also be a person of color, a first-generation college student, LGBTQ, an immigrant. And so one thing that we find often when we’re talking to people with disabilities about their experience is, there was so much focus on my disability that we completely forgot—(laughs)—to talk about these other aspects of myself that are important to me. So I think that’s definitely a good lesson. If anyone out there is more interested in this topic of disability intersectionality, I want to just kind of do a little plug for a publication that I’m really excited about that we put forth last year on Intersections Abroad, which I’m holding up to the screen. I think it might be blurred out, unfortunately, but—(laughs)—oh, here we go. FASKIANOS: It’s a little blurry but we’ll— HOLBEN: It’s a little blurry. FASKIANOS: (Inaudible)—anyway. HOLBEN: But it’s Intersections Abroad: “Travelers with disabilities explore identity and diversity through a lens of international exchange.” So it’s a series of travelers’ stories, interviews with people with different types of disabilities including people who are blind or have chronic health conditions or who are on the autism spectrum but who also want to describe what their study abroad experiences in different countries was like as a person of color or as someone with a religious identity or someone who brings all these unique experiences to their international exchange experience itself. For those of you who—I know we have a lot of different folks joining the call. On the higher education campus, people with disabilities not only includes students but also faculty, staff, administrators, campus leaders, visitors, and institutions often have dedicated staff or offices to support individual level disability accommodations and also to promote disability access more broadly across campus. So I noticed some folks who registered for this event come from, for example, Office of Student Accessibility, Office of Disability Services, Office of Student Support and Success. We had—I saw an access and accommodations coordinator, an ADA compliance coordinator. So these are all some examples of the types of folks who are working to help promote access at the—in higher education. You can also find counseling centers, tutoring centers. There are a growing number of campuses that are providing services tailored for students on the autism spectrum and also those that are tailored for students with intellectual disabilities, which is really interesting. And if you want to learn more about that I encourage you to check out the organization Think College. But in addition to campus accessibility and disability support services you’re going to find other entities that help promote disability community, disability history, disability rights, representation and visibility. For example, student groups led by and for students with disabilities. I saw one of the registrants—there were a couple of registrants on this event who are representing the Harvard Law School Project on Disability to, as they describe, use their learning in comparative and international law to advance understanding regarding disability law, policy, and education around the world. So it’s really exciting to see just kind of all the different ways in which higher education can support and promote disability access and inclusion in different ways in representation. Another topic that we are really passionate about at the NCDE is disability-inclusive campus internationalization, especially when it comes to the international exchange aspect of internationalization. So take education abroad, for instance. For the most part, I think a huge bulk of our resources relate to students—college students with disabilities who study abroad. That’s a big chunk of our resources, and we get a lot of questions about that from international exchange administrators and international study abroad advisors and coordinators about how can we provide some support to these students who want to study abroad who might have some specific disability-related accommodations they might need abroad, or everything from how can we attract students with disabilities to participate in our programs, and so on. So you’re going to find a lot of those types of resources in our library. But, education abroad that can also encompass faculty with disabilities leading trips abroad, and it’s really exciting to be able to connect with some faculty with disabilities who can share some of their stories with us about arranging these types of exchange programs. And the programs that they’re leading may or may not have a disability theme, depending on what their scholarly background is. However, I’ve observed that some education abroad curricula does include disability-related themes. So one example is at California State University in Northridge. One of their faculty led an exchange program called “Black Deaf Activism: Culture and Education in South Africa,” bringing together a lot of students from their campus who identify either as deaf, as Black, or both, and more. So that was really exciting to follow their journey through South Africa, again, with those different lenses. And then, of course, people with disabilities working in the international exchange field—in the international education field as advisors, administrators, and more, and that’s always something that we get really excited about at the Clearinghouse. We kind of proselytize a little bit to people with disabilities about, oh, have you thought about entering a career in international education so that we can see more disability representation and leadership within that field. A lot of students with disabilities are—and without disabilities are kind of blown away in a good way to see some of that disability representation in the kind of leadership level of that field and so that’s something that we try to encourage in some different ways that I’ll get to a little later. And then on the flip side of education abroad we also want to see disability-inclusive campus internationalization in the form of international student recruitment, so welcoming international students and scholars with disabilities to U.S. higher education, and that comprises another large segment of the resources housed at NCDE. So for those of you who advise international students and scholars on your campus or who are connected to the recruiting side to bring students with disabilities to the U.S., or bring international students to us, ESL offices and instructors. We want to work with them to make sure that they’re aware of the international students with disabilities. These are fantastic opportunities for them, too, and but they also might have some different cultural expectations related to disability. They might be used to a different type of system of accessibility and accommodations or a lack thereof. And, most recently we’ve talked to a lot of international students who are expressing an interest in connecting with other students with disabilities during their stay in the U.S., whether it’s other American students or other international students with disabilities. And so one thing that we’re excited to do in the near future is think of some ways that maybe we can help facilitate these types of connections on kind of a peer-mentor type model. Another focus of campus internationalization can be offering coursework on international disability rights. One prominent example in my mind is the University of Oregon’s “Global Perspectives on Disability” course because it’s co-taught by MIUSA’s own CEO, Susan Sygall, who is a woman with a disability, and what’s interesting is that that course is cross listed on campus with international studies, special education, and disability studies. So, you know, disability is such a cross-cutting issue. There’s really no topic or department or educational focus that doesn’t—that can’t touch upon disability, inclusion, and access. And so the “Global Perspectives on Disability” course at the U of O is one that’s been running for several years and it’s fantastic. We’re able to bring some guest presenters who are often disabled women leaders from countries around the world to share about their experiences in disability rights, disability policy, movement building, and so on. And then, one last example I’ll share, but not to say the last one, is access to foreign language learning and ESL and really ensuring that, you know, those are so vital to promoting campus internationalization and often they’re linked to these international exchange experiences, education abroad, and so on. But, sometimes we hear from people with disabilities that they were discouraged from taking a foreign language class because of assumptions about what they’re able to do. So, for example, like a person who is deaf, there might be some assumptions that they can’t participate in a foreign language class. And so, we would really promote any person with a disability to see if learning a foreign language is something that would help further their goals, personal, career wise, or otherwise. And so, I do want to hear your—all of your questions and your—not just questions but also just sharing from your experiences. But before we do that, I do want to just say a little bit about NCDE resources so that you’re aware of what we have in our library. That is to say they all touch on this crossover of disability inclusion in international exchange and include everything from tips for recruiting people with disabilities in international exchange programs, disability-specific tips for international travel. So, if your wheelchair gets broken when you’re abroad, what might you do? Or, what are some different types of accommodations that a blind student might use or someone with dyslexia might use? Best practices from various U.S. higher education institutions. And I think that’s going to really appeal to the folks who are on this webinar today. We have—just like we’ve been able to interview international exchange alumni, students who’ve come back from their experiences abroad, and others, we’ve also really relied on higher ed professionals to share their best practices with us because, really, our resource is a compendium of expertise from the field. And so I would really encourage anyone here who maybe they have a best practice to share from their own campus that they’re working on and we would love to be able to add that as a resource to be able to share with our broader community. So if that’s of interest please get in touch. We also offer sample disability accommodation forms and questionnaires, which is really handy for those out there who are wanting to start a conversation around disability access but maybe don’t know the—don’t have the vocabulary or don’t have the language. These are kind of helpful guides that can help you take those next steps. And then, finally, one thing that I am really excited to share because this is a new—relatively new initiative on our part is we’ve started hosting an access to exchange externship for—and this is a resource you can share with your students—this is for students with disabilities, recent graduates and others, who want to use their experiences to further the mission to promote disability inclusion in international exchange. So they’re tasked with coming up with some kind of either a webinar or event or a country guide, some kind of resource that can help further this mission. And so some of them have created resources for peers like prospective study abroad students with disabilities or for the folks who are working in the international education field so that they can be more cognizant of—you know, from a disabled person’s point of view what are the supports needed or what can they be doing. And then our seminar—access to exchange seminar is for people with disabilities who have not had any international exchange experiences and, you know, or maybe it’s a little intimidating to take that first step, and so our seminar is really just trying to break it down and make it feel a little bit more comfortable to ask questions and help try to just instill some confidence in future international exchange participants with disabilities. So, well, let me stop there for the time being and let me put it to all of you. What I’d like to know is, given, again, just this very—all of the different types of departments and expertise that you’re all bringing with you today what are some of your own experiences, observations, activities, around disability inclusion on your campus and in international affairs. So I’d really like to hear from you all and I wonder if anyone would like to start. FASKIANOS: Great. Great. Thank you, Ashley. This is terrific and, yes, we want to go to everybody on the call. You can click the raised hand icon on your screen to ask a question, and on an iPad or tablet click the more button to access the raised hand feature, and when I call on you, you can accept the unmute prompt. Please state your name and affiliation followed by your question. You can also write your question in the Q&A box. If you do that, please say who you are. And we do have our first written question from Pearl Robinson, who is an associate professor at Tufts University: Does the Peace Corps offer opportunities for people with disabilities? HOLBEN: Thank you for that question. Oh, I’m so glad you asked. Absolutely. The Peace Corps encourages people with disabilities to participate in—as volunteers and, indeed, we have seen so many returned Peace Corps volunteers with disabilities come back and share their experiences. I think I referred earlier to a person who was discouraged from learning a language because she’s deaf, and she often shares, she really pushed back against that, insisted she wants to learn French and one of the happy results of her advocating for herself to be able to pursue French despite being discouraged from doing so is it enabled her to be able to serve in the Peace Corps in Francophone Cameroon, which was a life-changing event for her. And, actually, I know that there is an upcoming webinar that’s going to be hosted by a Peace Corps staff on volunteers with disabilities that will feature a number of returned Peace Corps volunteers. And so if that—I think that is coming up pretty soon. So I’ll share that information with Pearl individually or unless other people are interested I can share with you, Irina. But also the Peace Corps also has opportunities for shorter-term programs for folks with unique expertise and who have a specific area of specialized focus. And so we recently interviewed someone who took part in that program—it’s called Peace Corps Response—which worked out really well for her because she has some chronic health conditions and mobility disabilities that made that format work quite well for her. But, yes, we have lots of returned Peace Corps stories on our website about people with different types of disabilities who served and it’s really fun to read their stories and just really eye-opening as well. FASKIANOS: Great. So we have another question from Deena Mansour with the Mansfield Center: We’ve appreciated using some of your resources on our State Department exchanges. Could you speak to some of the most important ways you prepared others in a cohort, a predeparture orientation to support a colleague with disabilities, given that many countries have less—far less exposure and support than we have had in the U.S.? HOLBEN: Mmm hmm. Yeah. I would say—and that’s fantastic that you’re working with—being able to implement State Department exchanges as well. We’re really excited by any time we can provide resources related to, for instance, the Global UGRAD program or the Mandela Fellowship or Fulbright, whatever it might be. And then, as for predeparture orientations, this has been a topic that we’ve explored both in terms of international students coming to the U.S., which we just kind of put—created some new resources for that. But it sounds like what you’re asking is for folks going abroad—maybe coming from the U.S. and going abroad. I think it’s just really important that people with disabilities who are preparing to go abroad are—have a chance to research a bit about the country’s disability rights—not only disability rights laws but disability culture and context. We really encourage folks to try to do outreach to a disability-led organization, if possible, and some people who’ve been able to do that it’s led to a really fruitful relationship and really enhanced their experience to be able to meet with local people with disabilities who can share kind of the real experience on the ground, what it might be like. I think a lot of people are also—maybe aren’t prepared for just the feeling of kind of being—standing out and others are unprepared for—well, just to use an example from our Intersections Abroad publication that I shared earlier, one student who studied abroad who is blind, she really thought that people would only be interested in her blindness and only have questions about her blindness, and she was really surprised that when she arrived people had wanted to know about other things about her, too. And so I think just allowing some room for all aspects of yourself there can be really beneficial. It’s something that sounds simple but people might forget. And so kind of evaluating different identities that you have, what you want to get out of the experience. But it sounds like what you’re asking about is kind of more just on-the-ground—those logistics, those environmental barriers. And you can’t foresee all of them, but I think just one thing that’s really helpful is just getting an idea of, how do people in that destination approach disability access because, if you call a hotel or something like that and you say is this going to be disability accessible, I really encourage just trying to get a little bit more specific, because they might say yes because their idea of disability access is having some burly people lift you up over some stairs, whereas that might not be at all your idea of accessibility. And so some of these things you’re not going to know until you arrive. But if you can connect with another—a person with a similar disability who has traveled abroad or someone who has gone to the place where you’re going that can really be helpful, or talking to locals with disabilities. And then our resource library, that’s one of the things that, I think—I really hope is helpful to folks planning their trips abroad is to be able to read about the experiences of other travelers and kind of the types of things unexpected that they encountered during their travels that might help other folks just get into that mindset of what might be on the horizon. FASKIANOS: There’s a question from Kwaku Obosu-Mensah at Lorain County Community College: Do students with disabilities need special insurance to travel abroad in an exchange program? HOLBEN: That’s a great—thanks for that question. Not always. Some students who have maybe chronic health conditions have been able—sometimes their study abroad program, for instance, has been able to negotiate, like, a group rate of health insurance for—for example, if it’s a group of students who are going abroad, in case there’s some additional coverage needed related to preexisting conditions or disabilities. However, we’re also seeing a best practice in the form of international exchange departments and offices budgeting for some funds to be able to provide for students with disabilities in those instances where something’s not going to be covered by. It’s kind of an extenuating circumstance, whether it’s related to getting access to health care, kind of an emergency fund, or being able to help pay for some private transportation when the local public transportation is not accessible, to use a couple of examples. So I think you’re going to have to—it’s really important to check with the insurance company and find out what their policies are around that but also to consider negotiating what they’re able to cover to be as inclusive as possible. And that’s not always going to be able to happen in that way, in which case those contingency funds are going to help supplement whatever the insurance is not able to. FASKIANOS: Great. And people can also raise their hand and ask their questions and share best practices. But I will have another question—written question—from Kimberly Pace, University of Alaska Anchorage, which goes along with Kwaku’s question, which was—you just answered about health care for students—faculty with disabilities when engaged in study abroad programs. So it’d be great if you could elaborate on that. HOLBEN: So, with health care, I guess just some additional considerations related to health includes mental health. Some folks with chronic health conditions might need to just get some—do some extra preparation—not only chronic health conditions but other types of disabilities. People with disabilities planning to go abroad will sometimes need to just take some extra steps for preparation, for example, those who are taking medications in the U.S. Certain types of ADHD medications in the U.S. are not legal in certain countries where people study abroad, and so trying to get information about what types of health care you’re able to receive abroad, what types of prescriptions you’re able to bring into the country abroad, working with your health care professionals about whether or not to adjust any medications prior to travel, and then where are you going to be able to access medical supplies in case yours get depleted or are lost or stolen or break—you know, where to go if your mobility equipment breaks. And we do have some tip sheets kind of on these different types of disability topics related to, what happens if you get into this dilemma, how can you try to, for example, keep your mobility equipment or your medications—how do you travel with those things in such a way that kind of helps mitigate some of the risks of having things break or confiscated or flagged or whatever it might be. So it’s not, like, a simple answer but it’s absolutely really important predeparture. Part of the —it’s part of the research. It’s part of the process for going abroad and, unfortunately, it typically means building in some extra time for planning to go abroad. So we always encourage students with disabilities, even if you think you might possibly go abroad at some point in your college career it’s not too early to start planning for it now and start looking into some of these questions, and some of the guides that we have on our website are helpful just for thinking through what those questions might be because, as they say, you don’t know what you don’t know. And people will often think, well, I’ve got that taken care of, no problem. But they’re only considering it from a home environment perspective and not really thinking about how, well, is the host city infrastructure going to be able to support this accessibility software that I use or whatever it might be. So not just in terms of health care but other types of accommodations as well. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Can you elaborate on the difference between access and inclusion? I think it would be helpful to give those. HOLBEN: Well, I don’t think there needs to be a broad difference. But one thing that I would want to emphasize is, there’s—on one hand, we’re talking about disability inclusion and how can we make sure that—they’re really—they go hand in hand. Inclusion is how can people with disabilities access these—all of the same programs, all of the same services—really, just kind of everything that nondisabled people can access and—but I think inclusion is not quite the full picture. It’s not really enough. And so what we would say is how can we go beyond inclusion—the inclusion piece—which is just making sure can you participate to sometimes you have to kind of take the first step to get people with disabilities to see these things as belonging to them or see these—sometimes people will self-select out of things because they’ve grown up with these messages that this isn’t for them, or they have to wait until it’s a special disability-focused program or activity for them to participate. And so one message that we tell people with disabilities is to kind of think of it as an infiltration where you’re, like, find these nondisability-focused activities and if you want to be part of it then be part of it. But on the flip side, we’re also thinking a lot about reverse infiltration, which is the folks that are managing different projects and opportunities and activities sometimes you might have to go out of your way a little bit to invite in people from the disability community, meet them where they are, really make sure that they are expected, anticipated. So it’s not really just enough to say, well, we wouldn’t turn a person with a disability away so that makes us inclusive but, really, how can you be more proactive and intentional in your strategy to make sure that disability is represented. So I think that that would be one distinction. And then, furthermore, beyond just disability inclusion—are they participating—then I think another important step to look at is disability leadership, and so that’s kind of where—why I say we get really excited when people with disabilities are entering leadership positions in higher education, whether that’s working in the study abroad office or as faculty leaders and others who are taking part in these decision-making roles and, how can we create kind of a pipeline for people with disabilities to become leaders in these different areas and be that kind of next generation of leadership. So I would keep that at the forefront as well. FASKIANOS: Great. HOLBEN: And, you know— FASKIANOS: Uh-huh. HOLBEN: Oh, go ahead. FASKIANOS: Oh, I was just going to call on Kimberly Pace. She raised her hand. HOLBEN: Oh, perfect. Yes. Looking forward to hear Kimberly. FASKIANOS: From the University of Alaska Anchorage. Q: That’s brilliant. Oh, I’m just so appreciative of this forum, and thank you both so much. As a person with a physical disability it never occurred to me as a college student to ever go—even ask the question about study abroad and I—certainly, you’re blowing my mind that there are resources to allow students to do this. I teach international relations and comparative politics, and I am just beyond giddy that there—(laughter)—are options for students because that’s something that, personally, I, you know, never got to experience and never, certainly, was encouraged to do that. So I’m very excited. I just want to say thank you very much for the information. So thank you. HOLBEN: We’re right there with you, Kimberly, as far as the giddy factor. And, you know, thank you so much for sharing that experience because, actually, that is—I think that inclusive, that welcoming, encouraging messaging is so important and we kind of go into detail about that on one of our tip sheets about inclusive recruitment. But even just something as simple as a message on an opportunity that says people with disabilities encouraged to apply, you never know who that’s going to make all the difference in the world to and one prime example is our organization, Mobility International USA, might not exist if our CEO, who is a wheelchair rider, hadn’t done her Rotary exchange program in Australia, which kind of spawned this idea of what Mobility International USA should be, and what led her to participate in that Rotary exchange program was seeing just a simple ad in the newspaper that said people with disabilities encouraged to apply. And who was responsible for putting in that little line? We’re not sure. But it kind of led to this chain of events that kind of brought us to where we are here. And, you know, there are so many folks in the field in higher education who are—they don’t have all the answers and they don’t have a lot of—they might not have personal experience with disability. But I think if they can help be a champion, an ally, and be kind of someone who says, well, let’s figure this out, or let’s see what’s possible and not shut it down, I think that that’s often what has led to all of these amazing outcomes and impact stories from the folks who have shared their experiences with us on our website and then who knows how many more are out there. So, sounds simple, but it can have an important impact. FASKIANOS: So we have a written question from Mark Scheinbaum, who’s at the Florida International University: What updates or guidance do you have for students with de jure and/or de facto comfort pets that are needed for completion of usual and customary academic tasks? HOLBEN: If you can leave the questions up a little longer. Then I can— FASKIANOS: Oh, sure. Sure. Sorry. HOLBEN: That’s OK. FASKIANOS: I’ll put it back. HOLBEN: Well, I would just, first of all, make sure that you’re familiarizing yourself with the distinction between—you kind of use two different terms here. So there are comfort animals or emotional support animals, and then there are service animals, which are trained to do a specific service. Comfort animals and emotional support animals aren’t necessarily trained to perform a specific service related to a disability-related accommodation whereas a service animal is. So maybe that service is helping to detect the onset of an epileptic seizure, or the service is being able to help the person open doors or pick up items from the floor, or, of course, sight dogs for folks who are blind or visually impaired, for mobility. And so, anyway, that’s going to be a really key distinction for whether or not it’s going to be appropriate to have a service animal or an emotional support animal in a higher education setting, and especially that becomes more complicated when you’re talking about going abroad to another country where you’re also considering factors—not just the laws but also the cultural factors whether dogs are welcome in every restaurant or if it’s an animal that’s very taboo and you don’t keep them as pets, let alone travel around with them. And so all of those questions are going to come into play. We do have some tip sheets on our website that go into more detail around some preparation for bringing animals abroad, what you should know related to quarantine, vaccinations, and things like that. So search for animals on the MIUSA website to access some of those tips. FASKIANOS: Great, and we’ll send out links to that section, Ashley, after this so people can access it easier. HOLBEN: Oh, great. Yeah. FASKIANOS: So another written question from Erin Reed, and I will leave it up so you can see it— HOLBEN: Oh, thanks. FASKIANOS:—who’s the student services and admissions advisor/DSO at California State University San Marcos: What are your suggestions for a university study abroad program that is not made aware of a student’s disability prior to the student’s arrival? HOLBEN: I think my number-one suggestion would be rather than waiting for one student to participate start thinking about it now what are some ways we can build in some inclusive practices into our programming. So one thing that some programs might do is, well, maybe people aren’t disclosing their disability because we’re not giving them the opportunity to do so. So including questions in some of those post-acceptance forums that ask how can we make this program—how can we help set you up for success in this program. Might also ask specifically, including related to disability accommodations so that folks know that—I think it’s really important for prospective students or otherwise to just know that they’re being anticipated, that someone is thinking, yes, like, we’re totally expecting that at some point some students with disabilities will participate in this program. And I think that that can be—really signal to students, OK, this—we’re coming from a place that or we’re going to be interacting with folks who are anticipating me and, even if they don’t know all the answers to my questions they’re not going to shut me down. So I think that some of those types of—whether it’s just amending some of your forms or putting information on your program website, having inclusive images such as if there are images of people with apparent disabilities participating in the program, seeing themselves reflected in those images can be just as important as an inclusive written message. Let me go back to that question. Sorry. It went away again. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: If you click on the answered question. HOLBEN: I got it. Yeah. FASKIANOS: OK. And then I have two more written questions. Everybody’s sending in their questions at the end here. (Laughs.) HOLBEN: But just also, going back to Erin Reed’s question, if the program—it sounds like, we didn’t know that there was a student with a disability planning to arrive. Now we—we have this—these things that we need to figure out in the meantime. One more thing I’ll just say about how to maybe avoid that situation is working with—oh, this is so important—collaborating with the disability services office and other similar services on the campus to be able to arrange some kind of system. So a lot of institutions—for example, their study abroad offices will share a list of all of the students who are enrolled in study abroad for that upcoming semester and they’ll share it with the disability services office so that they can kind of go through and say, oh, well, we recognize—and this is all just privately on the disability services side to protect the students’ privacy—but they will kind of flag, oh, this is a student that we work with. And so what they might then do is connect with that student directly and say, hey, we learned that you’re going abroad—do you want to talk about some of the questions you might have or is there anything that we can do to support you and can we—are you comfortable with inviting those—the international advisors into this conversation so that we can just kind of put everything out in the open and we can figure out all the best ways to support the—that student. So, I would say, that’s so important that we used to at NCDE pay people to take each other to lunch from the study abroad office and the disability services office because too often we heard, oh, yeah, they’re just right across the—you know, their office is literally right over there. I can see them from our office. But we’ve never talked to them or—and we don’t really know what they do. So I think just to have it breaking some of that ice early on and not waiting for the time when there’s a student with a disability there but just kind of building that into your process, and that can also be helpful for collecting data as well. The Institute for International Education has an annual Open Door survey that provides data and statistics around who is participating in an international exchange and they’ve started including a question—some questions related to disability so that, hopefully, over time we can kind of see is disability—are people with disabilities being represented in international exchange in greater numbers, what types of disabilities do they have, and so on. So working with the disability support office is one great way to also collect that type of information too, which is going to really help the field and, hopefully, help more people with disabilities to be able to participate in international exchange. FASKIANOS: So we have a question from Andrew Moran from London Metropolitan University: In the U.K. inclusion is not just about access or being in a classroom. It is also about inclusive assessment methods. I wonder if you have any resources—if you know of any resources that suggest assessment methods that would allow neurodiverse or physically disabled students to fully engage and not be excluded. They’ve done away with exams because you can’t rely on an elevator to work to get to an exam room, let alone the barriers in the exam might pose for neurodiverse students. And he’s leading a working group on allowing students to choose, create their own assessment method to enable greater diversity and meet students’ needs but always looking for new ideas. HOLBEN: Oh, that’s really interesting. Thanks so much for sharing that, Andrew, and for sharing the example at your own institution as well. And I would love to hear other folks respond to this, too. As far as—one, again, I would really encourage you to check out Think College as a prospective resource for—especially just because you mention neurodiverse students. So Think College operates at different campuses right now—for now, I think, only in the U.S. Perhaps their network is growing beyond that as well. But it’s kind of this network of professionals who work with—to try to get students not only with intellectual disabilities but also those who are neurodiverse, including those who are on the autism spectrum. And so they are really a fantastic source of expertise for everything from inclusive education or specialized support and accommodations and pedagogy. So I think that they would be probably the ones to connect with about this question in particular. But if other folks have other ideas in response to Andrew, I’m sure we’d all appreciate it. And maybe while we’re thinking of that, we’ll check out this next one. FASKIANOS: Right. McKennah Andrews with the Mansfield Center: We have a blind participant on an upcoming international program taking place here in the U.S., and MIUSA’s resources have been so valuable. Can we touch on the topic of personal assistants? What advice or testimonies might you have regarding engaging with personal assistants during a program? HOLBEN: Yes, absolutely. So personal assistants can look like a couple—many different things, actually. You might even—since you mentioned having a blind participant, this might not be what you meant but some—for some folks who are blind they may have had some sighted guides during their exchange programs abroad. So that’s another example where a student who—or a person who is used to one type of access accommodation or assistive devices or technology in their home environment might have to look into some different ones for their host environment. So we’ve known some people who are really—have great cane skills for orientation and mobility and strong independent mobility skills in their home environment but have felt more comfortable having the program help arrange a sighted guide for them when they’re going to, perhaps, countries where—or environments that are a little more chaotic or where, for whatever reason, their usual skills might not work out. Or, again, if that person uses a service dog in—or service animal in their home environment and that wouldn’t really be feasible in the home environment then having that kind of human guide or a personal assistant might be one method that they look into. Personal assistants might also provide everyday living services—you know, feeding or using the bathroom or just getting ready throughout the day, assisting with lifting and transferring, and that’s going to—might—again, as somebody who—we’ve seen some instances where people in the U.S. who don’t use personal assistant services might opt for that when they’re going to a place where, you know, they might need to be lifted more often because the infrastructure is not as—going to be as smooth or not as accessible. And so we’ve seen different situations where sometimes they are—the personal assistant in question is someone they’ve worked with a long time in the U.S. Sometimes it might be a peer who attends their school. Sometimes it’s a parent who travels. I’ve definitely seen all kind of different types of—oh, and also a local person that’s hired in the country to provide personal assistant care. So it’s really interesting just to kind of be aware of all of the different ways that that might look and check out—again, we have a specific tip sheet about that—actually, a series related to personal assistant services. So, yes, we can talk about personal assistant services and we have kind of a suite of resources related to that so there’s a lot that can be said. So thanks for bringing that up. FASKIANOS: Terrific. We are almost out of time, and I did see that there was a raised hand from Justice Chuckwu— HOLBEN: Fantastic. Let’s hear from Justice. FASKIANOS: —disability rights, Oregon. He lowered his hand but—oh, there we go. And if you can ask it quickly and unmute yourself that would be great. HOLBEN: I think we’ve met before, Justice. Hello. HOLBEN: Oh, hi. There’s Justice. Q: Hello. HOLBEN: Hello. Q: Yeah, I think we met a couple times. Yeah. So my name is Justice and, yeah, I’m so much appreciative of this program. And I always have a simple question and the question is how do we—how do we unify orientation for international students with disabilities, given the fact that they come from different backgrounds and most times there are just maybe one or two or three in one university or one college and may not be able to really understand the environment early enough. Maybe by the time they would get to understand the environment they might be getting to the mid-semester. So my question is, is there a way to kind of unify the orientation, especially since we now have online—things could be done online to unify the orientation to make sure that students—international students with disabilities are not left behind. HOLBEN: Mmm hmm. Yes. Thank you, Justice. And, actually, it was your bringing that to light that kind of got—we started incorporating that question into some of our resources and, in fact, you helped contribute to one of our webinars on this very topic of support for international students with disabilities coming to different campuses in which you kind of described that feeling of how do I connect with other people with disabilities, especially other international students with disabilities, who might be able to share in some of these experiences so I don’t feel so alone in this. And I really—that really sparked a lot of ideas but one of which is, might there be some kind of opportunity for a student group of international students with disabilities but bringing together students from different campuses to be able to share their experiences. And so that’s something that we at the NCDE are exploring more. But as for existing resources, in addition to the webinar that Justice contributed to we also added some others related to just sharing some best practices from our—MIUSA leads an orientation for high school exchange students with disabilities who are arriving to the U.S. for a State Department-funded scholarship program and we—as part of this orientation we incorporate information about your rights as a person with disabilities while you’re in the U.S. and how to advocate for yourself if there’s something that you need but aren’t getting, how to fully participate in all of the opportunities while you’re there. So I think that those are the—some of the same messages that could be really beneficial to folks entering U.S. higher education from different parts of the world and just learning about U.S. disability culture and those steps for taking advantage of all of the resources available to you. So, yeah, you’re absolutely right, Justice. There’s more work to be done, and I think folks like you who are voicing kind of those needs—those firsthand gaps that you’ve identified is kind of one of the first steps in helping to build out some of these resources. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Well, we are out of time. In fact, we’re a little over. HOLBEN: Oh. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: So, Ashley Holben, thank you so much for doing this. We really appreciate it, and to all of you for your questions and comments. Again, we will be sending out a link to this webinar transcript as well as to the resources that Ashley mentioned. So stay tuned for that. Our next Higher Education Webinar will be on Wednesday, February 22, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time with Jeremi Suri, who will lead a conversation on teaching the history of American democracy. And just please do follow us at @CFR_Academic and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Ashley, again, thank you very much for doing this. We appreciate it. HOLBEN: Thank you. Thank you for—to everyone who attended for your time and thanks to CFR for getting this on the agenda. I really appreciate it also. FASKIANOS: Great. We look forward to everybody continuing to participate in this Higher Education Webinar series. Have a good rest of your day. (END)

Webinar by Ashley Holben January 26, 2023 Academic and Higher Education Webinars
South Africa

Darryl G. Behrman Lecture on Africa Policy: The Legacy of Nelson Mandela

Panelists discuss the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela, following the release of Mandela: The Lost Tapes, which features never-before-heard audio from interviews with Mandela for Long Walk to Freedom. The Darryl G. Behrman Lecture on Africa Policy is held in memory of Darryl G. Behrman, who was originally from South Africa and had an abiding passion for Africa and international peace. The annual lecture is funded by members of the Behrman family.

Virtual Event by Xolela Mangcu and Richard Stengel December 12, 2022 Darryl G. Behrman Lecture on Africa Policy
Sub-Saharan Africa

Putting African Aspirations First

African aspirations, not African leaders, should be the focus of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.

Blog Post by Ebenezer Obadare December 12, 2022 Africa in Transition
United States

A Conversation With Robert O’Brien

National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien discusses technology, disinformation, and the intersection of technology policy and national security.

Virtual Event by Robert C. O'Brien December 2, 2022
Religion

Academic Webinar: Religious Literacy in International Affairs

Susan Hayward, associate director of the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative at Harvard Divinity School, leads the conversation on religious literacy in international affairs. FASKIANOS: Welcome to the final session of the Fall 2022 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today’s discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic if you would like to share it with your classmates or colleagues. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Susan Hayward with us to discuss religious literacy in international affairs. Reverend Hayward is the associate director for the Religious Literacy and Professions Initiative at Harvard Divinity School. From 2007 to 2021, she worked for the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), with focus on Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Columbia, and Iraq. And most recently serving as senior advisor for Religion and Inclusive Societies, and as a fellow in Religion and Public Life. During her tenure at USIP, Reverend Hayward also coordinated an initiative exploring the intersection of women, religion, conflict, and peacebuilding, partnership with the Berkley Center at Georgetown University and the World Faith Development Dialogue. And she coedited a book on the topic entitled Women, Religion and Peacebuilding: Illuminating the Unseen. Reverend Hayward has also taught at Georgetown and George Washington Universities and serves as a regular guest lecturer and trainer at the Foreign Service Institute. And she’s also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. So, Susan, thank you very much for being with us today. Can you begin by explaining why religious literacy is so important for understanding international affairs? HAYWARD: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Irina. And thanks to the Council on Foreign Relations for inviting me to be a part of this webinar. And I really appreciate you and the invitation, and I appreciate all of you who have joined us today, taking time out of what I know is a busy time of year, as we hurdle towards final exams and cramming everything into these last weeks of the semester. So it’s great to be with all of you. I am going to be—in answering that broad question that Irina offered, I’m going to be drawing on my work. As Irina said, I worked at the—I work now at Harvard Divinity School’s Religion and Public Life Program. And what we seek to do here is to do here is to advance the public understanding of religion in service of a just world at peace. And we do that, in part, by working with professionals in governments and foreign policy, and in the humanitarian sector, as well as working with our students who are seeking to go into vocations in those professional spheres. And then my fourteen years with the Religion and Inclusive Societies Program at the U.S. Institute of Peace. So I’ll say a little bit more about both of those as we go along, and those experiences, but I’m also happy to answer any questions about either of those programs when we turn to the Q&A. And I should say that I’m going to be focusing as well—given that a lot of you all who are joining us today are educators yourselves or are students—I’m going to be focusing in particular on how we teach religious literacy within international affairs. So I wanted to begin with the definition of religious literacy, because this is a term that is increasingly employed as part of a rallying cry that’s based on a particular diagnosis. And the diagnosis is that there has been insufficient deep consideration of the multiple and complex dimensions of religion and culture that impact international affairs at all levels across the world. And that the result of that lack of a complex understanding of religion in this arena has been the—the hamstringing of the ability of the international system to operate in ways that are effective in bringing justice, peace, democracy, human rights, and development. So I’m going to circle back to that diagnosis in a bit. But first I want to jump to the prescription that’s offered, which is to enhance religious literacy using various resources, trainings, courses, and ways that are relevant for foreign policymakers and those working across the international system, as well as those students who are in the schools of international affairs, or other schools and planning to go into this space, into this profession. So the definition that we use here at Harvard Divinity School—and this is one that has been adopted by the American Academy of Religion, which is the scholarly guild for religious studies—defines it in this way: Religious literacy is the—entails the ability to discern and analyze the fundamental intersections of religion and social, political, and cultural life through multiple lenses. So specifically, one who is religious literate will possess a basic understanding of different religious traditions, including sort of fundamental beliefs and practices and contemporary manifestation of different religious traditions, as well as how they arose out of and continue to be shaped by particular social, historical, and cultural contexts. And the ability to discern and explore the religious dimensions of political, social, and cultural expressions across time and space. So this gets broken down in two different ways—three, according to me. But that definition focuses on two in particular. One is often referred to as the confessional approach or the substantive approach. So that’s looking at understanding different religious traditions and their manifestations in different places. That’s understanding something fundamental about the difference between Theravada Buddhism and Vajrayana Buddhism, for example. Or how Islam is practiced, and dominantly practiced in Nigeria, versus in North America, for example. The second approach is the religious studies approach. Which is sometimes also called the functional approach. So that’s the ability to be able to analyze the ways in which religions in complex ways are really intersecting with social, and political, and economic life, even if not explicitly so. But in implicit, embedded ways shaping different kinds of economic systems, social systems, and political systems, and being able to analyze and see that, and so ask particular questions and consider different kinds of policy solutions—diagnoses and solutions that can take that into account. And then finally, I add the religious engagement approach. That particularly comes out of my work when I was at USIP and working with foreign policymakers in the State Department and elsewhere. To some extent, overseas as well, those in the diplomatic sector. Which I understand is determining whether, when, and how to engage with specifically defined religious institutions, actors, and interests, including on issues related, for example, with religious freedom, in ways that are inclusive, just, strategic, and, importantly for the U.S. context, legal. So abiding by the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Now, all three types of religious literacy defined here depend on three principles or ideas. So the first is that they understand religions as lived, as constituted by humans who are constantly interpreting and reinterpreting their religious traditions. This means that as a result they are internally diverse, sometimes very internally contradictory. They’ll have different religious interpretations with respect to particular human rights issues, particular social issues, issues related to gender, and so on and so forth. That they change over time. That that sort of complex interpretive process that is going on within religious traditions also leads to kind of larger normative changes within religious traditions over history in different temporal contexts. And that they’re culturally embedded. So as the question I was asking earlier, how is Islam, as it’s understood and practiced in Nigeria, different from how it’s understood and practiced in North America, for example. There are ways in which the particular religious interpretations and practices of a tradition are always going to be entangled with specific cultural contexts in ways that are near impossible to disentangle at times. And that means that they just manifest differently in different places. And this—these ideas of religion as lived pushes against an understanding of religions as being static or being monolithic. So that then leads us to ensure that there’s never—that it’s always going to be a problem to make sweeping claims about entire religious traditions because you’ll always find somebody or some community within those religious traditions that don’t believe or practice according to the claim that you just made about it. And that applies to situations of violent conflict and with respect to human rights, on global issues like climate and migration. This idea, the internal diversity in particular, is what is at play when you hear the phrase “Ambivalence of the Sacred” that was coined by Scott Appleby in his—in this very influential book by the same name. I’ll throw in here a quote from Scott Appleby from that book, this idea that religions are always going to show up in ambivalent or contradictory ways across different places, but also sometimes in the very same contexts. So I think we can see that, for example, in the U.S. right now, and that there’s no one, let’s say, religious position with respect to reproductive rights, for example. There’s a great deal of internal plurality and ambivalence that exists across religious traditions and interpretations within the Christian tradition and beyond about that specific issue. Moreover then, what religion is, what is considered religious, what is recognized as religious and what isn’t, and how it manifests in different contexts depends on just a complex array of intersecting factors. I’m going to come back to—that’s kind of meaty phrase just to throw out there, so I’m going to come back to that in a minute. So the second principle or idea of religious literacy that I want to highlight here is the idea of right-sizing religion. This is a phrase that Peter Mandaville used quite a bit when he was in the State Department’s Religion and Global Affairs Office under the Obama administration and has written about. So I’ll turn you to that article of his to understand more about it. But the central idea is that we don’t want to over nor underemphasize religion’s role in any given context. So just by way of a quick example, in looking at the Rohingya crisis or the ethnic cleansing of Rakhine State in Myanmar, one could not say it was all about religion, that it was about Buddhist nationalists who are anti-Muslim wanting to destroy a particular religious community. Nor could you say it had nothing to do with religion, because there were these religious dimensions that were at play in driving the violence towards the Rohingya and the larger communities’ acceptance of that violence against the Rohingya community. But if you were to overemphasize the religious roles, the religious dimensions of that crisis, then your policy solutions—you might look at religious freedom tools and resources to be able to address the situation. And that would address the situation in part, but obviously there were other economic and political factors that were at play in leading to the Rohingya crisis. And including certain economic interests with oil pipelines that were being constructed across lands that the Rohingya were living on in Rakhine state, or the political conflict that was taking place between the military and the National League of Democracy, and so on. So addressing the crisis holistically and sustainably requires that we right-size the role that religion is playing in that particular crisis. And that goes across the board, in looking at conflicts and looking at the role of religion in climate, and addressing climate collapse, and so on and so forth. We need to always neither under nor overestimate the role that religion is playing in driving some of these issues and as a solution in addressing some of these issues. OK. So with that definition and principles of religious literacy in mind, I want to go back to the diagnosis that I gave at the—that I mentioned at the top, for which religious literacy is offered as a solution. The diagnosis, if you remember, was that there’s been insufficient consideration given to the multiple and complex dimensions of religion and culture that impact international affairs. So I’m going to demonstrate what it means to apply the religious studies approach to religious literacy, or the functional approach to religious literacy, to help us understand why that might be. And remember, the religious studies approach is seeking to discern and explore the religious dimensions of political, social, and cultural expressions and understandings across time and place. So this approach, in trying to answer that question and consider that diagnosis, it would invite us to look historically at the development of the modern international legal and political systems in a particular time and place in Western Europe, during the European Enlightenment. As many of you may well know, this came about in the aftermath of the so-called confessional or religious wars. Those were largely understood to have pitted Protestants against Catholics, though it’s more complicated in reality. But broadly, that’s the story. And the modern state, on which the international system was built, sought to create a separation between religious and state authority. For the first time in European history, this separation between religious and state authority that became more rigid and enforced over time, in the belief that this was necessary in order to ensure peace and prosperity moving forward, to bring an end to these wars, and to ensure that the state would be better able to deal with the reality of increasing religious pluralism within Europe. So this was essentially the idea of secular political structures that was born in that time and place. And these secular political structures were considered to be areligious or neutral towards religion over time, again. In the process of legitimating this sort of revolutionary new model of the secular modern state, and in the process of creating this demarcated distinction that had not previously existed—at least, not a neat distinction of the secular or the political authority and the religious—the religious authority—there was an assertion as part of that ideologically legitimate and support that. There was an assertion of the secular as rational, ordered, and associated with all of the good stuff of modernity. Meanwhile, the religious was defined in counter-distinction as a threat to the secular. It was irrational, backwards, a threat to the emerging order. A not-subtle presumption in all of this is that the new modern state and the international system would serve as a bulwark against archaic, dangerous, religious, and other traditionally cultural, in particular, worldviews and practices in—it would be a bulwark against that, and a support for this neutral and considered universal international law and system—secular system. Now, I realize I’m making some, like, huge, broad historical sweeps here, given the short amount of time I have. But within that story I just told, there is a lot more complexity that one can dig into. But part of what I seek to do in offering religious literacy in international relations theory and practice to students, and to practitioners in this realm, is to help those operating in the system think through how that historically and contextually derived conception of religion and the co-constitutive conception of secularism continues to operate within and shape how we interpret and respond to global events within the system. And this occurs—I see this happening in two dominant ways. One is, first, in thinking about religion as a distinct sphere of life that can be disentangled entirely from the political, when in reality religion is deeply entangled with the political, and vice versa. And scholars like Talal Asad and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd have done really great work to show how even our understanding of the secular and secular norms and so on is shaped by Protestant Christian commitments and understandings. And saying within that, our understanding of what religion is—like, a focus on belief, for example, which has been codified in a lot of religious freedom law, as part of the international system—again, tends to emphasize Protestant Christian understandings of what religion is and how it functions. So that’s the first reason for doing that. And then second, in understanding religion to be a threat to modernity, and sometimes seeing and responding to it as such rather than taking into account its complexity, its ambivalence, the ways in which it has been a powerful force for good, and bad, and everything in between, and in ways that sometimes let the secular off the hook for ways that it has driven forms of violence, colonialism, gender injustice, global inequalities, the climate crisis, and so on. So those are the consequences of when we don’t have that religious literacy, of those potential pitfalls. And, on that second point, of the ways in which religion continues to be defined in ways that can overemphasize its negative aspect at time within the international system, I commend the work of William Cavanaugh in particular and his book, The Myth of Religious Violence to dig into that a little bit more. So what we’re seeking to do, in bringing that kind of religious literacy to even thinking about the international system and its norms and how it operates, is to raise the consciousness of what Donna Haraway calls the situatedness of the international system, the embedded agendas and assumptions that inevitably operate within it. And it invites students to be skeptical of any claims to the systems neutrality about religion, how it’s defined, and how it’s responded to. So I recognize that that approach is very deconstructionist work. It’s informed by, post-colonial critical theory, which reflects where religious studies has been for the last couple decades. But importantly, it doesn’t, nor shouldn’t ideally, lead students to what is sometimes referred to as analysis paralysis, when there’s sort of groundedness within hypercritical approaches, only looking at the complexity to a degree that it’s hard to understand how to move forward then to respond constructively to these concerns. Rather, the purpose is to ensure that they’re more conscious of these underlying embedded norms or assumptions so that they can better operate within the system in just ways, not reproducing forms of Eurocentrism, Christo-centrism, or forms of cultural harm. So the hope is that it helps students to be able to better critique the ways in in which religion and secularism is being—are being discussed, analyzed, or engaged within international affairs, and then be able to enter into those kinds of analysis, policymaking, program development, and so on, in ways that can help disrupt problematic assumptions and ensure that the work of religious literacy or religious engagement is just. So I’m just going to offer one example of how this kind of critical thinking and critical—the way of thinking complexly about religion in this space can be fruitful. And it speaks back to one of the things Irina noted about my biography, the work I had done looking at women and religion and peacebuilding. So while I was at USIP, in that program, we spent several years looking specifically and critically at forms of theory and practice, and this subfield that had emerged of religious peacebuilding. And we were looking at it through the lens of gender justice, asking how religion was being defined in the theory or engaged in the peacebuilding practice and policy in ways that unintentionally reinforced gender injustice. And what we found is that there were assumptions operating about certain authorities—often those at the top of institutions, which tended to be older, well-educated men—representing entire traditions. Assumptions made about their social and political power as well. When in reality, we knew that those of different genders, and ages, and socioeconomic locations were doing their own work of peacebuilding within these religious landscapes, and had different experiences of violence, and so different prescriptions for how to build peace. So we began to ask questions, like whose peace is being built in this field of religious peacebuilding that was emerging? And the work that USIP had been doing in this space of religious peacebuilding? Whose stories were being left out in the dominant analyses or narratives in the media about religious dimensions of certain conflicts, and what are the consequences of that? So these kinds of questions are grounded in the recognition of, again, the internal diversity, the change over time of religious traditions. And they help ensure that analysis and policy actions aren’t unintentionally reproducing forms of harm or structural violence. I’m almost done. So please do bring your questions so that we can engage in a discussion with each other. But I wanted to end by offering a couple examples of resources that I think might be helpful to both enhancing your own religious literacy but also as potential pedagogical tools in this work. So first is Religious Peacebuilding Action Guides that were produced by the U.S. Institute of Peace, in partnership with Salam Institute for Peace and Justice, and the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers. There’s four guides. They’re all available for free online. Once I close down my PowerPoint, I’m going to throw the links for all of these things I’m mentioning into the chat box so you can all see it. But one of the things—I’m just going to dive in a little bit to the analysis guide, because one of the things that I think is useful in helping, again, to help us think a little bit more complexly about religion, is that it takes you through this process of thinking about the different dimensions of religion as defined here—ideas, community, institutions, symbols and practices, and spirituality. So it’s already moving beyond just an idea of religious institutions, for example. And it takes you through doing a conflict assessment, and asking the questions related to religion with respect to the drivers of the conflict and the geographic location and peacebuilding initiatives, to help you craft a peacebuilding—a religious peacebuilding initiative. I have used this framework as a means to help students think through the ambivalence of religion as it manifests in different places. So I have an example there of a question that I have sometimes used that has been fruitful in thinking about how these five different dimensions of religion have manifested in American history in ways that either have advanced forms of racialized violence and injustice or that have served as drivers of peace and justice. And there’s lots of examples across all of those dimensions of the ways in which religion has shown up in ambivalent ways in that respect. There’s also—USIP’s team has produced a lot of amazing things. So I’ll put some links to some of their other resources in there too, which includes they’re doing religious landscape mappings of conflict-affected states. They have an online course on religious engagement in peacebuilding that’s free to take. Another resource is from here, at Harvard Divinity School in the Religion in Public Life Program. And we provide a series of case studies that is for educators. It’s primarily created educators in secondary schools and in community colleges, but I think could easily be adapted and used in other kinds of four-year universities or other kinds of professional settings, where you’re doing trainings or workshops, or even just holding discussions on religious literacy. So there’s a series of kind of short, concise, but dense, case studies that are looking at different religions as they intersect with a host of issues, including peace, climate, human rights, gender issues. And it says something about that case study here—the example that I have here is the conflict in Myanmar, pre-coup, the conflicts that were occurring between religious communities, and particularly between Buddhist communities and Muslim communities. And then there’s a set of discussion questions there that really help to unearth some of those lessons about internal diversity and about the ways in which religious intersects with state policies and other kinds of power interests and agendas—political power interests and agendas. And then also, at our program, Religion and Public Life, we have a number of courses that are available online, one that’s more on the substantive religious literacy side, looking at different religious traditions through their scriptures. Another course, it’s on religion, conflict and peace, all of which are free and I’m going to throw them into the chat box in a moment. And we also have ongoing workshops for educators on religious literacy, a whole network with that. So you’re welcome to join that network if you’d like. And then finally, we have a one-year master’s of religion and public life program for people in professions—quote/unquote, “secular” professions—who want to come and think about—they’re encountering religion in various ways in their work in public health, or in their work in journalism. And so they want to come here for a year and to think deeply about that, and bring something back into their profession. And then the final thing, and then I’m going to be done, and this one is short, is the Transatlantic Policy for Religion and Diplomacy, which brings together point people from—who work on religion across different foreign ministries in North America and Europe. And their website, religionanddiplomacy.org, has a lot of really great resources that—reports on various thematic issues, but also looking at religion in situ in a number of different geographic locations. They have these strategic notes, that’s what I have the image of here, that talk about, at a particular time, what are some of the big stories related to religion and international affairs overseas. And they list a number of other religious literacy resources on their website as well. So I commend all of that to. And with that, let me stop share, throw some links into the chat box, and hear responses and questions from folks. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Thank you for that. That was terrific. And we are going to send out—as a follow-up, we’ll send out a link to this webinar, maybe a link to your presentation, as well as the resources that you drop into the chat. So if you don’t get it here, you will have another bite at the apple, so to speak. (Gives queuing instructions.) So I’m going to go first to the written question from Meredith Coon, who’s an undergraduate student at Lewis University: What would be a solution for India to have many different religions live in peace with each other, especially since most religions share a lot of the same core values of how people should live? And how can society prevent the weaponization of religion, while still allowing broad religious freedom? HAYWARD: All right. Thank you for the question, Meredith. And one thing just to note, by way of housekeeping, I’m not sure I can actually share the links with all of the participants. So we’ll make sure that you get all of those links in that follow-up note, as Irina said. So, Meredith, I think a couple things. One, I just want to note that one of the assumptions within your question itself is that folks of different religious persuasions are constantly at conflict with one another. And of course, there is a reality of there is increasing religious tensions around the world, communal tensions of many different sorts, ethnic, and religious, and racial, and so on, across the world. And the threat to democracy and increasing authoritarianism has sometimes exacerbated those kinds of tensions. But there’s also a lot of examples presently and historically of religiously incredibly diverse communities living in ways that are harmonious, that are just, and so on. So I think it is important—there’s a lot of work that supports forms of interfaith dialogue and intra-faith dialogue. And I think that that work is—will always be important, to be able to recognize shared values and shared commitments, and in order to acknowledge and develop respect and appreciation for differences as well on different topics—again, both within religious traditions and across them. But I think that dialogue alone, frankly, is not enough. Because so often these tensions and these conflicts are rooted in structural violence and discrimination and concerns, economic issues, and political issues, and so on. And so I think part of that work, it’s not just about building relationships kind of on a horizontal level, but also about ensuring that state policies and practice, economic policies and practices, and so on, are not operating in ways that disadvantage some groups over others, on a religious side, on a gender side, on a racial side, and so on. So it’s about ensuring as well inclusive societies and a sense as well of inclusive political systems and inclusive economic systems. And doing that work in kind of integrated ways is going to be critical for ensuring that we’re able to address some of these rising forms of violations of religious freedom. Thanks again for the question. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question from Clemente Abrokwaa. Clemente, do you want to ask your question? Associate teaching professor of African studies at Pennsylvania State University? I’m going to give you a moment, so we can hear some voices. Q: OK. Thank you very much. Yeah, my question is I’m wondering how peacebuilding, in terms of religious literacy, how would you look at—or, how does it look at those that are termed fundamentalists? How their actions and beliefs, especially their beliefs, those of us—there are those outside who perceive them as being destructive. So then to that person, is their beliefs are good. So they fight for, just like anyone will fight for, what, a freedom fighter or something, or a religious fighter in this case. So I’m just wondering how does religious literacy perceive that in terms of peacebuilding? HAYWARD: Right. Thank you for the question, Professor Abrokwaa. I really appreciate it. So a couple things. One, first of all, with respect to—just going back, again, to the ambivalence of the sacred—recognizing that that exists. That there are particular religious ideas, commitments, groups, practices that are used in order to fuel and legitimate forms of violence. And I use violence in a capacious understanding of it, that includes both direct forms of violence but also structural and cultural forms of violence, to use the framework of Johan Galtung. And so that needs to be addressed as part of the work to build peace, is recognizing religious and nonreligious practices and ideas that are driving those forms of violence. But when it comes to religious literacy to understand that, a couple ways in which the principles apply. One is, first, not assuming that their—that that is the only or exclusive religious interpretation. And I think sometimes well-meaning folks end up reifying this idea that that is the exclusive religious interpretation or understanding when they’re—when they’re offering sometimes purely nonreligious responses to it. And what I mean by this, for example, let’s look at Iran right now. I read some analyses where it’s saying that, the Iranian authorities and the Ayatollahs who comprise the Supreme Council and so on, that they—that they define what Islamic law is. And there’s not a qualification of that. And in the meantime, the protesters are sort of defined as, like, secular, or they’re not—the idea that they could be driven by certain—their own Islamic interpretations that are just as authoritative to them, and motivating them, and shaping them is critical. So being able to recognize the internal plurality and not unintentionally reify that particular interpretation of a religious tradition as exclusive or authoritative. Rather, it’s one interpretation of a religious tradition with particular consequences that are harmful for peace. And there are multiple other interpretations of that religious tradition that are operating within that context. And then a second way that the religious literacy would apply would also look at the ways in which sometimes the diagnoses of extremist groups that are operating within a religious frame doesn’t right-size the role of religion in that. It sometimes overemphasizes the religious commitments, and drives, and so on. And so, again, we need to right-size. There are religious motivations. And we need to take those seriously. And we need to develop solutions for addressing that. And there are economic interests. And there are political interests. So there’s a whole host of factors that are motivating and inspiring and legitimating those groups. And being able to take into account that more holistic picture and ensure that your responses to it are going to be holistic. And then one final thing I want to say that’s not with respect to religious literacy as much—or, maybe it is—but it’s more just about my experience of work at USIP, is that—and it kind of goes back to the question that Meredith asked before you about religious harmony between multireligious relations and harmony, is that I sometimes finds that engaging with groups that are defining themselves and motivating themselves with a primary grounding in religion, that they’re not going to participate generally in interfaith initiatives, and so on, right? And so that’s where some of that intra-faith work can be particularly important. I saw this, for example, in Myanmar, when their—when previously the movement that was known as Ma Ba Tha, which was defined by some as a Buddhist nationalist anti-Muslim kind of Buddhist supremacist group. The folks who were most successful in being able to engage in a values-grounded conversation with members of the organization were other Buddhist monks, who were able to speak within the language of meaning and to draw attention to, like, different understandings of religious teachings or religious principles with respect to responding to minority groups, and so on. So I think that’s in particular, with addressing those groups, that’s where that intra-religious work or intra-communal work can be really critical, in addition to some of that cross-communal work. FASKIANOS: Thank you. So we’ve seen, obviously, the war in Ukraine and how Christian Orthodoxy is being—or, Greek Orthodoxy in Ukraine, and the division. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it’s playing out with Russian identity? HAYWARD: Yeah, absolutely. There’s been some really good analysis and work out there of the religious dimensions of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. So again, the sort of dominant story that you see, which reflects a reality, is that there are ways in which political and religious actors and interests are aligning on the Russian side in order to advance particular narratives and that legitimate the invasion of Ukraine that—that are about sort of fighting back against an understanding of the West as being counter to traditional and religious values. Those are some of the religious understandings. And then that concern gets linked then to the establishment of an independent or autocephalous Orthodox Church within the Ukraine context. And you see—in particular, what’s pointed to often is the relationship between Patriarch Kirill in the Russian Orthodox Church, and Putin, and the ways in which they’ve sort of reinforced each other’s narrative and offered support to it. And there’s really great analysis out there and stories that have been done about that. And that needs to be taken into account in responding to the situation and, I would say, that some of the religious literacy principles would then ask us to think about other ways in which religion is showing up within that, that go beyond the institution too. So a lot of the news stories that I’ve seen, for example, have focused exclusively on—sometimes—exclusively on the clerics within the Orthodox Church and their positions, either in support of or in opposition to the war. But in reality, on the ground there’s a lot more complexity that’s taken place, and a lot more of the ways in which different individuals and communities on both the Russia and the Ukraine side are responding to the violence, to the displacements, and so on. It paints a more complex and, I think, fascinating story, frankly. And sort of illuminates ways forward in support of peacebuilding. For example, there’s ways in which different kinds of ritual practices within Orthodoxy have served as a source of support and constancy to folks who are living in this situation of insecurity and displacement, in ways that have been helpful. There are, of course, other religious traditions that exist within both Ukraine and Russia that are operating and responding in different ways. Like, the Jewish community in Ukraine and the Catholic—the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine. So looking at those complexities both within Orthodoxy, but there’s many different ways that Orthodox Christians are responding in both countries. There’s not one story of Orthodox Christianity and the invasion of Ukraine. But also looking at some of the religious diversity within it. And that helps to ensure, like I said, one, that we’re developing solutions that are also recognizing the ways in which religion at a very ground level is serving as a source of support, humanitarian relief, social, psychological support to people on the ground, as well as the ways in which it’s sort of manifesting ambivalently and complexly in ways that are driving some of the violence as well. And it also helps to push back against any sort of a narrative that this is about a Russian religion—on the Russian side—this is about a religious war against a secular, non-religious West or Ukraine, right? That that goes back to what I was talking about with the historical sort of contingencies that are baked into this system a little bit. And in defining it in that way, Russia’s religious and its motivations are religious, Ukraine’s not religious, that’s both not true—(laughs)—because there’s many religious folks within the Ukraine and within the West generally, but also feeds—it feeds the very narrative that Putin and Kirill are giving of a secular West that is anti-religion, that is in opposition to Russian traditional values. FASKIANOS: It seems like there needs to be some training of journalists too to have religious literacy, in the same way that we’re talking about media literacy. HAYWARD: Yeah. FASKIANOS: Probably should be introduced as well. (Laughs.) HAYWARD: Yeah, Irina, it’s funny, we did—one of my students actually did a kind of mapping and analysis of stories about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the religious dimensions of it. And she noted that there was—for example, it was—almost always it was male clerics who were being quoted. So there was very little that was coming from other gendered perspectives and experiences on the ground, lay folks and so on. And again, for that—for that very reason it’s sort of—because we know so many policymakers and international analysis are depending on these kinds of media stories, I worry that it creates a blinder to potential opportunities for different kinds of ways of addressing needs and partners for addressing needs on the ground. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. I’m going to go next to Liam Wall, an undergraduate student at Loyola Marymount University: With so much diversity within religions itself, how can we avoid the analysis paralysis you mentioned and take in as many unique perspectives as possible, without letting that stand in the way of progress? How does one know that they have enough religious literacy and can now become an effective practitioner? HAYWARD: Well, OK, the bad news is that you will never have enough religious literacy. (Laughs.) This is a process, not an end. There are scholars here at Harvard who have been studying one particular sect of a particular religious tradition for their entire adult lives, and they would still say that they are students of those traditions, because they’re so complex. Because so many of these traditions are composed of a billion people or just—just 500 million people. But that means that there’s going to be an incredible diversity to explore. And so that’s the bad news. But the good news is, one, like, first take the burden off of your shoulders of having to be an expert on any one particular religious tradition, in order to be able to help to develop and enhance your own religious literacy, and those of others, and to operate in ways that reflect the principles of religious literacy, is the good news. As well as there are many different kinds of resources that you can turn to in order to understand, for example if you’re going to be working in a particular geographic location, scholarship, people you can speak to in order to begin to understand at least some of the specific manifestations and practices, and some of the disputes and diversity that exists within that particular country or geographic location across religious traditions. But, secondly, I would say, it’s almost more important than—like, the substance is important. But what’s just as important, if not more important, is understanding what kinds of questions to be asking, and to be curious about these religious questions and their intersection with the political and social. So we sometimes say that religious literacy is about developing habits of mind in how we think about these religious questions, and what kinds of questions we ask about religion. So it’s about developing that kind of a reflex to be able to kind of see what’s underneath some of the analysis that you’re seeing that might be relevant to religion or that might be advancing particularly problematic understandings of religion, or reinforcing binaries like the secular and the religious and so on. And that’s just as—just as important. So the extent to which you’re continuing to, like, hone those—that way of thinking, and those habits of mind, that will set you up well for then going into this space and being able to ask those particular questions with respect to whatever issues you’re focusing on, or whatever geographic location you’re looking at. FASKIANOS: Great. I’m going to go next to Mohamed Bilal, a postgraduate student at the Postgraduate Institute of Management in Sri Lanka. HAYWARD: Yay! FASKIANOS: Yes. How does sectarianism influence our literacy? In turn, if we are influenced by sectarianism, then would we be illiterate of the religion but literate of the sect? Thus, wouldn’t such a religious literacy perpetuate sectarianism? HAYWARD: Thank you for the question, Mohamed. It’s—I miss Sri Lanka. I have not been there in too long, and I look forward to going back at some point. So I would say sectarianism, in the sense of—so, there’s both religious sects, right? There’s the existence of different kinds of religious traditions, interpretive bodies, jurisprudential bodies in the case of Islam. And then broader, different schools or denominations. The term that’s used depends on the different religious tradition. And that reflects internal diversity. Sectarianism, with the -ism on the end of it, gets back to the same kinds of questions that I think Professor Clemente was asking with respect to fundamentalism. That’s about being sort of entrenched in an idea that your particular religious understanding and practice is the normative, authentic, and pure practice, and that all others are false in some ways. That is a devotional claim or—what I mean by a devotional claim, is that is a knowledge claim that is rooted within a particular religious commitment and understanding. And so religious literacy in this case would—again, it’s the principles of internal diversity, recognizing that different sects and different bodies of thought and practice are going to exist within religious traditions, but then also ensuring that any claim to be normative or to be orthodox by any of these different interpretive bodies is always a claim that is rooted within that religious tradition that we sometimes say is authentic. It’s authentic to those communities and what they believe. But it’s not exclusive. It’s not the only claim that exists within that religious tradition more broadly. And the concern is about—sects are fine. Different denominations, different interpretative bodies are fine and a good and sort of natural thing, given the breadth and the depth of these religious traditions. The problem is that -ism part of it, when it becomes a source of competition or even potentially violence between groups. And so that’s what needs to be interrogated and understood. FASKIANOS: So another question from John Francis, who’s the senior associate vice president for academic affairs at the University of Utah: If you were training new diplomats in other countries to be stationed in the United States, where a wide range of religious traditions thrive, how would you prepare them for dealing with such religious variation? HAYWARD: The same way I would—and thank you, again, for the question. The same way that I would with any other diplomats going to any other—the same way I do with foreign service officers at the Foreign Service Institute, who are going to work overseas. I would—I would invite them to think about their own assumptions and their own worldviews and their own understandings of what religion is, based on their own contexts that they grew up in. So how that shapes how they understand what religion is, in the ways I was speaking to before. So for example, in Protestant Christianity, we tend to emphasize belief as the sort of core principle of religious traditions. But other religious traditions might emphasize different forms of practice or community as sort of the central or principal factor. So recognizing your own situatedness and the ways in which you understand and respond to different religious traditions. I would invite those who are coming to work here to read up on the historical developments and reality of different religious communities and nonreligious communities in the U.S. and encourage them to look not just at some of the—what we call the world religions, or the major religions, but also at indigenous traditions and different practices within different immigrant communities. And I would have them look at the historical relationship between the state and different religious communities as well, including the Mormon tradition there in Utah, and how the experience of, for example, the Mormon community has shaped its own relationship with the state, with other religious communities on a whole host of issues as well. And then I would encourage—just as I was saying earlier—no diplomat going to the U.S. is going to become an expert on the religious context in the U.S., because it’s incredibly complex, just like anywhere else in the world. But to be able to have sort of a basic understanding to be able to then continue to ask the kinds of questions that are going to help to understand how any political action is taken or response to any policy issues kind of inevitably bumps up against particular religious or cultural commitments and values. FASKIANOS: Great. I’m going to take the next question from Will Carpenter, director of private equity principal investments at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, and also taking a course at the Harvard Extension School. HAYWARD: Hey! FASKIANOS: I’m going to ask the second part of Will’s question. How will the current polarized domestic debate regarding U.S. history, which is often colored by the extremes—as a force for good only versus tainted by a foundation of injustice—impact America’s capacity to lead internationally? HAYWARD: Hmm, a lot. (Laughter.) Thank you for the question. I mean, I think the fact of polarization in the U.S. and the increasing difficulty that we’re facing in being able to have really deep conversations and frank conversations about historical experiences and perceptions of different communities, not just religiously, not just racially even, but across different—urban-rural, across socioeconomic divides, across educational divides and, of course, across political divides, and so on. I think that—I think that absolutely hampers our ability to engage within the global stage effectively. One, just because of the image that it gives to the rest of the world. So how can we—how can we have an authentic moral voice when we ourselves are having such a hard time engaging with one other in ways that reflect those values and that are grounded within those values? But also because I think get concern—with respect to religion questions in particular—I get concern about the increasing polarization and partisanization of religion in foreign policy and issues of religious freedom, and so on. Which means that we’re going to constantly have this sort of swinging back and forth then between Republican and Democratic administrations on how we understand and engage issues related to religion and foreign policy, different religious communities in particular, like Muslim communities worldwide, or on issues of religious freedom. So I think it’s incredibly critical—always has been, but is particularly right now at this historical moment—for us to be in the U.S. doing this hard work of having these conversations, and hearing, and listening to one another, and centering and being open about our values and having these conversations on that level of values. To be able to politically here in the U.S., much less overseas, to be able to work in ways that are effective. Irina, you’re muted. FASKIANOS: Thank you. (Laughs.) With that, we are at the end of our time. Thank you so much for this. This has been a really important hour of discussion. Again, we will send out the link to the webinar, as well as all the resources that you mentioned, Susan. Sorry we didn’t have the chat open so that we could focus on what you were saying and all the questions and comments that came forward. So we appreciate it. And thank you so much, again, for your time, Susan Hayward. And I just want to remind everybody that this is the last webinar of the semester, but we will be announcing the Winter/Spring Academic Webinar lineup in our Academic bulletin. And if you’re not already subscribed to that, you can email us at [email protected] Just as a reminder, you can learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/careers. Follow @CFR_Academic on Twitter and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Good luck with your exams. (Laughs.) Grading, taking them, et cetera. Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving. And we look forward to seeing you again next semester. So, again, thank you to Susan Hayward. HAYWARD: Thank you, everybody. Take care.

Webinar by Susan O. Hayward November 16, 2022 Academic and Higher Education Webinars
Foreign Policy

Twenty-Seventh Term Member Conference

The Stephen M. Kellen Term Member Program is supported by a generous gift from the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation.

Virtual Event by Guillermo S. Christensen, Sara Eisen, Liana Fix , Additional Speaker to be Announced, Tara Hariharan, Suriya Jayanti, Jennifer DJ Nordquist, Stephen Sestanovich , Thomas J. Bollyky , Philip M. Caruso, Julian Gewirtz, Alfred I. Johnson, Lauren Kahn, Patricia M. Kim, Zongyuan Zoe Liu , Timothy J. MacDonald , Inu Manak , Matthias Matthijs , Manjari Chatterjee Miller , Bill Nelson, Ebenezer Obadare , Brad W. Setser , Neil Shenai, Varun Sivaram, Scott A. Snyder , Erin M. Staine-Pyne, Ray Takeyh , Christopher M. Tuttle , José Miguel Vivanco and Ali Wyne November 3, 2022 Renewing America
Globalization

CFR Fellows’ Book Launch Series: The Globalization Myth: Why Regions Matter By Shannon K. O'Neil

The conventional wisdom about globalization is wrong. When companies, money, people, and ideas went abroad more often than not they went regional. The Globalization Myth details the rise of three main regional manufacturing and supply chain hubs in Europe, Asia, and North America and lays out why it matters for the United States. The CFR Fellows’ Book Launch series highlights new books by CFR fellows.

Virtual Event by Shannon K. O'Neil October 20, 2022 Renewing America
United States

A Conversation With Chairman Jack Reed

U.S. Senator and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Jack Reed discusses how the United States can best leverage its military and economic power to compete with China on the global stage.

Virtual Event by Jack Reed October 17, 2022 Renewing America
Russia

Academic Webinar: Russia's Global Influence

Mary Elise Sarotte, Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis distinguished professor of historical studies at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, leads the conversation on Russia’s global influence. FASKIANOS: Welcome to today’s session of the Fall 2022 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Mary Elise Sarotte with us to talk about Russia’s global influence. Professor Sarotte is the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis distinguished professor of historical studies in the Henry Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. She is also research associate at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies. She previously taught at the University of Southern California and the University of Cambridge and served as a White House fellow. She is the author or editor of six books. Her most recent book is entitled Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate. And it was published by Yale University Press. Thank you, Mary. She has already won the Pushkin House Prize for the best book on Russia, and she is shortlisted for CFR’s Arthur Ross Book Award, and the Cundill History Prize. So we’re very excited to have you here with us, Professor Sarotte, to talk about this and to be with us. And congratulation on your accolades for prior books as well as this one. So best of luck with those two upcoming book awards. So I thought we could perhaps start with you giving us your analysis of what exactly is happening to Russia’s global influence as we are watching the war in Ukraine and Russia, obviously, on the world stage. SAROTTE: Absolutely. First, let me just say a quick word of thanks to you, Irina, to your staff, and to all the people who have taken the time to sign on. At a time like this, which is a time of war, the Council is more essential than ever. It’s essential to have a place where we can meet, either in person or virtually, and talk about these utterly critical issues. So thank you for doing this. And thank you to all of the students and educators who have made time to Zoom in today. I was looking through the list last night and, as of last night, we have people signed up from eleven time zones—from London, to Hilo, Hawaii. So in these days where there’s a lot to be worried about, it’s a silver lining that there are smart young students and that there are smart educators taking time to inform and learn about this. Yeah. So the name of today’s session is Russia’s global influence. My feeling is that as—what’s happening is that Russia’s global influence is decreasing as the Ukraine war’s global influence is increasing. So in other words, they’re on opposite trajectories. So as the duration, significance, brutality and bloodiness of the war increases, Russia becomes more and more isolated. You can go through this in a number of factors. If you look, for example, in energy terms, this is going to be the last winter that Russia could plausibly put Europe in the cold and in the dark. Europe is making great strides towards finding alternative sources of energy—whether that’s alternative suppliers, or renewables. Dramatic changes are happening. There’s a famous saying, I think it’s attributed to Lenin, I believe, that there are some decades when nothing happens and then there are some weeks when decades happen. And there’s been many, many weeks this year where decades happen. And I think we’ve seen decades of progress in terms of energy renewables, and so forth. So, one of five. So, number one, energy terms. Russia is going to have decreasing influence over Europe. Number two, in trade and economic affairs we’ve already seen what’s being referred to as the great decoupling of Russia being cut off from what used to be formerly major trading partners. In military terms, the recent retaliation against Ukraine for the putative attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge—putative in that they’re subscribing authorship of that to Ukraine—that is, again, also self-defeating for Russia. It’s using up a supply of precision-guided munitions that, in military terms, would be better used against military targets, not against kindergarten playgrounds. And to say nothing of the incredible moral crime of doing that. Just in pure military terms it doesn’t make sense. Also, what it has done is further solidified Ukrainian opposition. As historians, we see this again and again. When you bomb a people—like, for example, the Blitz in London, the reaction tends to be a sense of solidarity and a sense of hanging together to survive and persist. And that’s happening in Ukraine as well. It's also given such credence to Ukraine’s request for air defense systems that the New York Times just now, as I was just getting ready for this session, just reported that Germany is now shipping an air defense system that is so new, it has never been used in Germany or anywhere else. It’s called the IRIS-T SLM system. It has already crossed Ukraine’s border from Poland. It apparently includes mobile launchers, a 360-degree radar, and a separate command vehicle from which you can operate the system. This was in development in Germany, and it was—it’s capable, apparently—it’s effective at distances of up to twenty-five miles. It can strike targets twelve miles up. It was basically still in development, but now they’ve let Ukraine jump the queue and shipped it right to Ukraine. The idea that that would have happened even, you know, a week ago is unthinkable. So to recap, in terms of energy, economics, military, Russian influence is actually declining because allies are banding together to fight against it. Soft power from before, that is—in the West, Russia’s soft power is basically nonexistent at this point. The fifth and final category, and that’s the real wild card, is nuclear. That’s, obviously, the big worry. There, Russia’s global influence in that category remains strong. There are only two strategic nuclear powers, and that’s the United States and Russia. More than thirty years after the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States still control 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads. They are the only two states with civilization-ending capabilities, with the ability to kill most life on earth, within practically a matter of minutes, if they choose to do so. They are in a nuclear class by themselves. So that is why we are now hearing so much nuclear saber rattling from Russia. So just to sum up, because of the immense self-inflicted harm of this war to Russia—to say nothing of the terrible harm to the Ukrainians who are fighting bravely against a truly brutal aggressor—because of this war, Russia’s global influence is decreasing, which, of course, raises the risk that they’ll lean heavily on the one way in which they still have global influence, which is as a strategic nuclear power. So I think you’ve chosen exactly the right topic for us to talk about today. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you, Mary, for that. We want to get to all of you and your questions. So we’re going to turn now to you. (Gives queuing instructions.) And we already have four hands raised, so I’m going to go first to Morton Holbrook. Q: Professor Sarotte, a somewhat obscure question. Russia early on purported to recognize two new countries in eastern Ukraine, which Russia did not do with regard to Georgia or with regard to Crimea. And the question is, is it a complete charade? Or has anyone actually, besides Russia, recognized them. Someone like Belarus, maybe, or China, or any other country? Or is it just a completely charade, these two new countries? FASKIANOS: Morton, can you give us your affiliation? Q: Kentucky Wesleyan College in Kentucky. FASKIANOS: Thank you so much. SAROTTE: OK. Thank you for calling in from Kentucky. So we’ve got one time zone down, for those of you doing a time zone bingo chart. We can tick that one off. Thank you, Morton Holbrook, for your question. Yeah, things have been moving so quickly, it’s hard to keep up. Initially, as you indicated, Putin indicated he was going to recognize people’s republics in eastern Ukraine. But now things have moved on, and now he’s said he’s annexed those areas. There’s a little bit of a gray zone because, of course, no one’s quite sure what the annexed borders are, what the borders of the annexed area are. Obviously, no other countries have recognized this. So this is, obviously, all very contested. I would actually, rather than trying to parse the recent terms—whether it’s a recognized republic, or a country, or an annexation—I actually would go back to a vote that took place in 1991, while the Soviet Union still existed, although it was falling apart. And in December 1991, Ukraine held what was essentially a free election to decide—to basically confirm among the population the decision of the parliament to depart from the Soviet Union and become an independent state. And that vote, that Ukrainian vote for independence, was enormously successful. It was over 90 percent in favor of independence. And the relevant fact here for your question, Morton, is that in no electoral district was support for independence below 50 percent. In other words, there was majority support for independence in every single part of Ukraine—whether that was Crimea, whether that was Donetsk, whether that was Luhansk, whether that’s the areas that Putin is now calling new countries, or new annexations. And so if we take that as an expression of popular will about whether or not Ukrainians want to be part of Russia, it was really clear that the desire was overwhelmingly to be independent. So that is, I think, an important data point. That when that question was actually put to a vote, an overwhelming number of Ukrainians voted to be independent, and a majority voted in every single district. Now, obviously, there are Ukrainian separatists who feel—sorry—there are pro-Russian people inside Ukraine who feel differently. But I think that that election is the information that we should really look to when we’re trying to figure out the sentiments of the people. FASKIANOS: Thanks. I’m going to go next to Julian Reich. And you need to unmute yourself. Q: Yeah. Hi, professor. Yeah, I’m Julian Reich from the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College. I’ve read some of your articles about NATO enlargement and the post-Cold War settlement. Do you think Russia’s renewed revisionism is as much a sense of their inability to achieve economic growth post-Cold War? Or do you think it largely rests on the unsatisfactory nature of the post-Cold War settlement? SAROTTE: Hmm. Yeah. Thank you, Julian, calling from Hunter College. Yeah, so as I like to say to my own students—so if any of them are on this call, they’ll groan when they hear me say this—the one phenomenon that I have never observed as a historian is mono-causality. Important events happen for multiple reasons. They’re not necessarily significant reasons. There’s a huge role for accident and chance in history. But there’s usually a mixture, often a dramatic mixture changing over time, of reasons. So I don’t think there is one simple answer for why what’s happening now—why Putin has become an aggressive invader of Ukraine. Certainly, the economic difficulties of Russia in the 1990s, the economic difficulties of other parts of the Soviet space, those are all a factor because they then gave Putin a base of support. When he came in and the economy started doing better, setting aside for a moment the question of whether or not he was responsible for that, people then associated him with moving beyond a really terrible time. The 1990s were an awful time in the post-Soviet space. Any of the indicators that you look at are just truly depressing. For example, the life expectancy for men decreased in Russia in the 1990s. The population decreased. Those are numbers that conceal a great deal of suffering. And so Putin coming in and the economy improving meant there was a certain base of support for Putin, which then meant when he started dismantling the fragile democracy in Russia, he had support for what he was doing that put him in the position that he’s in. But of course, you also have to look at his personal beliefs and fixations. It seems that he spent sadly, tragically, far too much time alone during the pandemic obsessing about the history of what he thinks belongs to Russia. I’m hearing reports from archivists out of Russia that there were all kinds of requests from the Kremlin, presumably from Putin personally through his subordinates, for evidence and documents. And he, Putin, has been publishing articles, or at least allowing articles to be published under his name, about the history of the Second World War, the history of ties with Ukraine. I’m not agreeing with any of them; I’m just noting that he is fixated on history. And so he has this fixation on the idea that he can restore the Russian greatness, he can restore land that belonged to Russia. So that’s a factor as well. Then there is, of course, the factor that the post-Cold War settlement didn’t define a place in its security structure for Ukraine. There were early discussions about that, and I talk about that in my book Not One Inch, but those did not result in a fixed secure birth for Ukraine in the European security structure. So that meant it was left outside of what was essentially the new frontline in Europe, which was the Article 5 frontline. Article 5 is, of course, the heart of the North Atlantic Treaty. It’s the article that says every member state should treat an attack on one state as an attack on all. It’s a very, very strong security guarantee. And NATO, of course, as I describe in my book Not One Inch, expanded, enlarged, in the 1990s, and expanded and enlarged its Article 5 territory, but not to Ukraine. One of the bigger surprises of my research was that President Bill Clinton in the early 1990s recognized, as he put it, that Ukraine was the, quote, “linchpin” of Europe, the key to Europe. I’m paraphrasing, but the exact quotations are in my book, Not One Inch, if you’re interested. So in early discussions of NATO enlargement, Clinton went to Central and Eastern Europeans and said: I understand. You have every right to want to join NATO. You are new, free democracies. We admire hugely how you threw off Soviet control. But you have to understand, if we give you Article 5, we’ll draw essentially a new line. We just got rid of the Cold War line. If we give you Article 5, we’ll draw a new line, and that will leave Ukraine on the wrong side. And Ukraine is a huge country in terms of geography, in terms of population. At the end of the Cold War, it had a population over fifty million, which meant it was on the size of Britain or France. It’s geographically enormous. It was becoming a new democracy as well. And Clinton said, you know, we can’t leave Ukraine in the lurch like that. It’s too big a leap to put it in NATO right away, but we can’t just leave Ukraine in the lurch like that. But then Boris Yeltsin, Putin’s predecessor, made a lot of self-harming, bad mistakes. He started using bloodshed to fight what should have been political fights. In October 1993, Boris Yeltsin decided to have tanks fire on his own parliament. I mean, we think about in the United States we had January 6. Imagine if Trump had sent tanks to fire on the Capitol, right? Then Yeltsin allowed a very brutal invasion of Chechnya. There’s some question as to whether he understood quite how extensive that invasion would be, and quite how brutal it would be. But he allowed it. He was president of the country. And so once he started shedding blood again in Russia, so soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europeans, who had been willing to listen to what Clinton said about Ukraine, who had been willing to agree, through clenched teeth, to perhaps try to find some intermediate solution for Ukraine as well, said: No. Forget it. We need Article 5. And you see this kind of parting of the ways between the post-Cold War path for the Central and Eastern Europeans and the Ukrainians. And so then Ukraine gets left out. So I could continue. There’s, like, five more reasons. But basically, when you’re looking at a history, you try to look at what the main factors are and how they interact with each other. So I think that there are a lot of factors, and the ones that you mention are part of them, that led to where we are today. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question from Victoria Williams, who has written her question out. But why don’t you ask it? Q: Hi, how are you? Hello. So I’m very curious to understand how we can deescalate the situation and move away from the sort of nuclear option or nuclear threat. How can we do this without basically empowering him and allowing him to just take Ukraine—take pieces of it? FASKIANOS: Victoria, you’re with Alvernia University? Q: In Reading, Pennsylvania, that’s correct. So I’m East Coast zone. (Laughs.) SAROTTE: East Coast, OK. (Laughs.) All right. Well, thank you, Victoria. And, yeah, obviously that’s the huge question. So the huge question is how do we avoid nuclear escalation. That is the essential question. The challenge is to balance that against responding to Putin, who is essentially an aggressive bully, right? And who at this point, it’s clear, only understands the language of force. What has happened in the past couple weeks has really, unfortunately, foreclosed options for de-escalation. The announcement of annexation of territory, what I was talking about in response to Morton Holbrook’s question, that removed, for example, the option that there could perhaps be a negotiated settlement. Because now Putin is saying, no, no, that’s Russian territory. It’s not even Ukraine anymore. And Ukrainians obviously don’t accept that. So the possibilities for de-escalation unfortunately became fewer in the past couple of weeks. And that is really tragic because, as I said, we’ve got the nuclear shadow hanging over all of this. So the real challenge is how to push back against a bully. And this, by the way, is not just, of course, about Ukraine and Russia. Obviously, there’s discussions about what the People’s Republic of China might do to Taiwan in the wake of its de facto takeover of Hong Kong. So there are other countries around the world that are looking at this to see what could happen. So it’s important to push back and be firm, but to do so in a way that doesn’t lead to nuclear escalation. That is a very, very difficult task. The one thing that heartens me is that we do have some experience with it. The experience was called the Cold War. So we do have a track record of dealing with this challenge. Some of the big differences that make me nervous are that the Cold War evolved over decades, and there was time to build guardrails, which were arms control agreements. We seem, by contrast, now to have spun back up to Cold War-like conditions in a matter of months, but we’re missing guardrails. We’re missing—and we’re missing popular understanding of what that means. Let me talk a little about both of those. So during the Cold War, there were a whole host of arms control agreements that limited the kinds of weapons that Washington or Moscow could build, and where they could be deployed, and a whole host of things. At present, there’s only one nuclear treaty that constrains Washington and Moscow in any way. It’s going to expire soon. And my guess is it’s probably not going to be renewed. And then Moscow and Washington will be in, in nuclear terms, completely unconstrained. That is jaw dropping and immensely frightening. So during the Cold War, of course, you had the ABM Treaty—the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty—Intermediate Nuclear Range Forces Treaty, and a whole bunch of alphabet-soup treaties that at least put some guardrails on. We don’t have those. What we also had during the Cold War was a greater cultural understanding of what nuclear war would mean, the sheer devastation that would be involved. I remember as a kid seeing a film called The Day After, about the nuclear devastation that would ensue if Soviet missiles hit the United States. I was actually just listening to Ian Bremmer the other day. And Ian Bremmer said he woke up and started thinking about that film, The Day After, for the first time in decades. We, as kids, those of us who are old enough, at least have memory of the potential horror of nuclear war. My students now do not have that at all. There’s really no understanding of that. And that’s not their fault, but it means there’s just not a cultural awareness of just how risky this is. As a matter of fact, I heard a report—it must have been on the BBC, just some stray report. But someone—it was a couple months ago—something about Russia tested some nuclear systems, but they didn’t—and the journalist added: But they didn’t actually have nuclear weapons on them. They were just testing the systems. And I was thinking, of course they didn’t have nuclear weapons on them. (Laughs.) I mean, you know, of course they didn’t blow up large segments of Europe in a test. But just the fact that the person kind of didn’t know what she was saying I though, wow, we really just lost, like, the cultural understanding of what it means. So we have these risks and we don’t have the guardrails, and we don’t have the cultural understanding. So we need to move forward carefully. I think the Biden administration has been doing a good job with this immense challenge. I think the answer has been to move incrementally, which is what has been happening. So there has been a gradual escalation of the amount and sophistication of weaponry provided. As I said, literally just in the past couple of hours there was a big step forward with Germany now delivering air defense systems. There has been, obviously, meetings of the G-7 and NATO. I think the incremental approach has been a strong one in a very, very dark situation. The Finnish and Swedish memberships in NATO are advancing incrementally. And it seems that this incremental approach so far has, at least for the prospects of the wider world, kept the conflict constrained. Now, obviously, it has not kept it constrained in any way for Ukraine. And I really have to express my admiration for the Ukrainians for how bravely they are fighting, for what they are suffering. It really is remarkable. And these recent strikes, with precision-guided munitions hitting kindergartens, just, unspeakable. So obviously the war is not constrained for Ukraine, but it has not become a global thermonuclear war. It has not become a bigger war. I am worried about this pipeline destruction that has been going on. I heard reports this morning about some kind—I don’t even know if this is accurate, so don’t quote me on this. I haven’t even had time to look at this. But I heard reports this morning that there was pipeline damage in Poland. If that’s true, that’s Article 5 territory. That would be—things that start to happen in Article 5 territory increase the risk of escalation. So the best way to keep it from escalating is to keep it away from Article 5 territory, to give Ukrainians the means to defend themselves, to keep ratcheting up the pressure incrementally. I don’t really know that there are many offramps more for Putin. I think at this point we’re probably looking at some kind of a grinding to a stalemate process. I think that’s probably the best-case scenario. It’s not a good one, but it’s probably the best of bad options. Obviously, the worst option would be escalation in some way to nuclear use. So thank you, Victoria, for the question. Long-winded answer, but it’s an important and complicated question. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to Manuel Montoya at the University of New Mexico. Q: Hello, Dr. Sarotte. I’m Manuel Montoya. I’m a professor here at the University of New Mexico, here in Albuquerque. So Rocky Mountains, Mountain time zone. SAROTTE: All right, thank you. (Laughter.) Q: Yeah, thank you very much for your presentation. And thanks, everybody, for all of your questions. I’ve been thinking recently about the health of international institutions in the next chapter of whatever follows what is happening now. And my question is about Russia’s global influence, not in terms of its military power or even its social power, but also the influence it will have on the stability of international institutions, like the International Criminal Court. If there is a political will to try Russia in the International Criminal Court system or to hold them accountable through any other political devices that the international global governance community has, what do you perceive being the vulnerabilities or the risks associated with that? And how is that going to influence the stability or legitimacy of those institutions moving forward? SAROTTE: All right, Mountain time in the house. Excellent. Thank you so much. Q: Thank you. SAROTTE: Yeah. Thank you, Manuel, for your question. Yeah, it’s a good question. I guess I would answer your question two different ways, short term and long term. And, preview, I’m actually going to duck answering the long-term part. So short term, I think one of the silver linings is—of these terrible events that are happening—one of the silver linings is that Putin’s actions have created a new sense of solidarity, purpose, mission, and togetherness in international organizations. And this is not uncommon. Theorists know that having a clear enemy concentrates minds. Having an enemy the size of Russia really concentrates minds. So this is not surprising, but it is heartening. NATO, in particular, has a new sense of purpose and mission. There’s some speculation on this—back in February—oh, there’s a sense of unity now but it will fall apart as soon as leaves start turning in the fall. Well, the leaves are turning, at least here in Washington, D.C., and that sense of unity has not fallen apart. And I think other international institutions are feeling new life in their limbs, feeling new power in their veins, feeling a new sense of purpose. So in the short run, I think what is happening—although, it is again, I can’t say this enough, it’s deeply tragic for the world, incredibly dangerous, awful for Ukrainians—there are some silver linings, such as this new sense of solidarity. Now, your question about holding Russia accountable, I would put that in the category of longer-term questions. Because right now what’s essential is to prevent loss of life in Ukraine, to somehow find a way to end the violence and the bloodshed. That’s the most pressing path. But obviously holding Russia accountable and pursing what has happened here, the war crimes that are happening, is obviously hugely important. It’s a little hard right now to predict exactly how, when, and where that will happen while the conflict is still ongoing. Because obviously the continuation of the conflict itself makes it difficult to gather evidence and so forth. So your question is an insightful one. It’s an important one. But it’s just really hard to answer right now. As a historian, I am interested in the interplay between contingency, so individual decisions, individual actors making decisions, and structures. And right now, we’re in a war. And a war is a time when contingency dominates. Many unpredictable factors come into play. So it’s just a little bit—a little bit—it’s a lot hard to say what the conditions, what the parameters will be for the kind of accountability initiative that you’re talking about. So I think it’s the right question, but I just think I’d be lying if I said I had a good answer for you. The only thing I can say with certainly is it’s not a question that can be answered right now. It’s an important question, but it’s something that has to be on hold for a little while. FASKIANOS: Great. I’m going to go next to the University College London. I don’t know who is asking the question, but please say who you are and unmute yourself. Q: Yes. Hello. We are from UCL, from the IPP master’s program. My name is Dr. Aboudounya and I have a number of students who have really interesting questions. They are just on their way, just one second. (Laughs.) SAROTTE: All right. So we’ve got British summertime in the house, excellent. Very good. How many people have you got there in your classroom? Q: So at the moment we have around eight people attending. SAROTTE: Excellent. Q: And we have a number of questions. So the first one will— Q: Hello. I have two questions. The first question is, is our world still in the process of globalization, especially with the United States’ economic pressures to the Russia and as Russia set war to Ukraine and they cut off the energy to Europe, and also add in the situation of the spread of COVID-19? This is my first question. And then my second question is, without Russia, how can Europe solve its energy problem? Q: Thank you very much. We just have another question, sorry. FASKIANOS: One more and then we will go answers, and then we have so many other questions we’ll have to keep it at that. Q: Hi. I also have a question. That is, if the war continues, will Russia change its public policy with other developing countries, like Malaysia or India? Will they cooperate together to solve their current issues, or they will take other actions? Thanks. SAROTTE: All right. Well, thank you, UCL, for making a good showing there. You can check off British summertime. Let me—first, let me say—so, the second question first was Russia and its attitude towards developing countries. Obviously, because Russia is now decoupling itself, and also being decoupled from, the Western economy, that increases the importance to Russia of countries that are not in Europe, countries that are not in the United States, and so forth. So there is new leverage now for basically other countries. Obviously, , I wouldn’t call China a developing country, but obviously China and India have enormous leverage right now with Russia. So in a sense, there’s a kind of recalibration happening in the international system as the energy and economic ties between Europe are being cut, it’s then going to be creating newer ties or stronger ties to developing countries. So there’s a large realignment going on. Again, as with the previous question from Manuel, it’s a little early to foresee the outcome, but it’s clear that process is underway. And then the previous question about without Russia, how can Europe solve its energy problem, that’s obviously the right question. The Europeans have had now a lot of this calendar year to think about that. So one of the self-harming choices that Putin made was to play his energy card too early. In other words, he started threatening and actually cutting off supplies—energy supplies—to Europe in the early spring, when the invasion didn’t end in three days, as he hoped. And that actually gave Europeans the whole summer to start to make plans, to try to find alternatives, to do things like build floating harbors to get liquefied natural gas to their customers, to find alternative sources. The sense, for example, from Germany, which is a country where I was recently, is that while it might be a difficult winter, no one is going to freeze. The supplies will be enough. There might—they’re not going to be able to keep lights on, perhaps, in stores in the evening, and maybe the Christmas markets won’t be as bright, but no one is going to freeze. And they’re ready for it. And that feeling seems to cover other European countries as well. And if there are some difficulties, people are ready for that. And, as I said before, this will be the last winter where Russia will able to threaten to put Europe in the dark and in the cold. And renewables are going to come online in a major way. Germany had to reverse course on some of its use of coal. It’s also has to reverse course on cutting down some nuclear plants. There is going to be a shifting, but it will—Europe will be able to provide for its essential energy needs. There may be some non-essential things that go away, but Europe will make sure that nobody freezes. And I couldn’t quite hear the first question, but I understand there are other questioners, so you’ll forgive me if I pass on the first question and move onto the next questioner. But thank you for ticking off the British summertime box. FASKIANOS: Great. I’m going to go next to Zachary Hammerschmidt. Q: Hi. I’m Zach Hammerschmidt from Mankato State—Minnesota State University in Mankato. So my question to you is: Should we be viewing this more of a continuation of the Cold War? Proxy wars have been more noticeable of late—as in Syria and the Ukraine, with NATO’s influence. And if so, wouldn’t the expansion of NATO into Scandinavia and our support of Ukraine as a pro-Western democracy further exacerbate the problem with Russian aggression? Because that definitely does mimic Putin’s rhetoric, of late. SAROTTE: OK. OK. Are you Central time? Q: Yes. SAROTTE: All right. We can tick off Central time. Excellent. Very good. All right, so, all right, Zachary, thank you for your question. Historical question. I love it. I’m a historian, so history, the one true discipline. All your political science students out there, nobody’s perfect. All right. So, yeah, Cold War. That whole thing has really come up again. My colleague, Stephen Kotkin, the author of the biography of Stalin, has recently said—I think actually in Foreign Affairs, Irina, I think, or at a Foreign (Affairs) event—that the Cold War never ended. That it’s been continuing. That we are kidding ourselves that we had a break in it. I’m not entirely sure I agree with that. I believe that we are once again now in cold war-like conditions. But in contrast to my colleague, Stephen Kotkin—I disagree with him with great hesitation—but I believe that the thaw between the last Cold War and this new cold war was real. The problem is that cold wars are not short-lived affairs. So thaws are precious. And neither Russia nor the West made the best use of the thaw that we had, that is now over. For example, it would have been wonderful if there had been more progress on disarmament than there was. That didn’t happen. It would have been wonderful if it had lasted longer. That didn’t happen. This indeed is what I investigate in my book, Not One Inch. So since I know this is not meant to be a seven hour, or an eleven hour event, I’m not meant to cover all the time zones, I won’t describe all the arguments in my book right here. But if you are interested, you can definitely look at it more. I think what has happened is we—the Cold War ended. We had a genuine moment where it would have been possible to establish lasting cooperation. I know there are other people who think differently, but I believe that there was a real moment of optimism. Perhaps that’s because I experienced some of it personally. I was studying abroad in West Berlin in 1989. That is ultimately the reason I do what I do. That is the reason why I became a historian, why I am interested in Cold War history, the history of the end of the Cold War, the history of what is happening now, because of the experiences that I had living in West Berlin and traveling behind the Iron Curtain and then, obviously, the experience of seeing that Iron Curtain open, unexpectedly. So I think that there was a genuine thaw. I do not agree with Stephen Kotkin. I do think, as I was saying before, that we are spinning back up to cold war-like conditions, but with some important differences. There are important differences both in the surrounding structure and context, and there are important individual differences. And the surrounding structure and context, obviously the previous Cold War was a lot more bipolar, Moscow-Washington. Now China’s a much—a major player, certainly in economic terms, also in military terms. So that is different. There are just—India, Brazil—it’s not as bipolar as it was. It's also not an ideological conflict. Putin is not a communist. He’s far too rich for that. (Laughs.) He’s not trying to restore communism. So I grant that there are many, many differences to the previous Cold War. And yet, the key factor of the previous Cold War was the rise of this thermonuclear conflict—a potential thermonuclear conflict between Washington and Moscow which, to repeat, would be a civilization-ending conflict. It would kill most life on Earth. That, for me, is a significant threshold in history. We crossed that with the development of thermonuclear weapons. And so that nuclear conflict between Washington and Moscow is, to me, what defines the Cold War, what made it unique and different from previous eras. The fact that we are now once again talking about a nuclear conflict at that level—again, I hope very much this does not happen, but the rhetoric is bad—means that we are once again having a cold war. And then, as you mentioned, Zachary, there’s also this idea of proxy wars. That there is a stalemate between Washington and Moscow directly, or Moscow and NATO countries, but then there are other countries where there is hot war, not cold war. The Cold War is a bit of a misnomer. There’s an excellent book by Paul Chamberlin called The Cold War Killing Fields. Talks about all of the people who died in hot wars during the Cold War. And so, yes, you’re right to say we’re seeing this phenomenon again of a stalemate between Moscow and Washington, for now, but with a lot of bloodshed and fighting in a proxy war situation. And then, to get to the last part of your question about NATO enlargement, I think that you have to differentiate sharply between peacetime and wartime. So as you’ll see, if you have a look at my book, I am not an opponent of NATO enlargement, right? If you’re looking for the person who says everything that’s happened is NATO’s fault, that’s John Mearsheimer. That’s not me. So you can ask Irina to organize an educator’s event with John Mearsheimer and have at him. I am not opposed to NATO enlargement. I think the problem with NATO enlargement was how it happened. There were ways not to leave Ukraine in the lurch, for example. There were alternatives known at the time, that I describe in my book. And I wish that those alternatives had dominated, those alternative methods of enlarging NATO. NATO enlargement was not one thing. There were multiple possibly ways to expand it known at the time, including ways that would have involved Ukraine. And I wish that those had happened. So I think how it happened was problematic. But—and this is a big but—my criticism referred to this peaceful thaw that I genuinely believe was a real thaw, a real opportunity for cooperation between the last Cold War and the one we’ve got coming up. That time has changed. We are now in a time of war. War changes everything. So now that we’ve seen that Putin will know no limits, that Putin will respond only to force, now that we’ve seen the brutality of what happened in Bucha, now that we’re uncovering the atrocities every time Ukraine liberates another city, now we need wartime actions. It’s clear that what we need to do now is to defend Ukraine, to make it clear either to Putin or people around Putin that there is no point in continuing this conflict, and to try to somehow move beyond this bloodshed. And in the first instance, that requires showing as much military resolve as possible. And, as I said, also, in response to an earlier question, that also shows playing up alliance unity, creating new opportunities for people to join, like Sweden and Finland. So in the context of the war, now that we are in war, I think that it is the right and appropriate thing for NATO to keep enlarging and for it to push back forcefully against Putin to hopefully get back to a place where we’re not in wartime, we’re in peacetime, and then diplomacy can take over again. FASKIANOS: Great. So we did have a written question from Gail Evans, who’s at Georgia Tech, who referenced—and I don’t know if you saw it—the event that CFR hosted with Dr. Henry Kissinger, Mary, in which he suggested that we needed to be aware of how the Ukraine war ended would determine whether Russia was the far end of the West or the beginning of the East. And she wondered what your reaction is to that. SAROTTE: Hmm, interesting. So, no, I did not see that event. I mean, obviously Henry Kissinger is very—is a smart man. I think whether Russia is the far end of the West or the near end of the East is up to the Russians. So I don’t know that it is in our hands to decide that. I’m also not sure that’s a meaningful distinction. Obviously, there’s a lot of countries between Europe and China. So what about them? I would—but I do agree with him, absolutely, that the way this war ends is of monumental significance. The problem is, it’s hard to say how it will end. We can talk about how it won’t end, right? So, for example, it’s not going to end with Putin saying, oh, I don’t know what got into me, sorry. And everyone saying, OK, no problem, let’s go back to where we were before February, 24, 2022. That is not going to happen. I mean, even if—I said this in a television interview recently—even if—and this is not going to happen. But even if we get off this Zoom and we find that somehow, miraculously, while we’ve been on the Zoom, Putin said: You know, what? Forget it. Let’s stop this sill invasion. Call it off. That’s not happening. And even if it did, no one is going back, right? No one is going to say, oh, OK, all right. Let’s, you know, start the oil flowing again. I mean, even though despite there’s holes in the pipelines now. This is a real breaking point in history. So the question is, how is the war going to end? And it will be something new. I don’t know what it will be. It could be worse. But it will be something new. Russia, as I said, has been largely decoupled from the Western economy. That’s not going to change immediately. There will be questions, obviously, huge questions, about the internal domestic politics in Russia. It seems that Putin has decided to really attach his fate to the fate of this war, which is yet another tragic decision. He seems to have foreclosed other options for himself. So it’s not clear—it is not clear to me how this war ends. But it is clear to me that it will be hugely significant. And so I would agree with Dr. Kissinger that how this war ends is hugely significant. FASKIANOS: Great. I’m going to go next to Konstantin Tkachuk. Please excuse my pronunciation. Q: Yeah. Thank you a lot also from myself. My name is Konstantin. I’m coming from—I’m half Russian, half Ukrainian. And that’s a very insightful talk for me. I’m dialing from Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. SAROTTE: All right, Chinese time zones. Excellent. All right. All right. Very good. (Laughs.) Q: And my question is, we provide well—or somehow covered already the topic of the war and what is happening in the short term. I’m more curious that, given the situation will resolve in some time which we obviously cannot predict right now, and the war was definitely a political suicide for the current government in Russia, what do you think would be the settlement process worldwide for Russia, given the size of Russian resource markets, given the need in those resource markets still in many other countries, and the remaining impact on the various other industries? So how would you, from a historical perspective, see that? SAROTTE: Hmm, OK. Well, first of all, so thank you for adding the Chinese time zone. Secondly, thank you for sharing your personal background. I hope that your family members are safe. And I’m so sorry about the experiences that the Ukrainian side of your family is obviously going through. On your third point, your statement that this war was political suicide for the current Russia regime, I wish that were obviously true. I hope that will be true. I hope that we are approaching the post-Putin moment. It is not yet clear to me, however, that Putin has committed political suicide. When you’ve had a country in personal rule for decades, as he has—or, let me put it this way—when you’ve been at the top of a country for decades and you have created a situation of personal rule, you’ve established deep roots through the institutions of loyalties and supporters. Obviously, there’s no longer freedom of the press, there’s no longer freedom of association. And among the tragic effects of the war for Russia is that it has caused mass flight of people who might have led opposition. So certainly the outbreak of the war caused journalists and other writers to flee because the use of the word “war” was criminalized, and so their writing could have landed them in jail. More recently, the botched efforts at mobilization have caused some enormous number of young Russian men to leave Russia, as I’m sure you know. I haven’t—it seems like there are estimates that are bouncing around, but it looks like the number is clearly in the hundreds of thousands. So I’ve seen estimates that as many as half a million Russian men have fled the country because of the mobilization. So in a system that already has a dearth of venues to express opposition, to call for change, the war has depleted the supply of people who might be brave enough or inclined enough to make those calls. So it’s not clear to me that in domestic Russian terms Putin has committed political suicide. I think what has happened is grim for Russia as a country, as I said at the outset. I think as the global impact and influence of this war grows, the global impact and influence of Russia declines. I think many of the people around Putin are starting to realize they may be living in a very large version of North Korea. But again, the leader of North Korea has held on for a long time. So it’s not clear to me that this is political suicide for Putin. That then relates to the second part of your question, which is, you know, what kind of settlement comes out of this. And this goes back to the earlier question we had about, you know, the ICC and holding Russia accountable. You wisely mentioned, Konstantin, Russia’s resources. Obviously, Russia’s resources—its oil, its gas, and so forth—along with its strategic nuclear power, give it a certain weight in the international system. Russia is just simply too big to ignore, right? Before the war broke out I would often go to give talks and I would say: You know, there’s growing tensions with Russia, and they really worry me. And I would often face audiences who would say, well, why does Russia matter? It has the economy—it only has the economy the size of a small Chinese province or Spain. And I would respond, well, number one, Spain’s economy is not that small. And, number two, Russia’s a strategic nuclear power, right? That doesn’t change whether its economy is the size of Spain or not. So, you know, can’t just ignore Russia. It’s just too big and too nuclear to ignore. So it’s not as if the world is just going to be able to ignore Russia. There will, as you rightly said, have to be some kind of settlement. But as I’ve said with some of the other previous questions, I think we’re in a moment of contingency right now. And I think it would be—I’d be lying if I said, oh, I know absolutely what’s going to happen. It’s clear there is going to have to be a settlement. It’s clear Russia is just too big a factor, a player in the international system to simply write off. But what kind of settlement is going to come is going to depend on whether this really does turn out to be political suicide for Putin or not. And I don’t think that that is clear yet. But thank you for the insightful question. And thank you for adding in some Chinese time zones to this call. FASKIANOS: I’m going to go next to Zinadid Simpson Crasiyah (ph). Q: Hi. Good afternoon and thank you for this talk, Professor. I am a law student at the University of Oklahoma. I had a question regarding one of the articles you attached in your invitation to this, The World Putin Wants. And I was particularly interested in the talk about Putin’s influence on the global south and, as the article described it, the rest of the developing world, and how he has been winning the information war with them. So my question is, how does the West, the global west and I guess the United States, fight the information war if they’ve already started doing that? And how that could, in a sense, resolve at least some issues? SAROTTE: Hmm, yeah, all right. So, excellent. University of Oklahoma. I’m guessing Central time, yes? Q: Yes. Yes. SAROTTE: All right. Central time. All right. We’ve got another good—(inaudible)—from Central time. All right. Yeah, so the—I’m trying to remember how old that article is, I can’t remember exactly. I don’t think right now people would say Putin is winning the global information war. I think that headline has to go to the Ukrainians, right? Pro tip, don’t go to war against a very online comedian who knows how to communicate effectively. The Ukrainians have used information warfare very, very skillfully. As they should. They are at war. Again, wartime is different than peacetime. And so the terms of the information war have shifted greatly since that article was written. Obviously, another big factor, which is a little bit outside the topic here for us today but is worth mentioning, is the impact of, of course, the Chinese in the global south, the Belt and Road Initiative, their actions there. That, I think, has had much—had had more traction than the Russian approaches, and especially now because of the war Russia, as I—sort of just come back to my theme—Russia’s global influence is, I would submit, declining. So I think if that article were written today, it would have a little bit of a different focus. But that is a little bit outside of the area that we’re focusing on today. But thank you for the question. FASKIANOS: Mary, there are a lot of questions about China. So I guess maybe just to talk a little bit. You know, Russia’s relations with China, with a view to its global influence, and given its growing—China’s growing bargaining power. What opportunities does this create for China to reshape the power dynamic? And do you see this as a factor pressuring Russia to find an offramp? SAROTTE: Yeah. All right. We’re just going to assume that was, you know, questions from eleven time zones here and tick them all off here, as we wrap up. Yeah. So I actually—on the subject of Moscow’s relationship with Beijing, I co-authored an article with Sergey Radchenko for Foreign Affairs. So for those of you who are interested, please search—I don’t know, maybe one of the staff here could put it in the chat or, you know, the link to it. Sergey Radchenko and I, a colleague of mine at SAIS who is actually himself, Konstantin, he’s actually Russian-Ukrainian as well. We looked at historical parallels to the current relationship between Moscow and Beijing. And Sergey and I, we saw a cautionary tale. It’s a tale of a country that supported its crumbling neighbor in an effort to menace a smaller power. And in historical terms, that was rising Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, supported the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire, attacking Serbia. That did not end well for imperial Germany. That ended in World War I, which dragged down Germany as well. Germany, at the end—at the beginning of the 20th century was on course to be the dominant industrial military technological power of the century. If you at the beginning of the 20th century had tried to guess which country will dominate this century, the answer would have been Germany. And as a result of its foolish decision to support a crumbling neighbor in its effort to restore a lost empire, imperial Germany itself was dragged under. That’s not a good precedent for a current rising power, namely China, supporting a former imperial neighbor, namely Russia, trying to restore—trying to launch war and restore imperial glory in a small country, namely Ukraine. So we think that it is not wise for Beijing to be supporting Russia to the degree that it has been so far. There seem to be a lot of signs that Beijing is starting to have second thoughts itself. There seem to be a lot of signs that Beijing is trying to communicate to Putin that this war did not go well, is not going well, wrapping it up would be a good idea. I suspect that Xi Jinping regrets the statement that his partnership with Russia had no limits, made before the Olympics last fall—sorry—earlier this year. So I think the relationship between Moscow and Beijing is hugely important. As Russia gets more and more cut off from European countries, its economic relationship with China becomes more and more important. Beijing has leverage over Russia right now. Beijing is also enjoying getting, you know, gas and oil at a discount. Beijing is able to exploit Russia right now. That’s not really in Russia’s interest. So the relationship is hugely important. I hope that Beijing will continue on the trend line it is on, which is—which appears to be behind the scenes pressure on Moscow to start wrapping this up. I don’t think China, let me put it this way, would, you know, try to engage in some kind of muscular coercion of Putin. I think there are limits. But I think it’s at least—heartening is the wrong word—but less terrible if Beijing is saying to Moscow—if Xi is saying to Putin: This is really not a good idea. That’s better than what was being said earlier this year, which is, our friendship has no limits. Do whatever you want, right? So it’s an important relationship. Beijing has leverage. I hope Beijing will see that it is ultimately not in Beijing’s interest to be on the wrong side of this war. That is—I hope that very much. Again, like with so many other things, because we’re in a moment with such contingency, it’s a little bit hard to predict. But it’s definitely essential to keep an eye on Beijing and on China. FASKIANOS: Thank you. We just dropped the link to that Foreign Affairs article in the chat. So I commend it to all of you. We have so many questions, raised hands and written questions. I’m sorry we couldn’t get them all. But I’m going to reserve the right of the moderator to ask the last one. So, Mary, you did mention a little bit earlier about why you became a historian. So could you say a few words about, even if you don’t aspire to become a historian, why history is so important for all of us to have in our lives? SAROTTE: Yeah, absolutely. I believe that history is the—understanding history is the best way to prepare for the future. I don’t believe that it, or any other discipline, lets you accurately, to the last detail, predict the future. I think anyone who tells you students out there, I can predict the future, don’t believe them. But I think you can prepare for the future, right? If you think, for example, about, I don’t know what a soccer team, a football team, an American—you know, the New England Patriots and Detroit Lions, and in, you know, England it might be Manchester United. The fact that they hold a practice on—you know, in advance of the big game does not guarantee that they will win the game, but it greatly increases the chances, right? The fact, to use another example, that a pilot might spend many hours in a flight simulator before actually getting into a cockpit does not mean that the pilot will do everything personally—that he or she will do everything personally—but it does greatly increase the chances, right? And so, similarly, I would like to leave students with this thought. History doesn’t provide us with clear and obvious lessons, a clear, you know, checklist of what to do. But it does greatly increase the chances that we can meet the challenges that are coming. And, sadly, we are, once again, in an era of some very, very dangerous challenges—indeed, potentially existential challenges—for our planet. So I’ve been making a joke of it, but it actually really does mean a lot to me that the students have called in from around the globe to talk about these issues, because our globe needs you and needs your efforts to keep us away from disaster. So thank you for calling in to think about this, and helping create a global community to talk about these issues. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Well, thank you, Mary, for this terrific hour, and to all the students and professors who are trying to get everybody interested in history on the call. We appreciate your participation and I’m sorry, again, that we couldn’t get to all your questions. Again, I commend Mary’s book to you, Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate. And we will keep an eye on those book prizes. Hope you are the winner. So the next Academic Webinar will be on Wednesday, October 26, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time. Zongyuan Zoe Liu, fellow for international political economy here at CFR, will talk about global economics. And in the meantime, please do check out our CFR fellowships for educators at CFR.org/fellowships. The deadline for that is October 31. It IS a unique opportunity to come to the Council for nine months, or to go work in the government. Follow @CFR_Academic on Twitter and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. So again, thank you all for being with us. Thank you, Professor Mary Elise Sarotte. And we look forward to having your join us again in a couple of weeks. SAROTTE: Sounds great. Bye-bye. FASKIANOS: Bye. (END)

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