On March 25, RIAC President Igor Ivanov made a welcoming address at the opening of the third session of the Trilateral Dialog on New Atlanticism conducted by the Atlantic Council of the United States at Moscow Carnegie Center for International Peace.
On March 25, RIAC President Igor Ivanov made a welcoming address at the opening of the third session of the Trilateral Dialog on New Atlanticism conducted by the Atlantic Council of the United States at Moscow Carnegie Center for International Peace.
Ellen Tauscher, Special Envoy for Strategic Stability and Missile Defense at the State Department, also addressed the forum, whose March 26 meeting was attended by RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov, Program Director Ivan Timofeev, RIAC member Dmitry Trenin and several RIAC experts.
Text of the speech by Igor Ivanov:
Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues!
It is my deep pleasure to welcome participants of the third session of the Atlantic Council Trilateral Dialogue – Americans, Europeans and Russians. I am glad to see here some of my old partners and friends, who have been working on critical international problems for many years. But let me specifically recognize Ellen Tauscher, who is with us today. I believe that it would not be an overstatement to say that people like Ellen Tauscher are those who can change the course of history by achieving what others consider to be impossible. Her commitment, her dedication and her persistence were one of the key factors that resulted with the New START Agreement between Russia and the United States back in 2010. Ellen, I do believe that your presence here is the best proof that the Dialogue will not be yet another general academic talk, but will rather bring along specific and productive policy advice.
As a former diplomat who now happens to lead a policy focused NGO, I have strong beliefs in the productivity of a civil society engagement in the discussion of international relations and security matters. Events like the Trilateral Dialogue help to generate new ideas, to review traditional practices and approaches, to engage new people and to enlighten the general public about important global issues. Moreover, an intensive and multifaceted civil society dialogue creates a positive background for any successful official negotiations.
This is exactly what we need now in the relations between Russia and the United States. Skeptics on both sides like to say that the ‘reset’ in the US – Russian relations is over, that tensions are growing, that we are back to the standard confrontational mode of dealing with each other. I do not share this pessimism. The ‘reset’ policy has successfully accomplished its mission. And today the goal is not to get back to ‘reset’, but rather to get beyond ‘reset’, to reach out to a new level of the US-Russian cooperation. A new level that would mean that we have finally emancipated ourselves from the bondage of the Cold war.
I fully understand how difficult it is. The Cold war mentality turned out to be very resilient; we can dismantle it only if we are able to combine imagination, expert knowledge and political will. I have to tell you that earlier today the Russian International Affairs Council and the Atlantic Council of the United States have decided to launch an ambitions joint project on elaborating the concept of “mutual assured stability” as an alternative to the present “mutual assured destruction”.
This is not a trivial task, but we a confident that working together we can achieve even the most ambitious goals.
Once again, let me welcome all the participants of the Trilateral Dialogue here in Moscow and wish you the most productive and inspiring discussions tomorrow.
Thank you for your attention.
