On July 17, 2018, RIAC held a seminar "Towards a More Stable NATO-Russia Relationship» within the joint project with European Leadership Network (ELN). The project is aimed at identifying exact, realistic, and politically possible steps that Russia and NATO member countries can take to move towards a more sustainable mutual deterrence by direct participation of representatives from Russian and Western strategic communities.
On July 17, 2018, RIAC held a seminar "Towards a More Stable NATO-Russia Relationship» within the joint project with European Leadership Network (ELN). The project is aimed at identifying exact, realistic, and politically possible steps that Russia and NATO member countries can take to move towards a more sustainable mutual deterrence by direct participation of representatives from Russian and Western strategic communities.
The seminar discussed the main factors contributing to the instability and confrontation between NATO and Russia, as well as the opportunities for future cooperation between Russia and NATO. The seminar was divided into four sessions, that analyzed specific issues of interaction: what features of Russia and NATO military doctrines are perceived as escalation; deterrence signaling in peacetime and crises: are Russia and NATO currently reading each other’s deterrence signals correctly?; conducting military exercises, new military deployments, and introduction of new capabilities.
The seminar was attended by leading experts from NATO countries and Russia — retired diplomats and military, former officials, representatives of think tanks and the academic community.
Russian side was represented by: Army General Yury Baluyevsky, Adviser to the Russian National Guard's Commander-in-Chief; Army General Anatoly Kulikov, former Interior Minister of Russia, President of the Club of Military Leaders of the Russian Federation, RIAC Member; Army General Valentin Korabelnikov, former Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Russian Federation, RIAC Member; Nikolay Bordyuzha, former Secretary General, CSTO, RIAC Member; Colonel General Leontiy Shevtsov, former Deputy for Russian Forces; Dmitry Danilov, Head of the Department of European security, Institute of Europe, Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor of MGIMO; Vladimir Baranovsky, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Member of the Directorate, Chairman of the Dissertation Council of the IMEMO RAS, RIAC Member; and Ruslan Pukhov, Director, Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), RIAC Member.
ELN was represented by: Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, Distinguished Fellow, Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, Atlantic Council, former NATO Deputy Secretary General; Sir Adam Thomson, Director, European Leadership Network, former UK Permanent Representative to NATO; General Knud Bartels, former Chairman of NATO Military Committee (Denmark); Air Marshal Sir Christopher Harper, former Director-General of the NATO International Military Staff; Ambassador Ünal Çeviköz, Former Deputy Undersecretary at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Iraq; Nick Williams, Former Head of Operations for Afghanistan and Iraq, NATO International Staff; Professor Dr Katarzyna Zysk, Director of Research, Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS); Oberst a.D. Wolfgang Richter, Senior Associate, German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP); Dr Katarzyna Kubiak, Policy Fellow, ELN; and Lukasz Kulesa, Research Director, ELN.
The seminar resulted in defining the alignment of Russia’s and NATO’s interests, in which a resumption of the dialogue is possible, and outlining issues to be discussed in detail at the following seminar within the framework of the project scheduled for November 2018.
