02/22/2016 3:45 PM Lecture Heather A. Conley

Monday, February 22, 2016

The Sources of Vladimir Putin’s Conduct

On February 22, 1946 George Kennan, the U.S. chargé in Moscow, sent to the State Department his now-famous “Long Telegram,” which responded to questions about the “basic features of the post-World War II Soviet outlook” and its practical implications for U.S. foreign policy.  This missive and Kennan’s subsequent Foreign Affairs article, The Sources of Soviet Conduct, eventually became foundational elements for America’s containment policy of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, leading to the Soviet Union’s eventual collapse.  Seventy years later, Russian experts and scholars are attempting to understand the basic features of Vladimir Putin’s foreign and domestic policies following Russia’s invasions of Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014) and the Kremlin’s recent military intervention in Syria (2015) against the backdrop of Russia’s economic deterioration.  What does the future hold for Russia?

Ms. Conley is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Arctic and is frequently featured as a foreign policy analyst on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, and PBS. She received her B.A. in international studies from West Virginia Wesleyan College and her M.A. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

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