Symposium: Decoding the Great Strategic Triangle:Washington - Beijing - Moscow

About the Symposium:
Half a century ago the United States successfully implemented a strategy of triangular diplomacy to achieve a rapprochement with China that dramatically changed the Cold War balance. Is the notion and practice of a “strategic triangle” applicable to current relations between the United States, China, and Russia? Is it time today for full-fledge geopolitical competition between democratic and autocratic power centers? Is it possible to craft relationships based on equal measures of cooperation, competition, and confrontation, and avoid slipping into a Cold War conflict? How can we calibrate a trilateral nuclear arms control? The panel discussion brings together outstanding scholars and practitioners to help address these questions, and to explore and decode complex policy patterns of Washington, Beijing, and Moscow.
Host: Michael David-Fox, Georgetown
Introduction: Joel Hellman, Georgetown
Moderator: Vadim Grishin, Georgetown
Panelists: Fiona Hill, Brookings Institution
Alexander Gabuev, Carnegie Moscow Center
Thomas Graham, Council on Foreign Relations
Charles Kupchan, Georgetown
Joel Hellman is Dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. He has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and an M.Phil. from the University of Oxford in Russian and East European Studies. Before coming to Georgetown, he served as a faculty member in the Department of Government at Harvard University, the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, and as Chief Institutional Economist at the World Bank.
Michael David-Fox is Director of CERES and Professor in SFS and History at Georgetown. He also serves as Executive Editor of Kritika: Exploration in Russian and Eurasian Studies and Scholarly Advisor at the Institute for Advanced Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at the Higher School of Economics. His most recent book is Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union (Pittsburgh University Press) and he is now completing Crucibles of Power: Smolensk under Nazi and Soviet Rule for Harvard University Press.
Thomas E. Graham is a Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a cofounder of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies program at Yale University and a research fellow at the MacMillan Center at Yale. Graham was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia on the National Security Council staff from 2004 to 2007. He served as Director for Russian Affairs on the NSC staff from 2002 to 2004.
Fiona Hill is a Senior Fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. She served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia and Senior Director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council. She is co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin” and author of “There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century.”
Vadim Grishin is Adjunct-Assistant Professor at Georgetown University and a Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University. He has had extensive experience working with the Bretton Woods Institutions: as a Board Member of the World Bank Group, a Senior Adviser at the International Monetary Fund, and a Consultant at the International Finance Corporation. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Alexander Gabuev is a Senior Fellow and the Chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. He also was a member of the editorial board of Kommersant publishing house and served as deputy editor in chief of Kommersant-Vlast magazine. He has previously worked as a Nonresident Visiting Research Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and taught courses on Chinese energy and political culture at Moscow State University.
Charles A. Kupchan is Professor of International Affairs in the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University, and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2014 to 2017, Kupchan served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs on the National Security Council in the Obama White House. He was also Director for European Affairs on the National Security Council during the first Clinton administration. His most recent books are “Isolationism: A History of America’s Efforts to Shield Itself from the World” (2020), “No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn” (2012), and “How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace” (2010).
This event is sponsored by Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies (CERES) and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.