On Thursday, March 31, at 6 p.m., JHC welcomed former US intelligence official and Georgetown Russia scholar Angela Stent, author of “Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest,” for a virtual discussion of her book and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Powerfully relevant to today’s headlines, Stent’s book asks the following key questions: “How did Russia manage to emerge resurgent on the world stage and play a weak hand so effectively? Is it because Putin is a brilliant strategist? Or has Russia stepped into a vacuum created by the West’s distraction with its own domestic problems and US ambivalence about whether it still wants to act as a superpower?” It also “examines the country’s turbulent past, how it has influenced Putin, the Russians’ understanding of their position on the global stage and their future ambitions — and their conviction that the West has tried to deny them a seat at the table of great powers since the USSR collapsed.”
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the book “brilliant,” adding that both “casual observers and seasoned experts” would benefit from Stent’s discussion of “Putin’s strategy and its disturbing implications for the West.” Walter Isaacson, the New York Times bestselling author of “Leonardo Da Vinci” and “Einstein,” adds that Stent’s “deeply knowledgeable and readable book provides brilliant insights.”
Stent is director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and a professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University. From 2004 to 2006, she served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. She is also the author of “The Limits of Partnership: US-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century,” for which she won the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Douglas Dillon prize for the best book on the practice of American diplomacy.