THE ASPEN STRATEGY GROUP
ON THE OLD &
NEW COLD WAR
Over thirty years, the Aspen Strategy Group has shied from no crisis or tense relationship
troubling the world, from the Middle East to climate change to cyber theft.
But Russia has never been far from its sights—and particularly not now.
By Nicholas Burns
Hal Williams
W
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THE ASPEN IDEA
WINTER 2014/2015
hen members of the Aspen Strategy Group
assembled this past August at Aspen Meadows,
we returned to a familiar if troubling topic—
America’s “long, twilight struggle,” as
President Kennedy so memorably called it, with the Kremlin.
During four summer days of debate and discussion, our cochairs, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and
Harvard Professor Joe Nye, led us through an in-depth, spirited,
and very frank conference on how the Obama administration
should cope with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of
Crimea and destabilization of Eastern Ukraine.
Around the table was an extraordinarily interesting collection of
Republicans, Democrats, and independents. The largely American
group spent our time in meetings, over lunch and dinner, and on
the hiking trails in pursuit of one overarching question: What are
the vital American interests at stake with Moscow, and how can we
best defend and advance them?
Brookings President and long-time Russia expert Strobe Talbott
opened with a penetrating and insightful Ernest May Memorial
Lecture on the roots of Russian policy under Putin. Russia watchers,
such as Georgetown’s Angela Stent, provided insights into Putin’s
mind-set and worldview. Current Assistant Secretary of State
Victoria Nuland presented the Obama administration’s policies
and perspectives. Harvard’s Meghan O’Sullivan and former World
Bank President Bob Zoellick delved into the energy and economic
consequences of a new time of tension with Moscow. Former
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offered insights on Russia’s
growing partnership with China. The United Kingdom’s Shadow
Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander described European attitudes
in a new era of competition with Russia. Senator Dianne Feinstein
hosted the group for dinner and lent her long congressional
experience to all these questions.
We also benefited from the unique experience of former
Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright and
former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates. In our only public forum
at Aspen, I interviewed the three before an overflow audience in
the Greenwald Pavilion about the extraordinary challenges the
United States faces from Russia, the Middle East crises, and China.
Behind closed doors, we had the benefit of their advice on how to
cope with Putin and his “back to the future” outlook.
It is safe to say that all of us emerged from this year’s discussions
with a palpable sense of just how complex these challenges will be
for the United States and its NATO allies. Putin’s aggression toward
Ukraine is, without doubt, the most serious crisis in Europe since
the end of the Cold War. Having won a democratic peace in Europe
a quarter-century ago with the collapse of the Soviet Union and
Warsaw Pact and the achievement of a unified Germany, dividing
lines are once again reappearing to separate parts of Eastern
Europe—Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia—from the West. I came
away from the conference with the view that President Obama and
THE ASPEN IDEA
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63
Nye and Rice at an early
Strategy Group meeting
Ferenc Berko
that the group would be resolutely nonpartisan. They set in place
a framework of private, off-the-record discussions to which we
still adhere today. We believe this is a key reason for our success
and why we continue to attract to Aspen the most senior former
government officials from both parties as well as top journalists,
businesspeople, and academics.
During its first years, the Strategy Group focused principally on
defense strategy, arms control, and the US-Soviet debate at the
height of the Cold War. After the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact
disintegrated, the Strategy Group took on a more global focus,
looking, for instance, at the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War. We
refocused on establishing close relations with a newly independent
Russia in 1993 and again in 1996. In that year, the Strategy Group
launched a five-year project known as the US-Russia Dialogue
to promote an opportunity for Americans to sit down regularly
Burns, Nye, Scowcroft
NATO leaders have been correct in placing stronger sanctions on
Putin to drive up the costs of his actions and by strengthening the
NATO alliance to defend its members, especially nearby Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.
Over the last thirty years, the Aspen Strategy Group has taken on the
most important global challenges facing America. We’ve examined the
contours and complications of US grand strategy in the Middle East
after the Arab revolutions, the national security implications of energy
and climate change, US policy in Asia, and the dangers emanating
from cyber war, cyber espionage, and cyber theft. But Russia has never
NOV 1985:
Geneva Summit
MAY 1984:
Soviet Olympic
Boycott
1971:
Paul Doty
Begins a
Series of
Workshops
on Arms
Control
64
DEC 1987:
Mikhail Gorbachev Selected
as TIME’s “Man of the Year”
APR 1986:
Chernobyl
Disaster
AUG 1984:
Aspen Strategy Group
Hosts Inaugural Summer
Workshop on Strategy
and Arms Control
THE ASPEN IDEA
NOV 1989:
Fall of Berlin Wall
MAY–JUN 1988:
Moscow Summit;
Ratification of
Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty
JUN 1986:
Aspen Strategy Group Holds
First Meeting with European
Strategy Group on “Chemical
Weapons & European Security”
WINTER 2014/2015
been far from the group’s minds and its origins three decades ago.
The story of the Aspen Strategy Group begins in 1971 with the
American strategist Paul Doty, who initiated an annual meeting
to discuss arms control at the Institute. By the early 1980s, the
group had become a nonpartisan forum for discussion among
university professors, think tank experts, and government officials.
In 1984, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, Brent Scowcroft,
and Joe Nye formally created the Aspen Strategy Group. The
“founding three,” highly regarded in Washington and around
the world for their thought leadership and public service, agreed
SEPT–OCT 1990:
German
Reunification
MAR 1990:
Gorbachev Elected
President of the
Soviet Union
JUN 1988:
Aspen Strategy Group Examines
“The Gorbachev Challenge and
European Security” with the
European Strategy Group
DEC 1991:
Dissolution
of USSR
FEB 1994:
First Joint USRussia Space
Shuttle Mission
AUG 1994:
Final Withdrawal
of Russian
Military Forces
from Estonia
and Latvia
AUG 1991:
Aspen Strategy Group
Broadens Focus and
Hosts Workshop on
the Gulf War
AUG 1993:
ASG Examines
“Security in the
Former Soviet
Union” at
Summer
Workshop
Dan Bayer
Hal Williams
Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine is,
without doubt, the most serious crisis
in Europe since the end of the Cold War.
with Russian counterparts and to take on the toughest issues that
separate the two countries.
This type of “Track-Two” dialogue is often most valuable when
governments find it difficult to have honest and open conversations
with each other. Finding a way to establish more direct personal
contacts is one of the objectives. That occurred in June 2000,
when American participants met for the first time a little-known
Russian official with a seemingly innocuous title—deputy head of
the presidential administration in Moscow. That man was Dmitry
Medvedev, who later became Russian president and who, today,
serves as Putin’s prime minister.
We would like to think that many of our members have also
found the Aspen Strategy Group to be a training ground for
leadership positions in the US government. Ash Carter and
Michele Flournoy, who would later both serve as under secretary
MAY 1995:
President Clinton
Visits Moscow for
50th Anniversary
Commemoration
of Allied Victory
in World War II
JAN 1996:
US Senate Ratifies
START II Treaty
AUG 1995:
First Aspen Strategy Group Meeting
Focused on US-China Relationship
OCT 1995:
Aspen Strategy Group Conducts a
Track II Dialogue on “The Future of the
US-Japanese Security Relationship”
MAY 1997:
NATO-Russia
Founding Act
MAY 1996:
Aspen Strategy
Group Begins
Track II Dialogue
with Russia
David Petraeus
NOV 1998:
Launch of
International
Space Station
DEC 1999:
Boris Yeltsin
Resigns
MAR 2000:
Vladimir
Putin
Elected
President
MAY 2002:
Creation of the
NATO-Russia
Council
DEC 2001:
Aspen Strategy
Group Meets for
10th US-Russia
Dialogue
THE ASPEN IDEA
JANUARY 2002:
Aspen Strategy
Group Launches
US-India Strategic
Dialogue
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65
Hal Williams
Hal Williams
Feinstein
SEPT 2005:
Russia and Germany Sign
Major Gas Pipeline Agreement
MAR 2004:
Putin Wins
Second Term
JAN 2006:
Russia
Briefly
Cuts Gas
Supply to
Ukraine
NOV 2007:
Putin Suspends
Conventional
Armed Forces
in Europe
Treaty
MAR 2008:
Dmitri Medvedev
Elected President
AUG 2008:
Russia Invades
Georgia
Nuland, Gates, Rice
of defense for policy, were young members of the group when
we examined Russia policy in the 1990s. Steve Hadley, President
George W. Bush’s national security advisor, and Condoleezza
Rice, who went on to become secretary of state, both participated
in Aspen Strategy Group meetings as far back as the 1980s. And
we have always benefited from the participation of members
of Congress, from former Senators Richard Lugar and Sam
Nunn to currently serving members Senator Jack Reed and
Senator Feinstein. Many of these same people were around the
table with us this summer as we discussed the latest challenges
with Russia.
Part of our mission is to identify young leaders who will play
a role in the senior levels of our government a decade or two
hence and to introduce them to our nonpartisan proceedings. We
will publish a book in November on this summer’s conference
APR 2010:
“New START”
Agreement
Signed
MAR 2009:
US-Russia “Reset”
NOV 2011:
Georgia and Russia
Sign Deal Allowing
Russia to Join World
Trade Organization
MAR 2012:
Putin Elected
President
AUG 2012:
Russia Formally
Joins World Trade
Organization
on Russia. We hope it will be of use to students, citizens, and
policymakers alike for how the United States should work to
shape America’s complicated relationship with Russia in the
years ahead.
As the Aspen Strategy Group reflects on the last thirty
years, we are more convinced than ever that it is our
nonpartisanship that makes us unique and that is so badly
needed in our national discourse, particularly in Washington.
That is the mission we look forward to continuing for many
years into the future.
Nicholas Burns is director of the Aspen Strategy Group and professor at
Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. aspeninstitute.org/asg
FEB 2014:
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych Flees
MAR 2014:
Russian Federation Annexes Crimea
JUL 2014:
Malaysia Airlines
Flight 17 Shot Down
Over Eastern Ukraine
MAY 2014:
Gazprom Signs Gas Deal with
China National Petroleum Corp.
AUG 2014:
Russia Invades
Southeastern Ukraine
TO BE DETERMINED
AUG 2004:
Aspen Strategy Group
Hosts Workshop on “The
Challenge of Proliferation”
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THE ASPEN IDEA
WINTER 2014/2015
SEPT 2007: Aspen Strategy
Group Convenes the 10th
Annual US-India Dialogue
in Washington, DC
NOV 2008: 16 Aspen Strategy
Group Members Will Join the
Obama Administration Over
Course of Two Terms
SEPT 2009: Aspen Strategy
Group Revisits Arms Control
Dialogue for “2010: A Critical
Year for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation”
DEC 2010: Aspen Strategy
Group Partners to Host
the First China-Europe-US
Trialogue in Beijing
SUMMER 2012:
Aspen Strategy Group
Surpasses 100 Meetings
JUN 2013:
Aspen Strategy Group
Launches US-China
Policy Dialogue
APR 2014: Aspen Strategy
Group Launches US-Brazil
Strategic Dialogue in Sao Paulo
AUG 2014: Aspen Strategy
Group Examines “US-Russia
Relationship” at Summer Workshop
THE ASPEN IDEA
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