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Carnegie Connects: Russia, Ukraine, and Great Power Conflict with Robert M. Gates

Wed. April 13th, 2022
Live Online

“Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has ended America’s thirty-year holiday from history,” Robert Gates opined in the Washington Post last month, referencing the United States’ reentry into great-power conflict for the first time since the Cold War. No more salient words have been written on the U.S. role in the crisis.

Russia’s brutal military campaign against Ukraine and its horrifying war crimes have stunned the West, which has responded with unprecedented sanctions and aid to Ukraine. But what are the trend lines behind the headlines? Is there a diplomatic off-ramp to end the crisis? What are the internal implications for Putin’s Russia and for NATO, China, and U.S. foreign policy?

Join Aaron David Miller as he sits down with former U.S. secretary of defense Robert M. Gates to unpack these and other issues in the ongoing crisis.

event speakers

Aaron David Miller

Senior Fellow

Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, focusing on U.S. foreign policy.

Robert M. Gates

Robert M. Gates served as the twenty-second U.S. secretary of defense (2006–2011). He is the only secretary of defense in U.S. history to be asked to remain in office by a newly elected president. Dr. Gates served eight U.S. presidents across both parties through various positions at the CIA, on the National Security Council, and, finally, at the Pentagon. On Gates’s last day in office, former president Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.