Russia’s intervention in the Syrian conflict has been popular in Russia, but confounding to analysts. This panel comprises experts who will analyze the causes and implications of Russia’s recent moves in Syria.
What are Russia’s objectives? How does it affect the political prospects of President Putin? What does it mean for the Syrian Civil War – both for Russia’s allies and for its adversaries in the conflict? And how should the Unites States respond? Will we see confrontation, cooperation – or just chaos?
When: Tuesday, Jan. 19 from 7:00-8:30 p.m.
Where: University of Washington, Thomson Hall, Room 101
Moderator
Scott Radnitz is an Associate Professor in the Jackson School of International Studies and Director of the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington. He has conducted research in Central Asia and the Caucasus since 2002. He received his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 2007, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Belfer Center at Harvard and at the Kennan Institute. He does research on post-Soviet politics, covering topics such as protests, authoritarianism, identity, and state building. His book, Weapons of the Wealthy: Predatory Regimes and Elite-Led Protests in Central Asia, was published by Cornell University Press in 2010. His publications are included in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Democracy, Post-Soviet Affairs, National Interest, Foreign Policy, and Slate. He is a member of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security (PONARS) in Eurasia, a participant in the Bridging the Gap Project at American University, and an advisory board member of the Central Asian Studies Institute at the American University of Kyrgyzstan.
Panelists
Bradley J. Murg teaches as an assistant professor of political science and serves as director of the program in Global Development Studies at Seattle Pacific University. His research, supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council and the International Research and Exchanges Board, focuses on legal reform, the political economy of foreign aid, and economic development in China and the former Soviet Union. He works regularly as a consultant/adviser to the Asian Development Bank on development issues in East Asia. He is also an affiliate faculty member of the Ellison Center for Russian, Eastern European, and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington.
He holds an M.Sc. in Economic History from the London School of Economics and his doctoral dissertation at the University of Washington focused on legal reform and economic development in China, Russia, and Kazakhstan. He is fluent in French, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese with proficiency in German, Dutch, Uighur, Tagalog, and Latin.
Chris Jones is Associate Professor at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington and Co-Director of the UW’s Institute for Global and Regional Security Studies. Previous books include Soviet Influence in Eastern Europe, and (with Teresa Raknowska Harmstone, co-editor), The Warsaw Pact: The Question of Cohesion, Vols. I, I. III.
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Ph.D., is a Baker Institute fellow for the Middle East. He is also an Affiliate Professor at the Middle East Center, at the Jackson School of International Studies at UW. Working across the disciplines of political science, international relations and international political economy, his research examines the changing position of Persian Gulf states in the global order, as well as the emergence of longer-term, nonmilitary challenges to regional security. Previously, he worked as senior Gulf analyst at the Gulf Center for Strategic Studies between 2006 and 2008 and as co-director of the Kuwait Program on Development, Governance and Globalization in the Gulf States at the London School of Economics (LSE) from 2008 until 2013. He is a visiting fellow at the LSE Middle East Center and an associate fellow at Chatham House in the United Kingdom.
