In this virtual panel discussion, Eugene Fishel and Yaropolk Kulchyckyj will provide an insider perspective into Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. They will bring together documentary evidence and declassified materials dealing with policy deliberation, retrospective articles authored by former policymakers, and formal memoirs by erstwhile senior officials for the first time.

Fishel will examine four key Ukraine-related policy decisions across two Republican and two Democratic administrations and ask whether, how, and under what circumstances Washington considered Ukraine’s status as a sovereign nation in its decision-making regarding relations with Moscow.

Kulchyckyj will focus on the decision-making process of the Obama and Trump administrations regarding providing lethal aid to Ukraine between 2014-2017. Although the two presidents and their administrations were at opposite extremes on domestic and foreign policy matters, the only major difference in their policy towards Ukraine was the decision to arm Ukraine with lethal aid, particularly with the Javelin anti-tank missile. 

Cornell government faculty Bryn Rosenfeld will respond to their findings.

Register here

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Panelists

Eugene M. Fishel, author of The Moscow Factor: U.S. Policy Toward Sovereign Ukraine and the Kremlin (Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, 2022), is a distinguished fellow at the Center for Security Policy Studies, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University.

Yaropolk T. Kulchyckyj completed his doctoral research on “U.S. Foreign Policy Decision-Making:  The Obama and Trump’s Administrations’ Decisions Regarding Lethal Aid to Ukraine, 2014-2017" from the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.

Bryn Rosenfeld, Assistant Professor, Department of Government, Cornell University

Moderator

Matthew Evangelista, President White Professor of History and Political Science, Department of Government, Cornell University

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Presented by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Co-sponsored by the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs.