December 4, 2023

Imagining Future US-Russia relations

After years of neglect, founded on the belief in Washington that U.S. relations with Russia
were no longer an urgent item on the foreign policy agenda, our relations with Moscow
burst back into the headlines with Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. An urgent
question, rarely asked, is how these relations can possibly get back on a constructive path.
Our December speaker, with extensive background both in government and in academia,
has written a book—Getting Russia Right-, just published at the end of October– that
concisely and persuasively explains why the U.S.-Russian post-Cold War relationship turned out so badly and what needs to be done to improve it. The book will be available at our meeting for purchase and signing. ($20 per copy)

Thomas E. Graham is a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a
cofounder of Yale University’s Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies program and
sits on its faculty steering committee. He is also a research fellow at Yale’s MacMillan
Center. He has been a lecturer in global affairs and political science since 2011, teaching
courses on U.S.-Russian relations and Russian foreign policy, as well as cybersecurity and
counterterrorism. Graham was special assistant to the president and senior director for
Russia on the National Security Council staff from 2004 to 2007, during which he managed
a White House-Kremlin strategic dialogue. He was director for Russian affairs on the staff
from 2002 to 2004.

Dr. Graham served as an advisor to Kissinger Associates from 2008 to 2021. He was a
Foreign Service officer for fourteen years.  His assignments included two tours of duty at
the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in the late Soviet period and in the middle of the 1990s, during
which he served as head of the political internal unit and acting political counselor.
Between tours in Moscow, he worked on Russian and Soviet affairs on the policy planning
staff at the U.S. Department of State and as a policy assistant in the office of the
undersecretary of defense for policy.
Dr. Graham serves on the Kennan council of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute and on
the advisory board of Russia Matters, a project of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs with the goal of enhancing the understanding
of Russia among policymakers and the interested public. He also serves on the editorial
board of the U.S.-Canada Journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ USA-Canada Institute.
Thomas Graham holds a BA in Russian studies from Yale University and an MA in history
and a PhD in political science from Harvard University.