January 1, 2002
CNAC and its Russian counterpart, ISKRAN, held their 15th seminar here at CNAC on 7 December 2001. This is a report of that seminar. The report is also based on other discussions the Russian visitors had in the Washington area, including with Deputy Secretary of State Armitage and Vice Admiral Keating, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans, Policy and Operations. The CNAC program dates back to the fall of 1990, when we invited Andrey Kokoshin, among others, to the CNAC Annual Conference, to the fall of 1991, when a CNAC group took its first trip to Moscow, and the spring of 1992, when the first CNAC-ISKRAN seminar was held, here in Washington. The discussions focused on new opportunities for Russian American relations and for NATO-Russian cooperation following September 11, following President Putin's initiative to support the United States on September 24, and following the Bush-Putin summit meeting in November ("the Crawford Summit"). These discussions stood in some contrast to the discussions we held in Moscow in July 2001. Then there was an almost complete obsession among our Russian interlocutors, with the impending demise of the ABM treaty, and with it, as they said, the end of strategic stability. There was also a discussion during the seminar on whether the last decade had seen a great deal of progress in the improvement of U.S.-Russian relations or was a time of wasted opportunities during which the chances for a real Russian-American partnership, especially in matters of security, were squandered.
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