Discussion on us russia relations, Nuclear Agreements between the two powers and President Trumps first meeting with president putin scheduled for next month. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to our final panel of the team which will focus on reducing security and Nuclear Risks with russia. As everyone in the room knows we are in a period of significant crisis in the bilateral us russia relationship. Causing symptoms are multifaceted, the ukraine, the buildup in exercising nato and parts of military forces, the common border area between the alliance and tempers of russia, russias alleged violation of the 1987 Intermediaterange Nuclear forces treaty, concern that russia is developing new Nuclear Weapons and threshold for when it might consider using them and of course, russian meddling in the us election and some of our european allies. Nuclear arms control may not be dead but it is certainly wounded. While some meaningful cooperation continues such as entry into the 20 2010 start treaty, the implementation of the joint comprehensive plan of action, theres no ongoing dialogue on steps although it was encouraged here. From chris ward that perhaps some dialogue may be in the offing. But in the absence of dialogue, this raises the odd , steps of conversation in the areas of strategic offense and defensive forces. Meanwhile technological change and advancing congressional weapons associated doctrines for the youth have increased escalation dangers. Press secretary of state Rex Tillerson said on may 14 the United States needs to quote, improve the relationship between the two greatest Nuclear Powers in the world. I think its largely viewed that if it is not healthy for the world, its not healthy for us but this relationship remains at this low level. I think the president is committed and rightly so and im committed with him as well to see if we cannot do something to put off on a better footing in our relationship with russia. Despite these comments the Trump Administration has yet to articulate a clear policy toward russia or strategy to reduce nuclear risk. While President Trump said he would like to improve relations with moscow and that inventory should be reduced, hes also pledged to strengthen and expand Nuclear Capabilities, denounced new start and reportedly he responded negatively to put in suggestion to expand the new start treaty. Further complicate matters, much of washington and democrats in particular are unlikely to do any engagement with russia given the Ongoing Investigation into the trumps campaigns ties and possible collusion with russia but preventing us russia confrontation potentially nuclear conflicts, cooperation and arms control should be judged on its own merits and on its own terms, namely whether it enhances Russian Security. Here at the Arms Control Association we been grappling with these problems and questions and working to identify potential solutions, primarily through our engagement with the trilateral us russia commission. Today were happy to continue this engagement and fortunate to be joined by two outstanding experts. To my right is a fellow instead a Nuclear Security fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for international peace, a fellow with the institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the university of hamburg. He holds a phd in Political Science from Hamburg University and his Current Research focuses on escalation dynamics in the nato arms control measures. Seated to my left is a stanton Nuclear Security fellow at the rand corporation, Research Interests include nato security strategy, Atlantic Security institution. Prior to her current position she was a Program Officer of the Family Foundation where she focused on multilateral action to strengthen the purity and she received her phd in policy studies in International Security and Economic Policy from the university of maryland. They will provide 10 to 15 minutes of opening remarks which will be plenty of time for questions from all of you. Ive asked a summary from your european perspective of for your Russian Security security and arms control relationships, the trumpet ministrations approach today, options to reduce security risks with russia and suggestions on how the inf treaty might be saved. Following already, and is to help us make sense of the us Russian Military nuclear doctrine, outlining escalations and what can be done to reduce Nuclear Escalation dangers and im possible ways forward for bilateral arms control. Thank you kingston. I think saving the inf treaty, thats a huge hole but okay. We will see what i can do. What i want to be doing in the next 10 minutes or so is im going to walk you through three different areas of arms control between the United States and russia, particularly i think that it was the view from europe and also answering a couple of questions such as why do we need us russian arms control, what speaks for further russian arms control, what speaks against it. It could be done and what has the Trump Administration done so far . As you will see, quite a lot actually speaks for another armscontrol approach in these difficult times. Letter, without anticipating my own remarks, im unfortunately very skeptical with regards to further us russian arms control, at least in the short, maybe midterm. And this is largely due to reasons that have not so much to do with armscontrol as such but more with the general bilateral us russian relationship in the terms of geopolitical competition, maybe we can talk about that later as well because i think its important to frame armscontrol in the larger political environment. Let me start with the first area and the area of constant security Building Measures and particularly im talking about museums for the region so why do we need it . Obviously at the risk of military escalation is particularly high in the baltic region and that is for two main reasons, one can find more reasons but im trading on those two. First, russia continues to engage in highrisk tactics such as dangerous military brinksmanship and second, the regionalmilitary balance is very much in favor of russia. That creates insecurity in the Baltic States, i just came back from a recent Research Trip through the Baltic States and poland and i can tell you yes, these guys are really afraid of what russia is amassing close to their border but at the same time, might also create misrepresentation to those countries and on nato. So if both sides, nato and russia denies the situation is quite destabilizing and treated as a matter of high priority, it could focus on conflict management to the aim of preventing unintended escalation. However what speaks again that is the pure fact that russia reads benefits from its contradictory behavior. I would go as far as to say that unpredictability is a major element of the russian strategy viscvis nato. In essence, it may be necessary to change the russian calculus. Moscow must come to use its gains from corporations as outweighing those from unpredictability. But that would basically mean that rush washington would have to be willing to offer something significant and with that, i mean something that goes beyond the immediate armscontrol bowls of unpredictability, stability and transparency and i think we should discuss that later as well, what could be. So background, what could be done . Nato and russia already hold airspace security, i think that i said three or four times on that. One of the goals here is to have transformatives which are not all times but that hasnt gotten very far. Another approach could be for washington to see direct talks with the russians, here the game could be reinvigorate, modernize and multilateral eyes armscontrol agreements. There are a couple of those that focus on Risk Reduction, was probably the incident or the agreement on dangerous military activity. So back in the cold war, those were designed to prevent excellence in exactly the kind of dangerous military encounters and that kind of atmosphere we have right now and thats trying to address that behavior that we are seeing from russia at the moment. Have we seen any conflict policies of the Trump Administration or any novel approaches that regards, the answer is straightforward, not all. Lets turn to conventional armscontrol in europe. Kind of like a side scheme in washington, you barely hear it mentioned these days. Conventional armscontrol in europe is that locks at least since 2002. Efforts by the Obama Administration i have failed, largely because at that time the russians completely lost interest in it. If we go down one level, we come to the regional balance. There, in the baltic region is a very strong concern for nato and the countrys concern. If we go even one level below that, to the sub regional level, here russia is concerned about the security of the leningrad. As much as we talk every day about leningrad, the Russian Military is concerned about their ability to hold the leningrad and in open conflict with nato. So, think of this whole approach over this whole situation as a russian. [inaudible] you have the strategic level and regional and subregional. At least, theoretical, it should be possible to arrive at some kind of quid pro quo low arrangement for the region because everyone could gain something and everyone has concerns in the region. What could that mean . It could mean mutual geographic limitation on manpower, equipment and other capabilities coupled with intrusive and transparent measures. We are not running short of ideas in that regard. Kingston just mentioned a deep cuts commission and the last to report, particularly german came forward with practical ideas of what that can look like. Then again, arms control policies are basically built on certain recognition that preserving the status quo is beneficial. However, the United States and russia both view each other as challenging the status quo. That is a fact, from both sides. It is also highly questionable that u. S. Allies in the region such as poland would agree to a regional conventional armscontrol regime particularly in light of the Nuclear Superiority in the region by russia. So for rhetorical regions, has there been any novel approach of the trumpet ministration in that regard . Unfortunately not. That leads me to my last part, to Nuclear Arms Control, as we have all learned earlier this year from media reports, russia has not only produced more inf muscles that are needed to sustain a flight test program, but basically started to deploy some of those weapons. That is what we hear from intelligence assessments and some leaks that come to the press. These missiles are known as ssc eight. While that fact alone speaks quite strongly and both sides see it violating the treaty. The consequence for europe would be tremendously negative. Let me make this point as clear as possible. If not carefully handled, the inf crisis has the potential of reinvigorating the missile debate of the 1980s, with all the turmoil encountered at that time also with potential to further undermined and split the alliance. In time of a politically weak in nato, and times of almost no leadership from the United States, we should make sure that is not happening we should not allow to split the alliance along certain lines. Are there armscontrol Solution Solutions . One would be for the u. S. Reassuring russia. [inaudible] in romania and poland. For a long time russia complained, perhaps correctly that defense could be turned into offense with our systems. One of the options would be to make it impossible to fire tomahawk cruise missiles. Im not just talking about software fixes. They need to make sure russia has declined all systems. Heres the caveat. If they tested and deployed the missile, according to the inf treaty all those must be destroyed. That doesnt look like an option for moscow because they replaced almost 80 of their short range system. It would mean i would have to destroy their newest generation of shortrange launches. Having said that the fallout could go further. Without writte russia returning to compliance they will most likely not give their consent to a new start agreement. No input from the trumpet ministration so far, and before i continue along those lines, let me finish, i believe it was a rather Bleak Outlook so let me apologize but i hope i will provide some positive note in that regard. Thank you. Thank you to the Arms Control Association for bringing us together for these important discussions. Its an honor to be here. I fondly recall my time as a student when i was first getting into this field. Sometimes a long time listener, firsttime caller. My husband said that would work. As a student of policy study, you learn about the garbage can model. We all know this. Its this idea that policymaking is as organized anarchy and consists of various streams, problems, solutions, participants in choice opportunity. Choice opportunity is essentially garbage can into which various problems and solutions are dumped by the participants as theyre generated. Its very important that the garbage is processed and remove removed. Its cynical for policymaking but its very descriptive of the current state of relations. Many old garbage cans and new garbage cans. We have nuclear, gray zone issues, syria, ukraine, and lots of garbage cans. None of them are being processed or removed. Kind of heartened to hear the remark about the important work underway at the National Security council and i hope we make Good Progress on these issues. We are getting into the summer. We have a lot of garbage cans. Wait, no one heard my list . Let me speak up. I had a great list but i hope we start making headway into a lot of these difficult problems we have, especially as we get into the summer. In the summer, garbage get stinky. We worked really hard to d conflict our remarks. I wanted to briefly share my personal opinion about three things to stimulate discussion and q a. First i wanted to talk about russias concept in their improving capabilities at the theater level. Second i wanted to talk about how its viewed in russia and third i wanted to talk about the importance of armscontrol and i know thats an issue that is near and dear to a lot of you here. First, Russian Military thinkers have been working for over a decade on the cost of Strategic Deterrence, i think weve seen a lot of writing calling this thing coercion and a lot of other things, but i believe personally using russian terminology for this is very interesting because its also not what we think of as Strategic Deterrence. This idea is essentially a blend of deterrence, corrosion and control. It is supposed operate in wartime and peacetime. Strategic deterrence relies on three types of capability. The first one is nonmilitary. We know theyre highly provocative and it also relies on Strong Nuclear and conventional capabilities. I think theres a debate in washington about how low the Nuclear Threshold is. What you see in practice is Strategic Deterrence and russia is improving with an explicit goal of reducing nuclear reliance on early stages of conflict. They are planning to use this as a means of escalation control. They want to inflict this on their military and economic targets. They call it forceful non deterrence. One of the many challenges is that russias precision strike systems are used for escalation control. We can talk much more during the questionandanswer session about potential nuclear use and how the russians look at that or their concerns about an Aerospace Threat from the west which could result in. [inaudible] their development of conventional system and how the russians think about them is really the thing to watch if you want to understand the russian dynamic moving forward. So, to get back to the garbage can, there are ways to reduce the potential of russias use of conventional military forces into echo what they have brought up as some of the potential proposals by the deep cuts commission, by the European Leadership Network on reducing the dangers of accidents, so kind of curbing those pathways to escalation and thats a very good place to start. Its clear to me that we are in for a period of very serious changes in the european theater, and are you having any discussions about armscontrol and its pretty bleak because we are in for a lot of transition. Second, across t