Russia on the Edge

Russia is going through a major transformation. What are the consequences in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the West?

Ilan Berman is Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council, a columnist for Forbes.com, and the Editor of The Journal of International Security Affairs. He is also a regular columnist for the Washington Times and a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, and other leading publications. An expert on regional security in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Russian Federation, he has consulted for both the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Department of Defense and provided assistance on foreign policy and national security issues to a range of governmental agencies and congressional offices. Berman is also a member of the Associated Faculty at Missouri State University’s Department of Defense and Strategic Studies. He has authored or edited four previous books: Winning the Long War (2009), Taking on Tehran (2007), Dismantling Tyranny (2005), and Tehran Rising (2005).

Leon Aron is Resident Scholar and Director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of three books and over 300 articles and essays. Since 1999, he has written Russian Outlook, a quarterly essay on economic, political, social and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet transition, published by the Institute. He is the author of the first full-scale scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000); and Russia’s Revolution: Essays 1989-2006 (AEI Press, 2007); Roads to the Temple: Memory, Truth, Ideals and Ideas in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991 (Yale University Press, Spring 2012).

Clifford D. May is President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has had a long and distinguished career in international relations, journalism, communications and politics. He spent nearly a decade with The New York Times as a reporter, editor and foreign correspondent. He is a frequent guest on national and international television and radio news programs including CNN, Fox and MSNBC, providing analysis and participating in debates on national security issues. He writes a weekly column that is nationally distributed by Scripps Howard News Service and he is a regular contributor to National Review Online, The American Spectator and other publications. He both studied and worked in the Soviet Union and, following the collapse of the USSR, traveled to Russia as an advisor on freedom of the press and democratic institution building.