The Monterey Trialogue: A Distinct Take on Superpower Diplomacy featuring Anna Vassilieva and Peter Slezkine

[00:00:00] Peter: I suppose the problem with present-day politics is that these three worlds are understood as entirely alien. So, they are simplified and reduced, exoticized. And there’s no need to even try to understand them. One word, like autocracy, is sufficient to basically exhaust the entire question. And that is the problem. We need to understand that lumping Russia and China together obviously overlooks the many ways in which these countries are different culturally, the ways in which their geopolitical interests don’t always align, their histories are very different.

[00:00:42] Laurie: You’re listening to Midd Moment, a podcast of ideas from Middlebury’s leaders and independent thinkers who create community. I’m Laurie Patton, president of Middlebury and professor of religion. Today, we’re talking with Peter Slezkine and Anna Vassilieva, directors of the Monterey Trialogue initiative.

The Monterey Trialogue brings together leading experts from the United States, China, and Russia for in-depth discussions of their country’s interests and concerns in the vital regions of the world. The Trialogue is a novel format, yet an indispensable one.

At a time when intra-governmental cooperation and communication among the three global powers is fraught, this initiative prioritizes and solicits the perspectives of in-country experts from the three regions, analyzes geopolitical challenges through the prism of history and culture, and emphasizes the importance of the trilateral relationship for each country separately and for the world as a whole.

Peter Slezkine was hired as the new director of the Monterey Trialogue in 2023. He earned his PhD in history at Columbia and has served as a fellow in East China Normal University in Shanghai, the Clements Center at the University of Texas, Austin, the Belfer Center at Harvard, and International Security Studies at Yale.

Anna Vassilieva is the founding director of both the Monterey Trialogue and the Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, where she also teaches and directs the Russian Studies program. Peter and Anna, welcome to Midd Moment.

It’s really great to have you on the show. I’m so excited about this conversation because it really is happening in real time. You just came from one of the trialogues. So, I wanted to start by giving our listeners a sense of what it’s all about.

And I wanted to read the elevator pitch that I read, that I’m sure you share, too, which is that the trialogue is a unique platform for bringing leading experts from the U.S., China, and Russia for in-depth and sometimes off-the-record discussions of their country’s interests and concerns in the vital regions of the world. I love that.

And then you go on to say, “Why is it so important that we do this?” Because it’s not happening at the government level. It’s an effort to bring expertise, enhance collaboration, and devise solutions to geopolitical issues that, from the general public’s point of view, appear to be intractable at best and increasingly untenable. What a great way to, sort of, think about a new initiative like this.

It’s not just academic. It’s not wholly political. Was there a moment, was there a particular intractability, that you said, “Look, we’ve got to just do something about this. How can we create a structure that really addresses this?”

[00:03:39] Anna: Well, perhaps, I’ll start. I studied poetry for a long time. And I remember what struck me as a young adult was that you can copy all kinds of things. Like, mathematical formulas can come from different mathematicians who live in different parts of the world, and so on and so forth, but poetry, two people who live in different countries can never create the same poem. It will always be unique.

So, Peter and I created the poetry of the Monterey Trialogue unknowingly, living in different parts of the United States, going about our work, business writing, so on and so forth. So, when we met, it was not the moment of birth of the idea. Peter can talk about his, but when we met, we found out that we basically want to do the same thing. How did it come to me? You know, I was born on the border with China in Eastern Siberia.

I was born in 1963, long time ago. And that was the time of the worst relationship that the Soviet Union had with China to the point that we had no visuals. China was a black hole, you know. It was very scary that we could not see even in the propaganda reporting on TV any images of the country. But I was lucky. I considered myself, even then, to be lucky because my parents went to China in 1960 as tourists.

And they brought lots of photographs and lots of souvenirs of different sorts. So, I had that visual image and many photographs. And you know how before, people would sign on the back of the photograph something. So, there was a picture of a kindergarten in Shanghai. So, that’s 1960. And cute little kiddies in that room, and my mother signed, “Our Future.”
And I remember living in that height of the Cold War when it wasn’t the United States of America that felt like the main enemy, but the fear of that unknown, dark country, huge country that we were bordering. And I always felt a bit enlightened because I thought, “Well, here are the kids, you know. Nobody want a war, you know. We have to coexist,” and so on and so forth.

So, I brought that feeling along with me throughout my academic career. And when I started Russian Symposium, you know, Monterey Initiative and Russian Studies, studying Russia so deeply, I understood we cannot really do that work without engaging China.

[00:06:09] Laurie: Yeah.

[00:06:09] Anna: And so, the idea was, at first, to engage students from China, from Russia, and from the United States, which we did online. That was the time of pandemic. And so, we did the first run. It was quite successful.

And that was the moment when Peter and I… Peter wrote a brilliant article on the concept of the free world and the foreign affairs. And I contacted him. And that’s how we started talking about the Monterey Trialogue. And Peter said, “Well, that’s something that I’m so interested about.”

[00:06:41] Laurie: So, Peter, had you known Anna before this or only through scholarly reputation?

[00:06:47] Peter: Through scholarly reputation. My father is a historian of the Soviet Union. So, he and his colleagues and all of his students were well aware of Anna and her program in Monterey.

[00:06:58] Laurie: Yeah. Wonderful. And so, when Anna called you, her proposal was, “Hey, come and play with us at Monterey. We’re doing really interesting things.” And then as you began to talk, it really seemed obvious that this kind of trialogue, and as we’ve talked about before, it’s a quadrilateral dialogue, depending on the house country, I’m going to get to that a little bit later, but did this idea… how, how did it come up for you as an idea, Peter?

[00:07:26] Peter: Well, my motivation is also, in large part, personal. My mother is American. My father is Russian. My wife is Chinese. And my kids are a bit confused. They are being brought up to speak all three languages. The younger one can’t speak any. The older one can speak all three.

[00:07:43] Laurie: Which means as they grow, they’re going to get more fluent, right?

[00:07:47] Peter: Yeah, yeah. Well, we just have to work hard to maintain a balance. That requires all sorts of artificial rules in the household-

[00:07:53] Laurie: Yes.

[00:07:53] Peter: … and constant access to grandparents. So, I’m also a historian of U.S. Foreign Relations, focusing on the origins impact of the concepts of the free world, as was mentioned earlier. So, I wrote an essay on that. Anna contacted me initially to do an interview for the Monterey podcast series. And having done that interview, we then started just talking about what we were up to.

I had an idea of doing something like the trialogue, I called it three worlds in my head, and imagine that after I finish my book, establish my career, perhaps a decade later, I might be able to realize these ambitions and fantasies. And then it turned out that Anna had the same idea, had the program already set to be launched. And I was able to come in right away at the ground floor. So, it was very exciting.

[00:08:42] Laurie: So, I want to pause for a second on this, really, two different things. The first is something you just shared, and the second is that wonderful article that you wrote about the idea of the free world. Before we go to that, and I really want to pursue that as, kind of, the grounding for this trialogue work, you said something about this concept of the three worlds.

I intuitively know what you mean about those three worlds because, you know, one reads the newspaper, one goes to China for various reasons, one goes to Russia for various reasons, one lives in the United States, or vice versa, but I would love to hear both of you talk a little bit about what you mean by those three worlds. Are you talking economic systems? I know culture and history are incredibly important to both of you as well. How do you define it as you introduce this to trialogue participants?

[00:09:23] Peter: Well, so, there’s two answers to that question. One is the logic of the concept of the free world, which is my academic focus, in which is a two-part division of the globe. So, this emerges in various ways, going back to the new-world, old-world opposition, which is central to the American imagination from the very beginning, and also maps onto liberty and tyranny, but allows for peaceful coexistence because the continents are so far separated from one another.

So, long as you maintain separation, don’t entangle yourself in old-world affairs, everything is okay. Wilson amends this and presents more of a zero-sum configuration, but it’s not until World War 2, and especially around 1950, that American foreign policy is organized around the concept of the free world, which is a neologism from that time, the free world versus what was called the slave world sometimes, also the communist bloc.

And so, the whole world was supposed to be free, but for accidental reasons was divided. One part was pathological. What was interesting is that the free world, which it wasn’t just a silly slogan, it was the organizing principle of American foreign policy, much repeated in every secret strategy document at the highest level and in routine cables.

[00:10:44] Laurie: And still is at a certain level.

[00:10:46] Peter: Well, we’ll get to that. So, it certainly comes back.

[00:10:49] Laurie: Yeah.

[00:10:49] Peter: So, for the 1950s and ’60s, it’s everywhere. And the free world is defined as the non-communist world. So, even though it was supposed to be the natural state of the globe, it was generated and defined negatively. Its geographical scope was determined by the extent of the communist world. So, I don’t know. Vietnam was in the free world by default, so was India.

And that had all sorts of consequences for American foreign policy, from global containment to difficulty coming up with a positive ideology. What should American embassy officials tell people in Indonesia and Argentina when they’re selling the idea of the free world, when, ultimately, it amounts to non-communism?

And when I first started my dissertation, I guess, ten years ago now, the Neil Young song was the only reaction. People thought that the free world was a funny anachronism from a long time ago. And I haven’t quite finished the book. And the idea has come back in very serious ways. And of course, in a, kind of, post-modern twist, Blinken was just in Kyiv singing Rockin’ in the Free World-

[00:11:47] Laurie: Right, right, right.

[00:11:48] Peter: … having perhaps not read the lyrics because that is not a song that represents the free worlds in the, the most positive of lights, but I guess the refrain was the point.

[00:12:00] Laurie: Right, right, right. Exactly. Yeah. Speaking of slogans, right?

[00:12:03] Peter: But so, just the one final point is that the free world was defined as a non-communist world. The communist world was principally China or the PRC and the Soviet Union.

And now that it’s come back around, the latest national security strategy begins with a division between autocracy and democracy, but then quickly shifts and has special chapters for both China and Russia and says that there are various autocracies of different kinds that aren’t really a challenge to the liberal order, but there are two that are qualitatively different.

They are Russia and China. Each gets a special section. And American foreign policy is represented as a response to the challenges presented by Russia and China. So, that isn’t to, to say that the world hasn’t changed since 1950, but there have certainly been some structural consistencies in this trilateral relationship has determined international relations for quite a while.

[00:12:49] Laurie: So, just, just to stay on this for a second, before we get back to the trialogue, when you say it’s come back around, I think it’s a really interesting question. And, you know, again, as a, as a person who is literate in global issues more broadly, but not necessarily a specialist, I would say intuitively, and as I said, spontaneously just now, yeah, it has come back around.

Tell me in your view how it has come back around because I think, you know, you could identify any number of different ways in which you see its resurgence. Could be in the ’90s. Could be… you know. There’s all sorts of different moments for it. And it has different language in certain ways, you know, the, the language of democracy.

Every people have a right to determine themselves democratically, all sorts of ways in which we thought about this with Afghanistan, you know, you name it. So, I’m wondering, with you as a scholar in the field, how would you describe that resurgence?

[00:13:45] Peter: I think all these possible explanations in some sense have value, autocrats’ bad behavior, the American disappointment in the failure of China to liberalize-

[00:13:53] Laurie: Right.

[00:13:55] Peter: … NATO expansion, all, all the narratives we’ve seen discussed in all sorts of venues in the last few years, but I think the simplest way to explain it is to just focus on the similarities, that there have been great changes in ideology and economic structure, but the dividing lines are more or less the same.

So, we are now, once again, trying to determine where the dividing line in Europe will lie between Russia and its sea of influence and the West. That line has shifted considerably east, but that was essentially the origin of the Cold War is where is that line going to be? And, and how are the two sides going to agree to, to, sort of, maintain this arrangement? That old argument from 1947 is still the one that we’re worried about today. In Asia-

[00:14:45] Laurie: Yeah.

[00:14:45] Peter: … the Taiwan Strait, the, the dividing line in Korea, those were the main issues from ’49 through ’53, and then subsequently. And they are still the places where conflict is most likely today. The unresolved issues all date back to that period. And not to mention the alliances that the U.S. has with South Korea dates back to the Korean War, with Japan dates back to World War 2. So, these blocks and points of contact and dividing lines all trace directly back to the middle of the 20th century.

[00:15:15] Laurie: Anna, you started your story with both poetry as well as photography, tourism, the idea that, you know, some folks talk about in conflict transformation, where if you’ve had a chance to humanize a potential enemy in your childhood, there’s a greater likelihood that you would remember, you know, that humanization later and in your adulthood. And I think I loved your story for that very reason.

So, as you think, Anna, as a historian, as a language person, as an international studies person, you know, a lover of poetry, a scholar of literature, when you, as someone sitting in the United States, need to explain the differences to American students between China and Russia, just thinking about the whole idea of a trialogue to begin with, what do you say about the differences between China and Russia?

[00:16:16] Anna: So, I’ve been teaching for 40 years, Laurie. 40, 4-0. It’s hard to believe. But, you know, I understood one of the faults of international education, you know, international politics, and so on and so forth, is that we teach the differences. We base our education on what is different. And in the last about 15 years or 10 years, whenever the wisdom hit me, you know, I’ve started to build my courses on what is the same about us.
What is the same about us? Let’s watch the movies, let’s listen to the language, let’s learn poetry, let’s see art, and figure out what’s the same about us. And once we know what’s the same about us, then let’s talk about the differences. So, that’s how I would begin. And that’s, for me, the philosophy of the Monterey Trialogue. And that’s the philosophy of the Symposium on Russia. Let’s really learn, you know. I can make a reference to George Kennan.

Many of you have heard… Many of those who listen to this podcast have heard the name. So, he was one of the greatest experts, the architect of containment. George Kennan, before he came into the State Department, was studying literature, was studying the language, was absolutely fluent, advanced in Russian language, read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, so on and so forth.

And when he came to the State Department, he and the other three, I think, it was a small cohort, he was told by his supervisor, Mr. Kelly, that before you even start thinking about political analysis, you have to learn the program of a Russian pre-revolutionary gymnasium from the first grade to the 12th grade. Everything. Mathematics, physics, Church Slavonic, Greek, God knows.

And only when you will know what does it mean to be a Russian, then you can start going into political analysis. And where are we now? We throw two or three courses at them. And it’s all about how different we are. And then we expect a reasonable pragmatic foreign policy, particularly in the current day and age when the discourse is so politicized and so non-academic.

[00:18:31] Laurie: And it’s interesting because your model just now is both education and literature is the path to understanding sameness, right? I mean, that’s, kind of, where you…

[00:18:42] Anna: Cultural anthropology. I mean, you know through your own discipline, through your own translation-

[00:18:47] Laurie: Absolutely.

[00:18:48] Anna: … you know. It’s like, what, what do people know about India if they didn’t read the great texts of India?

[00:18:54] Laurie: Yeah. It’s a very interesting way to be trained. It is not a usual way. Peter, what do you think about that? Because it is… there are many, many stories. We’ve heard them at MIIS. We heard them, you know, with Track Two Diplomats. We hear them so often that there are ways in which certain kinds of culture connect differently that anything you could say, even in the most friendly of diplomatic relations. Would you agree with that, Peter? And is that part of why you got connected to Anna and thinking about this question of the, of the free world more broadly?

[00:19:31] Peter: I think it’s… I mean, I’m a historian who then ended up doing a number of fellowships at various institutions focused on international security, international relations, then my eyes would glaze over as I looked at 2x2s and heard various theories that were, were pulled out of the air about how humans interact with no consideration of what they had read, what languages they spoke.

So, I had a great appreciation for Anna’s approach with Russia Summer Symposium, that it’s not just a matter of geopolitics and, and diplomacy, but a, a real appreciation for each culture and some understanding of the relationship via that lens.

I suppose the problem with present-day politics is that these three worlds are understood as entirely alien.

[00:20:21] Laurie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:20:22] Peter: So, they are simplified and reduced, exoticized. And there’s no need to even try to understand them. One word, like autocracy, is sufficient to basically exhaust the entire question. And that is the problem. We need to understand that lumping Russia and China together obviously overlooks the many ways in which these countries are different culturally, the ways in which their geopolitical interests don’t always align, their histories are very different.

And the same thing with every node of this triangle. And so, I think education is our main purpose. We invite experts of the highest level, academics, ex-officials, but very few of them have an appreciation… or I mean I’m using the same word again but understanding of the entire triangle.

[00:21:10] Laurie: Yeah.

[00:21:10] Peter: There are generalists who study the whole world and comment on it frequently and sagaciously.

There are those who are experts in one leg of this triangle, American experts on China or Russia, but there are very few who have any sense of how this entire dynamic functions. But nonetheless, as we see from the first Cold War, this next iteration, the way in which every American action in Ukraine is a signal about Taiwan, this triangle is inextricably interlinked.

[00:21:39] Laurie: Yes.

[00:21:39] Peter: And so, I think it’s important for each side that attends our trialogues to come away having learned something about the larger picture and about whatever theme or region we decide to focus on. So, like, we were just in Belgrade discussing Chinese, American, Russian interests in the Arctic.

And we invited a number of experts on the Arctic from each country, as well as, like, Americans who study China or study Russia who don’t have much background with the Arctic or any at all. And we hope that those who are expert in the Arctic benefit from seeing their subjects in this broader context of geopolitics and those who comment regularly on geopolitics gaining a bit of, sort of, concrete foundation further work, having studied the way in which these worlds collide in a particular place.

[00:22:26] Laurie: Yeah. I think what’s so exciting about this, and I want to get to the pragmatics in a second, you know, what you said earlier about a single phrase or a single word summing things up, certainly, you know, phrases I think of, like, in the United States, like manufactured in China, right? We all know what that means at least in terms of a stereotypical perspective. The other would be something a little more obscure, like, a social media engagement in Russia.

Right now, that means United States election interference, or any number of other things like that, right? So, I think that we’re now at the point where the social stereotypes are not just present, or national stereotypes or cultural stereotypes. They are actually self-producing. They are memes that produce other memes at a certain level. And all the more reason for this kind of work to happen. So, I want to talk pragmatics for a second.
I want to bring us back down to earth. So, you had your first fall meeting in Tashkent in Uzbekistan. And that must have been incredibly exciting. You just mentioned your second meeting in Belgrade on the Arctic. How did you begin to think about who you wanted there? How did you figure out who the experts were? And what was the process like of planning for that and then inviting the folks to come?

You needed to explain the concept. You need to show that you want it to be, you know, ongoing, et cetera. And I want to talk a little bit later about what you hope for its influence and how you create influence around it, but for now, just tell me a little bit about the actual experience of, of setting it up. Anna, you want to start?

[00:24:01] Anna: Yes, we can start. We work together on determining first key, you know, pillar experts in all three countries, the truly leading intellectuals. The concept of public intellectuals is, kind of, washed out now. But, you know, we think of who are the best who can carry the message, publish, connect, and recommend the others who are the best.
Peter can say more, particularly based on this last experience in Belgrade, but also, you know, the process of selecting the country is tricky, you know, because our Russian colleagues, those who come, the experts, they’re very courageous, let me put it like this, because it is dangerous now to do anything with the American-funded organizations no matter how noble the exercise is.

So, that’s the trick. And the trick is also that we need to choose the country not only based on the importance of this country or region for the three, China, Russia, and the United States, but also based on the ability of Russian experts to travel there. So, there are other reasons why Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, was chosen, or Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, was chosen. So, there are several factors, the importance of the region or an issue like the Arctic, the ability of our Russian colleagues to travel, and Chinese colleagues to travel there.

[00:25:29] Peter: So, I want to comment on what Anna was just saying. It is obviously difficult to pick the perfect place. And for the early conferences, we wanted to make sure that we had connections in those countries, that they were accessible to the Russians. But generally, the biggest difficulty with picking places to go is that there are so many that are interesting.

[00:25:48] Anna: Yeah.

[00:25:48] Peter: And the various sanctions and controls against Russia aren’t, in fact, all too limiting. The world is enormous. We were in Uzbekistan in November. I just came back from Serbia two days ago. And next November, we’re going to Cape Town, South Africa. And then I have a long list that includes, I don’t know, Arabia, Egypt, Ghana, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Mexico, and so forth.

All these places, I think these are free to all three countries. All of them are strategically very important. The people in each of these countries are very interested in the ways in which China, Russia, and the U.S. interact in their region.

[00:26:27] Laurie: So, just thinking for a second about the Arctic one being theme-based, I want to hear a little bit about the highlights of that, which you just came from in a second, but let’s go back to Tashkent. It was more general, right? And how do you design a program for a conference that is not the theme-based conference, but the more general one? Do you let the folks who are invited? How do you determine who’s invited there?

Because you’re not dealing as much with themes. You are dealing with perhaps five themes or something along those lines. And would they be only trade relations? Would they be interest in territory? Would they be interested in, you know, is there really a Cold War? There’s so many different aspects of what China, Russia, and the U.S. actually have in common in their arguments, if you will.

[00:27:13] Peter: So, this year, and for the next two, probably at least, we’re putting on two conferences each year of different kinds. So, the one in November, we invite 20 to 30 experts. It’s a bit larger. We go to some country or region that is of strategic interest to all three of our central countries. And then we divide the conference essentially into two parts. So, one part focuses exclusively on the trilateral relationship, both on big questions of how each foreign policy establishments views the world-

[00:27:44] Laurie: Right.

[00:27:55] Peter: … and the other two countries within it. And then concrete points of contact like Taiwan, Ukraine, sanctions, trade relations, and so forth. And then there’s a second part, which focuses on the region. And we take a look at how China, Russia, and the U.S., for example, perceive Central Asia, what are their interests in Central Asia.

So, here, you have Belt and Road Initiative, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, among many other interesting issues, terrorism, Afghanistan. And then we look at how locals see themselves within this larger geopolitical configuration. So, that is the way in which it becomes effect quadrilateral.

So, we had two former foreign ministers of Uzbekistan participated in Tashkent, gave us their view of this global configuration and how it plays out in their region. And a number of officials and local academics, who explained their country’s relations with each of these three countries, China, Russia, and the U.S., separately, and, sort of, within the larger geopolitical configuration.

So, we’re going to do the same thing in South Africa next November. And in Belgrade in future late spring, early summer conferences, we invite fewer experts and try to focus more narrowly on one theme.

So, in this case, it was the Arctic, but as I mentioned earlier, we don’t want to make it conference exclusively for Arctic experts, colleagues who may have met at many conferences before, but now can’t because of the deepening rifts among these three countries. We want to bring in general commentators, experts on each of these three countries from each place, along with experts on the Arctic so that we can learn more about the Arctic in light of the…

[00:29:25] Laurie: In context. Yeah.

[00:29:26] Peter: Exactly. In, in both directions. Each side would learn more.

[00:29:29] Laurie: Yeah.

[00:29:29] Peter: And so, in terms of inviting people, we always… it’s a complicated chemistry, but we want ex-officials who have, sort of, an intellectual approach, and we want academics who are interested in policy and preferably have a platform for commenting on it.

We want experts from each of the three countries on one of the others and general commentators and experts on the region. So, we wanted to have Russians who were experts on the U.S., Russians who were experts on China, and Russians who were experts on Central Asia.

[00:29:59] Laurie: Yeah.

[00:29:59] Peter: And then the same for each of the other two.

[00:30:01] Laurie: And the same mutatis mutandis with the others. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:30:04] Peter: Exactly.

[00:30:05] Laurie: It’s really interesting. So, Anna, just thinking aloud about this, or Peter, what is the biggest takeaway you had? I want to get to the Arctic in a second, but from Tashkent, both the thing that you thought you already knew, but you didn’t know in the way that it was then articulated, you know, some new articulation of an old idea, or the biggest realization that you never thought of as a result of bringing these three configurations and the sub-configurations that Peter was just talking about together.

[00:30:36] Anna: Well, I’ll, I’ll just give a brief and more general answer, and Peter then can go into more details, but the biggest takeaway, for me, is that experts are starving for talking to each other, starving. And Peter said that we’re not inviting them to sing songs with each other. No, of course not. The discussions are extraordinarily intense. And Peter always masterfully conducts them as a conductor of the orchestra.

But, you know, in the evening, when the day is over and everybody is together in an informal way after that immense intensity of intellectual discourse on the subjects, when people understand that they really, you know, can talk to each other. And I should mention that it’s off the record. The conference is off the record. So, they are free to speak, knowing that it will not be leaked in the media or manipulated in one way or another.

So, for me, that was the biggest takeaway. I cannot pinpoint one discovery, you know, intellectual discovery, that I’ve encountered in Tashkent, but, you know, let me just emphasize, again, also, not just the fact that there are Russian, American, and Chinese experts in the room, but the fact that we do it openly for the local intellectual community. That’s also what’s extraordinary, you know. So, they are not invited just as speakers. They are partners.

[00:32:06] Laurie: Yeah, yeah. And hosts and all the things that…

[00:32:09] Anna: Exactly. And that’s, to me, the biggest takeaway. And Peter can talk more about the ideas.

[00:32:16] Laurie: Peter, what do you think? Or were there any tense moments that you remember that you can share?

[00:32:20] Peter: Well, there are a few. I mean, Taiwan is always a tense topic, Ukraine as well. Central Asia is an interesting place because, I mean, it’s vital for Russia and China. It has long been so, historically. China has been a big player in Central Asia since the Tang dynasty, but it’s, sort of, a new arrival as a heavyweight there more recently at the expense perhaps of Russia, but since they have good relations overall, Russia and China, they are playing nice in the region.

The U.S. is hoping that, somehow, it can play the two off of each other and presents an alternative to ensure that Eurasia isn’t dominated by its two adversaries. The Russians, meanwhile, had taken Central Asia for granted.

Our Central Asian expert did not know any Central Asian languages, just spoke Russian with everybody. And it seems like that is typical of the Russian expert establishment at the moment. But now that they have been cut off from the Western world and have turned to the Global South or what they call the, the world majority-

[00:33:17] Laurie: Yeah.

[00:33:18] Peter: … they are at a breakneck pace. Russia is trying to produce a new generation of cadres that know everything about India and Central Asia and Africa and so forth. So, there is game of catch up that they’re playing as well. And then the Central Asians themselves had a line that both foreign ministers repeated.

And I think every one of our other Central Asian participants is that this is not a new great game and that they are subjects, not objects, of history, which we, of course take, as a given. That was the point of inviting them, but they clearly felt the need to reiterate that and to make sure that they were speaking as full actors in the room.

[00:33:57] Laurie: Yeah, that is powerful. I mean, I’ve been to many conferences early, certainly in the early 2000s and the ’90s, and in the teens in India, where if it’s a conference that has to do with colonizing and colonized, any number of other configurations like that, there is, especially when you think about either Global South or World Majority, there is a doubleness in conferences, academic conferences, that needs to be declared, you know, at some level.

And it’s powerful that you just shared that. The other thing I’m just interested in, and then I want to get to the Arctic, and a couple of other questions for you, a lot of times, in these conferences, you have these really wonderful moments where people strive to show that they’re critical of their own culture or have some distance from it, they are scholars, and so forth.

And then there’s a moment when someone either says something or people are not as aware as they might be of how they’re characterizing another culture where you suddenly see these scholars somewhat, you know, defending their own culture needing to move into that space as well. Did that kind of dynamic occur? Did you see scholars be both critical of and defensive of their own culture as well as others?

[00:35:09] Anna: Well, let me just say that it’s more politics, defensive of politics-

[00:35:13] Laurie: Yes.

[00:35:14] Anna: … rather than of culture. And of course, you know, such moments, you know, arise all the time, you know. When we hear criticism, of course, of the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, you know, the Russian participants around the table do not nod their heads in agreement.

It’s a very painful thing to hear. But at the same time, of course, you know, when issues… there are so many cliches in the speech, you know, the political science cliches that need to be untangled, you know, that need to be explained. And so, there is always an opportunity to do that. And I remember there was a moment in Tashkent when there was a certain intervention made by, I believe, an American participant.

And a, a Russian participant made the reference to who are the sources of this analysis and warned against making the base of the analysis rooted in those Russian intellectuals who emigrated. I believe the parallel was made with the Iraqi, you know, the Chalabi type group of those who left Iraq and became the main source of information, feeding the American government and encouraging the American government to undertake certain steps.

So, I remember that moment. I believe that question went unanswered, but certainly, there is a lot that’s going on that is not said, that is not verbalized. And as organizers, we have to be very aware of such tense moments.

[00:36:45] Laurie: Yeah. Really interesting. Anything from you, Peter, before we, we move to the Arctic?

[00:36:50] Peter: Well, I suppose an interesting nugget that I think I am allowed to share from the concluding panel of our Tashkent conference, we had people from each country give their vision of the future, a realistic vision of the future, that would benefit their country and the globe. And our American participant described an inevitable shift toward a more multipolar world and the need for the United States and others to adapt to this new reality.
And the Russian argued that the forces of globalization were in fact very sticky, and that we may seem to be fracturing at the moment, but that this cohesive whole was, in fact, tied together by forces stronger than we might believe. So, the headlines, we always see Russia is for the multipolar world, U.S. is for globalization and liberal order, but there’s a bit of convergence evidence in conferences like these.

When you get people with a bit of self-awareness sitting down, they are both… even though they’re representing their country, they were tasked, in this case, not with presenting their own personal views, but trying to imagine how their country might progress going forward, that there’s a bit of a convergence because each one takes a step back from the most cliched version of the national narrative.

[00:38:11] Laurie: Right. Yeah. That’s a great example. Exactly the kind of thing, that I was, I was getting at earlier. Well, you just got back literally two days ago from this conference in Belgrade. And my guess is that scientific collaboration must have come up as one of the topics.

And I wanted to know a little bit more about how you imagine the Arctic differently now that you’ve been at this conference, and you’ve heard these three highly vested interests discuss the broader questions, not only of territory, but also scientific collaboration. I’d love to hear your, your thoughts on the biggest takeaways there.

[00:38:46] Peter: Well, one I think we should mention that Anna was not able to make it to Belgrade. She was very busy planning for the summer symposium.

[00:38:54] Laurie: Got it.

[00:38:55] Peter: So, I was forced to carry the burden myself.

[00:38:57] Laurie: Yes. Okay. Go ahead.

[00:38:59] Peter: So, yeah, we discussed scientific collaboration, security questions, territorial disputes, climate change, of course, and the living conditions for people who actually reside in these regions among other subjects.

[00:39:14] Laurie: Was there an emerging consensus in any of these areas or a new direction that emerged as a result of the new convening of the trialogue?

[00:39:24] Peter: Well, I suppose one interesting thing was that at various moments in the conference, because we had people who were both expert on the Arctic and focused on other parts of the world-

[00:39:34] Laurie: Yeah.

[00:39:35] Peter: … there was a sense that either the Arctic was central to everything or didn’t matter much at all. So, even to the extent that, like, the Arctic is the symbol of climate change, we’ve all seen the polar bear on its little piece of ice-

[00:39:47] Laurie: Yeah.

[00:39:47] Peter: … it is also the area where warming is happening most rapidly and the melting of the ice is going to then raise sea levels everywhere, but we had an expert on climate security give us this data, but then say that once this happens, the big problems will be elsewhere.

So, in some sense, it all originates in the Arctic. The scientific research needs to be done there, but once that ice melts in the poor polar bear sinks, the trouble is going to be in, I don’t know, Africa and India where it’s 50 degrees Celsius in the winter. Same with security that now, with Finland and Sweden joining NATO, Russian-NATO relations at their worst since the 1980s, there’s clearly going to be a new positioning of missiles around the polar circle.

And the whole area is going to be securitized. And that’s terribly dangerous because it’s dark the half the year. It’s very easy for some mishap to lead to a big escalation. On the other hand, because it is dark half the year and there’s ice and it’s difficult operating conditions, neither side is really going to send-

[00:40:48] Laurie: Invest.

[00:40:49] Peter: … very many vessels there, it seems-

[00:40:52] Laurie: Right.

[00:40:52] Peter: … ultimately. And also, like, in the U.S. press, you see all sorts of hand wringing about how China is going to come into the Arctic along with Russia and present some horrible menace to the free world, but it seems like they don’t have the capacity nor really the interest.

[00:41:08] Laurie: Yeah.

[00:41:08] Peter: And finally, on energy, there’s a huge amount of energy in the Arctic, resources of all kinds, including rare earth minerals. China is the biggest purchaser of these Russian resources, but to a large extent, the question is how to get them to China through various pipelines and naval routes that then go elsewhere.

And the minute you start talking, for example, about the UN Conventional Law of the Sea in connection with discussions of trade routes, then you have American and Chinese participants switching to familiar debates about Chinese actions in the South China Sea. So, it flips very quickly to familiar debates.

[00:41:47] Laurie: Interesting. And do you feel a responsibility at a certain level when it flips into those familiar debates to make it more unusual again because the whole point of the conference is to, kind of, get the template little less obvious?

[00:42:01] Peter: Well, it was… I mean, I wouldn’t say this is obvious because this reveals a connection. So, there were times when I was trying to pull the room back to a discussion of the Arctic since that’s the theme, but I also don’t mind that it goes other places.

So, the UN Conventional Law of the Sea, to which the United States is not a party, is the way that exclusive economic zones are determined in the Arctic, which then has a very important role in, in how transit routes work and, and who can mine for various resources.
But it is interesting that through the prism of American and Chinese foreign policy, you still shift immediately to the South China Sea, which seems, sort of, strategically more salient immediately. So, this is a connection where this one law is of crucial importance in two different places. But you begin with the Arctic, you end with the South China Sea. And that creates connection that isn’t immediately obvious if you didn’t put these people in a room together.

[00:42:56] Laurie: Right, right, right. Absolutely. That’s a fantastic example.

[00:42:58] Peter: One reason that we ended up talking about these two issues, Arctic and South China Sea, is that it is explicitly included in American strategy documents on the Arctic. So, American Arctic strategy documents describe China as a potentially dangerous newcomer to the Arctic Circle-

[00:43:15] Laurie: Right.

[00:43:15] Peter: … and say that their behavior in the South China Sea potentially presages similarly bad behavior in the Arctic. So, then the Chinese participants are saying that the law actually doesn’t work that way. There are special provisions for ice-covered zones. And in any case, it’s completely different. And we’re doing nothing wrong in the South China Sea. And then the American, they’re saying, “Well, actually,” and so on and so forth.

[00:43:37] Laurie: Wow. Yeah. You couldn’t have those conversations in any other context, or maybe you could, but not with the degree of engagement and dimensionality that you clearly are able to, you know, respond to them in this way. So, we’re going way too long because this has been such a great conversation, but I want to talk a little bit about the Summer Symposium.

First of all, Anna, you’ve been planning this, and this is all part of what is fantastic about the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, what Monterey has been doing for decades and decades. Armenia, Georgia, Turkey are where you’ll be traveling. And in China, it’s Harbin, Changchun, and Changbai. I believe that those are the two. So, that’s wonderful.
It’s one of those, kind of, traveling graduate seminars that is so rare these days. And I think that the pedagogical model is brilliant. My one query for you is, are you going to have an American one? And if so, what would it look like to do an American one? And what would be the three places that you might go?

[00:44:35] Anna: Well, I would definitely go to California, Middlebury, Monterey, and San Francisco nearby. I would definitely go to Midwest or South-

[00:44:46] Laurie: Yeah.

[00:44:46] Anna: … probably New York or Washington. So, with a one-day trip, maybe to Washington. That’s what I would do. Alaska would be great, too, but that’s my Russian gene is being…

[00:44:58] Laurie: You would also bring, in those context, graduate students from all sorts of places other than America who are still working in American studies, correct?

[00:45:09] Anna: That’s correct. That’s our principle, you know, with the symposium on Russia. We pick the best graduate students. We allow one undergraduate, usually, who is really gifted. All of them should possess, that’s the requirement, advanced language skills, Russian language skills, and they come from Europe and Asia and the United States, most of them. That’s the way for them to learn. So, why is it the Caucasus? You asked me the question.

So, it’s a symposium in Russia. Why do we do it in the Caucasus? The reason we do it in the Caucasus is that, you know, for, I don’t know, five years, I guess, four years, we were doing, here, the Symposium on Russia, broad curriculum Symposium on Russia. That was all before the pandemic, and then the war. Once the war in Ukraine happened, I understood that it is impossible to do a broad curriculum on Russia because it’s an elephant in the room.

It’s emotionally irrational. Our goal as educators is to teach the fellows to analyze. We have to tell them, “You’re, you’re going to hear things that are absolutely unacceptable to you in the room, but it’s not you. It’s not you. You have to learn to listen to things that are unacceptable and understand where it comes from,” and so on and so forth. So, in order to maintain that skill of analyzing Russia, the decision was made to take it to South Caucasus.
So, last year, we had it Armenia and Georgia. And there is plenty of involvement in both Russia in the Caucasus and Caucasus in Russia. So, it was a fantastic program. But then we also understood that Armenia and Georgia without Azerbaijan or Turkey is not giving a full picture. And we cannot take people to Azerbaijan for a number of reasons.

So, the choice was made to make it Turkey, Istanbul. And that’s what’s going to happen, you know. So, each segment is a unique curriculum, you know, but all in all, there is an inner logic to that curriculum. And Istanbul will present that arc of Byzantium to the current mediation of Erdogan in things that are related to Russia war and so on and so forth.

[00:47:16] Laurie: Right. And have you done the China Symposium yet, or is it just the model that…

[00:47:21] Peter: Next summer. I mean, not this one, so the one following. And it’s built entirely or conceived entirely as a Chinese version of the model established by Anna for the Russia Symposium. And we decided to take it to the Northeast for the first one to play to our strengths. There are a number of American programs that take students to China, but we would go to the Northeast, to Harbin.

For the longest time, Harbin is a city that was built largely by Russians. And we would look at the history of the region and of China’s relations with Russia, both historically and in the present. And we would draw on many of our trialogue participants, Chinese experts on Russia, who would then come and be expert lecturers when we do the symposium.

[00:48:04] Laurie: So, I have a final question for you. All of us are academics. We all know that people say things like, you know, “What’s the point of convening? You know, nothing changes. It’s just a group convening.”

We all know that that’s not the case, but we also know that we live in a culture where the people who are going to naturally be invited to and attracted to these kinds of things may or may not have either the influence currently, or they might have had the influence, they might have it in the future, or in the inclination necessarily to really change the conversation, that there’s a version of this question that comes up with Track Two Diplomacy, too, right, which is, how do you imagine this being influential?

[00:48:48] Peter: Well, the question of is crucial and complicated. And I have been in Beijing, in Moscow. And I am now in D.C. in the last number of months. And I obviously address each audience somewhat differently. They all have their own concerns. So, I suppose Track Two often has… comes in two flavors. One is based on the idea that interpersonal interaction is the key factor.

And I think that is very important. We obviously strive to create real relations among the various participants to emphasize the social aspects to create the times for informal conversations, but that pays off when larger structures change. We’re under no illusion that we can create friendships in that, somehow, we’ll solve the larger issues. There need to be big shifts for these relations to then pay off.

Another possibility is to discuss very specific issues, come up with some possible solutions, and then pitch those to the powers-to-be. And to the extent that we came across a couple of ideas, for example, in Belgrade on the Arctic, we will try to transmit that higher up, but that’s also not the principal objective. Just because the relations among these three countries are so complicated, the issues are so large that we could only gain traction if we focused on the smallest problems.

And we want to tackle the, sort of, largest issues. So, our focus really is on informing our participants, getting them to understand the picture better, so that people who write essays all the time about the state of the world, about what is going on in Taiwan or Ukraine or with the sanctioned regime, hear directly from their counterparts in other countries, learn about the ways in which the Ukraine issue is perceived in China, or the ways in which the United States’ concern about Taiwan might inform their policy in Ukraine.

And even within the United States, one issue that I think is… or two, I suppose, I think are very important. One is that the U.S., as I said before, explicitly identifies Russia and China as its twin adversaries. The organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy is reacting to the challenge presented by those two countries. But experts on each country exist, more or less, in their separate silos.

And then there are a number of generalists who know very little about each place but discuss both and have a very large impact. So, it’s impossible, really, to form a grand strategy, to use a currently fashionable term. If the experts on the two principle are, sort of, opposing forces, don’t exist in the common space with those who formulate the broader policies.

And it also creates my final point, a, sort of, escalatory dynamic where you end up with two different lobby groups, each invested in acquiring resources for their own sphere. And I don’t think it’s cynical, but this is the logic that often plays out is that those in Washington who focus on Russia claim that Russia is the most imminent threat. They are the ones now engaged in warfare aggression in Ukraine. So, we should have our eye on the ball.
And those who are focused in China say, “Oh, Russia is a middling power. Don’t worry about it. It’s all a sideshow. The real pacing threat is China.” And as a result, each side escalates, and then there’s a sense that we have to do everything everywhere all at once. And when we bring everybody in the same room, you have to confront the fact that there are only 100% resources and not 200, and that the world is one and not three.

[00:52:35] Anna: This is why Peter and I work very, very, intently on selecting the best, you know, the intellectuals who would carry the torch. I teach courses on communication here. I put candles between the students. I break students in pairs. And I lit up a candle. And I have them talk to each other. And they see that the act of talking, a conversation, is a physical act because the flame keeps flickering.

[00:53:01] Laurie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:53:02] Anna: And so, our idea is for those 30 people who have spent three or four days in these intense debates to take that flame out, you know. I believe in, in that fire of the thought, the fire of goodness, the fire of constructivism, that can shine brightly, you know, if the right models are established. And I do believe that Monterey Trialogue is one of those models and what we do at the symposia, where we engage young people, and this established experts.

And hopefully, we’ll be able to develop some courses for Middlebury students that are spin-offs. The trialogue sessions, Peter and I are thinking about that. So, there’s a lot of work, but this is all meaningful, and this is for the good of the world. So, I believe it will continue, hopefully, with the help of Middlebury and others.

[00:53:56] Peter: Well, if only the relations were to be resolved completely, we could close up shaft, but I’m, I’m afraid we’ll still be in operation in 10 years, unfortunately.

[00:54:06] Laurie: Yeah. You know, cancel yourself out. Yeah. I mean, I do think you’re right, Anna, to point out Middlebury, just to extend what you just said, Middlebury has been creatively global, really, ever since it started, and very intensely in the last 60, 60 years. And I think this is a great example of ways in which it’s creatively global. Its global education is suggesting a new model, that, to your point, Peter, is not dyadic.

It challenges the imagination by virtue of its triologic nature or quadrilateral nature. It challenges us to think differently about international relations. It challenges us to think differently about the centrality of culture. We engage our translation and interpretation folk, you know, from the beginning. All of that is just incredibly exciting to think about as a model for education.

So, I want to thank you for that. And I want to end by saying something that I deeply believe in, which wasn’t… the assumption was not present in my last question because I wanted to hear what you had to say about it, but I frequently say to my senior team here or to colleagues, never underestimate the power of convening, period, right?

And, you know, you have no idea what’s going to happen once that convening occurs, but I think you have instantiated that really basic principle of human relations as well as international relations. So, I want to thank you both for this really creative, innovative work.
I can’t wait to see what you’re going to be doing next. And thank you. In the middle of planning for your summer or just getting back from the second conference of the trialogue, I want to thank you for taking the time speak with me. And I wish you absolutely the best of luck.

[00:55:50] Peter: Thank you very much.

[00:55:51] Anna: Thank you, Laurie. Thank you. Good luck to you. Good luck to all of us. Thank you. Bye-bye.

[00:55:56] Laurie: Thank you. Take care. We’d like to thank Peter Slezkine and Anna Vassilieva for joining us in conversation today. Midd Moment is hosted by me, Laurie Patton, president of Middlebury. The podcast is executive produced by Matt Jennings, editor of Middlebury Magazine.

Today’s episode was engineered by Scot Maupin, and produced and edited by Caitlin Whyte, both wonderful colleagues at the podcast agency, University FM. Research on this episode was provided by Matt Jennings. For more conversations like this, subscribe to Midd Moment on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening.