How can the United States advance its interests without abandoning its core values? Alexander Vindman, retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and former director for European Affairs on the White House’s National Security Council, presents a discussion on the critical interplay between morality, values and power in the practice of geopolitics and national security. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, six U.S. presidential administrations across both parties crafted policies for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia that unintentionally emboldened Russia and played into its imperialist, centuries-long mythos of regional hegemony, by pursuing short-term transactional policies. The result: military aggression and full-scale invasion. It was all too foreseeable. 

Vindman will discuss the shifting U.S. foreign policy landscape, what a just peace and lasting end to the war in Ukraine might look like, the administration's increasingly transactional approach to international relations, and Trump's heavy-handed approach to national security and domestic politics.

About the Speaker 

Dr. Alexander Vindman, a retired US Army lieutenant colonel, was the director for European Affairs on the National Security Council. Before that, he served as the political-military affairs officer for Russia for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as an attaché at the U.S. Embassies in Moscow and Kyiv. While on the Joint Staff, he authored the National Military Strategy for Russia. He earned a Master's from Harvard University, where he served as a Hauser Leader, and a Master's and Doctorate from Johns Hopkins, where he is a senior fellow. Dr. Vindman leads the national security think tank Institute for Informed American Leadership, is the president of the nonprofit Here Right Matters Foundation, an executive board member for the Renew Democracy Initiative, a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation, and a senior advisor to VoteVets. Dr. Vindman is the author of the "Why It Matters" Substack and the New York Times bestselling books Here, Right Matters and The Folly of Realism.