Dr. Robert English and Russia
A few nights ago GIP and fellow Global Scholar Ian Kim hosted an event with USC professor Dr. Robert English, Associate Professor of International Relations, Slavic Languages and Literature and Environmental Studies . According to the Dornsife website, Professor English studies Russia, the former USSR, and Eastern Europe, with a focus ranging from general issues of regional relations to specific questions of ethnicity, identity, and nationalism. He is presently working on a book-length study entitled Our Serbian Brethren: History, Myth, and the Politics of Russian National Identity. He formerly worked as a policy analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense and the Committee for National Security.
In this event, Ian Kim facilitated an interview/discussion with Dr. English about Russia as a power in history, today, and where he sees Russia-US ties headed in the future. Dr. English spoke at great length about the history of Russia as a nuclear and global superpower as well as their depression in the 90s. He also spoke about the similarities between different administrations as far as the Trump-Putin relationship goes and the idea of the "strong man" identity in global politics and more specifically, what it means in Russian culture.
To end the night, Dr. English took what had evolved into a rather nuanced and macroscopic discussion back down to a person-to-person scale with an anecdote from one of his trips to Moscow. He spoke about his interaction with a local man and his impression of Americans in general. The man had wanted to thank an American in person for Spam, as it had personally saved this man from near-starvation. With that anecdote, a large-scale intellectual discussion was brought back to the very real human interactions on the ground and how a lot of the future with Russia-US ties will be related to that.
In this event, Ian Kim facilitated an interview/discussion with Dr. English about Russia as a power in history, today, and where he sees Russia-US ties headed in the future. Dr. English spoke at great length about the history of Russia as a nuclear and global superpower as well as their depression in the 90s. He also spoke about the similarities between different administrations as far as the Trump-Putin relationship goes and the idea of the "strong man" identity in global politics and more specifically, what it means in Russian culture.
To end the night, Dr. English took what had evolved into a rather nuanced and macroscopic discussion back down to a person-to-person scale with an anecdote from one of his trips to Moscow. He spoke about his interaction with a local man and his impression of Americans in general. The man had wanted to thank an American in person for Spam, as it had personally saved this man from near-starvation. With that anecdote, a large-scale intellectual discussion was brought back to the very real human interactions on the ground and how a lot of the future with Russia-US ties will be related to that.
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