Russian aggression: What now? U.S. and NATO considerations

Eric Edelman, a Miller Center practitioner senior fellow, retired as a career minister from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2009 after having served in senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense as well as the White House. As the undersecretary of defense for policy (2005–2009), he oversaw strategy development as the Defense Department’s senior policy official with global responsibility for bilateral defense relations, war plans, special operations forces, homeland defense, missile defense, nuclear weapons and arms control policies, counter-proliferation, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, arms sales, and defense trade controls. Edelman served as U.S. ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and was principal deputy assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney for national security affairs.

Evelyn Farkas is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and CNA and a national security analyst for NBC/MSNBC. She served from 2012 to 2015 as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, responsible for policy toward Russia, the Black Sea, Balkans, and Caucasus regions and conventional arms control. From 2010 to 2012 she served as senior advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and special advisor to the secretary of defense for the NATO Summit. Prior to that, she was a senior fellow at the American Security Project, and executive director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.

From April 2001 to April 2008, she served as a professional staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Asia Pacific, Western Hemisphere, Special Operations Command, peace and stability operations, combatting terrorism, counternarcotics, homeland defense, and export control policy.

Ambassador Stephen D. Mull, a Miller Center practitioner senior fellow, joined the University of Virginia as vice provost for global affairs in August 2018. He has served in a broad range of U.S. national security positions, most recently as acting under secretary for political affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

Mull served as lead coordinator for Iran nuclear implementation from 2015 until 2017, in which capacity he led U.S. government efforts to implement the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to constrain Iran’s nuclear program. Prior to that position, he was U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Poland from 2012 until 2015, supporting a significant growth of U.S. exports to Poland and expanding U.S.-Polish military cooperation within NATO in response to Russian aggression against Ukraine. 

Andrew S. Weiss is the James Family Chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees research in Washington and Moscow on Russia and Eurasia. During the 2021–22 academic year, he was also the Library of Congress Chair in U.S.-Russia Relations at the John W. Kluge Center.

Prior to joining Carnegie, he was director of the RAND Corporation’s Center for Russia and Eurasia and executive director of the RAND Business Leaders Forum.

Weiss’s career has spanned both the public and private sectors. He previously served as director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council staff, as a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and as a policy assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush.