Event recording from 4/12/2017; introductory remarks by Dr Natasha Kuhrt.

Professor Sakwa explores how the tension between Russia and the Atlantic community mirrored a fundamental realignment of the international system from the late 1980s onwards. He provides a new analysis of the end of the Cold War and the subsequent failure to create a comprehensive and inclusive peace order in Europe. The end of the Cold War did not create a sustainable peace system. Instead, for a quarter of a century a 'cold peace' reflected the tension between cooperative and competitive behaviour. None of the fundamental problems of European security were resolved, and tensions accumulated.

Speaker biography:

Richard Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent. Prof. Sakwa is an Associate Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies (CREES) at the University of Birmingham and since September 2002 a member of Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences. His latest book, 'Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order' is published October 2017 with Cambridge University Press.

This event was a Russian and Eurasian Security Seminar in association with the King's Russia Institute.