From fluency in the history, culture, language, and politics of regions and countries to prioritizing area studies to better understand what drives partners and competitors, experts on Russia, nuclear security, and international affairs offer perspectives on what is needed to navigate the foreign policy challenges of today and tomorrow
As a foundation with a historical commitment to improving the ability of the United States to understand international issues and foreign countries, Carnegie Corporation of New York has solicited expert views on three critical questions provoked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022: How is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine likely to alter the post-World War II international order? How can we avoid further escalation of the international conflict? And what knowledge is needed for the U.S. to navigate evolving foreign policy challenges?
Experts on Russia, nuclear security, and international affairs more broadly offer their views on each of these questions in a series of three articles. This article addresses the third question through brief perspectives, with each answer limited to 100 words or fewer.
In the spirit of the Corporation’s mission to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding, the responses shed light on developments that will impact national policies and international relations for the foreseeable future.
The U.S. needs a new generation of experts whose knowledge is both deep and broad. In my view, depth implies fluency in the history, culture, and politics of regions and countries. It is acquired not only from academics but from in-country experience and hands-on training from practitioners. A sine qua non of depth is advanced language skills and research capabilities in foreign languages because language is a window into culture and worldview. In today’s world, breadth requires comparative capabilities, thematic and theoretical expertise across borders, and global sweep. Breadth without depth is superficial; depth without breadth is myopic.
We have to dispense with the twin illusions of convergence by globalization (that we are all pursuing the same ends, primarily as defined through economics) and Internet connectivity (that ready access to information obviates the need for deep analytical expertise).
Explore more questions on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as answered by experts and our grantees
Policymakers need up-to-date, nuanced knowledge about Russia’s complex society and culture to craft effective responses to foreign policy challenges posed by Russia. The Putin regime’s subjugation of Russia’s universities to its political agenda imperils three decades of progress building a world-class social science community within top Russian institutions. The destruction of this community will deprive scholars, journalists, and officials in the United States of access to a vital source of tacit knowledge about Russia, at a time when other avenues of access have been abruptly closed off. Russian social science capacity must be sustained outside of Russia to preserve its insights.
The international landscape is increasingly marked by contradictions, complexity, and opportunities. Specific skills and knowledge will be paramount to thrive in such an environment: 1) systemic thinking to design policies that operate across domains rather than in silos, 2) designing policies in a time of social media and information warfare will require greater communication skills and effective strategies to address disinformation in a constructive and timely fashion, and 3) bringing history and cultural sociology back to the table to understand not only how technology works but what norms and values underpin its use and deployment in any given society.
The U.S. needs to have a granular knowledge of Russian society and Russian elites, of the evolution of their mindset, and what unites and what divides them.
We have to dispense with the twin illusions of convergence by globalization (that we are all pursuing the same ends, primarily as defined through economics) and Internet connectivity (that ready access to information obviates the need for deep analytical expertise), as well as the expectation that any country’s policies can be understood by reference to abstract paradigms. It thus becomes easier to substitute “what we would like to see” as opposed to what other states will actually do. We have to bring back and prioritize “area studies” to better understand what drives both our partners and our competitors.
A key variable for U.S. foreign policy at the moment is Russian public opinion. There are long-established structures in academia, in the public sphere, and in government for analyzing the Kremlin, its personnel, its priorities, and its actions. There are fewer structures for understanding Russian public opinion. Survey data alone is not enough. What we need is a comprehensive view of Russia society and of the ways in which it is, and will be, changing because of the war in Ukraine, incorporating the different social classes, the different ethnicities, the different religious groups, and the many regions of this enormous country. Going forward, a great deal will depend on the state-society relationship in Russia. It is not an easy relationship to piece together but when clearly perceived it is a crucial indicator of the future course of the war as it is of Putin’s domestic political and foreign policy choices.
The U.S. must reinvest in area studies, exchanges, and scholarships to combat our reflex to oversimplify (“essentialize”) conflicts with adversarial states, such as Russia and China, into black-and-white narratives about good versus evil, democracy versus autocracy.
The U.S. needs to have a granular knowledge of Russian society and Russian elites, of the evolution of their mindset, and what unites and what divides them. This should come from both U.S. experts and from insiders from Russia. This means increasing funding for building Russia expertise in U.S. universities, especially language knowledge, the social sciences, and history, as well as welcoming Russian scholars in exile who can provide unique insights, and therefore changing the U.S. visa policy to welcome those experts who will contribute to informing the U.S. policy community.
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has systematically divested from area studies knowledge. Yet navigating current and future foreign policy challenges requires specialized understanding of Russia and China, in particular. It is imperative that policymakers have access to expertise on the domestic context in which decisions are made and on the historical legacies that inform such decisions. To do so, it could introduce a new version of the National Defense Education Act targeting lacunae in knowledge of languages, cultures, science, and technology, ensuring the U.S. can understand — and compete in — crucial economic and foreign policy spheres.
Lack of knowledge is not the primary impediment to U.S. foreign policymaking. Lack of will by competing political factions to use knowledge is the bigger problem.
The U.S. must reinvest in area studies, exchanges, and scholarships to combat our reflex to oversimplify (“essentialize”) conflicts with adversarial states, such as Russia and China, into black-and-white narratives about good versus evil, democracy versus autocracy. Such reflexes, worsened by deficits in area-studies knowledge, make us dismiss more complex, contingent, or contextual drivers of confrontation — including security dilemmas, misaligned interests, perceptions/misperceptions, cultural particularities, and emotions. This blinds us to potential compromises or shared interests between adversaries, which in turn shrinks the cooperation that is indispensable for addressing existential global problems. Solutions include more multidisciplinary area studies, student exchanges, and visas for exiled scholars/experts from concerned regions.
Lack of knowledge is not the primary impediment to U.S. foreign policymaking. Lack of will by competing political factions to use knowledge is the bigger problem. Polarization and the single-minded desire to defeat political opponents results in the prioritization of partisan advantage. Sidelined is the use of knowledge to identify feasible foreign policy objectives and to fashion the compromises necessary for durable progress. The Constitution’s requirements that each state have two senators, regardless of population size, and that treaties be ratified by two-thirds of the attending senators, empowers those whose ignorance or political ambitions lead them to reject compromise with foreigners.
Watching Western civilization teetering on the edge of an abyss, one wonders whether we can still have a chance to rebuild peaceful coexistence and restore trust between the collective West and Russia. One of the solutions, provided the awakening of political will, would be reinvesting in a strategic empathy approach in the study of international relations. Multidisciplinary programs in language acquisition, area studies, history, literature, and anthropology would offer an in-depth, comprehensive, pragmatic education. This would enable future foreign policy professionals to focus on similarities rather than differences between countries and peoples, empowering them to develop solutions that would strengthen peace and cooperation.
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