This event is in partnership with the Kettering Foundation.

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

In The Folly of Realism, leading national security expert and bestselling author Alexander Vindman argues that America’s mistakes in Eastern Europe result from policymakers' fixation on immediate, short-term problem-solving and misplaced hopes and fears. He proposes a new long-term, values-based approach that insists on the fundamentals of liberal democracy and a rules-based world order.

Vindman, lieutenant colonel, U.S. Army (retired), was the director for European Affairs on the White House’s National Security Council, former Political-Military Affairs Officer for Russia, and diplomat at the American Embassies in Moscow and Kyiv. He is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute and Kettering Foundation, the author of the New York Times-bestselling memoir Here, Right Matters, and leads the Here Right Matters Foundation organization which focuses on helping Ukraine win the war against Russia. He lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Vindman will be in conversation with Sharon L. Davies, the president and chief executive officer of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.

Hosted by Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC. Learn more here.