Российская Федерация…

Today’s Editorial in the New York Times notes that the Pentagon has put Russia at the top of its list of national security threats. Similarly, Putin recently named the U.S. a threat to Russian security for the first time. It’s funny — when I was studying Russian and Cold War history at Columbia University for one of my masters degrees (including Middle Eastern Cold War history with Professor Rashid Khalidi), it felt like I was a few decades late to the subject. Similarly, when I was studying Advanced Russian at St. Petersburg State University in Russia and getting in touch with my Russian roots, I wondered how relevant my studies would prove to be in the future. Now, however, I’m more grateful than ever for the Russian education I received at Columbia and Brown and in Russia itself — to make sense of the complex relationship between the U.S. and Russia in this particular historical moment…