Strategic Significance of the Black Sea Region for Russia

Panelist: Alexander Cooley

Director, Harriman Institute, Columbia University

Clair Tow Professor of Political Science, Barnard College

Area(s) of expertise: International relations, Eurasian politics. Politics of regions and regionalism

Alexander Cooley is the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College and Director of Columbia University's Harriman Institute (2016-present). Professor Cooley’s research examines how external actors have influenced the development, governance and sovereignty of the former Soviet states, with a focus on Central Asia and the Caucasus. Cooley is the author and/or editor of seven academic books including, Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia (Yale University Press 2017), co-authored with John Heathershaw, and most recently, Exit from Hegemony: the Unravelling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020), co-authored with Daniel Nexon.
In addition to his academic research, Professor Cooley serves on several international advisory boards engaged with the region and has testified for the United States Congress and Helsinki Commission. Cooley's opinion pieces have appeared in New York Times, Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs and his research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Open Society Foundations, Carnegie Corporation, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States, among others. Cooley earned both his MA and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Panelist: Tom de Waal

Senior Fellow, Carnegie Europe

Area(s) of expertise: Eastern Europe and the Caucuses

Tom de Waal is a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region. He is the author of numerous publications about the region. The second edition of his book The Caucasus: An Introduction (Oxford University Press) was published in 2018. He is also the author of Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide (Oxford University Press, 2015) and of the authoritative book on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War (NYU Press, second edition 2013).

From 2010 to 2015, de Waal worked for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. Before that he worked extensively as a journalist in both print and for BBC radio. From 1993 to 1997, he worked in Moscow for the Moscow Times, the Times of London, and the Economist, specializing in Russian politics and the situation in Chechnya. He co-authored (with Carlotta Gall) the book Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (NYU Press, 1997), for which the authors were awarded the James Cameron Prize for Distinguished Reporting.

Adjunct Senior Fellow, RAND Corporation

Area(s) of expertise: Russia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, former Soviet Union, nuclear arms control

William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and executive director of the RAND Business Leaders Forum, and he chairs the board of trustees of Eurasia Foundation. A corporate executive from 2000 to 2014, he retired from Computer Sciences Corporation as senior principal for federal policy strategy. From 1972 to 1999 he was a foreign service officer in the U.S. Department of State, and served as ambassador to Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the U.S.-Soviet Commission to implement the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. He served abroad in Brasilia, Moscow, Geneva, Almaty, and Tbilisi. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Cosmos Club. He graduated from West Virginia University with a B.A. and Brown University with a Ph.D. in economics. He is married and has two adult children.