MELINDA RABB: It's my pleasure
to introduce today's speakers.
I'm Melinda Rabb.
I'm a Professor in the
Department of English.
My first introduction,
of course,
is the recently retired, to the
dismay of many, National Public
Radio correspondent
Corey Flintoff.
You all know his voice.
[APPLAUSE]
You all know his voice
and the familiar sign off,
"I'm Corey Flintoff."
But I can't say it
the way he does.
And now you can meet the man
to whom that voice belongs.
During almost 40 years
as a radio journalist,
beginning in Bethel,
Alaska, population 6,000,
400 miles on the coast
west of Anchorage,
Cory has traveled the globe and
reported on an astonishing list
of major world events--
the Civil War in
Libya, the Downing
of Malaysian Airlines Flight
17, the Olympic sports doping
scandal, pirates in Somalia,
earthquake in Haiti,
Egypt during the Arab Spring,
Russia's seizure of Crimea,
the Ukrainian revolution, the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
where he was embedded
with US troops.
He spent two years in
Delhi, and most recently,
four years in Moscow
as NPR'S Bureau Chief,
reporting on the
growing authoritarianism
of Vladimir Putin's Russia.
But I want to say
a word, and this
is directed at the students
in the room about why
I get to have the privilege
of introducing our guests.
One of the most valuable aspects
about studying at a university
is the opportunity to meet
a diverse group of people
whose paths intersect
because they share
a class or a dorm,
a team, a club,
or some other
serendipitous happenstance.
You never know what will
happen once you leave campus,
but the future is
full of surprises.
Corey Flintoff and I took
classes in English literature
together and formed a friendship
during our single year
at the University of Chicago.
Yes, he was an English major.
And he shares the English
major's love and respect
for language and the belief
that it should mean something.
He can still cite passages
from "Gulliver's Travels,"
I discovered last night.
And he is writing a novel.
After the year in Chicago, he
headed west for Alaska and I,
east for Cambridge.
But good friendships
do not just go away.
I wish you, all your
students out there,
similar bonds in your futures.
It's something to
look forward to.
At a historical
moment, when we all
have been reminded of the value
of reliable information, what
we at Brown call fact-based
research subject to peer
review, Corey's career has
exemplified the possibility
of trying to find the facts and
to tell the truth as best one
can.
We are joined on
stage tonight by three
of my distinguished
colleagues, representing
the several departments
that have collaborated,
in true Brown
interdisciplinary style,
to co-sponsor this event.
Jon Readey is a lecturer
in the English department
and esteemed teacher
of journalism
and creative
nonfiction, as well as
20th century and
contemporary novels.
He's edited the collection
"Crafting Cultural Rhetorics--
Readings for
University Writers,"
and published both critical
and creative writing.
Linda Cook is Professor in
the Departments of Political
Science and Slavic Studies.
Her books include "The Soviet
Social Contract and Why It
Failed," "Post-Communist
Welfare States--
Reform Politics in Russia
and Eastern Europe."
She recently was granted
a Fulbright scholarship
for research in the
Russian Federation
for her current project,
political economies
of health care in Russia's
fragmented welfare state.
And James Morone is John
Hazen White Professor
of Public Policy, Director
of the Alfred Taubman
Center for American
Politics and Policy,
and Professor of Political
Science and Urban Studies.
He's written-- so I
actually wrote down
that he wrote 10 books.
But having just
checked more recently,
he's actually written 11.
[LAUGHTER]
And over 150 articles,
reviews, and essays
on American political
history, health care policy,
and social issues.
His first book, "The
Democratic Wish,"
was named a notable book
by "The New York Times."
His "Hellfire Nation--
The Politics of Sin
in American History"
was nominated for
a Pulitzer Prize.
AUDIENCE: Wow.
MELINDA RABB: His most recent
is "The Devils We Know,"
although I don't know.
Maybe there's even another
one that's about to come out,
I'm not really sure.
But in any case, we have a
wonderful group of speakers
to listen to tonight.
And I hope you will join
me in welcoming them.
[APPLAUSE]
JAMES MORONE:
Thank you, Melinda,
for that lovely introduction.
We're about to turn it
over to Corey Flintoff, who
you will now soon
discover is number
is more than a pretty voice.
He's got a fascinating life.
We want to get to Russia
and Putin and Trump,
as we've advertised.
But first we thought it would
be fun to hear a little bit
about his back story.
He had to know how
to sign off in Alaska
in two different languages.
So you'll hear a variation of
a sign off in just a second.
But first to walk us through
the pre-story of Corey's
experiences abroad, we're
going to turn to Jonathan
to just see the
pre-engineering of a reporter.
JON READEY: Yes,
and we do have a lot
of students in the audience,
both undergrad and graduate.
And we're very curious about
your coming of age story--
high school, college.
When you were 20 to 25 and you
were plotting the next move,
how did it start for you and
how did you get to the point
where you became an
investigative foreign
correspondent?
COREY FLINTOFF: Well, after I
left the University of Chicago,
where Melinda and
I became friends,
I decided that what
I really wanted to be
was a fiction writer.
And that's because I took a
class about Flannery O'Connor
and was absolutely seduced
by good short story writing.
But you know, you always are
looking for that perfect place
where you're going to
sit down, and you're
going to write whatever your
great American fiction may be.
And it happened that my wife at
the time was a dental student
and had run up her student loans
and needed to pay them off.
And she did that by joining
the Indian Health Service.
And so that was an
opportunity for me
to go back to my
home state of Alaska.
And we wound up in a small
town in southwestern Alaska
on the Kuskokwim River.
It's called Bethel.
At that time, it had a
population of around 4,000
and 90% of those
people were Yupiks.
They were Yupik Eskimos.
And when we first got there
to the Public Health Service
Hospital, and I asked
one of the doctors there,
well, what do you do
for jobs around here?
Where do you go?
Because I thought, you
know, I could support myself
during the long
nights while writing
whatever this great American
novel was going to be.
And he said, oh, go
to the radio station.
They always need somebody.
So turned out, sure
enough, they did.
And the only thing you
had to do at this station,
which was bilingual, was to
be able to say the station
identification in Yupik.
So I got somebody to coach
me and walk me through this
until I was able to say this--
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
[APPLAUSE]
COREY FLINTOFF:
And I got the job.
As I was telling
somebody just earlier,
that one of the things
that that job taught me
was respect for your
listeners and readers
and respect for the culture
of people who surround you.
I made a lot of
really awful mistakes
when I was a young
reporter in Bethel.
One of my first jobs was
to cover the local city
council and the school board.
And when I first
went there, it was
full of interesting characters.
And they were just loud and
boisterous and argumentative
and fractious.
And I came home and I said,
these people are buffoons.
You know, what am I
doing spending my time
covering their politics?
But it didn't take very
long to realize that--
these are the people who are on
the city council and the school
board--
were the people who made things
happen in this community,
and they did it out
of genuine allegiance
to the better interests of
their community as they saw it.
And I came to have a
lot of respect for them.
And that, actually, is what
got me hooked on journalism
as opposed to fiction.
JAMES MORONE: And how did
you make it to NPR central?
Everyone knows that you are the
voice of the 6 o'clock news.
COREY FLINTOFF: Yeah, well--
JAMES MORONE: How
did you get there?
COREY FLINTOFF: --as Dan
Rather would tell you,
every reporter who gets a bump
up in their career usually
has it because of some
disaster or catastrophe.
In my case, it was the Exxon
Valdez oil spill in 1989.
That was the biggest oil
spill disaster that had ever
happened in the United States.
It was absolutely devastating
to the ecology of this very
pristine part of Alaska.
And NPR, among
other organizations,
spent an enormous amount
of time covering it.
So that was my opportunity
to do coverage for NPR
and meet NPR people.
And it resulted in my
getting a residency at NPR.
And so I got to Washington.
And I did the job, and I
thought I could do this.
You'll find-- students,
you'll find this--
often those things that
look rather imposing
are often things when
you get there, you
find the opportunities are
good and the things are usually
within your capacity.
JAMES MORONE:
Corey, take us just
for a second inside the booth.
We've all heard the thing.
It's NPR from Washington,
the Corey Flintoff.
But what's going on?
How do you get the news?
How do you read it?
What's the trick
about doing this?
COREY FLINTOFF:
You know, there's
a little factory in the heart
of every news organization.
And the factory at NPR
is the newscast unit.
And it's a matter of a
desk that's constantly
staffed by four or
five people, who
are gathering news, recording
news, putting things together.
The newscasters actually
write their newscasts.
But usually it's
based on consultations
with your editors.
You know, you're constantly
talking about what's coming up.
What should you cover?
What should you drop?
We have reports from our
various correspondents
around the country
and around the world.
And those are coming in
as prerecorded pieces
that you work into
your newscast.
So this whole thing
comes together,
and you're in it where you work
in a sort of cyclical world,
where you do a five
minute newscast.
And then you go back and
you write for 45 minutes.
And then you go and do the
same thing over and over again.
The reason I have such
great name recognition
is because for 17 years I had
the opportunity to say my name
12 times a night.
[LAUGHTER]
JAMES MORONE: And so somehow
you went from NPR central
to Iraq, with many steps.
But there was one, I
take it, helicopter ride
that really brought you
to the international scene
with Condoleezza Rice.
COREY FLINTOFF: Yes,
I was substituting
for a really wonderful
correspondent
on our foreign desk, Michelle
Kellerman, who is still there.
She's our State
Department reporter.
And while she was
on maternity leave,
I got to substitute for her.
And one of the
things that came up
was a round the world trip
with Condoleezza Rice.
You know they do
these periodically,
and you hear reports
from these trips.
It's really difficult
and energy consuming,
because you spend your entire
time either on the plane
or in these various locations,
trying to put together
a story at the last minute.
And so we went to--
as often happens on
these trips, there
was an unannounced trip to Iraq.
And so we landed in
Bahrain, and none of this
was on the schedule
because they don't
like to be public
about these trips
until they've
actually taken place.
And so away we went.
We got on to one of these
C-130s, and we flew to Mosul.
And as we were
flying across Iraq--
you know, it's one of
these big cargo planes,
and they have a little
flight deck up above.
And Condoleezza Rice was
alone on the flight deck
just with the
pilots and the crew.
And so I went up
there, and we sat down,
and we had this sort of
awkward little conversation.
Condoleezza Rice
looks out at the view
that we're seeing, which
is the Iraqi desert,
just stretching for miles away.
And a lot of it you
couldn't see at all,
because there was
always dust storms
and there's always
haze out there.
She looked up, and she
said, isn't Iraq beautiful?
I've been coming here for
four or five times now,
and I feel I really am
getting to know this country.
And I really have
come to love it.
And I thought, whoa,
that's pretty admirable.
Wow.
So you know, we
went on and we made
chit chat and this and that.
And we landed in Mosul.
And we found ourselves
in a completely fortified
American camp, surrounded by
blast walls and tanks pointing
outward.
And then we went from
there, by helicopter,
to Baghdad, where we landed
in a completely fortified
American air base in Baghdad.
And once again, we
got into Humvees,
completely armored Humvees.
We're wearing our--
correspondents always
look ridiculous in
these, because I
was wearing a jacket and a tie.
And I've got the
bulletproof vest on.
So I looked like a penguin.
And I've got the helmet
that never quite fits right.
Never looks good like
it does on the soldiers.
And so we're marching
in to this place.
And you know, I realized
that this trip, which
lasted for something
like 10 hours,
was what Condoleezza
Rice meant when she said,
I've been to Iraq five times,
and I feel I know it very well.
She was completely shielded
throughout these trips
by American weaponry.
And she met only
people like generals
and senior Iraqi politicians.
So that was her idea of knowing
and loving this country.
I discovered afterwards there's
a lot more to it than that.
JAMES MORONE: One of
the things you did
was embed with American troops.
Tell us a little about that.
And was it very different?
COREY FLINTOFF: Yeah,
the thing about it,
embedding with American
troops, as I learned--
you know, NPR always
had a household that
was outside the green zone.
I mean we were well-protected,
and we had good security.
But we were never part
of the green zone.
So we did have a
better access to Iraq.
We could go out in our cars
and actually interview people,
actually see the signs and
sights of these bombings
and that sort of thing.
But periodically,
we would also embed
with the American military.
And I discovered that there's
a tremendous difference
between riding around
in NPR'S armored car
and riding around
in a Humvee that's
guarded by a Humvee
crew of infantrymen.
There's something
about looking out
the window of an
armored vehicle that
has a gunner on the roof that
makes you instantly suspicious.
I felt much less secure
when I was traveling
with American soldiers, because
the odds of being blown up
were much greater.
And I realized that to an
American soldier looking
through that bulletproof
glass window,
if you see, for instance,
an Iraqi guy standing
on the street corner and
talking on his cell phone,
you're instantly
afraid that he's
either going to use that cell
phone to detonate something,
or that he's calling
in somebody else
who is going to ambush you.
It's a very strange change
that happens in your perception
when you're in a
situation like that.
And so I understand why
American troops are nervous
and sometimes trigger
happy in those situations.
And it was the source
of, some of us,
our biggest disasters in Iraq.
The simple fact that you
always feel that you're
surrounded by the enemy.
JAMES MORONE: Many more
fascinating experiences,
but let's turn to the Russian.
LINDA COOK: I thought--
weren't we going to go to--
JON READEY: Oh, go ahead.
LINDA COOK: OK.
All right.
So I know you spent four
years in Russia beginning
in early 2012,
arriving there when
there were some of the
largest demonstrations we've
seen during the Putin period.
So I just want to ask you a few
questions about your experience
there.
So we should start
with recent events.
We know in the last
week, there were
first of all-- have been,
again, large protests
against corruption.
Then followed a few days
later by this horrible bombing
in St. Petersburg.
I just wonder if you could
talk a little bit about what
you see as the significance
of those events,
in particular why you think
protests have developed now
after such a long
period of quiescence.
COREY FLINTOFF: It's funny.
You know, those protests
were the bookends
of my experience in Russia.
When I first got
there was in 2012,
when there were a series of
enormous protests in Moscow
and St. Petersburg especially.
They brought tens of thousands
of people into the street.
And those protests were
precipitated by a feeling
that the parliamentary
elections that proceeding fall
had been blatantly stolen.
And in fact, everything
that you'll read about those
protests, you'll see that
United Russia officials--
and United Russia is the
party of President Putin--
were absolutely
scandalous in the way
that they stole votes
in that election.
People were very
much aware of it,
and they were really
angry about it.
Secondly, there was the decision
by then Prime Minister Putin
and then President Dmitry
Medvedev to change places.
So it became perfectly
clear to everyone
that Medvedev had
been doing nothing
but warming Putin's seat
for him for four years.
And that this was a
plan that had always
been put in place to get around
the Russian term limits laws.
So people were really angry.
They came out in these.
And it was interesting to see,
because these people were not
radicals, and they
were not rabble.
They were absolutely
middle class people
who remember very
well the Soviet Union
and consider themselves
to be much better
off under the current regime
than they were in the past.
But they were people who
were so angered by what
they saw as the betrayals that
were taking place that they
went out on the street.
Well, as soon as
Putin was inaugurated,
he began a campaign of
extreme repression to silence
opposition groups, shut down
opposition media sources,
and in general, make it really
impossible to effectively
protest against his regime.
So for four years,
we'd go and cover
these very small demonstrations
of a group of remaining
Loyalists who would get
out there with their signs
periodically, most
of them older people.
We saw fewer and fewer young
people who are engaged by this.
And it looked-- at the time we
were getting ready to leave,
it looked as if the
Kremlin had succeeded
in completely repressing any
kind of opposition feelings.
Some friends of mine
there who told me that--
a friend of mine had just
gone to a commemorative march
in honor of Boris Nemtsov.
He'd been killed almost
exactly two years
before, five or 10,000
people came out and marched
up and down.
She said to me, I feel like I've
seen all these faces before,
the same old people who
come out every time.
And there are fewer and fewer
young people engaged in this.
Well, so two weeks
ago, all of a sudden
there are huge protests
in downtown Moscow
and more than 100 other cities.
And those protests, if you
look at the video from them,
they are overwhelmingly made
up of young people, older
teenagers and young
adults, who are
being very peaceful,
but very passionate
in this demonstration.
And what got them
going, once again,
was a demonstration
of corruption.
Alexei Navalny, who is
probably the most prominent
remaining Russian
opposition leader,
he's an extreme
nationalist, actually.
But he is also a very
charismatic and witty guy.
And you can go on
YouTube and see
his most recent
little documentary
about Russian corruption.
It's called, "Don't
Call Him Dimon."
That's one of the nicknames
for Dmitry Medvedev.
It is a funny takedown
of Medvedev's history
of collecting enormous wealth,
assembling enormous wealth,
including yachts and estates
and palatial mansions
around the country.
And it's based on, the funny
part of it is it's based on--
his investigation was based on--
Medvedev's fancy sneakers.
Medvedev has a
reputation for being
fascinated with technology.
He loves the net, and he
loves to buy stuff on the net.
And so Navalny traced how--
we see a photograph
of Medvedev wearing
a nice sweater and a pair
of really colorful sneakers.
You know that he probably
ordered them on the internet.
And so he found an invoice that
showed that these sneakers had
been delivered to a lifelong
friend of Medvedev's.
And then he found
photographs that
showed Medvedev
wearing these garments,
you know, very
shortly after that.
And from that, he then
proceeded to network
through the friend and the
friend's business connections
and the shell companies
that the friend owns
in Cyprus and in Bermuda
and in London and so forth,
and associated all
those companies
with various properties
that Medvedev
has been photographed
at that are
thought to be his properties.
So it's totally worth watching,
and it has English subtitles
as well.
And it's only about
10 or 11 minutes.
So this was something that
became an instant internet hit
and got millions of hits.
And it's thought that that's
what finally drove people
into the streets in
absolute frustration.
Because the Russian
economy is not doing well.
Pensioners and people on fixed
incomes are in terrible shape.
Russian infrastructure
is crumbling.
And here we are, this guy is
wearing his fancy sneakers
on the deck of his fancy yacht.
And we're supposed
to swallow this?
So I think that's what
precipitated the protests.
So we go on to the
bombing in St. Petersburg.
And as you know,
Russia is no stranger
to these kinds of attacks.
We've had terrorists
open up with gunfire
in the airport in Moscow.
We've had people
attack the metros
in Moscow and other places.
So my feeling is that this
could have been anything.
It seems that this
might have been
a lone wolf, al-Qaeda-influenced
kind of attack
by a guy from Central
Asia, Kyrgyzstan,
who may have been
disaffected in some way.
We don't know.
But when you become
a Russia watcher,
there are three possibilities
that open up to you when
something like this happens.
A, this is a random
act committed
by a random terrorist such as
we have in the United States,
but the Russian
government is going
to seize hold of this
as an opportunity
and use it as a chance to
enact further repression
against, especially
against, the kind of people
who took part in these
protests just a week before.
The second, which is
the conspiracy theory,
is that the Russian
government itself actually
committed this act as a
provocation which could then
be used as a device and an
excuse for more repression.
And the third is that this
is something that is actually
an al-Qaeda or Taliban-connected
act that was actually
run from abroad.
So the discouraging
thing for a journalist
is that it's very hard to
figure out what's what.
LINDA COOK: OK.
So we were talking
earlier and you
talked about loving Moscow, the
beautiful public parks being
renovated, the society.
But at the same time,
viewing the regime
as a very corrupt
kind of mafia regime.
And I think many
other people have
had that reaction that this
is a well-educated society
of wonderful people that
are really badly governed.
So could you just talk a
little bit about that duality,
that contradiction?
COREY FLINTOFF: Yes, I mean,
throughout Vladimir Putin's
tenure--
which began in 2000, so he's
been in office for 17 years--
Russia enjoyed
tremendous good fortune.
Oil prices were high.
Russia is almost entirely a
resource extractive economy.
Putin's fault probably is
that his government has never
tried to diversify that
economy and protect it.
So that when oil
prices collapsed,
suddenly Russia's revenues have
fallen by approximately 50%.
The Russian government,
incidentally,
can still make money when oil
goes down to as low as $30
a barrel.
But it reeks hell with
the Russian budget.
And so that's the situation
that they're in now.
And they had further difficulty
as a result of the US
and European sanctions
that were brought
after the seizure of Crimea.
I think that those sanctions
were not as serious
a part of Russia's difficulties
as the drop in oil prices.
So overall, revenue
collapse was really
what hit them the hardest.
But in the meantime though,
up until this happened,
Putin and his regime were
able to show great results
for the Russian economy.
If you go to Moscow, it is, in
almost every respect, at least
in central Moscow, it is a
modern, almost European city.
If you go to St. Petersburg,
it is a European city.
And you find nice cafes,
nice lively theaters,
and an interesting art scene,
and beautiful public parks.
And it's borne out by
economic statistics, too.
I mean, people's wealth
grew during that time.
People's incomes grew.
People's spending power grew.
And so Russians by and
large were pretty satisfied.
And the trade off
was that, yes, this
is a mafia state in many ways.
Yes, most of the
wealth is siphoned off
by Russian oligarchs and members
of the security services.
But in fact, the
share that was given
to the ordinary Russian
consumer was so much better
than what they had
under Soviet times
that it felt like progress.
And I think that that's
why Russians are still
very loyal to this government,
even though they know
pretty much what's going on.
LINDA COOK: OK.
So I think that most of the
people in the audience, most
of the people in
the United States
who follow the news, one of
their dominant understandings
or impressions of
Russian behavior
over the last several
years is that it's
become quite aggressive.
First there was the invasion
of Georgia, then of Ukraine,
the taking of Crimea, the
intervention in Syria,
the menacing of
the Baltic states.
And I just wanted to--
and the Russian government would
say that much of this behavior
is actually defensive, that
NATO was surrounding them,
that they were determined to
set limits on NATO's expansion.
Others would see this as really
an aggressive behavior that's
designed to simply strengthen
the Russian state and project
power.
I just wonder if you
could talk about how
you see the motives of
the Russian government
in this foreign policy.
COREY FLINTOFF: I think
it's a little bit of both.
I think that Putin
genuinely believes
that he is under threat.
And he believes that
the United States
is the source of that threat.
And he sees, and he
has said repeatedly
that the West has
continually been
trying to undermine Russia ever
since the fall of the Soviet
Union.
He's also the guy who said that
the fall of the Soviet Union
was the greatest
geopolitical catastrophe
of the last century.
LINDA COOK: Yes,
he did say that.
COREY FLINTOFF: What
happened to World War II?
But I think these are
articles of faith for him.
Remember that he is a
Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB
and that most of his education
came through the KGB.
And he does tend to see the
United States as an enemy.
What's more, he saw
the expansion of NATO
right up to Russia's borders as
something that was deliberately
designed to hem in Russia.
I believe that his--
I mean, look at the
Baltic states that share
direct borders with Russia.
They could not wait to
become part of NATO,
because they were always
afraid of Russian aggression.
The same is true of Ukraine.
Ukraine would have liked
to have joined NATO.
Georgia would have liked
to have joined NATO.
You can make a case for the
fact that the Russian aggression
against places like Georgia was
designed to make it impossible
for them to join
NATO, because NATO
can't accept a member
that's involved
in a current conflict or war.
So once Georgia
had been engaged,
then there was no
way that they could
be accepted as members of NATO.
Same is true of Ukraine.
So there are lots of
arguments on either side,
but if you live in
Moscow long enough,
it's a bit like looking through
the window of that Humvee.
Everybody outside of it
looks like an enemy to you,
and everything
that's done is not
a friendly gesture
anymore, but part
of a conspiracy against you.
So remember that--
I believe truly that
he sees Hillary Clinton
as a potential enormous
enemy, and as the person who
helped to foment those
opposition demonstrations back
in 2012, 2011, 2012.
He sees the fact that the
United States has indeed
spent a great deal
of money in Russia
and Eastern Europe for
democracy building programs,
for election-monitoring
programs,
for independent press.
He sees that as
subversion, you know,
absolute naked subversion--
very much as we see the
accusation that Russia
has hacked American election.
You know so it's a
question of which
side of that armored
window you're on.
LINDA COOK: OK, and
one final question.
So you raised already the
issue of Hillary Clinton.
But I still wonder whether
the Russian government or most
of the Russian political
and security elite
really wanted to hurt
Clinton, that they really
preferred Trump, a
complete unknown, somebody
about whose foreign
policy they knew nothing,
whose behavior
was unpredictable.
Do you think that the
Russian government was really
determined to damage the
electoral prospects of Hillary
Clinton?
COREY FLINTOFF: They
certainly despised Hillary.
Now whether that that meant
that they could work with
was another thing.
I talked to analysts in
Moscow who said, yeah,
we know what she's all about.
And although we may not
be able to work with her,
we can do deals.
We can work on nuclear
proliferation, which
is important to both sides.
We can work on maintaining a
degree of military cooperation
so we don't collide
with each other,
and inadvertently start a war.
There are many reasons for us
to want to keep engaging Russia.
And they thought, well,
at least, Hillary,
they know what kind
of diplomacy she does.
And they have dealt
with her a lot.
So there was a certain
amount of stability in that.
On the other hand,
people told me
that there are two
potential wins for Russia
if Donald Trump were elected.
One is that he may in fact be
friendly enough towards Russia,
and he may, in fact, not care
enough about the foreign policy
implications of
Ukraine, for instance,
that he may be willing
to drop sanctions.
And if the United States
dropped sanctions,
Russia would soon
follow after, and that
would be a tremendous
win for the Kremlin.
The second would be that
if Donald Trump created
an atmosphere of chaos and
turmoil in the United States,
it would take away American
attention from foreign policy
altogether.
And thus give Russia
a much, much freer
hand to operate geopolitically.
So there are two potential wins.
On the other hand,
they did understand
that the unpredictability
could come back
to bite them in the backside.
JAMES MORONE: And one
might say bite us as well.
COREY FLINTOFF: Yes.
JAMES MORONE: We're about
to turn to Corey's future,
but as soon as we do, we'll
open it up to questions.
So there are two microphones.
So please, if you want to ask
a question, open it up to you
all.
Anything goes, please just
head for a microphone.
But before we do that,
let's talk about the future.
JON READEY: Yeah,
and obviously there's
much more to discuss about
Putin, Trump, and Russia.
We're hoping that questions
will follow suit about that.
But we are curious.
You seem to be making a move
after a very illustrious
career, going back
to fiction writing,
the initial youthful aspiration.
Can you talk more
about what's next?
COREY FLINTOFF: Yes, I am.
I have a novel on the boards.
You know, what I want to
do is take my experience
as a foreign correspondent
and apply it to fiction.
I mean, there's so
much that you have
to be careful about even when
you're talking about things
that you've reported
in the past.
And I would like to
simply apply the things
I learned in Iraq, for instance,
about what militaries are like,
and what happens when
military adventures go wrong.
Or the things that I learned
in India, for instance,
about what happens when
economies collapse or rise
or fall, what happens when
cultures are disrupted,
and that sort of thing.
And so why not do
it as fiction, where
you can combine all these
things into a single narrative.
So that's what's up for me.
And the other thing is
I still like talking
about Russian foreign policy,
so I'll keep doing that.
JAMES MORONE: All right.
So watch for local
bookstores in a year or so.
Let's go to the first question.
And of course, as always, keep
them short, no autobiographies.
Here you go.
AUDIENCE: Good evening.
I'd love to hear
three or four or five
aspects from your
perspective that, excuse me,
Putin and Trump are very
similar, but also very
dissimilar.
COREY FLINTOFF: That
is a good question.
We have to remember that
what we know about Putin
is something that's evolved.
He has evolved as a leader
over a 17 year period.
He came in as an almost
complete unknown.
He made some sort of clumsy
foreign policy gaffes
early in his career.
But he has become steadily more
knowledgeable and more poised
as time has gone on.
You know, I've seen him
in this kind of forum.
I've seen him sitting in an arm
chair at various conferences
and so forth many times.
And I'm here to tell you that
this is a charismatic guy.
This is a guy who projects
enormous authority.
He's a comparatively small man.
He's about five six or so.
When you see him standing
among his entourage,
he's always the smallest
person in the group.
But he's a guy who
fills up a lot of space.
You notice, if you ever see
him in one of these things,
he sits like this.
He man spreads.
[LAUGHTER]
He puts his arm
around it like this.
He owns the stage.
So he's now a guy who learned
a great deal from his 17 years
in power.
He has also steadily
consolidated his own position.
So in 2012, as you
may recall, there
was a lot of interest in
who ran the Kremlin, who
were the centers of
power in the Kremlin.
And in fact, you may remember
"The New York Times" would
do these graphics,
would show photographs,
little circular photographs
of the Russian leadership.
And part of them were the
security service people.
Some of them were the
liberal economists.
And there were lines
drawn back and forth.
It was all very impressive.
And we all paid a lot
of attention to it.
Well, nobody's
doing that anymore.
And the reason for that is
that Putin has little by little
gotten rid of a lot
of his former cronies.
And he's replaced them with
young technocrats who've never
known anything but
Putin in power,
and have no loyalties
anywhere else.
So he has become a vastly more
powerful figure over that time.
So we have this
guy who is crafty,
who is a quick study, who
is personally charismatic,
and who has a great deal
of experience and power.
And who has become the pencil
point of Russian policy
on every single subject.
And then we have Mr. Trump,
whose career we have all
followed for a long
time, especially
in this neck of the woods.
But I mean, his career
is that of a businessman,
a marketer, a
branding guy, a guy
who was able to make a name
that he was then able to sell,
a guy who has always
prided himself
on being able to do deals.
And he has not had
the policy experience
nor does he seem to have
the policy interest that
could make him into
the kind of force
that Putin has
made himself into.
So I think we're in
dangerous territory.
And I would like to see
more institutional support
for a coherent American foreign
policy, which would include
using the resources of
our State Department,
using the resources
of the Pentagon,
and not concentrating power
among a coterie of people who
have very little experience.
JAMES MORONE: Vladimir?
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I'm Vladimir.
I'm an undergraduate.
And I had a question
about Alexei Navalny.
I know that in Russia,
opposition leaders
have a habit of being jailed
on charges of corruption
or whatever it might be.
Navalny, however, in the
European Court of Justice
was found to be not guilty.
I'm wondering is Navalny
getting to be too big to jail?
Is he too famous?
What do you think is going
to be the future of Navalny
going forward towards the
2018 presidential elections?
COREY FLINTOFF: Well,
as you probably know,
Navalny has been
tried and convicted
on what are universally--
I mean, at least
what, for instance,
the European Court of Justice
regarded as trumped up charges,
and what they actually called
a ludicrous judicial process.
But nevertheless, he
has been convicted.
And one of the things
that that means
is that he can't legally
run for president of Russia.
And he is the leading
potential opposition candidate.
The other thing is that
in one of these trials,
he was tried along
with his brother
for having allegedly committed
embezzlement in a business deal
that they were involved in.
His brother was
thrown into jail.
And so, in a way, there's a
hostage to the justice system,
this brother in jail.
Navalny has effectively
been blocked from running
for political office.
His brother is being held
essentially as a hostage.
The Russian government
up until now
has always wanted to show
that there was an opposition,
whether it was viable or not.
They wanted to show that
there was an opposition,
and that it is
possible to do that.
There are, in fact, systemic
opposition political parties
in the Duma right now that
are part of the Kremlin system
and will always vote
the Kremlin line.
But one of the things
about Russia's democracy
is that it has always tried to
preserve some sort of trapping
of opposition.
And I think Navalny
is their guy.
And the reason that he's allowed
to go free, at least so far,
is that he is still the
symbol that somehow we
have some sort of open
process in Russia.
That may prove not to
be true in the future.
And Navalny has always had
to live with the possibility
that he could be
jailed at any time.
You know, like so
many people who are
about to be arrested in Russia.
He does keep a bag of
toiletries and things
like that ready to go.
AUDIENCE: Do you view
Putin's ultimate vision
for Russia as being
something relatively modest--
basic economic
prosperity, the lifting
of sanctions,
prestige and respect
in the international arena?
Or on the other
hand, do you think
it's rather more ambitious
than that-- in a sense,
becoming the nation,
the hegemon, as it were,
on par with say
the current United
States or previous empires?
COREY FLINTOFF:
That was well-put.
And I think that in fact his
vision is bigger than that.
I think he is looking
for the restoration
of the Soviet and the
Russian imperial empire.
He'd like all that
territory to be Russian.
He believes that it is Russian.
He's said many times that the
neighboring countries are not
countries at all.
He's said this of
the Baltic states.
He's said this of the Ukraine.
And he said it of Kazakhstan,
as a matter of fact.
So these are all
former Soviet countries
that he regards as being
essentially part of Russia's
orbit at the very
least, if not part
of Russia's imperial territory.
So there is that.
I mean, the other thing is
restoration of the economy.
And I think there's a certain
amount of magical thinking
that goes on in the Kremlin.
The idea that if
sanctions were dismissed
and oil prices
rose even slightly,
they could be back
in a position where
they could sort of
restore their economy,
build up their foreign reserves,
and then start attracting
foreign investment again.
So there is that, as well.
But I think it's a mentality.
Putin has a mentality
that you don't
want to back into a
corner unless you're
willing to take really
decisive action against him.
AUDIENCE: Thank you
so much for coming.
I'm an undergraduate
at Brown as well.
We've seen, over the past few
years, an expansion of Russia's
aggression, as you said.
And we're seeing
this particularly
in the cyber arena.
We're seeing this in cyber
incursions in Georgia.
We're seeing it in the
allegations of interference
in election processes.
And we also see it in investment
in Russia's cyber apparatus
as a form of conflict.
Where do you see this growing?
And who do you think could
be the possible next target
of Putin's cyber arm?
COREY FLINTOFF: Well, I
certainly think that--
and I'm just taking the word of
the United States intelligence
agencies, that they expect--
that they see that the Russians
as having experienced success
maybe far beyond their
original plans, in fact.
My guess is that the
sort of Russian cyber
attacks on the United
States may have
been a lot more modest in scope,
or at least modest in ambition.
And that they may have had
a sort of windfall success
that they didn't fully expect.
So the people from the
intelligence agencies
are saying building
on that success,
we can expect to see more and
probably more sophisticated
cyber attacks.
And it's not just a question
of propaganda or hacking
or trying to influence
the political process.
There is in my mind, far greater
dangers to our infrastructure.
There was a Russian
exploit last year
that shut down a power
plant in Western Ukraine.
They've shown that
they have that ability.
So I think that we can
consider ourselves a target,
and that we should
take defensive action.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
JAMES MORONE:
Interesting question.
Professor [? Haid? ?]
AUDIENCE: So it's not hard to
see that President Trump is
close to a certified sociopath.
[LAUGHTER]
So how do you see President
Putin taking advantage of that
in the past and in the future?
I read an article in Vanity
Fair last night about one
of Trump's--
the Putin-- sorry,
always confuse those two.
Sorry about that.
Putin's closest
advisers who have
written a story in pseudonym
about the ways in which they
manipulated the
Ukraine, et cetera,
through false information
and everything like that.
So the question is really,
how do you see the future
in terms of the tendencies
of our current US president
and the capabilities of
the FSB and their agenda?
COREY FLINTOFF: You know it
seems to me that the Trump
administration is now besieged
by these various accusations
and connections and so forth.
And they seem to have drawn in
their horns quite a bit as far
as activities with Russia.
And that may happen for
the foreseeable future.
What's more, the Russian
attitude towards Trump
seems to have changed.
They were absolutely gleeful
when Trump was elected.
And we know that there
were communications
among Kremlin officials
patting themselves
on the back for
having achieved the--
not for having achieved,
but for having predicted,
or having said that this
was a possibility when
most people in the West
didn't believe it was true.
I think that if I'm going
to sit here and do something
that I could never do
when I was a reporter
and that's speculate about
what's going to happen--
JAMES MORONE: That's
what we do here.
[LAUGHTER]
COREY FLINTOFF: --in
the various arenas.
I think in the arena of
Ukraine, for instance,
I think that we're aiming
at or will find ourselves
in a frozen conflict,
not unlike what
we have in Georgia, Abkhazia,
for instance, right now.
LINDA COOK: Muldova.
COREY FLINTOFF: I don't
think that Putin domestically
can afford to withdraw
from eastern Ukraine.
He certainly can't politically.
It would be political suicide
for him to give up Crimea.
And I think that we're going
to find that there's not
enough interest on the
part of the United States
or the west to defend Ukraine's
interests, unfortunately.
I mean we really--
that's something
that we really should have given
a lot more support and a lot
more attention to Ukraine.
But that's not in
the cards right now,
so I think what we're
going to find ourselves
with is one of these
awful frozen conflicts.
Costly to the United
States, costly to Ukraine,
and it can make it very
difficult for Ukraine
to achieve its ideal or
its ambition of joining
the European Union anytime soon.
I think the same thing is
going to happen in Syria.
I think that Russia has invested
a great deal of prestige
in supporting Bashar al-Assad.
I think they're are going
to continue to do that.
They've shown that
they're willing to commit
war crimes to support al-Assad.
And I think that's something
that-- what they've had
is the old Colin
Powell Pottery Barn
rule-- that if you
break it it's yours.
You break it, you buy it.
They have become
invested, and Syria is now
Russia's problem in a way that
it was not America's problem.
And that means that he's going
to have to continue to invest
time and resources in Syria.
And he's going to probably
have to force a situation where
Assad claims most of
Western Syria, the mountain
regions, the Alawite regions.
And it is going to have to
leave a sort of frozen conflict
line between the eastern
parts of the country that
will be the responsibility
of the various neighbor
countries that are
involved in this.
One of the things that
I've noticed about Syria
lately is that Russia seems
to be getting militarily
exhausted there.
You'll recall that when
Assad's army seized
the city of Palmyra, that was
a great coup and something that
was widely celebrated in Russia.
They were tremendously
proud of the fact
that it was with Russian support
that Assad was able to reclaim
that sort of iconic city.
Well, there was very
little publicity
when later on it fell back
into the hands of ISIS.
And it's only very
recently that they
were able to recover it again.
That says to me
that Russia doesn't
have the military force.
They may have the military
force to capture ground.
Doesn't have the military
force to hold it.
That's a very exhausting, very
personnel intensive business,
as we found in Iraq.
So I think that Putin
is in the same shape
that we were in, are in Iraq.
AUDIENCE: Speaking of, so
to speak, frozen conflicts,
over the last several decades
as climate change has affected
conditions in the Arctic,
we've seen more and more kind
of pushing of buttons
in the region,
especially on the
Russian front, kind
of claiming territory
and sending expeditions
under the ice and above.
I suppose I was interested
in hearing your perspective
about-- do you think as
sea ice continues to recede
in the coming years, is there
a political will in Russia
to kind of see how far they
can go and kind of push
their luck into the Arctic?
And do you think that
perhaps with your perspective
from Alaska, do you think
the United States will have
the will or the capability
to kind of push back
and prevent Russia
from having somewhat
of a free hand in the Arctic?
COREY FLINTOFF: No,
I think there is
the political will in Russia.
And I think that
they certainly would
like to dominate the Arctic
with as much territory
as they can possibly claim.
And as you said, I mean, that
goes right up to the North Pole
where they dropped that
titanium Russian flag.
There's also a great deal
of capacity in Russia
that other Arctic
nations do not have.
They have the best fleet
of icebreakers, including
nuclear powered icebreakers.
And they have an enormous
amount of engineering expertise
when it comes to
working in the Arctic.
So they are a formidable
player in the Arctic right now.
But at the same time,
I think that right
now at least the
open water passage
through northern Russia--
it's premature to
say that there really
is a lot to be done there.
Because in fact,
even at the best,
that passage is only open for a
very short window in the summer
time.
The weather there is terrible.
So that if you're planning to
take one of those big cruise
ships through the Russian Arctic
passage, bring your slicker.
I mean, it could be
potentially pretty awful.
Much more, if you're in
a vessel in the Arctic,
and you get caught in one
of these terrible storms,
you get frozen in like
the Franklin expedition,
there's nobody's going to be
able to come and rescue you,
either.
So the environmental challenges
are really formidable.
Russia's big interest in
the Arctic, of course,
is in resource extraction.
And at the very
beginning, at least,
it's all about offshore oil.
But with oil prices
dropping to the level
that they have,
with fracking being
such a big deal in the United
States, with nations like Iran
bringing more and more
oil production online,
I don't think Arctic
oil development
is going to be a very
serious issue for anybody
in the immediate future anyway.
Canada is the
country that probably
has the most to lose in terms
of territory in the Arctic.
The United States
has rather less.
But I mean we have resources to
protect and on the north slope
and that kind of thing.
So I think we need
to get in there,
and we need to have a
presence in the Arctic.
And we need to be doing
research there for sure.
JAMES MORONE: Again, thank you.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: Hey, thank you so
much for being here today.
I was going to ask about
Syria, and you kind of beat me
to the punch a little bit.
But as a follow up, do
you think the situation,
the Russia situation
in Syria is going
to change at all as a result of
the chemical weapons use that
happened recently and the
increased calls for action
within the United
States that followed?
COREY FLINTOFF: I'm not sure I
fully understand your question.
I'm sorry.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I know.
It's my bad.
I'm sorry.
Do you think Russia's
position in Syria
is going to change at all as a
result of the chemical weapons
use that happened
earlier this week?
COREY FLINTOFF: No, no.
I mean, because
Russia has always
denied that those attacks came
from the Syrian government.
In the UN recently we saw them
trying to blame the rebels.
The rebels somehow have
storage of sarin gas
that we didn't know about
and that they for some reason
never used before.
And I think that's a crock.
I think that that
whole take, you know,
that whole Russian story
built around rebels having gas
is absolutely untrue.
I think it's propaganda.
I think it was the Syrian
government that did that.
But Putin has shown that
he will support Assad
through any atrocity
or any war crime
that the man can think of doing.
The Russians are the ones who
have bombed hospitals in Syria.
Unfortunately, they
have a what about ism
case where we bombed
a hospital as well.
But I think that the strategy
on the part of the Assad
government and on
the part of Russia
is to attack these civilian
centers, drive people out
of them, take them over if
it means leveling cities
like Aleppo, and assuring
that Assad stays in control.
So I don't think that a little
thing like 200 people being
killed by chemical
weapons is going
to deter anybody in Russia.
JAMES MORONE: Corey, this
has been fascinating.
Just one last question.
There's a lot of
students here who
aspire to a life like yours--
to a life of journalism,
a life of writing.
So to get back to Jon's
questions, any advice?
COREY FLINTOFF: Yeah, the
only thing about my career
is I wish I had
started it sooner.
I wish-- I didn't
start it in college.
You know, I basically did.
After I left grad
school, I did start
to write for a little
free paper in Chicago
called The Chicago Reader.
JAMES MORONE: Oh, yeah.
COREY FLINTOFF: Yeah, so I
was dipping my toes into it
at that point.
But I'm really sorry that I
missed the years immediately
after college when I
could have been doing
reporting somewhere and
having a lot of fun doing it,
and had less at stake than
I did later on in my career
where I felt like
I had to succeed.
JAMES MORONE: All right.
Get to work everybody.
Corey, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
