UKRAINE AND RUSSIA: WILL EUROPE STEP UP?

OUR PANELISTS

MODERATOR J. RYAN O'CONNELL '73

Author, The Wall Street Democrat newsletter (Substack)

Ryan received an A.B. in History from Harvard University in 1973 and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. After working as a corporate lawyer and a banker in New York City, Ryan found his true calling as a bond analyst on Wall Street. At firms such as Moody’s, Citigroup, and Bloomberg, he wrote frequently about banks and other financial institutions. He found these firms particularly fascinating because they are profoundly affected by the economy and government policies as well as market trends. Ryan retired in 2018.

Ryan has a lifelong interest in politics. He has written a bi-monthly newsletter on politics since 2015, providing a moderate Democratic perspective. He publishes The Wall Street Democrat on Substack. Ryan has also written numerous articles for The Globalist, an English-language online daily based in Berlin, Germany.

Ryan has helped to create four ClassAct forums on political and voting issues. He has written several articles for ClassAct on gerrymandering, voter suppression and other election issues.

Ryan traveled extensively in Latin America during the 1970s, at a time when military dictatorships ruled most of the continent. These experiences drove home to him how fortunate Americans have been to enjoy fair elections, freedom of the press, and other rights that we often take for granted.

MARK CANCIAN '73

International Security Expert

Retired Marine Colonel

Mark Cancian (Colonel, USMCR, ret.) is a senior adviser with the CSIS International Security Program. He joined CSIS in April 2015 from the Office of Management and Budget, where he spent more than seven years as chief of the Force Structure and Investment Division, working on issues such as Department of Defense budget strategy, war funding, and procurement programs, as well as nuclear weapons development and nonproliferation activities in the Department of Energy. Previously, he worked on force structure and acquisition issues in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and ran research and executive programs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. In the military, Colonel Cancian spent over three decades in the U.S. Marine Corps, active and reserve, serving as an infantry, artillery, and civil affairs officer and on overseas tours in Vietnam, Desert Storm, and Iraq (twice). Since 2000, he has been an adjunct faculty member at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he teaches a course on the connection between policy and analysis. A prolific author, he has published over 40 articles on military operations, acquisition, budgets, and strategy and received numerous writing awards. He graduated with high honors (magna cum laude) from Harvard College and with highest honors (Baker scholar) from Harvard Business School.

PETER GALBRAITH '73

Former US Ambassador to Croatia

Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith is an author, academic, commentator, politician, policy advisor, and former United States diplomat. From 1993 to 1998, he served as the first U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, where he was co-mediator of the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the Croatian War of Independence. He was a cabinet member in East Timor’s first transitional government, successfully negotiating the Timor Sea Treaty. In 2009, Ambassador Galbraith was an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations serving as Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan. Ambassador Galbraith served two terms as a Vermont State Senator from Windham County from 2011 to 2015, and was a candidate for Governor of Vermont in 2016. He is the author of two critically acclaimed books on the Iraq War, including the bestselling The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End. Ambassador Galbraith argues that Iraq has broken up into three parts, allowing for Kurdistan’s independence. In the 1980s, Galbraith uncovered the beginnings of the Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds and, in 1988, documented the use of chemical weapons, leading the US Senate to pass comprehensive sanctions legislation (“The Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988”) authored by Galbraith. He was in Kurdistan during the 1991 uprising and his reports–including video footage of the uprising’s collapse – contributed to the US decision to create a safe area. Beginning in 2003, Ambassador .Galbraith was an informal advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, supporting the Kurdistan delegation in the drafting process of the 2005 Iraqi Constitution. He is on the Board of Directors of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the research arm of the Council for a Livable World.

Ambassador Galbraith was an assistant professor of International Relations and Economics at Windham College in Putney, Vermont, from 1975 to 1978. Later, he was Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College in 1999 and between 2001 and 2003. In addition to his books, Ambassador Galbraith has written extensively for a range of publications including The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Guardian.

Ambassador Galbraith earned a B.A. degree from Harvard College, an M.A. from Oxford University, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

THOMAS KENT

Consultant on propaganda and Russian affairs

Thomas Kent teaches and consults on Russian affairs, journalism, and the problems of propaganda and disinformation. President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty until 2018, he now teaches at Columbia University and consults for governments, NGOs, and news organizations. He is the senior fellow for strategic communication of the American Foreign Policy Council and an associate fellow of Slovakia’s GLOBSEC. Previously, he was Moscow bureau chief for The Associated Press, chief of AP operations in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, head of AP’s international news coverage, and editor for standards and ethics. His first book, Striking Back: Overt and Covert Options to Combat Russian Disinformation, was published in 2020, and his second, “How Russia Loses,” in 2023. He is now working on a new book, on the propaganda lessons of the Ukraine war.