How should the trans-Atlantic alliance counter Russian aggression?

The West is searching for a response to Russia’s ongoing malfeasance, including its recent attack on Ukraine in the Black Sea and its just-revealed effort to “muck around” in U.S. 2018 midterm elections. These are the latest in a long sequence of transgressions on the part of the Kremlin, ranging from the invasion of Georgia, to the violation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, to interference in the democratic processes of NATO member states, perhaps most dramatically seen in Putin’s assault on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As a result, on both sides of the Atlantic, democratic values and institutions—and the trans-Atlantic alliance predicated upon them—are at risk.

On Dec. 12, Governance Studies and the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings co-hosted an event with the bipartisan Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG), featuring an expert panel that discussed the threats emanating from Russia and elsewhere to security, democracy, and the trans-Atlantic alliance—and what the alliance can and should do about it.

After the panel, speakers took questions from the audience.