UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Heather A. Conley, senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia and the Arctic and director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., will deliver a lecture titled “The Kremlin Playbook: Understanding Russia’s New Generation Warfare” at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 29, in Room 116 of the Lewis Katz Building on Penn State's University Park campus.
In her talk, Conley will discuss the Kremlin playbook — a strategy designed to exploit governance deficits to weaken the internal cohesion of democratic societies and strengthen the perception of Western economic and political dysfunction by influencing and eroding democratic governance from within.
Conley is an author of the 2016 CSIS report, "The Kremlin Playbook: Understanding Russian Influence in Central and Eastern Europe."
CSIS works to develop solutions to the world’s greatest policy challenges, and CSIS scholars provide strategic insights and bipartisan policy solutions to help decision-makers chart a course toward a better world. Their report, the result of a 16-month study on the nature of Russian influence in five case countries, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Serbia, in partnership with the Bulgarian Center for the Study of Democracy, determined that “Russia has cultivated an opaque network of patronage across the region that it uses to influence and direct decision-making.”
Conley is a leading expert on the intersection of a changing Arctic, due to climate change, and the policy implications, especially with Russia and China. Prior to joining CSIS in 2009, she served as executive director of the Office of the Chairman of the Board at the American National Red Cross, as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau for European and Eurasian Affairs. and as a senior associate with an international consulting firm led by Richard L. Armitage, former U.S. deputy secretary of state.
Conley received her bachelor of arts in international studies from West Virginia Wesleyan College and her masters of arts in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
Conley’s talk, sponsored by Penn State’s Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk and School of International Affairs, is free and open to the public.