You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast series on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.

This special episode of our podcast series, The Second, on the Munich Security Conference, is sponsored by American University School of International Service, which prepares graduates for global

service in government, non-profits, and business.

Applications for fall 2016 are still being accepted and you can check it out for yourself at American

edu slash S.I.S. slash apply. We're going to try something a little different with this episode of the

podcast and I think you're going to like it. If you listen to our last episode

you know our focus was on the Munich Security Conference,

a major annual event that hosts heads of state, ministers of foreign affairs and defense, thought leaders,

and this year, whiskey-swilling editors like me. In this episode, we're going to focus on Russia, and especially U.S. Russian relations.

To do that, we're going to tell a story.

This story starts with Vladimir Putin's 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference

and ends with Russian Prime Minister Medvedev

speech at this year's conference.

Between 2007 and 2016, U.S. Russian relations have gone from bad to good to bad again.

To tell that story, I conducted interviews in Munich with

Richard Fontaine, Senator John McCain, and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, and I conducted

more interviews back in Washington with Bridge Colby, Matt Reganski, and Michael Coffin.

Our next episode will feature a more forward-looking conversation on U.S. Russian relations with

Admiral James Stavridis, Jim Gold Geyer, Evelyn Farkas, Derek Shalay, and more.

So here we go.

Richard, so you told me earlier that you've been to this conference,

the Munich Security Conference 11 times, is that right?

...