Angela Stent, professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University, discusses her new book, Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest, in which she explores the ambitions, successes, and challenges of Putin’s Russia on the global stage.

How did Russia manage to emerge resurgent on the world stage and play a weak hand so effectively? Or has Russia stepped into a vacuum created by the West’s distraction with its own domestic problems and U.S. ambivalence about whether it still wants to act as a superpower? Stent will shed light on the country’s turbulent past and how it has influenced Putin, the Russians’ understanding of their position on the global stage and their future ambitions–and their conviction that the West has tried to deny them a seat at the table of great powers since the U.S.S.R. collapsed. This presentation will help Americans understand how and why the post-Cold War era has given way to a new, more dangerous world, one in which Russia poses a challenge to the United States in every corner of the globe–and one in which Russia has become a toxic and divisive subject in U.S. politics